You're saying if you owned a business, you would make it your goal to earn 5% more than breaking even?
No, I would make it my goal to maximize profits.
That said, if that maximization resulted in 5% over breaking even, that would be fine.
Remember, I define 'breaking even' as covering what I expect to pay myself this year. If my incorporated business only reflects 5% profit, after paying all operating expenses *including* my salary, then I'd be quite satisfied with that.
The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is around 8.5%. Have fun proposing a 5% profit margin to the boss!
Did you really mean to use the term 'profit margin' there?
Profit margin, more than anything, reflects how much volatility a company can withstand in terms of cost. A low profit margin means the company is at greater risk of losing money if costs rise. The average varies from industry to industry, and stating that its 8.5% across the S&P500 is practically meaningless. It you have a higher profit margin than competitors in your industry that might suggest that you are in a bit of a stronger position... but comparing two arbitrary companies is pretty much meaningless.
The cost of the equipment needed for speculative drilling and refining is absolutely enormous. These expenses are paid out and a large return over a very long time is needed to make it worthwhile to have even tried.
These expenses are amortized and deducted before you report your 'profit'.
If I run an oil company and I pay for some speculative drilling and build a new refinery to sustain my business, and clearly that investment requires me to take out a 10 year loan for some expensive equipment, then the loan is added to my liabilities offset by the capital added to my assets. While the cost of servicing the loan as well as the capital depreciation is added to my expenses. The cost of paying a team to drill holes speculatively is part of my regular salary expenses.
When I report my profits, those activities are all already paid for, and the profits reflect how much money is left over, over and above all that.
Wikipedia puts it well:
"In economics, a firm is said to be making a normal profit when total revenues equal total costs. These normal profits then match the rate of return that is the minimum rate required by equity investors to maintain their present level of investment."
Big-oil is making 'record profits'; and they are known to be generally profitable. In this case it is clear that this is after *all costs* (including ongoing specutive drilling, refinery maintenance/construction servicing costs) are paid, and there is excess profit well beyond 'the minimum rate of return required by equity investors to maintain their present level of investment' (ie the shareholders.)
One thing I never see mentioned is the fact that these companies all have two names combined... Exxon and Mobil used to be their own separate entities. In order to create these records, they had to combine efforts of some already giant companies. Would it be ok if the profit was half the size, but going to two different bank accounts?
I am assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that when 'big oil' makes record profits, it is evaluated by adding all the profits of all the big oil companies last year and comparing it to the sum this year. So a simple merger or partnership wouldn't really affect anything.
If you think speculators are not causing the problem, then please explain why was there a letter signed by many airline CEO's who DO take delivery of the commodity stating that speculation was at the root of the problem and asking that it be curbed.
Speculators buy and sell based on what they speculate the price will be in the near future. This has the effect of driving prices up in advance of them being driven up 'naturally', and ALSO the effect of driving prices down in advance of them coming down 'naturally'.
Airline CEOs want gas NOW. And they are having to pay what speculators are thinking its going to be worth next month. Since speculators think its going to be worth more next month, airlines get to pay those speculative prices prices now. They could gamble that prices won't really be that high next month, and pick up the contracts just before its time to take delivery, but that's stupid on two counts:
1) the speculators might be right, its not like they are collectively total idiots
2) If they gamble on buying the contracts closer to the delivery dates they are gambling with not being able to get any gas. Like going christmas shopping christmas eve -- no gaurantee you are going to get the gift you had in mind. And if they don't get any, their planes don't fly. That's just not an option. So they have to buy in advance.
Similiarly if the speculators thought prices were going down, the CEOs would be able to buy contracts at below market price, and won't write any letters asking for regulation.
I had heard that you couldn't get a "Verified" account without a bank account. Since that limits some of what you can do, I verified with them.
Could be. I signed up in 2001 ago and am Canadian. I'm not even sure if they supported linking to a Canadian bank at that time, and adding a credit card was enough to 'get verified' at the time. (An unverified account at the time was one that was simply opened, and then funded by having another paypal user send you cash, which you couldn't withdraw)
But you could send it to another paypal user. So if you sold something on ebay, and accepted paypal, you could get money into your account... which you could then use to buy stuff from people on ebay who acceptable paypal.) The rules of likely changed, by my account appears to be grandfathered... because it is reporting its status as verified and I have not linked an account to it... although they invite me to frequently, "for my convenience".)
I suppose the best thing would be to get a throwaway bank account that keeps no real money in it, and use that as the "verified" account.
Or close it after you are verified. I wonder if they have any way of detecting that, after you are verified, without you actively attempting to transfer money between them.
What if my business isn't sustainable with a 5% profit margin?
Why exactly wouldn't it be?
If your business isn't sustainable after ALL your expenses are paid, including your salary, r&d costs, and any other costs you might incurr and there is still money left over (hint - that's the 'profit'), then you are completely incompetent.
In a small sole proprietership, where the owner doesn't draw a wage, but rather just 'keeps the profits' as his compensation, then sure, if the profits aren't high enough to adequately compensate him, he will close the business. But it would be more accurate to say in that situation that from the perspective of the business, that it is actually unprofitable, because its not covering the cost of keeping its most important 'staff member'.
Corporations aren't run like this. Profits are used to grow the business (and growth, by definition, implies that it has already been 'sustained'. and in some cases, paid back to shareholders as dividends.
So in the case of big-oil, record profits are just that: an opportunity for them to grow and to further line the pockets of shareholders and investors.
So quit harping on the "record profits" of the oil companies. It just demonstrates your complete lack of understanding of economics at the most basic level.
While you just demonstrated your complete lack of understanding of business at the most basic level.
No, it's not. It shouldn't prevent me from doing anything on my machine.
Correct. It shouldn't prevent you from doing anything on your machine. But it should take steps to ensure that you actually are doing things.
It should prevent other people from doing it behind my back.
And how is the OS supposed to know the difference? How does it know that you installed grub, and that it wasn't installed behind your back? How does it know that the grub installed hasn't been modified or tampered with? How does it know grub isn't a rootkit?
Personally, I trust grub more than I trust microsoft (not a fair comparison, I admit, Windows is a fair bit more complicated, and therefore buggy, than grub)
How do you know, each day that you boot up, that the copy of grub you are running hasn't been swapped out behind your back with a malicious version? Even if you installed it yourself from source code you inpsected and verified the md5 checksum... that doesn't prove I didn't swap it out on you last night.
Vista's digital signatures requirements and checks -does- protect you from that sort of tampering. Its a good thing.
The only flaw, as I said in my post, is that vista doesn't give us a well defined method of trusting code that it doesn't trust by default. Ideally, you should want to tell Vista -- "I installed this exact version of grub, and I trust it, so you can boot with it. But, if tomorrow you boot up, and its not running this exact version of grub then I want you to stop and let me know that its been changed." Then if you know you made a change to grub, you can 'sign' the new version and authorize Vista to boot with it too, or if you didn't change grub, you can say --what the fuck-- and investigate who swapped grub out behind your back...
The problem with Vista is that the process of 'signing' a copy of grub and getting Vista to trust it is not an established and well documented procedure, if it is even possible.
However, given that you can develop windows device drivers and test driver signing etc, and you can create 'developer signatures' that will apply to just your machine(s), there apparently **IS** a process for doing it.
So rather than disable Vista's driver signing and so forth, we should be signing GRUB so Vista knows that we trust it.
Interac Email Money Transfers (IEMTs) have been available from the major banks in Canada for at least the last 6 years. They're very convenient when paying your rent, etc. - giving money to people you know in real life, for relatively large sums.
I find them extremely useful for giving larger one time transaction sums of $100+ to people I don't know, online.
PayPal is designed for online retailers who need to process one-time or recurring monthly payments without getting a merchant account. In other words, it's geared towards businesses - it has features like recurring payments, storing your credit card number for future use, etc.
I disagree. It is geared toward personal users, especially back when it was introduced. I concede that now its become somewhat more geared for businesses.
But that is stupid. A credible business should just a merchant account. If I see a 'business' that only transacts with paypal, my faith in them, their product, their credibility plummets like a stone. Its not exactly difficult or expensive to get at least a partnered merchant account to accept visa/mc/amex through. If your so rinky-dink that you've only got paypal... well... color me unimpressed.
IEMTs are totally different, and designed for personal use.
Which pretty much covers how I use ebay. Which is paypals stronghold. So while they are 'totally different' their is some obvious overlap.
PayPal fees are also much less than the interac fee for most small transactions that happen online anyway - anything less than $25.
Yeah, I agree microtransactions were still in paypals realm, I asserted IEMTs would dominate the larger transactions where you want security, and don't want to deal with a 2-bit outfit like paypal.
In short, IEMTs have almost nothing in common with PayPal or other online payment systems.
I disagree. As I said, for me, IEMT's have replaced most of my paypal usage. I used to paypal to buy larger items on ebay. I don't anymore. I don't tend to buy 'microtransation' class stuff on ebay unless I'm bidding on multiple options, because the various fees, shipping, etc that get applied balloon the price ridiculously.
But, this means you have to actually have the money to send. With PayPal (or other payment services), you can back your payment with a credit card. For the vast amount of people who rack up a lot of debt, this is important.
1) People -should- have the money before they buy stuff. Any financial advisor will tell you that. If you -need- credit for an ebay purchase, you've probably got issues.:)
2) There is nothing stopping anyone from making a cash advance from their credit card into their bank account. I can do it through my online banking in around 3 seconds. (And i recognize that a cahs advance doesn't pay rewards, also starts charging interest immediately, so its not quite as good a deal... but seriously, if you need to buy on credit you still can.)
I use a credit card for PayPal payments because I get the credit card rewards. Plus, I don't like some of the PayPal practices very much.
I use a cc for paypal because I don't trust paypal, and wouldn't EVER give them my bank account details.
But seriously, the paypal limits are so low, especially for credit cards, that if you do more than a couple transactions a month, you need a 'premium account', and the fees start racking up. And if you are doing few enough transactions that you can get away with a free paypal account, well, $1.50 per transation vs $0.30 isn't really a big deal if your only doing one or two a month.
Plus you are probably using paypal as an american. As a canadian using paypal, there is a 2.5% exchange rate fee for currency conversion, an additional $0.30+ 3-4% fee for just being cross-border on top of the usual $0.30+ 2-3% fees, and I have to pay to withdraw money from my paypal account... they really nickle and dime us, and by the end of the day, I'm probably paying $1+ a transaction anyway.
Sorry for the double post... slashdot munched my formatting.
While this sounds like a really great system, unless they slash the fee, there is no way it will ever be a Paypal killer, or even serious competitor.
1) Paypal's fees are quite a bit higher than you seem to think. They are currently:
2) And yeah, while paypal still has the advantage in the micropayments area, I'd be willing to pay a buck fifty to send a $1000, $500, even $200 through the bank network instead.
3) I think if it catches on, there -will- be monthly plan options to bring that fee down...I predict you will eventually you'll get a certain number of them bundled in with your 'chequing account plan', with the option to upgrade to a higher plan.
The secret behind Paypal has always been the low fee, which means huge volume.
Since the receiver in this system doesn't pay anything, they can do huge volume at no cost. That blows paypal out of the water for a 'high volume seller'.
And 'high volume buyers'? Well, they are a rarer breed to start with. And see #3 above.
You can use it for almost any transaction, no matter the size. This system sounds great, but how many transactions large enough to make the $1.50 reasonable are actually going on over the net, especially when compared to the millions of small transactions just done by eBay?
My average ebay purchase is usually over $100, because anything less than that and shipping becomes the dominant cost. I might bid on multiple items from a single seller, or big on larger lots of items. But the average auction that closes at $3.00 probably bears another $5 to $10 in shipping. Is an extra buck for the secure cash transaction really a big deal? The buyer already takes those costs into account when they bid, and bid accordingly.
As a buyer, I use Paypal a lot even for places that take credit cards just because it is convenient. I can just log into Paypal and send the money versus having to go and get my credit card to enter all of the information. The fee for me is nothing and the fee for the seller is small enough that they still use it. All of those type transaction dry up with this system unfortunately.
Agreed. As I said in my original post, paypal and its ilk will still be around, but will be competing for the microtranaction market. The interac system will grab all the large transactions.
I just used CIBC's Interac Email Money Transfer system, and it was a pain in the ass. Having to pick a security question that the recipient has to answer? Ok, I can kinda sorta understand that.
Given that that is the only shared security information, its not bad. Remember anyone can claim the funds if they intercept the email. The ONLY security is the secret/question answer.
However, their are draconian limitations on what can be entered. Length limitation when trying to come up with your own question? That certainly helps me come up with something unique that the person would know. Only allowing letters, numbers and hyphens in the answer? Even more annoying! Why can't I used spaces and punctuation?
You are over thinking it. Just exchange a secret code. Have them pick a random word and 5 digit number, and that's the answer. The secret question can be... "whats the code?" When I'm sending hundreds of dollars we exchange the code over the phone. Sometimes, I'll just generate a random answer myself, and then phone them with it, or have them phone me when they've received the email.
As a concept it is ok, and for all I know other participating banks don't have CIBC's limitations, but from my user experience it was more frustrating than it needed to be.
Agreed but its not really aiming at the microtransactions market. Its aimed that hundreds of dollars and up market. And at that price point it works brilliantly.
While this sounds like a really great system, unless they slash the fee, there is no way it will ever be a Paypal killer, or even serious competitor.
1) Paypal's fees are quite a bit higher than you seem to think. They are currently:
2) And yeah, while paypal still has the advantage in the micropayments area, I'd be willing to pay a buck fifty to send a $1000, $500, even $200 through the bank network instead.
3) I think if it catches on, there -will- be monthly plan options to bring that fee down...I predict you will eventually you'll get a certain number of them bundled in with your 'chequing account plan', with the option to upgrade to a higher plan.
The secret behind Paypal has always been the low fee, which means huge volume.
Since the receiver in this system doesn't pay anything, they can do huge volume at no cost. That blows paypal out of the water for a 'high volume seller'.
And 'high volume buyers'? Well, they are a rarer breed to start with. And see #3 above.
You can use it for almost any transaction, no matter the size. This system sounds great, but how many transactions large enough to make the $1.50 reasonable are actually going on over the net, especially when compared to the millions of small transactions just done by eBay?
My average ebay purchase is usually over $100, because anything less than that and shipping becomes the dominant cost. I might bid on multiple items from a single seller, or big on larger lots of items. But the average auction that closes at $3.00 probably bears another $5 to $10 in shipping. Is an extra buck for the secure cash transaction really a big deal? The buyer already takes those costs into account when they bid, and bid accordingly.
As a buyer, I use Paypal a lot even for places that take credit cards just because it is convenient. I can just log into Paypal and send the money versus having to go and get my credit card to enter all of the information. The fee for me is nothing and the fee for the seller is small enough that they still use it. All of those type transaction dry up with this system unfortunately.
Agreed. As I said in my original post, paypal and its ilk will still be around, but will be competing for the microtranaction market. The interac system will grab all the large transactions.
It has a lot of advantage when dealing with people you don't want to provide any permanent credentials, such as when buying something from an unknown individual or donating money to some organization, group, or charity.
Visa, at least, and probably the other cards by now, have a system where you can generate a single use credit card number pre authorized for specific merchant and dollar amount. So you can use that numbe in an online transaction and the merchant gets a number that's only valid for that single use single dollar amount. If it gets stolen, no big deal. If the merchant tries to double bill it, no dice. etc etc. And I trust Visa a lot more than Paypal.
I don't hate paypal, but I do dislike using it given all the limitations, fees, and scams. I also despise the ebay/paypal pairing.
As for egold... yeah total scam... it had potential...maybe something like it still does.
But I think the real juggernauts -- the banks -- still have to weigh in on this.
My bank recently introduced "Interac Email Money Transfer" and its pretty freaking impressive. I can send money to nearly anyone in Canada with a Canadian bank account, and an email address. We don't need to share bank information or personal information at all. All I need to know as the sender is the recipients email address -- any email address, they can even use a throw-away one as long as they can pick up email on it, and I don't need to know what bank they belong to as long as its participating in the Interac Email system which is currently the 5 major Canadian banks (TD, RBC, Scotia, CIBC, and BMO).
The price is a flat $1.50 per transaction, which is pretty steep to pay for a $10.00 ebay win... but a drop in the bucket when paying for a $500 transaction. There is no fee to receive money.
If they don't use one of the 5 participating banks, but have an account at, for example, a credit union, they can -still- receive money, but I think it gets redirected through a more complicated and time consuming inter-bank transfer, and there is a fee charged to the recipient.
For me this is the paypal killer. Not only is it secure convenient and trustworthy but banks and credit unions, at least in Canada are pretty customer service oriented...toll free 24-hour hot-lines, and genuinely useful staff are the norm in my experience with TD, RBC, and Scotiabank. Contrast that with Paypal.:)
Already for me, anything significant is now done via this interac system when I can. Once it expands to the credit unions and/or goes international... I think paypal and its cohorts will be reduced to competing for petty cash transactions and micropayments, e.g. sending sums like... $1 or $5, where the $1.50 fee is just too much.
but I wouldn't be surprised to see the interac system evolve and start offering 'plans' in addition to the a la cart flat fee.
Biggest? Not for me. That it reveals what porn sites I've visited to all and sundry, when I type in an address that begins with the same few letters, to show someone, and there's no function in the privacy options to clear those sites from coming up like that. Clear History won't get rid of them. That's the biggest strike against it.
That's actually a legitimate gripe.
I know there is a way to prevent FF3 from showing any results which is a half assed workaround. I suspect there *is* a way of 'purging' whatever its list is. But I think that's a fundamentally ass-backwards way to deal with it anyway... I want to keep bookmarks, and history, and whatnot. That's USEFUL to me. In fact that useful for both 'clean family/work related stuff' and the 'pr0n'. I don't want to lose either. I just don't want the two to MIX.
So that said, I'd suggest a completely different solution... you can run FF with multiple profiles. Just create and use the 'other' one for pr0n etc. (look in the help for 'profile manager'.) Then you can keep the history, and make bookmarks, and so on, without worrying about your kids/wife/family being confronted with them.
My main profile is the default, and I have a password protected alternative launched via a separate shortcut for when I go browsing in places I don't want to confront my family with... not that I mind my wife -knowing- where I go...or anything; but if I've got my brother over, or my parents, or I'm pulling stuff up with my daughter -- I agree that it would be one of inappropriate/embarassing/offensive/etc for that stuff to be popping up.
Some people use a separate browser. Some people use a separate use account.
Finally, if you are actually want to hide all traces of what you did, from someone who might be searching your computer for evidence you were looking at pr0n to use against you... then again, a separate profile is the way to go... just delete it when you are done. (and overwrite it with zeroes, etc, etC) Personally I'd find it far more 'suspicious' to find a browser that had had its history cleared, and so forth. By using a separate profile, you can leave the default one clean and intact... so if someone browses your history -- well now there still -is- one, and its all nice and clean.
And if you do opt-out of the Microsoft Trust package, you can run what you like but it is impossible for your software to read any data inside the secures area of the Trusted system and it is impossible to read any Trust-secured file types (like DRMed music or even Trusted email) with your software.
I can see why the MPAA would have a policy of -only- trusting a "Microsoft Trust Package" that they've pre-approved and not anything the end user might have have signed. But:
What possible motivation would there be for my email client or office package to have that policy? My email client should say, 'Hey, if you trust it, I trust it, its your email.' Ditto for my office package.
And also other computers can and will refuse to connect to you over the internet because you are not running the Microsoft Trust package - i.e. it with be impossible for you to view websites no matter what software you run. The websites will only be viewable on Microsoft Trusted Windows using the Microsoft Trusted browser, a browser which enforces DRM and which enforces ad-views etc. What website wouldn't jump at the chance to use Trusted Computing to enforce ad-views and lock out ad-blockers and more?
And for some websites like banks, it might even be worth it. For others just looking to ram ads down our throats? Get real... sites live or die by how much they annoy their users. If your average website said 'hey you have to run the microsoft trusted suite and punch the monkey to post on our forums' someone else would run a website where you didn't, and the first one would die a quick death.
Sure there will -always- be someone who wants to lock things down that hard, but they'll be facing competition from someone with a more relaxed policy. The more 'relaxed' site will kill the other one quickly -- not only will it be generally less annoying to use, but it will also be visted and referred to by more people, including the savvy and technical people who got locked out of the annoying one.
That aspect is fundamentally designed into the hardware chip itself. The chip is designed to secure the system against the owner.
The "owner" or the "end-user"? Those are two extremely different situations. As the *owner*, I want the chip to secure the system against the user. The user may be clueless, the user may be malicious, etc. And as the owner I want to protect my systems.
The chip says the owner has no control, except the control to "opt-in" to a given pair of handcuffs or to "opt-out" and the chip locks you out.
I disagree. The chip says the -end user- has no control. He who defines the handcuffs owns the system. And **Someone** has to define what those handcuffs are. **SOMEONE** is in control. To me, that person is the *OWNER*.
The chip "design" is not at fault here. If we give the *appropriate* person the right to be that "someone" -- ie the physical hardware owner, then the system isn't evil in the least.
Its only evil, if we assign Microsoft to be the "owner" or "the one who sets the rules"... or the RIAA, or the BSA. But that assingment isn't implicit in the chip design. There is nothing in the design of the chip that prevents us from assigning those rights to the guy or gal or enterprise who buys the hardware.
There is no basic fix to make this Not-Evil by just having Microsoft or any other particular person/organization Not-Be-Evil with this stuff. The evil aspect is in the chip design itself, handing those lockdown powers to whomever wrote the un-modifiable software you were given.
The basic fix is to assign those powers to the physical owner of the hardware.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think if Microsoft is implementing trusted computing in order to implement DRM, to prevent pirating, then it would be by design to prevent users from signing or trusting any software on their own.
I'd say their trusted computing scheme puts bit locker and encryption are far higher up on their list than preventing piracy.
If they allow to sign arbitrary software and run it on a trusted computer the whole point of the DRM part of trusted computing is defeated and the BSA, MPAA and RIAA get mad.
Ah... no. Not at all. The two aren't actually in conflict. Suppose the MPAA demands a 'trusted path' and requires all drivers to be approved by them before they'll show their precious HD movie. Microsoft with their trusted computing systems has enabled that.
But if I were able to self-sign a driver, so that my copy of vista would accept it as ok to run while driver signing was enabled, what would that do to defeat the MPAA's 'DRM'? Nothing at all!! Because the MPAA doesn't trust my signature, so even though the code is signed by me, its not signed by THEM, so as long as I'm running 'vux984's video driver', the system won't play their content, and its safe from my 'untrusted' (by them) driver.
There is no conflict here!!
1) I can run anything I trust on my computer. 2) If I want to play -their- content, I'd to provide a system -they- trust.
We are already seeing the beginning of this outside of the 'trusted computing' systems...for example already some games won't run if they detect certain other programs running -- like debuggers, virtual CD rom systems, known cheat programs, etc.
And its been a fairly peaceful co-existence... its not like they don't allow us to run debuggers and whatnot... just not at the same time as their software. The same sort of situation could arise with drivers... especially if we get to the point where we can reliably load and unload more of them on the fly.
There is a big difference between the motivations Stallman has in signing things and Microsoft and its corporate partners have in signing things.
Microsoft is certainly aiming to accomodate its corporate partners, but there's actually no conflict to including accomodating the stallman's of the world too.
This also means that if hardware maker 'A' releases a driver that MS does not like, they will simply refuse to sign it.
First, has that -ever- happened? And wouldn't Microsoft end up being dragged over the coals in Europe for sure, and probably america too.
Second, the 'development driver' signatures I mentioned DO NOT need Microsofts blessing. That is their entire point, to allow you to work on 'signed code' yet which is only valid on one machine.
That would be a *reasonable* loophole for Free/OSS drivers to work within. If I download source and compile drivers myself, I can sign them myself, and they will work on my machine. They won't work on YOUR machine, unless you sign them yourself.
The problem with Vista's UAC is this: I have an admin account, under which I should have full control and access to the system. Restricted access should only happen in a standard user account.
Vista is much like Ubuntu, where you don't log in as root, and have to sudo a bunch of admin tasks? Vista's just more annoying because its coping with a huge legacy of insecure code that its trying to offer some semblance of backwards compatibility for.
You say that the only flaw is that users don't have a way of manually trusting things they want-- this is the major issue which breeds the hatred of UAC and most of the 'chatter on the internets' you speak of.
But instead of breeding demand for Microsoft to allow them to trust the things they want to trust, its breeding the demand for Microsoft to remove UAC, get rid of driver signing, and so forth.
Vista's security chain works as designed and intended, preventing from you to inject an untrusted bootloader into the bootstrap. Isn't that what we -want- from our security systems? This isnt' a case of "Microsoft" holding our data hostage, this is a case of our own security policies WORKING.
If I were to be running Linux, with equivalent protection, I'd be right pissed if it could be trivially rootkitted/bypassed by swapping in a malicious bootloader.
The ONLY flaw I see in the entire Vista/TPM system is that users don't seem to have a way of manually trusting things they genuinely want to trust. If it hasn't been blessed by MS its not trusted -- that's a fine policy for general users, but if I, as the hardware want to trust a specific bit of code (e.g. the linux boot loader) then I should be able to manually sign it somehow, and add my personal key to my personal install of Vista. And then the grub bootloader I signed will be trusted on my (and only my) PC.
All the 'chatter on the internets' is currently centered around how to disable UAC, how to disable driver signing, how to go back to running windows as insecurely as possible. i would prefer to see the discussion take a more intelligent direction -- how to obtain keys/certificates, how to add them to Vista's chain of trust on a per PC or per domain basis, and how how sign code with them.
Signed drivers are a FANTASTIC idea. not being able to sign drivers myself for my own hardware is EVIL. But MS --does-- have programs in place to let you sign code with 'development drivers' which are designed to only be valid on your PC... its just that most of the discussion surround the issue is how to disable it, and how evil MS for deciding what is blessed and what is not.
I mean, take Stallman, even -he- who wrote the GPLv3 in part to counter DRM isn't against code signing. He just requires that the keys necessary to sign code be included, so the owner of the hardware and user of GPLv3 code can sign it, and thereby be free to make modifications and excercise all the freedoms intended by the gpl.
They did. The feature in question is called the Smart Location Bar. "Awesomebar" is just a nickname.
Touche.
Then again, the fact that I've been using FF3 since release and wasn't actually aware of that, ought to tell you something about how pervasively hyped the 'awesomebar' nickname is.
To the point that I thought it was the 'awesomebar' described as being a "smart" location bar... not the other way around.
I can say that I've encountered a BSOD in XP but it must have been less than a dozen times spread across 5 years and over 80 computers.
Agreed and in my case it can almost always be invariably traced back to either: 1) bad network drivers, particularly wifi 2) bad video drivers 3) faulty ram 4) faulty hard drive
I've had linux kernel panics about as often, and for generally the same reasons.
although it has a painfully stupid name that makes me want to hate it already
That's really the -biggest- strike against it. The presumption that I or anyone else would think its awesome immediately triggers the hate response. If they'd simply called it 'enhanced address bar', made it optional but default, and described it as 'awesome' there wouldn't have been this massive resistance to it.
The reality is that its really good. I can reliably pull up a LOT more url's with a lot less effort. It is true that some of the mnemonics for urls that I was used to in FF2 don't work, and I've had to expand to 2 characters or 3. But after using it since release, 's' brings up slashdot first again. But what's even more interesting, is that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th results are all also sites I frequent regularly, and FF3 has made it easier to get to them. I don't use bookmarks nearly as often now. One of my clients has a page listing its branch offices that I need to refer to frequently for contact information... i used to pull up their site and browse to the locations page, or use a bookmark... in FF3 i type 'loc' and its the first match. The next few matches are the list of locations for a couple of other businesses I've looked up recently... which is also useful.
I really have nothing negative to say about FF3's address bar.
To those people who are finding a couple of their most frequently used sites have moved 'down' the list, the benefits do outweigh the cost. Push through it, so that FF3 can learn or choose a new mnemonic for that url; it -is- worth the trouble.
Its pretty amusing really on some level. This is the sort of thing we routinely ridicule our less nerdy counterparts for... we mock them for their refusal to use a product called 'firefox' because it doesn't sound 'professional' like 'internet explorer'... we ridicule their inability and/or blind refusal to cope with even a slight deviation in user interface... we tell anecdotes about how we had to set Windows XP's theme to classic before our bosses could/would use it...because it was scary and different... or because it looked like 'candy' and they didn't want to use a childish OS.
And yet here we are... its comical to see how many of us 'enlightened' people are hung up on the feature name, or the fact that a couple keyboard shortcuts are working a bit differently. Aren't we the same people who are supposedly able to effortlessly transition from platform to platform, from distro to distro, able to pick up any pieces of electronics and figure it out. Last time I checked, we weren't known for buying a new phone and rejecting/hating it simply because the menu arrangement wasn't identical to the old one, or because it had to 'learn' our preferred autocompletions for text messaging all over again. People we mock and ridicule do that. How does it feel?:)
Why does it seem like games companies don't know how give their customers what they want?
Oh i dunno... the original microprose magic the gathering was amazing. It was flawed and buggy too, but it was a remarkable and amibitious bit of programming, especially given the resources it ran on.
Magic the Gathering Online was an attempt to both legitimize and encourage online play while preserving the game's revenue stream. And it too was an ambitious bit of programming, since it to enforced the rules of the game.
Why didn't they just release / rebrand magic suitcase or apprentice? Simple -- those games they viewed as cutting into their sales. Why buy the cards, if you can have them all for free? Sure, they might be wrong... maybe by exposing more people to the game via free online, more people would become interested in the physical paid product... but that's a gamble and I'm not convinced it would pan out.
In my opinion, what they should have done for the online version was to sell the virtual cards as codes with the physical ones... so anything you bought at retail you had in the game too.
I doubt that pretty much. It's just an elongated "s" [wikipedia.org] and my handwritten integral symbols (and most i see from others) look more like an upright, elongated "s". But i think i know what you're meaning: taller and angled integral symbols look more "correct", but maybe that's because we're used to it because it's the style commonly used in textbooks.
The 'angle' is just more aestheticly pleasing.
But I think the taller is more correct. The integral has 'scope' over the following expression, so it should be as tall as it to reflect that. In the same way parenthesis should be as tall as the expression they enclose. Similarly, the integral symbol should be at least as tall as the expression being integrated. At least, in my opinion; it makes things easier to read.
I couldn't figure out how to get the subsequent lines to have equal signs, or how to get them to line up. I think the correct solution is a table with separate formula objects.
The integral symbols in the sample, are much better than what you get out of OO. They are taller and angled which is more correct, the range values are also smaller and positioned closer to the ends of the in. The horizontal line part of the radical symbol is much heavier in OO as well, and less attrative as a result, especially when its the denominator.
I'm also not sure why you used the greek delta symbol, when all that was called for was an italicized d, but that's neither here nor there.
But bottom line, if I had to read 50 pages of formulas, I would infinitely prefer to read the latex version over the OO version.
The other issue with Word and OO, is that it often looks better on the screen that it does printed out. The pdf / postscript / printed out version is often plagued with all kinds of really annoying 'glitches'.
As for using a table with separate formula objects... sure ok... but that functionality should be part of the formula editor, and the result should be an object that copes with line breaks. If I make a 12 line formula, OO treats it much like a single image... which is a royal pain.
Slashdot Mirror
You're saying if you owned a business, you would make it your goal to earn 5% more than breaking even?
No, I would make it my goal to maximize profits.
That said, if that maximization resulted in 5% over breaking even, that would be fine.
Remember, I define 'breaking even' as covering what I expect to pay myself this year. If my incorporated business only reflects 5% profit, after paying all operating expenses *including* my salary, then I'd be quite satisfied with that.
The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is around 8.5%. Have fun proposing a 5% profit margin to the boss!
Did you really mean to use the term 'profit margin' there?
Profit margin, more than anything, reflects how much volatility a company can withstand in terms of cost. A low profit margin means the company is at greater risk of losing money if costs rise. The average varies from industry to industry, and stating that its 8.5% across the S&P500 is practically meaningless. It you have a higher profit margin than competitors in your industry that might suggest that you are in a bit of a stronger position... but comparing two arbitrary companies is pretty much meaningless.
The cost of the equipment needed for speculative drilling and refining is absolutely enormous. These expenses are paid out and a large return over a very long time is needed to make it worthwhile to have even tried.
These expenses are amortized and deducted before you report your 'profit'.
If I run an oil company and I pay for some speculative drilling and build a new refinery to sustain my business, and clearly that investment requires me to take out a 10 year loan for some expensive equipment, then the loan is added to my liabilities offset by the capital added to my assets. While the cost of servicing the loan as well as the capital depreciation is added to my expenses. The cost of paying a team to drill holes speculatively is part of my regular salary expenses.
When I report my profits, those activities are all already paid for, and the profits reflect how much money is left over, over and above all that.
Wikipedia puts it well:
"In economics, a firm is said to be making a normal profit when total revenues equal total costs. These normal profits then match the rate of return that is the minimum rate required by equity investors to maintain their present level of investment."
Big-oil is making 'record profits'; and they are known to be generally profitable. In this case it is clear that this is after *all costs* (including ongoing specutive drilling, refinery maintenance/construction servicing costs) are paid, and there is excess profit well beyond 'the minimum rate of return required by equity investors to maintain their present level of investment' (ie the shareholders.)
One thing I never see mentioned is the fact that these companies all have two names combined ... Exxon and Mobil used to be their own separate entities. In order to create these records, they had to combine efforts of some already giant companies. Would it be ok if the profit was half the size, but going to two different bank accounts?
I am assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that when 'big oil' makes record profits, it is evaluated by adding all the profits of all the big oil companies last year and comparing it to the sum this year. So a simple merger or partnership wouldn't really affect anything.
If you think speculators are not causing the problem, then please explain why was there a letter signed by many airline CEO's who DO take delivery of the commodity stating that speculation was at the root of the problem and asking that it be curbed.
Speculators buy and sell based on what they speculate the price will be in the near future. This has the effect of driving prices up in advance of them being driven up 'naturally', and ALSO the effect of driving prices down in advance of them coming down 'naturally'.
Airline CEOs want gas NOW. And they are having to pay what speculators are thinking its going to be worth next month. Since speculators think its going to be worth more next month, airlines get to pay those speculative prices prices now. They could gamble that prices won't really be that high next month, and pick up the contracts just before its time to take delivery, but that's stupid on two counts:
1) the speculators might be right, its not like they are collectively total idiots
2) If they gamble on buying the contracts closer to the delivery dates they are gambling with not being able to get any gas. Like going christmas shopping christmas eve -- no gaurantee you are going to get the gift you had in mind. And if they don't get any, their planes don't fly. That's just not an option. So they have to buy in advance.
Similiarly if the speculators thought prices were going down, the CEOs would be able to buy contracts at below market price, and won't write any letters asking for regulation.
I had heard that you couldn't get a "Verified" account without a bank account. Since that limits some of what you can do, I verified with them.
Could be. I signed up in 2001 ago and am Canadian. I'm not even sure if they supported linking to a Canadian bank at that time, and adding a credit card was enough to 'get verified' at the time. (An unverified account at the time was one that was simply opened, and then funded by having another paypal user send you cash, which you couldn't withdraw)
But you could send it to another paypal user. So if you sold something on ebay, and accepted paypal, you could get money into your account... which you could then use to buy stuff from people on ebay who acceptable paypal.) The rules of likely changed, by my account appears to be grandfathered... because it is reporting its status as verified and I have not linked an account to it... although they invite me to frequently, "for my convenience".)
I suppose the best thing would be to get a throwaway bank account that keeps no real money in it, and use that as the "verified" account.
Or close it after you are verified. I wonder if they have any way of detecting that, after you are verified, without you actively attempting to transfer money between them.
What if my business isn't sustainable with a 5% profit margin?
Why exactly wouldn't it be?
If your business isn't sustainable after ALL your expenses are paid, including your salary, r&d costs, and any other costs you might incurr and there is still money left over (hint - that's the 'profit'), then you are completely incompetent.
In a small sole proprietership, where the owner doesn't draw a wage, but rather just 'keeps the profits' as his compensation, then sure, if the profits aren't high enough to adequately compensate him, he will close the business. But it would be more accurate to say in that situation that from the perspective of the business, that it is actually unprofitable, because its not covering the cost of keeping its most important 'staff member'.
Corporations aren't run like this. Profits are used to grow the business (and growth, by definition, implies that it has already been 'sustained'. and in some cases, paid back to shareholders as dividends.
So in the case of big-oil, record profits are just that: an opportunity for them to grow and to further line the pockets of shareholders and investors.
So quit harping on the "record profits" of the oil companies. It just demonstrates your complete lack of understanding of economics at the most basic level.
While you just demonstrated your complete lack of understanding of business at the most basic level.
No, it's not. It shouldn't prevent me from doing anything on my machine.
Correct. It shouldn't prevent you from doing anything on your machine. But it should take steps to ensure that you actually are doing things.
It should prevent other people from doing it behind my back.
And how is the OS supposed to know the difference? How does it know that you installed grub, and that it wasn't installed behind your back? How does it know that the grub installed hasn't been modified or tampered with? How does it know grub isn't a rootkit?
Personally, I trust grub more than I trust microsoft (not a fair comparison, I admit, Windows is a fair bit more complicated, and therefore buggy, than grub)
How do you know, each day that you boot up, that the copy of grub you are running hasn't been swapped out behind your back with a malicious version? Even if you installed it yourself from source code you inpsected and verified the md5 checksum... that doesn't prove I didn't swap it out on you last night.
Vista's digital signatures requirements and checks -does- protect you from that sort of tampering. Its a good thing.
The only flaw, as I said in my post, is that vista doesn't give us a well defined method of trusting code that it doesn't trust by default. Ideally, you should want to tell Vista -- "I installed this exact version of grub, and I trust it, so you can boot with it. But, if tomorrow you boot up, and its not running this exact version of grub then I want you to stop and let me know that its been changed." Then if you know you made a change to grub, you can 'sign' the new version and authorize Vista to boot with it too, or if you didn't change grub, you can say --what the fuck-- and investigate who swapped grub out behind your back...
The problem with Vista is that the process of 'signing' a copy of grub and getting Vista to trust it is not an established and well documented procedure, if it is even possible.
However, given that you can develop windows device drivers and test driver signing etc, and you can create 'developer signatures' that will apply to just your machine(s), there apparently **IS** a process for doing it.
So rather than disable Vista's driver signing and so forth, we should be signing GRUB so Vista knows that we trust it.
Interac Email Money Transfers (IEMTs) have been available from the major banks in Canada for at least the last 6 years. They're very convenient when paying your rent, etc. - giving money to people you know in real life, for relatively large sums.
I find them extremely useful for giving larger one time transaction sums of $100+ to people I don't know, online.
PayPal is designed for online retailers who need to process one-time or recurring monthly payments without getting a merchant account. In other words, it's geared towards businesses - it has features like recurring payments, storing your credit card number for future use, etc.
I disagree. It is geared toward personal users, especially back when it was introduced. I concede that now its become somewhat more geared for businesses.
But that is stupid. A credible business should just a merchant account. If I see a 'business' that only transacts with paypal, my faith in them, their product, their credibility plummets like a stone. Its not exactly difficult or expensive to get at least a partnered merchant account to accept visa/mc/amex through. If your so rinky-dink that you've only got paypal... well... color me unimpressed.
IEMTs are totally different, and designed for personal use.
Which pretty much covers how I use ebay. Which is paypals stronghold. So while they are 'totally different' their is some obvious overlap.
PayPal fees are also much less than the interac fee for most small transactions that happen online anyway - anything less than $25.
Yeah, I agree microtransactions were still in paypals realm, I asserted IEMTs would dominate the larger transactions where you want security, and don't want to deal with a 2-bit outfit like paypal.
In short, IEMTs have almost nothing in common with PayPal or other online payment systems.
I disagree. As I said, for me, IEMT's have replaced most of my paypal usage. I used to paypal to buy larger items on ebay. I don't anymore. I don't tend to buy 'microtransation' class stuff on ebay unless I'm bidding on multiple options, because the various fees, shipping, etc that get applied balloon the price ridiculously.
But, this means you have to actually have the money to send. With PayPal (or other payment services), you can back your payment with a credit card. For the vast amount of people who rack up a lot of debt, this is important.
1) People -should- have the money before they buy stuff. Any financial advisor will tell you that. If you -need- credit for an ebay purchase, you've probably got issues. :)
2) There is nothing stopping anyone from making a cash advance from their credit card into their bank account. I can do it through my online banking in around 3 seconds. (And i recognize that a cahs advance doesn't pay rewards, also starts charging interest immediately, so its not quite as good a deal... but seriously, if you need to buy on credit you still can.)
I use a credit card for PayPal payments because I get the credit card rewards. Plus, I don't like some of the PayPal practices very much.
I use a cc for paypal because I don't trust paypal, and wouldn't EVER give them my bank account details.
But seriously, the paypal limits are so low, especially for credit cards, that if you do more than a couple transactions a month, you need a 'premium account', and the fees start racking up. And if you are doing few enough transactions that you can get away with a free paypal account, well, $1.50 per transation vs $0.30 isn't really a big deal if your only doing one or two a month.
Plus you are probably using paypal as an american. As a canadian using paypal, there is a 2.5% exchange rate fee for currency conversion, an additional $0.30+ 3-4% fee for just being cross-border on top of the usual $0.30+ 2-3% fees, and I have to pay to withdraw money from my paypal account... they really nickle and dime us, and by the end of the day, I'm probably paying $1+ a transaction anyway.
Sorry for the double post... slashdot munched my formatting.
While this sounds like a really great system, unless they slash the fee, there is no way it will ever be a Paypal killer, or even serious competitor.
1) Paypal's fees are quite a bit higher than you seem to think. They are currently:
2) And yeah, while paypal still has the advantage in the micropayments area, I'd be willing to pay a buck fifty to send a $1000, $500, even $200 through the bank network instead.
3) I think if it catches on, there -will- be monthly plan options to bring that fee down...I predict you will eventually you'll get a certain number of them bundled in with your 'chequing account plan', with the option to upgrade to a higher plan.
The secret behind Paypal has always been the low fee, which means huge volume.
Since the receiver in this system doesn't pay anything, they can do huge volume at no cost. That blows paypal out of the water for a 'high volume seller'.
And 'high volume buyers'? Well, they are a rarer breed to start with. And see #3 above.
You can use it for almost any transaction, no matter the size. This system sounds great, but how many transactions large enough to make the $1.50 reasonable are actually going on over the net, especially when compared to the millions of small transactions just done by eBay?
My average ebay purchase is usually over $100, because anything less than that and shipping becomes the dominant cost. I might bid on multiple items from a single seller, or big on larger lots of items. But the average auction that closes at $3.00 probably bears another $5 to $10 in shipping. Is an extra buck for the secure cash transaction really a big deal? The buyer already takes those costs into account when they bid, and bid accordingly.
As a buyer, I use Paypal a lot even for places that take credit cards just because it is convenient. I can just log into Paypal and send the money versus having to go and get my credit card to enter all of the information. The fee for me is nothing and the fee for the seller is small enough that they still use it. All of those type transaction dry up with this system unfortunately.
Agreed. As I said in my original post, paypal and its ilk will still be around, but will be competing for the microtranaction market. The interac system will grab all the large transactions.
I just used CIBC's Interac Email Money Transfer system, and it was a pain in the ass. Having to pick a security question that the recipient has to answer? Ok, I can kinda sorta understand that.
Given that that is the only shared security information, its not bad. Remember anyone can claim the funds if they intercept the email. The ONLY security is the secret/question answer.
However, their are draconian limitations on what can be entered. Length limitation when trying to come up with your own question? That certainly helps me come up with something unique that the person would know. Only allowing letters, numbers and hyphens in the answer? Even more annoying! Why can't I used spaces and punctuation?
You are over thinking it. Just exchange a secret code. Have them pick a random word and 5 digit number, and that's the answer. The secret question can be... "whats the code?" When I'm sending hundreds of dollars we exchange the code over the phone. Sometimes, I'll just generate a random answer myself, and then phone them with it, or have them phone me when they've received the email.
As a concept it is ok, and for all I know other participating banks don't have CIBC's limitations, but from my user experience it was more frustrating than it needed to be.
Agreed but its not really aiming at the microtransactions market. Its aimed that hundreds of dollars and up market. And at that price point it works brilliantly.
While this sounds like a really great system, unless they slash the fee, there is no way it will ever be a Paypal killer, or even serious competitor. 1) Paypal's fees are quite a bit higher than you seem to think. They are currently: 2) And yeah, while paypal still has the advantage in the micropayments area, I'd be willing to pay a buck fifty to send a $1000, $500, even $200 through the bank network instead. 3) I think if it catches on, there -will- be monthly plan options to bring that fee down...I predict you will eventually you'll get a certain number of them bundled in with your 'chequing account plan', with the option to upgrade to a higher plan. The secret behind Paypal has always been the low fee, which means huge volume. Since the receiver in this system doesn't pay anything, they can do huge volume at no cost. That blows paypal out of the water for a 'high volume seller'. And 'high volume buyers'? Well, they are a rarer breed to start with. And see #3 above. You can use it for almost any transaction, no matter the size. This system sounds great, but how many transactions large enough to make the $1.50 reasonable are actually going on over the net, especially when compared to the millions of small transactions just done by eBay? My average ebay purchase is usually over $100, because anything less than that and shipping becomes the dominant cost. I might bid on multiple items from a single seller, or big on larger lots of items. But the average auction that closes at $3.00 probably bears another $5 to $10 in shipping. Is an extra buck for the secure cash transaction really a big deal? The buyer already takes those costs into account when they bid, and bid accordingly. As a buyer, I use Paypal a lot even for places that take credit cards just because it is convenient. I can just log into Paypal and send the money versus having to go and get my credit card to enter all of the information. The fee for me is nothing and the fee for the seller is small enough that they still use it. All of those type transaction dry up with this system unfortunately. Agreed. As I said in my original post, paypal and its ilk will still be around, but will be competing for the microtranaction market. The interac system will grab all the large transactions.
It has a lot of advantage when dealing with people you don't want to provide any permanent credentials, such as when buying something from an unknown individual or donating money to some organization, group, or charity.
Visa, at least, and probably the other cards by now, have a system where you can generate a single use credit card number pre authorized for specific merchant and dollar amount. So you can use that numbe in an online transaction and the merchant gets a number that's only valid for that single use single dollar amount. If it gets stolen, no big deal. If the merchant tries to double bill it, no dice. etc etc. And I trust Visa a lot more than Paypal.
I don't hate paypal, but I do dislike using it given all the limitations, fees, and scams. I also despise the ebay/paypal pairing.
As for egold... yeah total scam... it had potential...maybe something like it still does.
But I think the real juggernauts -- the banks -- still have to weigh in on this.
My bank recently introduced "Interac Email Money Transfer" and its pretty freaking impressive. I can send money to nearly anyone in Canada with a Canadian bank account, and an email address. We don't need to share bank information or personal information at all. All I need to know as the sender is the recipients email address -- any email address, they can even use a throw-away one as long as they can pick up email on it, and I don't need to know what bank they belong to as long as its participating in the Interac Email system which is currently the 5 major Canadian banks (TD, RBC, Scotia, CIBC, and BMO).
The price is a flat $1.50 per transaction, which is pretty steep to pay for a $10.00 ebay win... but a drop in the bucket when paying for a $500 transaction. There is no fee to receive money.
If they don't use one of the 5 participating banks, but have an account at, for example, a credit union, they can -still- receive money, but I think it gets redirected through a more complicated and time consuming inter-bank transfer, and there is a fee charged to the recipient.
For me this is the paypal killer. Not only is it secure convenient and trustworthy but banks and credit unions, at least in Canada are pretty customer service oriented...toll free 24-hour hot-lines, and genuinely useful staff are the norm in my experience with TD, RBC, and Scotiabank. Contrast that with Paypal. :)
Already for me, anything significant is now done via this interac system when I can. Once it expands to the credit unions and/or goes international... I think paypal and its cohorts will be reduced to competing for petty cash transactions and micropayments, e.g. sending sums like... $1 or $5, where the $1.50 fee is just too much.
but I wouldn't be surprised to see the interac system evolve and start offering 'plans' in addition to the a la cart flat fee.
For details check it out...
http://www.interac.ca/consumers/productsandservices_ol_emt.php ... not sure if something like this is in the states yet...
Biggest? Not for me. That it reveals what porn sites I've visited to all and sundry, when I type in an address that begins with the same few letters, to show someone, and there's no function in the privacy options to clear those sites from coming up like that. Clear History won't get rid of them. That's the biggest strike against it.
That's actually a legitimate gripe.
I know there is a way to prevent FF3 from showing any results which is a half assed workaround. I suspect there *is* a way of 'purging' whatever its list is. But I think that's a fundamentally ass-backwards way to deal with it anyway... I want to keep bookmarks, and history, and whatnot. That's USEFUL to me. In fact that useful for both 'clean family/work related stuff' and the 'pr0n'. I don't want to lose either. I just don't want the two to MIX.
So that said, I'd suggest a completely different solution... you can run FF with multiple profiles. Just create and use the 'other' one for pr0n etc. (look in the help for 'profile manager'.) Then you can keep the history, and make bookmarks, and so on, without worrying about your kids/wife/family being confronted with them.
My main profile is the default, and I have a password protected alternative launched via a separate shortcut for when I go browsing in places I don't want to confront my family with... not that I mind my wife -knowing- where I go...or anything; but if I've got my brother over, or my parents, or I'm pulling stuff up with my daughter -- I agree that it would be one of inappropriate/embarassing/offensive/etc for that stuff to be popping up.
Some people use a separate browser. Some people use a separate use account.
Finally, if you are actually want to hide all traces of what you did, from someone who might be searching your computer for evidence you were looking at pr0n to use against you... then again, a separate profile is the way to go... just delete it when you are done. (and overwrite it with zeroes, etc, etC) Personally I'd find it far more 'suspicious' to find a browser that had had its history cleared, and so forth. By using a separate profile, you can leave the default one clean and intact... so if someone browses your history -- well now there still -is- one, and its all nice and clean.
cheers.
And if you do opt-out of the Microsoft Trust package, you can run what you like but it is impossible for your software to read any data inside the secures area of the Trusted system and it is impossible to read any Trust-secured file types (like DRMed music or even Trusted email) with your software.
I can see why the MPAA would have a policy of -only- trusting a "Microsoft Trust Package" that they've pre-approved and not anything the end user might have have signed. But:
What possible motivation would there be for my email client or office package to have that policy?
My email client should say, 'Hey, if you trust it, I trust it, its your email.' Ditto for my office package.
And also other computers can and will refuse to connect to you over the internet because you are not running the Microsoft Trust package - i.e. it with be impossible for you to view websites no matter what software you run. The websites will only be viewable on Microsoft Trusted Windows using the Microsoft Trusted browser, a browser which enforces DRM and which enforces ad-views etc. What website wouldn't jump at the chance to use Trusted Computing to enforce ad-views and lock out ad-blockers and more?
And for some websites like banks, it might even be worth it. For others just looking to ram ads down our throats? Get real... sites live or die by how much they annoy their users. If your average website said 'hey you have to run the microsoft trusted suite and punch the monkey to post on our forums' someone else would run a website where you didn't, and the first one would die a quick death.
Sure there will -always- be someone who wants to lock things down that hard, but they'll be facing competition from someone with a more relaxed policy. The more 'relaxed' site will kill the other one quickly -- not only will it be generally less annoying to use, but it will also be visted and referred to by more people, including the savvy and technical people who got locked out of the annoying one.
That aspect is fundamentally designed into the hardware chip itself.
The chip is designed to secure the system against the owner.
The "owner" or the "end-user"? Those are two extremely different situations. As the *owner*, I want the chip to secure the system against the user. The user may be clueless, the user may be malicious, etc. And as the owner I want to protect my systems.
The chip says the owner has no control, except the control to "opt-in" to a given pair of handcuffs or to "opt-out" and the chip locks you out.
I disagree. The chip says the -end user- has no control. He who defines the handcuffs owns the system.
And **Someone** has to define what those handcuffs are. **SOMEONE** is in control. To me, that person is the *OWNER*.
The chip "design" is not at fault here. If we give the *appropriate* person the right to be that "someone" -- ie the physical hardware owner, then the system isn't evil in the least.
Its only evil, if we assign Microsoft to be the "owner" or "the one who sets the rules"... or the RIAA, or the BSA. But that assingment isn't implicit in the chip design. There is nothing in the design of the chip that prevents us from assigning those rights to the guy or gal or enterprise who buys the hardware.
There is no basic fix to make this Not-Evil by just having Microsoft or any other particular person/organization Not-Be-Evil with this stuff. The evil aspect is in the chip design itself, handing those lockdown powers to whomever wrote the un-modifiable software you were given.
The basic fix is to assign those powers to the physical owner of the hardware.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think if Microsoft is implementing trusted computing in order to implement DRM, to prevent pirating, then it would be by design to prevent users from signing or trusting any software on their own.
I'd say their trusted computing scheme puts bit locker and encryption are far higher up on their list than preventing piracy.
If they allow to sign arbitrary software and run it on a trusted computer the whole point of the DRM part of trusted computing is defeated and the BSA, MPAA and RIAA get mad.
Ah... no. Not at all. The two aren't actually in conflict. Suppose the MPAA demands a 'trusted path' and requires all drivers to be approved by them before they'll show their precious HD movie. Microsoft with their trusted computing systems has enabled that.
But if I were able to self-sign a driver, so that my copy of vista would accept it as ok to run while driver signing was enabled, what would that do to defeat the MPAA's 'DRM'? Nothing at all!! Because the MPAA doesn't trust my signature, so even though the code is signed by me, its not signed by THEM, so as long as I'm running 'vux984's video driver', the system won't play their content, and its safe from my 'untrusted' (by them) driver.
There is no conflict here!!
1) I can run anything I trust on my computer.
2) If I want to play -their- content, I'd to provide a system -they- trust.
We are already seeing the beginning of this outside of the 'trusted computing' systems...for example already some games won't run if they detect certain other programs running -- like debuggers, virtual CD rom systems, known cheat programs, etc.
And its been a fairly peaceful co-existence... its not like they don't allow us to run debuggers and whatnot... just not at the same time as their software. The same sort of situation could arise with drivers... especially if we get to the point where we can reliably load and unload more of them on the fly.
There is a big difference between the motivations Stallman has in signing things and Microsoft and its corporate partners have in signing things.
Microsoft is certainly aiming to accomodate its corporate partners, but there's actually no conflict to including accomodating the stallman's of the world too.
This also means that if hardware maker 'A' releases a driver that MS does not like, they will simply refuse to sign it.
First, has that -ever- happened? And wouldn't Microsoft end up being dragged over the coals in Europe for sure, and probably america too.
Second, the 'development driver' signatures I mentioned DO NOT need Microsofts blessing. That is their entire point, to allow you to work on 'signed code' yet which is only valid on one machine.
That would be a *reasonable* loophole for Free/OSS drivers to work within. If I download source and compile drivers myself, I can sign them myself, and they will work on my machine. They won't work on YOUR machine, unless you sign them yourself.
The problem with Vista's UAC is this: I have an admin account, under which I should have full control and access to the system. Restricted access should only happen in a standard user account.
Vista is much like Ubuntu, where you don't log in as root, and have to sudo a bunch of admin tasks? Vista's just more annoying because its coping with a huge legacy of insecure code that its trying to offer some semblance of backwards compatibility for.
You say that the only flaw is that users don't have a way of manually trusting things they want-- this is the major issue which breeds the hatred of UAC and most of the 'chatter on the internets' you speak of.
But instead of breeding demand for Microsoft to allow them to trust the things they want to trust, its breeding the demand for Microsoft to remove UAC, get rid of driver signing, and so forth.
Vista's security chain works as designed and intended, preventing from you to inject an untrusted bootloader into the bootstrap. Isn't that what we -want- from our security systems? This isnt' a case of "Microsoft" holding our data hostage, this is a case of our own security policies WORKING.
If I were to be running Linux, with equivalent protection, I'd be right pissed if it could be trivially rootkitted/bypassed by swapping in a malicious bootloader.
The ONLY flaw I see in the entire Vista/TPM system is that users don't seem to have a way of manually trusting things they genuinely want to trust. If it hasn't been blessed by MS its not trusted -- that's a fine policy for general users, but if I, as the hardware want to trust a specific bit of code (e.g. the linux boot loader) then I should be able to manually sign it somehow, and add my personal key to my personal install of Vista. And then the grub bootloader I signed will be trusted on my (and only my) PC.
All the 'chatter on the internets' is currently centered around how to disable UAC, how to disable driver signing, how to go back to running windows as insecurely as possible. i would prefer to see the discussion take a more intelligent direction -- how to obtain keys/certificates, how to add them to Vista's chain of trust on a per PC or per domain basis, and how how sign code with them.
Signed drivers are a FANTASTIC idea. not being able to sign drivers myself for my own hardware is EVIL. But MS --does-- have programs in place to let you sign code with 'development drivers' which are designed to only be valid on your PC... its just that most of the discussion surround the issue is how to disable it, and how evil MS for deciding what is blessed and what is not.
I mean, take Stallman, even -he- who wrote the GPLv3 in part to counter DRM isn't against code signing. He just requires that the keys necessary to sign code be included, so the owner of the hardware and user of GPLv3 code can sign it, and thereby be free to make modifications and excercise all the freedoms intended by the gpl.
They did. The feature in question is called the Smart Location Bar. "Awesomebar" is just a nickname.
Touche.
Then again, the fact that I've been using FF3 since release and wasn't actually aware of that, ought to tell you something about how pervasively hyped the 'awesomebar' nickname is.
To the point that I thought it was the 'awesomebar' described as being a "smart" location bar... not the other way around.
The "almost always...invariably" phrase gave me a headache.
My typing keeps up with my thinking... and if i decide to change a phrase midstream I don't always realize the first version has already been written.
(e.g. In my head I'd changed "almost aways" to "invariably", but didn't realize I'd actually typed both.)
-cheers
I can say that I've encountered a BSOD in XP but it must have been less than a dozen times spread across 5 years and over 80 computers.
Agreed and in my case it can almost always be invariably traced back to either:
1) bad network drivers, particularly wifi
2) bad video drivers
3) faulty ram
4) faulty hard drive
I've had linux kernel panics about as often, and for generally the same reasons.
although it has a painfully stupid name that makes me want to hate it already
That's really the -biggest- strike against it. The presumption that I or anyone else would think its awesome immediately triggers the hate response. If they'd simply called it 'enhanced address bar', made it optional but default, and described it as 'awesome' there wouldn't have been this massive resistance to it.
The reality is that its really good. I can reliably pull up a LOT more url's with a lot less effort. It is true that some of the mnemonics for urls that I was used to in FF2 don't work, and I've had to expand to 2 characters or 3. But after using it since release, 's' brings up slashdot first again. But what's even more interesting, is that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th results are all also sites I frequent regularly, and FF3 has made it easier to get to them. I don't use bookmarks nearly as often now. One of my clients has a page listing its branch offices that I need to refer to frequently for contact information... i used to pull up their site and browse to the locations page, or use a bookmark... in FF3 i type 'loc' and its the first match. The next few matches are the list of locations for a couple of other businesses I've looked up recently... which is also useful.
I really have nothing negative to say about FF3's address bar.
To those people who are finding a couple of their most frequently used sites have moved 'down' the list, the benefits do outweigh the cost. Push through it, so that FF3 can learn or choose a new mnemonic for that url; it -is- worth the trouble.
Its pretty amusing really on some level. This is the sort of thing we routinely ridicule our less nerdy counterparts for... we mock them for their refusal to use a product called 'firefox' because it doesn't sound 'professional' like 'internet explorer'... we ridicule their inability and/or blind refusal to cope with even a slight deviation in user interface... we tell anecdotes about how we had to set Windows XP's theme to classic before our bosses could/would use it...because it was scary and different... or because it looked like 'candy' and they didn't want to use a childish OS.
And yet here we are... its comical to see how many of us 'enlightened' people are hung up on the feature name, or the fact that a couple keyboard shortcuts are working a bit differently. Aren't we the same people who are supposedly able to effortlessly transition from platform to platform, from distro to distro, able to pick up any pieces of electronics and figure it out. Last time I checked, we weren't known for buying a new phone and rejecting/hating it simply because the menu arrangement wasn't identical to the old one, or because it had to 'learn' our preferred autocompletions for text messaging all over again. People we mock and ridicule do that. How does it feel? :)
Why does it seem like games companies don't know how give their customers what they want?
Oh i dunno... the original microprose magic the gathering was amazing. It was flawed and buggy too, but it was a remarkable and amibitious bit of programming, especially given the resources it ran on.
Magic the Gathering Online was an attempt to both legitimize and encourage online play while preserving the game's revenue stream. And it too was an ambitious bit of programming, since it to enforced the rules of the game.
Why didn't they just release / rebrand magic suitcase or apprentice? Simple -- those games they viewed as cutting into their sales. Why buy the cards, if you can have them all for free? Sure, they might be wrong... maybe by exposing more people to the game via free online, more people would become interested in the physical paid product... but that's a gamble and I'm not convinced it would pan out.
In my opinion, what they should have done for the online version was to sell the virtual cards as codes with the physical ones... so anything you bought at retail you had in the game too.
I doubt that pretty much. It's just an elongated "s" [wikipedia.org] and my handwritten integral symbols (and most i see from others) look more like an upright, elongated "s". But i think i know what you're meaning: taller and angled integral symbols look more "correct", but maybe that's because we're used to it because it's the style commonly used in textbooks.
The 'angle' is just more aestheticly pleasing.
But I think the taller is more correct. The integral has 'scope' over the following expression, so it should be as tall as it to reflect that. In the same way parenthesis should be as tall as the expression they enclose. Similarly, the integral symbol should be at least as tall as the expression being integrated. At least, in my opinion; it makes things easier to read.
I couldn't figure out how to get the subsequent lines to have equal signs, or how to get them to line up. I think the correct solution is a table with separate formula objects.
The integral symbols in the sample, are much better than what you get out of OO. They are taller and angled which is more correct, the range values are also smaller and positioned closer to the ends of the in. The horizontal line part of the radical symbol is much heavier in OO as well, and less attrative as a result, especially when its the denominator.
I'm also not sure why you used the greek delta symbol, when all that was called for was an italicized d, but that's neither here nor there.
But bottom line, if I had to read 50 pages of formulas, I would infinitely prefer to read the latex version over the OO version.
The other issue with Word and OO, is that it often looks better on the screen that it does printed out. The pdf / postscript / printed out version is often plagued with all kinds of really annoying 'glitches'.
As for using a table with separate formula objects... sure ok... but that functionality should be part of the formula editor, and the result should be an object that copes with line breaks. If I make a 12 line formula, OO treats it much like a single image... which is a royal pain.