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South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

washingtonpost.com

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Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#71

Post by kalleboo »

onion2k wrote: post #7

This is why governments shouldn't be passing laws to 'protect' citizens online - they'd manifestly bad at understanding change and worse at designing legal systems that can cope with it.

In Sweden we added legislation to allow the Swedish FCC to evaluate and approve digital signature systems (by evaluating the security level of the technical system and the of the certificate authority). The law doesn't mandate any specific technical system. Approved systems are legally just as valid as a pen-and-paper signature.

It's worked extremely well. There are a couple competing systems. Some use smartchip ID cards, some use smartphone two factor auth, and others use a certificate file on the computer. The most popular system is run by a consortium of banks and uses a certificate file, and supports Windows, Mac and Ubuntu Linux through a browser plugin. Most government services like filing taxes, address change, student loans, etc support 3-4 different systems.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#73

Post by huxley »

Xdes wrote: post #47
revscat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flatly incorrect. 1) Property. If you have a monopoly on the property in a given area you can charge whatever you want for rent, and no competition will be around to add competition. 2) Vertical monopolies. If your company buys out not just the competition, but the entire supply chain, and there is a high cost of entry to being able to enter the market -- say automobiles -- then you can quash competition as i…

If a monopoly raises the price too high then the consumer will seek a substitute or simply not purchase the good. This is true regardless of the form of the monopoly. 1) If rent is too high then renters will leave. 2) If an automobile is too expensive then consumers will use mass transit or carpool. 3) If there is a coal shortage due to labor conditions then consumers will use natural gas or other alternative sources…

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." -- Richard P. Feynman

Your hypothesis doesn't take into account the complexities of people's lives which often overwhelm simple economic models.

1. 26.4% of all US renters spend over 50% their income on rent. The most commonly agreed-upon sustainable percentages are between 25-33%.

2. Sadly, there doesn't appear to be much correlation between the cost of transportation (car purchase, gasoline, car maintenance) and mass transit/car pooling increases. In North America, the idea of status being linked to the automobile is a strong counterincentive to mass transit/car pooling. People would rather be poorer than to be thought as too poor to drive.

3. Switching from one fuel to another is not a simple choice for homeowners, you need to switch your furnace (which may be tied to a long-term contract with the fuel supplier), you need to have a local supplier, and you will inevitably face the fact that as demand in the new fuel increases, so will its price.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#76

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Xdes wrote: post #47
revscat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flatly incorrect. 1) Property. If you have a monopoly on the property in a given area you can charge whatever you want for rent, and no competition will be around to add competition. 2) Vertical monopolies. If your company buys out not just the competition, but the entire supply chain, and there is a high cost of entry to being able to enter the market -- say automobiles -- then you can quash competition as i…

If a monopoly raises the price too high then the consumer will seek a substitute or simply not purchase the good. This is true regardless of the form of the monopoly. 1) If rent is too high then renters will leave. 2) If an automobile is too expensive then consumers will use mass transit or carpool. 3) If there is a coal shortage due to labor conditions then consumers will use natural gas or other alternative sources…

This is simplistic: there are not always viable alternatives, even in a free market.

1) Rent is too high, where do I go? Do I leave my job to live in the country side without one?

2) Public transportation has to exist to be an alternative to the automobile, and often requires public intervention to be viable.

3) Did someone build the pipelines necessary for gas to reach my house? Does the same company own both coal and gas supplies? How do I keep from freezing to death this winter?

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#77

Post by rsfinn »

talmand wrote: post #11

Boot Camp is a secret weapon? It costs $70? I'm confused. Could they not get a free VM and then download an image from modern.ie?

The original article is confusing.

Boot Camp is of course free, but only permits rebooting a Mac into Windows. For $70 one could purchase VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop, and run Windows side by side with OS X. The author of the Washington Post piece does not make this clear.

Calling Boot Camp a "secret weapon" suggests that most people aren't aware that Apple computers can run Windows. This may be true in the wider world, although any Apple employee in a retail store could inform customers otherwise.

Expecting a writer not focused on technology to discuss gratis tools like VirtualBox and modern.ie is probably asking too much (although these would be well within the reach of Hacker News readers).

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#78

Post by seanmcdirmid »

iand wrote: post #65
AnIrishDuck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any real economist. Any real economist can cite many monoplies that arise through market forces alone. > Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. This is not true. There are many different definitions of "profit", and there are many cases where an industry that makes a real business profit will not support a competitor that makes an economic profit. The obvious example is markets with very…

> What government policy led to the dominant monopoly of Standard Oil? Where did their mineral rights come from?

They bought them from landowners, sometimes through nefarious means if you remember your early 20th century literature.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#79

Post by vdaniuk »

criley2 wrote: post #63
jessaustin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where to start. Eh, you might reserve that tone for posts in which you're mostly correct. Ma Bell was not in any real sense broken up at any point in time. Presumably you're referring to the consent decree that took effect in 1984, but it's also possible you've been fooled by the fig-leaf Comm Act of '96. The result of all that mummery is that right now we have 2.5 phone companies in the USA (which organ…

I don't see why Capitalists are so often misguided about their Ideology. Capitalism is not a system of capital ownership that encourages competition directly, it is a system of capital ownership that encourages greedy[1] people to greedily control capital in a way that most benefits themselves, and by proxy, their company, and by proxy, the economy. There is no competition inherent in private capital ownership, but i…

One of the heuristics I've developed over years of internet surfing is to instantly disregard any content with terms like greed capitalized or coining new words like "Greed Motivation". FFS Google knows only 7000 pages with "greed motivation" phrase.

While you may be absolutely factually correct, which you are not, such argument form is not doing good for the cause you promote. If you really want to spread information about the negative aspects of capitalism, you should try doing that without diatribes and name-calling.

Re: South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

#80

Post by AnIrishDuck »

iand wrote: post #65
AnIrishDuck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any real economist. Any real economist can cite many monoplies that arise through market forces alone. > Inevitably, if any industry is profitable, competition will arise. This is not true. There are many different definitions of "profit", and there are many cases where an industry that makes a real business profit will not support a competitor that makes an economic profit. The obvious example is markets with very…

> What government policy led to the dominant monopoly of Standard Oil? Where did their mineral rights come from?

Private landowners would sell their rights either directly to Standard Oil, or to companies owned by Standard Oil. If you can point to a deal where Standard Oil bought mineral rights directly from the government in some kind of corrupt deal, I'm all ears.

Or are you arguing that the right to own private property comes from the government? What then, is the proposed alternative? Dispel property rights? Because history indicates this is likely to make the problem of monopolies worse instead of better.

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