I've yet to see anyone seriously address the real reason telcos want this, and it's quite unfortunate. Right now the telcos face something they have never had to really face before - competition! From who? Vonage, Skype, etc. The telcos want to marginalize them because they offer competing services to the telcos main business... telecommunications! This becomes a win-win for telcos because they can now charge the likes of Vonage and Skype, making those services less attractive to customers who already have to pay the telcos for their internet connectivity... and if Vonage/Skype don't want to pay, well that's okay too because they can degrade the quality of those services enough to effectivly make them unattractive to customers.
There was an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal last week from the CEO of Qwest who used the analogy of LL Bean and FedEx saying that a customer pays for the standard shipping to FexEd to receive a package from LL Bean - if LL Bean decided to offer an upgrade to overnight shipping to it's customers for no additional charge, there's no problem with that. I'm disappointed that WSJ did not print any reactions to that because the analogy was clearly flawed.
A better analogy would be if FedEx charged the customer for shipping and then turned around and charged LL Bean again in order for the customer to receive the package telling them "we already got the money from your customer (already paid for DSL/Cable/etc) and if you don't pay us more than the initial cost of shipping (pay for priority/quality of service), packages from you will be put in the back of the line behind all your competitors and we won't even guarantee it will be delivered at all."
Personally, I am insulted. I pay for my bandwidth already. If I want to use that bandwidth to use Google or Vonage or anything else, it's my bandwidth which the telco has already made money from.
They claim it offers more variety to customers - I already have variety! If 1.5mb is not enough, I can pay more and get more bandwidth, so their claim that this adds choice to customers is bunk - we already have choice. This serves no other purpose than to limit our choices to services they can extort or whom they prefer and to help marginalize their competitors at our expense.
I can't help but wonder why Microsoft bothered to buy Giant Company awhile back for their antispyware product. Guess it explains why they've put zero effort into improving it since they bought it though.
Here are two videos I found on Google Video giving you a driverside view of an entire qualifiying round and another where the car rear-ends a parked car (autonomously drunk?).
And just to rehash history... it's not like Israel has EVER tried to spyon the US before or anything.
When the government does business with a US company, it's a heck of a lot easier for the administration to send someone over to said company threatening, "Hey, we don't like what you're doing! Keep it up and we'll happily send your entire company on a quail hunting trip with Dick Cheney!" It just doesn't have the same affect on a foreign owned company, unfortunatly.
"Roesch sees Snort and Sourcefire as two different solutions aimed at distinctive markets. "The idea of Snort was to give people the best free, open source intrusion detection system we could, and we were pretty successful at that," he said. "The idea of Sourcefire is to say, 'Okay, we've got good intrusion detection technology: let's add everything else people need to use these systems effectively in large organizations.'"
And that's not to say that large organizations can't use Snort without the backing of Sourcefire. Roesch says some of the biggest companies in the world use Snort. Sourcefire just adds the manageability along with ease of use and deployment that many enterprise customers are looking for in an intrusion detection system.
Sourcefire's OpenSnort Sensors cost $9,995 each, and the OpenSnort Management Console costs $19,995. Various service contracts are available, ranging from a platinum level with around-the-clock support to a standard contract with per-incident support and e-mail discussion list access. Training on Sourcefire's products is also available. Training on IDS and forensic analysis in general is planned for the near future"
"The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Title III of the E-Government Act of 2002, outlines requirements to secure Federal information. Each Federal Agency, including contractors or other organizations who work with the agency, must develop, document, and implement an agency-wide information security program. Detailed guidance and recommendations are provided by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) encompassing all aspects of information security."
Why do we have region codes? We pay $15US (or more) for a DVD here in the US. In China they sell pretty much the same DVDs (sometimes without the extra commentaries etc, what a big loss) for $2-$3US, a fraction of the cost we pay. Obviously, taking into consideration how much the average citizen of China makes, that's a lot for them. But relative to our $15+ DVDs, even if we had to not only buy the DVD in China but pay for shipping back here, it would be cheaper to buy it in China.
So basically, we have region codes to ensure the distribution model of the movie industry works without interference from us pesky consumers being able to expect a price reasonable to us while still being profitable to them. It allows them to choose who's wallets they can pick more without fearing the usual consequences of supply and demand. If we can only get DVDs from one place at one inflated price, we have to go that route.
Ask yourselves... if selling DVDs for $2-$3US was not profitable enough, why would they even bother selling DVDs at such prices in places like China? While you may be prompted to say "to fight back against piracy, they are willing to take a loss", but take a moment to think of all the logical flaws with that, including the fact that by lowering their prices they also make it cheaper for those that pirate there to make copies for even cheaper and still sell them for less than legit DVDs. They would simply get out of that market if selling DVDs at that price was a 'loss' to them. Much the same way Apple will get out of France if iPods become a loss there soon.
While CATO isn't a think-tank I tend to agree with on many issues, I found their take on DRM and such very insightful. The article was carried on/. yesterday but here is the link again in case anyone's interested. They have quite a few explanations and analogies, including a better explanation of why we have region codes than I've provided here.
Slashdot Mirror
I've yet to see anyone seriously address the real reason telcos want this, and it's quite unfortunate. Right now the telcos face something they have never had to really face before - competition! From who? Vonage, Skype, etc. The telcos want to marginalize them because they offer competing services to the telcos main business... telecommunications! This becomes a win-win for telcos because they can now charge the likes of Vonage and Skype, making those services less attractive to customers who already have to pay the telcos for their internet connectivity... and if Vonage/Skype don't want to pay, well that's okay too because they can degrade the quality of those services enough to effectivly make them unattractive to customers.
There was an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal last week from the CEO of Qwest who used the analogy of LL Bean and FedEx saying that a customer pays for the standard shipping to FexEd to receive a package from LL Bean - if LL Bean decided to offer an upgrade to overnight shipping to it's customers for no additional charge, there's no problem with that. I'm disappointed that WSJ did not print any reactions to that because the analogy was clearly flawed.
A better analogy would be if FedEx charged the customer for shipping and then turned around and charged LL Bean again in order for the customer to receive the package telling them "we already got the money from your customer (already paid for DSL/Cable/etc) and if you don't pay us more than the initial cost of shipping (pay for priority/quality of service), packages from you will be put in the back of the line behind all your competitors and we won't even guarantee it will be delivered at all."
Personally, I am insulted. I pay for my bandwidth already. If I want to use that bandwidth to use Google or Vonage or anything else, it's my bandwidth which the telco has already made money from.
They claim it offers more variety to customers - I already have variety! If 1.5mb is not enough, I can pay more and get more bandwidth, so their claim that this adds choice to customers is bunk - we already have choice. This serves no other purpose than to limit our choices to services they can extort or whom they prefer and to help marginalize their competitors at our expense.
I can't help but wonder why Microsoft bothered to buy Giant Company awhile back for their antispyware product. Guess it explains why they've put zero effort into improving it since they bought it though.
Sorry, I posted same URL for both videos above :( Correct link to the crash video is here
Here are two videos I found on Google Video giving you a driverside view of an entire qualifiying round and another where the car rear-ends a parked car (autonomously drunk?).
Princeton DARPA Grand Challenge - NQE Run 5 Princeton University Prospect Eleven 12 min 38 sec
Princeton DARPA Grand Challenge - Crash Video Princeton University Prospect Eleven 54 sec
And just to rehash history... it's not like Israel has EVER tried to spy on the US before or anything.
When the government does business with a US company, it's a heck of a lot easier for the administration to send someone over to said company threatening, "Hey, we don't like what you're doing! Keep it up and we'll happily send your entire company on a quail hunting trip with Dick Cheney!" It just doesn't have the same affect on a foreign owned company, unfortunatly.
Snort is open-source.... SourceFire makes money off the other things they've created to work with/around Snort...
Quoted from here
"Roesch sees Snort and Sourcefire as two different solutions aimed at distinctive markets. "The idea of Snort was to give people the best free, open source intrusion detection system we could, and we were pretty successful at that," he said. "The idea of Sourcefire is to say, 'Okay, we've got good intrusion detection technology: let's add everything else people need to use these systems effectively in large organizations.'"
And that's not to say that large organizations can't use Snort without the backing of Sourcefire. Roesch says some of the biggest companies in the world use Snort. Sourcefire just adds the manageability along with ease of use and deployment that many enterprise customers are looking for in an intrusion detection system.
Sourcefire's OpenSnort Sensors cost $9,995 each, and the OpenSnort Management Console costs $19,995. Various service contracts are available, ranging from a platinum level with around-the-clock support to a standard contract with per-incident support and e-mail discussion list access. Training on Sourcefire's products is also available. Training on IDS and forensic analysis in general is planned for the near future"
Also, the Federal Information Security Management Act might have a lot to do with this decision as well:
"The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Title III of the E-Government Act of 2002, outlines requirements to secure Federal information. Each Federal Agency, including contractors or other organizations who work with the agency, must develop, document, and implement an agency-wide information security program. Detailed guidance and recommendations are provided by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) encompassing all aspects of information security."
Why do we have region codes? We pay $15US (or more) for a DVD here in the US. In China they sell pretty much the same DVDs (sometimes without the extra commentaries etc, what a big loss) for $2-$3US, a fraction of the cost we pay. Obviously, taking into consideration how much the average citizen of China makes, that's a lot for them. But relative to our $15+ DVDs, even if we had to not only buy the DVD in China but pay for shipping back here, it would be cheaper to buy it in China.
So basically, we have region codes to ensure the distribution model of the movie industry works without interference from us pesky consumers being able to expect a price reasonable to us while still being profitable to them. It allows them to choose who's wallets they can pick more without fearing the usual consequences of supply and demand. If we can only get DVDs from one place at one inflated price, we have to go that route.
Ask yourselves... if selling DVDs for $2-$3US was not profitable enough, why would they even bother selling DVDs at such prices in places like China? While you may be prompted to say "to fight back against piracy, they are willing to take a loss", but take a moment to think of all the logical flaws with that, including the fact that by lowering their prices they also make it cheaper for those that pirate there to make copies for even cheaper and still sell them for less than legit DVDs. They would simply get out of that market if selling DVDs at that price was a 'loss' to them. Much the same way Apple will get out of France if iPods become a loss there soon.
While CATO isn't a think-tank I tend to agree with on many issues, I found their take on DRM and such very insightful. The article was carried on /. yesterday but here is the link again in case anyone's interested. They have quite a few explanations and analogies, including a better explanation of why we have region codes than I've provided here.