I think there might be some legal complications with a cache system. *Most* of the sites linked to from Slashdot sell banner advertising... A cached site would not run the server-side script to deliver the advertising, so sites would be missing out on millions of hits. If I was the director of marketing for ZDNet or any other of these sites that get linked to on a regular basis, I know *I'd* be mighty pissed.
I think Slashdot would get a bunch of "cease and desist" orders within a couple of days of implementing a cache system.
Yeah, the Slashdot Effect sucks, but it's the web hosts' problem, and there's nothing that Slashdot can do about it.
Commercial sites would love this. Academic/government ones probably wouldn't care as much. You could sell them a contract with an existing CDN (Akamai, Mirror-Image, etc.) or build out your own special purpose service, just to handle slashdot-like effects.
I can imagine the phone conversation now:
Unsuspecting Web Host: Um, hello? Commercial Web Mirror: Dude... you've got 30 minutes until 1 million angry Slashdotters pummel your server into a pile of slag... What do you do? Unsuspecting Web Host: [click]
That's 90 minutes to yourself each day, for as long as you work there. I'd bet most of us could do it for a week, but how about a year? Not likely.
The article gave the 106-hour work week as the longest the tester had logged. He said 60 hours was typical in deadline crunches, so I think it's safe to say that the guy interviewed for the article was working between 40-60 hours a week, most weeks.
Bottom line, even if there is some wealthy person with tons of cash, but who is irresponsible, their irresponsibility won't cost the bank. And that's the bottom line.
You're kidding me, right? Rich people are never irresponsible and don't cost the bank. Ever hear of Enron? WorldCom? Global Crossing? Conseco? Texaco? KMart? And a multitude of others....
No, responsible (not "rich") people don't pay those fees.
"Responsible" has nothing to do with it. If I walk down to my local bank and deposit $5000 into a checking account, they will give me an account with overdraft protection. They won't even call my mother to find out if I'm a responsible lad.
There are irresponsible wealthy people too, ya know...
Financial services to the poor have, all else equal, much higher default risk. And default costs swamp everything else. Consider that the margin over cost of funds for most consumer credit is 2-3%. A default rate of 1% destroys the profitability.
Sorry, but that's the cover story for fleecing the poor. True, they represent a higher credit risk and therefore have a higher cost for default; however, at some point, the default costs are covered, and the rest is gravy. It's fairly well known that the poor are paying far more than their share.
Look at banking. A significant portion of profit (not simply revenue, but profit) comes from the various "poverty fees" they charge, like bounced check fees. People with money don't pay those fees, because the bank is willing to extend a small amount of credit to their checking accounts to cover shortages. But poor people get screwed in the ass if their checking account is short a few dollars.
The moral issues involving artificially intelligent life forms have been dealt with so many times that the premise just seemed rehashed. Certainly, it would be easy to cite examples of science fiction that deals with questions of robotic intelligence much more subtley.
Actually, I was far more impressed with the first short than with the second. The artwork was far more engaging, and the animation didn't look like it was rendered by a computer.
Yes, the "rise of the machines" scenario has been rehashed in a multitude of other stories. I think that this short carved out a unique niche for itself in the way that it humanized the machines. It was never that the machines became self-aware, and then suddenly became bent on kicking biological ass. The machines asserted their rights, were crushed and driven out. The basic premise is far-fetched, but I give the art and the animation a lot of credit for making the story convincing.
But what dissapointed me was that the short failed to touch on the themes of the original Matrix. I think it would have been more interesting to see the origin of the Matrix explore the deep psychological oppression that the Matrix represents.
...hence the name, The Second Renaissance, Part I.
BUt what about those of us that buy $12 CDs with 20 good tracks? (IE, Hendrix, SRV, Led Zep, etc)
First off, I don't know where you're getting the $12 number from, the average price of CD's these days seems to be from $14 to $18.
But, if you are looking for budget music, just go to Half.com. I buy almost all of my music there these days because a) I don't need a pristine copy, I'm just going to rip it to MP3, anyway, and 2) I'm buying music on the used market, so the RIAA doesn't see a penny from my transaction.
First off, CD manufacturing is less than $1/ea. (some have said as low as 25/ea.) Taking the "plastic token" out of the equation does not represent a significant reduction in cost.
Secondly, it's common practice that when manufacturers break out single units that they charge more. Ever buy a Coke from a vending machine? How much did you pay for it, 65? And what is the cost per unit when you buy a 12 pack from Food Lion? 40/ea.? Nothing new here.
Third, there are real savings here. Yeah, if you want the entire album, you may be better off just buying it from the store. However, if you just want one or two songs, then you have saved yourself $10 or more. I can think of a LOT of songs from the past 30 years that I'd like to buy, but I don't care to get the whole album. There's a lot of one-hit wonders out there, but very few artists that can pack out an album with great material.
I think that the price is right. In fact, if I were doing it, I'd set the pricing as a range, from 75 for the "moldy oldies" to $1.25 for the latest stuff. Really, the only hitch I see so far is that they haven't answered the question of DRM. If there is DRM technology built into this, then yes, you're right that the cost is way too much. I wouldn't be willing to pay more than 25 for songs with DRM, if that.
Yeah, but it would be too detrimental to Apple to cave in to Microsoft.
Keynote looks to be a great app. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it incorporates a lot of great Quartz technology. This is a comptetitive advantage that the Mac OS has over Windows, and they should absolutely take advantage of it. Also, one of the criticisms of Keynote is that you can't share files with PC users because it's not a cross-platform application; as far as I'm concerned, neither is PowerPoint. Yes, the basic file format is the same, but there's all sorts of weirdness that happens when you try to use PowerPoint in a cross-platform environment.
Second, I think it's more important that Apple has options for office suites than for Apple to court MS Office as the lone Mac office suite. If MS drops Office for Mac, then Apple has Keynote to replace PowerPoint; Mail, Address Book, and iCal are replacements for Outlook; MySQL, et. al. to replace Access; AppleWorks to replace Word and Excel on the low-end, and OpenOffice to replace MS Office in the enterprise. Are these perfect replacements? No, but unless they start receiving more support, they never will be. I'm sure that Apple has discussed myriad times the possibility of MS withdrawing Office for Mac from the marketplace, and I'm sure they have a contingency plan in place. We would probably see Apple either dump a ton of money into developing an Appleworks Pro, as you suggested, or committing a lot of resources to beefing up OpenOffice, in much the same way that they are now beefing up KHTML.
Speaking of that, I initially didn't know how to receive Safari, either. After all, what do we need with Yet Another Web Browser on the market? But Apple is being very shrewd. First of all, they know that the worst of all possible situations is already in place, i.e., Microsoft having near-total dominance over the web browser. This means that many, if not most, pages are being coded for IE compatibility alone. It's virtually handing Microsoft total control over the internet, and they're already taking advantage of it with Windows-only stuff like ActiveX controls. For that reason alone, Apple needs to throw their weight behind ANY browser in the market OTHER THAN Microsoft's. But the Safari strategy is shrewd in other ways. First, Apple went with an open-source browser rather than build their own from scratch; not only does this earn them beaucoup brownie points with the developer community, it also means that most of the great technology that Apple pours into Safari/KHTML is going to find its way into OTHER browsers, making all of the non-MS browsers more attractive. Second, it was smart of Apple not to use Mozilla as their codebase, because the Microsoft/Netscape battle has already been fought, and Apple would constantly be associated with joining the losing side yet again. Third, Mozilla already has a loyal base; again, it's in Apple's best interest to keep the browser market heavily segmented, so going with a relative unknown allows them to create a new browser that has built up an installed base in the millions of users in a very short period of time.
Yes, Apple should treat Microsoft as a valued partner. But they need to take care of their own self-interests, first. Microsoft should be forced to earn their place in the Mac market, it shouldn't just be handed to them by default.
True, the Newton was a separate platform that Apple was supporting. However, the Newton and the Mac are complementary products, i.e., buying one means that you need to buy the other (like cars and gas).
Jobs could have spun off the Newton division into a separate entity (like he did with FileMaker Pro). Even at their lowest point in '97, Apple still had $4 bil in cash. And it would have been an angle to get Macs into enterprise desktops.
Of course, I'm just as mystified as to why he killed Claris, which was an Apple subsidiary that was also in the black (and was another Sculley creation). Claris had produced some great software, and it doesn't make sense that, when your computer platform is hitting rock-bottom that you kill a major developer (especially a successful one).
My opinion of Jobs is that he was shooting from the hip, and if not for the offbeat iMac line that he introduced, he would have driven Apple under by now. I think he's making more sensible decisions these days, but some of his '97 decisions were downright bizarre.
Of course, you shouldn't forget that the Newton was actually in the black for the first time since its creation when Steve Jobs killed it. There is a distinct possibility that the Newton could have held down the high-end of the PDA market, particularly with vertical apps, and gradually trickled down to the consumer level.
I've always suspected that Jobs killed it because it was a John Sculley project. Most everyone in the Newton division bolted for Palm.
What's even worse was finding out that, within two years, Jobs was offering to acquire Palm, to which they replied, "Thanks, no." Jobs trashed the Newton brand, ran off its engineers, and only realized the error of his ways about the time that Microsoft was gearing up to enter the market. Too late.
However, the service is strictly limited to AOL customers, making many wonder if it will grab enough attention of the current subscriber base to actually be of value.
What AOL is attempting to do is to set up their ISP service and their music service as complementary products.
Will it be successful? Most likely, because A) they already have a huge catalog of music that they can use, and B) a lot of people will sign up for AOL just to use MusicNet, so AOL gets to hit them with two subscription fees, not just one.
It's an interesting idea, although, as a consumer, I don't like the restrictions on the music they place and probably wouldn't subscribe to it, myself.
Yes, Overture sells paid listings, not relevance, although they do at least check out your site to make sure that the keywords you are registering are germain to your site's content.
Registering with Overture is smart because Overture influences other search engines. Alta Vista has long had a deal with them to take the top three Overture listings and place them above Alta Vista's own results. Even the mighty Google is influenced by Overture.
For example, before my company registered keywords on Overture, we couldn't be found on Google unless you search specifically on our name. Today, there is at least one keyword category where we have the top spot on Google (keywords we registered on Overture), and a number of others where we at least show up in the list.
For businesses that are frustrated with the search engine games, Overture is probably the easiest way to influence them.
Much has been made of the problems of blacklisting. Do you see whitelisting as a viable alternative, and (if so) what form do you think that it will take?
Re:mac and pc in one case
on
New Dual System PC
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· Score: 2, Informative
The company was Orange Micro, and they've long since gotten out of the business.
Their cards were always priced similarly to a complete PC system at the same Mhz; what you were paying for was a) the convenience of running two systems out of one box, and b) the interoperability of the two environments. Their competition was Insignia's SoftWindows emulator, which was as zippy as a tortoise in a vat of cold molasaass, so Orange Micro offered a significantly better solution.
I think what killed their business model was that Macs got fast enough to run PC emulation software at acceptable speeds (about the time the G3's first came out). No, you still couldn't do 3D modeling with it, but when you double-clicked on the My Computer icon on the desktop, the window would open and render in seconds rather than minutes. That also meant that Office-type applications now ran at acceptible speeds, despite the fundamental x86/PPC incompatibility of having to convert big endian/small endian numbers for every byte that passed through the CPU. Orange Micro just couldn't compete because their PC cards started at just over $1000, whereas VirtualPC cost (back then) about $250.
Yes, but if the regulations are breached, the sender is liable, not the carrier.
That's because of two reasons:
1) the carrier was proactive in establishing rules, and 2) the carrier is run by the federal government, and therefore obligated to enact regulations upholding federal laws
Any industry that's in danger of being regulated needs to seriously consider being proactive about self-regulation. It stands to reason that an industry that does nothing to address concerns about violating ethics or social mores is going to find rules imposed upon it.
The slipperly slope in this case is that ISPs will be made ever more responsible for the content they carry. But the phone company and the post office aren't responsible for what their infrastructure is used to deliver. Why should the web be a special case?
Not sure about the telecom industry, but the USPS already *does* have regulations about what can and cannot be sent through the mail.
To make a point, Open Firmware works nice *now*. I've seen firsthand the difference between OF on an old Mac G3 and a new G4; it took years to get things worked out. Hopefully Intel won't be cursing PC hackers with years of bugs, missing functionality (older OF versions couldn't boot CDs, or could but couldn't read ISO9660, etc.), and unintelligible DEFAULT CATCH and CLAIM FAILED messages.
As a longtime Mac user (since 1984), I can't say that I've ever really noticed any problems with OpenFirmware. I don't recall any Mac with a built-in CD drive not being able to boot off of a CD, and it's understandable that Macs didn't boot off of ISO-9660 CD's since Apple didn't see compatibility with PC's as something desirable until OS 8.
Slashdot Mirror
Why didn't you implement a cache system?
I think there might be some legal complications with a cache system. *Most* of the sites linked to from Slashdot sell banner advertising... A cached site would not run the server-side script to deliver the advertising, so sites would be missing out on millions of hits. If I was the director of marketing for ZDNet or any other of these sites that get linked to on a regular basis, I know *I'd* be mighty pissed.
I think Slashdot would get a bunch of "cease and desist" orders within a couple of days of implementing a cache system.
Yeah, the Slashdot Effect sucks, but it's the web hosts' problem, and there's nothing that Slashdot can do about it.
This time window gives other authors a chance to take a look at them. To fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!
So, for people who don't subscribe, they don't have to put with dupe stories!
"Honey, call the bank and cancel that check!"
Commercial sites would love this. Academic/government ones probably wouldn't care as much. You could sell them a contract with an existing CDN (Akamai, Mirror-Image, etc.) or build out your own special purpose service, just to handle slashdot-like effects.
I can imagine the phone conversation now:
Unsuspecting Web Host: Um, hello?
Commercial Web Mirror: Dude... you've got 30 minutes until 1 million angry Slashdotters pummel your server into a pile of slag... What do you do?
Unsuspecting Web Host: [click]
That's 90 minutes to yourself each day, for as long as you work there. I'd bet most of us could do it for a week, but how about a year? Not likely.
The article gave the 106-hour work week as the longest the tester had logged. He said 60 hours was typical in deadline crunches, so I think it's safe to say that the guy interviewed for the article was working between 40-60 hours a week, most weeks.
Bottom line, even if there is some wealthy person with tons of cash, but who is irresponsible, their irresponsibility won't cost the bank. And that's the bottom line.
You're kidding me, right? Rich people are never irresponsible and don't cost the bank. Ever hear of Enron? WorldCom? Global Crossing? Conseco? Texaco? KMart? And a multitude of others....
No, responsible (not "rich") people don't pay those fees.
"Responsible" has nothing to do with it. If I walk down to my local bank and deposit $5000 into a checking account, they will give me an account with overdraft protection. They won't even call my mother to find out if I'm a responsible lad.
There are irresponsible wealthy people too, ya know...
Financial services to the poor have, all else equal, much higher default risk. And default costs swamp everything else. Consider that the margin over cost of funds for most consumer credit is 2-3%. A default rate of 1% destroys the profitability.
Sorry, but that's the cover story for fleecing the poor. True, they represent a higher credit risk and therefore have a higher cost for default; however, at some point, the default costs are covered, and the rest is gravy. It's fairly well known that the poor are paying far more than their share.
Look at banking. A significant portion of profit (not simply revenue, but profit) comes from the various "poverty fees" they charge, like bounced check fees. People with money don't pay those fees, because the bank is willing to extend a small amount of credit to their checking accounts to cover shortages. But poor people get screwed in the ass if their checking account is short a few dollars.
Yeah, also check out Beachhead 2000, which bombed as a home-PC game, but is pretty cool as an arcade game because of the 360 VR cabinet design.
Actually, I was far more impressed with the first short than with the second. The artwork was far more engaging, and the animation didn't look like it was rendered by a computer.
Yes, the "rise of the machines" scenario has been rehashed in a multitude of other stories. I think that this short carved out a unique niche for itself in the way that it humanized the machines. It was never that the machines became self-aware, and then suddenly became bent on kicking biological ass. The machines asserted their rights, were crushed and driven out. The basic premise is far-fetched, but I give the art and the animation a lot of credit for making the story convincing.
But what dissapointed me was that the short failed to touch on the themes of the original Matrix. I think it would have been more interesting to see the origin of the Matrix explore the deep psychological oppression that the Matrix represents.
BUt what about those of us that buy $12 CDs with 20 good tracks? (IE, Hendrix, SRV, Led Zep, etc)
First off, I don't know where you're getting the $12 number from, the average price of CD's these days seems to be from $14 to $18.
But, if you are looking for budget music, just go to Half.com. I buy almost all of my music there these days because a) I don't need a pristine copy, I'm just going to rip it to MP3, anyway, and 2) I'm buying music on the used market, so the RIAA doesn't see a penny from my transaction.
First off, CD manufacturing is less than $1/ea. (some have said as low as 25/ea.) Taking the "plastic token" out of the equation does not represent a significant reduction in cost.
Secondly, it's common practice that when manufacturers break out single units that they charge more. Ever buy a Coke from a vending machine? How much did you pay for it, 65? And what is the cost per unit when you buy a 12 pack from Food Lion? 40/ea.? Nothing new here.
Third, there are real savings here. Yeah, if you want the entire album, you may be better off just buying it from the store. However, if you just want one or two songs, then you have saved yourself $10 or more. I can think of a LOT of songs from the past 30 years that I'd like to buy, but I don't care to get the whole album. There's a lot of one-hit wonders out there, but very few artists that can pack out an album with great material.
I think that the price is right. In fact, if I were doing it, I'd set the pricing as a range, from 75 for the "moldy oldies" to $1.25 for the latest stuff. Really, the only hitch I see so far is that they haven't answered the question of DRM. If there is DRM technology built into this, then yes, you're right that the cost is way too much. I wouldn't be willing to pay more than 25 for songs with DRM, if that.
Yeah, and I must have missed the scene in LOTR:TTT where Aragon was wielding a shotgun...
it's a very one-sided view of things. There are, what, 34 nations that are going to support the US in the Iraq war?
Yeah, but it would be too detrimental to Apple to cave in to Microsoft.
Keynote looks to be a great app. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it incorporates a lot of great Quartz technology. This is a comptetitive advantage that the Mac OS has over Windows, and they should absolutely take advantage of it. Also, one of the criticisms of Keynote is that you can't share files with PC users because it's not a cross-platform application; as far as I'm concerned, neither is PowerPoint. Yes, the basic file format is the same, but there's all sorts of weirdness that happens when you try to use PowerPoint in a cross-platform environment.
Second, I think it's more important that Apple has options for office suites than for Apple to court MS Office as the lone Mac office suite. If MS drops Office for Mac, then Apple has Keynote to replace PowerPoint; Mail, Address Book, and iCal are replacements for Outlook; MySQL, et. al. to replace Access; AppleWorks to replace Word and Excel on the low-end, and OpenOffice to replace MS Office in the enterprise. Are these perfect replacements? No, but unless they start receiving more support, they never will be. I'm sure that Apple has discussed myriad times the possibility of MS withdrawing Office for Mac from the marketplace, and I'm sure they have a contingency plan in place. We would probably see Apple either dump a ton of money into developing an Appleworks Pro, as you suggested, or committing a lot of resources to beefing up OpenOffice, in much the same way that they are now beefing up KHTML.
Speaking of that, I initially didn't know how to receive Safari, either. After all, what do we need with Yet Another Web Browser on the market? But Apple is being very shrewd. First of all, they know that the worst of all possible situations is already in place, i.e., Microsoft having near-total dominance over the web browser. This means that many, if not most, pages are being coded for IE compatibility alone. It's virtually handing Microsoft total control over the internet, and they're already taking advantage of it with Windows-only stuff like ActiveX controls. For that reason alone, Apple needs to throw their weight behind ANY browser in the market OTHER THAN Microsoft's. But the Safari strategy is shrewd in other ways. First, Apple went with an open-source browser rather than build their own from scratch; not only does this earn them beaucoup brownie points with the developer community, it also means that most of the great technology that Apple pours into Safari/KHTML is going to find its way into OTHER browsers, making all of the non-MS browsers more attractive. Second, it was smart of Apple not to use Mozilla as their codebase, because the Microsoft/Netscape battle has already been fought, and Apple would constantly be associated with joining the losing side yet again. Third, Mozilla already has a loyal base; again, it's in Apple's best interest to keep the browser market heavily segmented, so going with a relative unknown allows them to create a new browser that has built up an installed base in the millions of users in a very short period of time.
Yes, Apple should treat Microsoft as a valued partner. But they need to take care of their own self-interests, first. Microsoft should be forced to earn their place in the Mac market, it shouldn't just be handed to them by default.
True, the Newton was a separate platform that Apple was supporting. However, the Newton and the Mac are complementary products, i.e., buying one means that you need to buy the other (like cars and gas).
Jobs could have spun off the Newton division into a separate entity (like he did with FileMaker Pro). Even at their lowest point in '97, Apple still had $4 bil in cash. And it would have been an angle to get Macs into enterprise desktops.
Of course, I'm just as mystified as to why he killed Claris, which was an Apple subsidiary that was also in the black (and was another Sculley creation). Claris had produced some great software, and it doesn't make sense that, when your computer platform is hitting rock-bottom that you kill a major developer (especially a successful one).
My opinion of Jobs is that he was shooting from the hip, and if not for the offbeat iMac line that he introduced, he would have driven Apple under by now. I think he's making more sensible decisions these days, but some of his '97 decisions were downright bizarre.
Of course, you shouldn't forget that the Newton was actually in the black for the first time since its creation when Steve Jobs killed it. There is a distinct possibility that the Newton could have held down the high-end of the PDA market, particularly with vertical apps, and gradually trickled down to the consumer level.
I've always suspected that Jobs killed it because it was a John Sculley project. Most everyone in the Newton division bolted for Palm.
What's even worse was finding out that, within two years, Jobs was offering to acquire Palm, to which they replied, "Thanks, no." Jobs trashed the Newton brand, ran off its engineers, and only realized the error of his ways about the time that Microsoft was gearing up to enter the market. Too late.
However, the service is strictly limited to AOL customers, making many wonder if it will grab enough attention of the current subscriber base to actually be of value.
What AOL is attempting to do is to set up their ISP service and their music service as complementary products.
Will it be successful? Most likely, because A) they already have a huge catalog of music that they can use, and B) a lot of people will sign up for AOL just to use MusicNet, so AOL gets to hit them with two subscription fees, not just one.
It's an interesting idea, although, as a consumer, I don't like the restrictions on the music they place and probably wouldn't subscribe to it, myself.
I take it you've never looked at Overture.
Yes, Overture sells paid listings, not relevance, although they do at least check out your site to make sure that the keywords you are registering are germain to your site's content.
Registering with Overture is smart because Overture influences other search engines. Alta Vista has long had a deal with them to take the top three Overture listings and place them above Alta Vista's own results. Even the mighty Google is influenced by Overture.
For example, before my company registered keywords on Overture, we couldn't be found on Google unless you search specifically on our name. Today, there is at least one keyword category where we have the top spot on Google (keywords we registered on Overture), and a number of others where we at least show up in the list.
For businesses that are frustrated with the search engine games, Overture is probably the easiest way to influence them.
I'm not sure, but in my building, there are three bathrooms -- Men, Women, and Scripters.
Much has been made of the problems of blacklisting. Do you see whitelisting as a viable alternative, and (if so) what form do you think that it will take?
The company was Orange Micro , and they've long since gotten out of the business.
Their cards were always priced similarly to a complete PC system at the same Mhz; what you were paying for was a) the convenience of running two systems out of one box, and b) the interoperability of the two environments. Their competition was Insignia's SoftWindows emulator, which was as zippy as a tortoise in a vat of cold molasaass, so Orange Micro offered a significantly better solution.
I think what killed their business model was that Macs got fast enough to run PC emulation software at acceptable speeds (about the time the G3's first came out). No, you still couldn't do 3D modeling with it, but when you double-clicked on the My Computer icon on the desktop, the window would open and render in seconds rather than minutes. That also meant that Office-type applications now ran at acceptible speeds, despite the fundamental x86/PPC incompatibility of having to convert big endian/small endian numbers for every byte that passed through the CPU. Orange Micro just couldn't compete because their PC cards started at just over $1000, whereas VirtualPC cost (back then) about $250.
Well said.
Yes, but if the regulations are breached, the sender is liable, not the carrier.
That's because of two reasons:
1) the carrier was proactive in establishing rules, and
2) the carrier is run by the federal government, and therefore obligated to enact regulations upholding federal laws
Any industry that's in danger of being regulated needs to seriously consider being proactive about self-regulation. It stands to reason that an industry that does nothing to address concerns about violating ethics or social mores is going to find rules imposed upon it.
The slipperly slope in this case is that ISPs will be made ever more responsible for the content they carry. But the phone company and the post office aren't responsible for what their infrastructure is used to deliver. Why should the web be a special case?
Not sure about the telecom industry, but the USPS already *does* have regulations about what can and cannot be sent through the mail.
To make a point, Open Firmware works nice *now*. I've seen firsthand the difference between OF on an old Mac G3 and a new G4; it took years to get things worked out. Hopefully Intel won't be cursing PC hackers with years of bugs, missing functionality (older OF versions couldn't boot CDs, or could but couldn't read ISO9660, etc.), and unintelligible DEFAULT CATCH and CLAIM FAILED messages.
As a longtime Mac user (since 1984), I can't say that I've ever really noticed any problems with OpenFirmware. I don't recall any Mac with a built-in CD drive not being able to boot off of a CD, and it's understandable that Macs didn't boot off of ISO-9660 CD's since Apple didn't see compatibility with PC's as something desirable until OS 8.