Slashdot Mirror

At first I was all for some kind of "Net Nuetrality" law, but I do agree that really any new "internet regulation" law that is passed regardless of who it favours is going to have long reaching effects. The solution?

At first thought I was leaning towards a net neutrality law, but second thought changed that. In general and specifically here I believe no law or regulation should be enacted unless and until a real problem is indentified. Real not potential problem. It wouldn't even be a problem if the FCC would get out of the way and allowed services to offer wireless broadband. Like in Portland or San Francisco, only with competition.

I simply cannot understand why Apple would do this to itself. The iPod was a grand slam, and I was expecting these Mactels to DOUBLE Apple's market share in time for Vista. I had nothing but high hopes, which is probably why I am so disappointed now.

Charles Wolf of Needham and Co. says Apple could end up with a global PC market share north of 5% by 2011, compared with a 1.9% sliver in 2005 [ . . . ]

From 0-60mph in 3sec. Ain't that fast enough for you?

No matter what you xbox d00dz say about sales figures and marketshare, one fact remains: the Xbox is costing Microsoft billions of dollars . I've read articles that claim the premium 360 package costs something like $526 to make. Another says it costs $715. That's a hell of a lot of money to make back through licensing.

Even back in 2005 when I dug this article up for a report, MS had roughly 1/5th the "Smart" Phone market linux did (5% compared to linux's 26%). If Microsoft is screaming over this, they've been doing so for quite a while.

Backbone.
http://www.businessweek.com/1998/29/b3587124.htm

You knew they would try this. If you didn't then you are stupid.

Cringley had a piece on this. I guess it doesn't make sense for them pay for a network that cannibalizes their long distance which voip does.http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit2005 0303.html

Unlike this article. The phone companies DO own the net.
http://www.networkingpipeline.com/blog/archives/20 06/05/big_money_boys.html

This is the end of the internet.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester

We need LOWER prices and faster speeds. I don't the phone companies with their history and now their attack on this network are going to be for that.

Ultimately we need a public municipal lowcost network with backbone owned by NO ONE.

To the extent that failing to exceed local labor laws would cause their customer base to revolt, they have a large responsibility. It's well-known that American and European consumers take a very harsh view of companies practicing what they view as exploitative labor practices. For some reason, they don't like it when they find out that their lifestyle is causing misery around the globe. Not taking that into account could be seen as evidence of negligent business practices.

How much, exactly, do other workers in their locale earn? What is the overall cost of living?

This BusinessWeek article indicates that the average hourly wage of a Chinese factory worker is $0.45 (rural) and $1.06 (city). Guessing at 22 working days a month, that's about $150 and $350 a month. The article suggests that $150 in China has the same purchasing power as $693 in the US ($350 is equivalent to $1618). So it would seem that, assuming that Longhua is a rural area, factory workers in these two locations are paid less than a third of the average local wage. But you raise a good point -- why is anyone even working there? What sort of illegal practices are being used?

How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"?

Apple frequently uses icons of human rights in its marketing materials, such as Ghandi, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr. Arguably, these are cynical marketing tools designed to give the impression that Apple cares about the same things as its target market, and shouldn't be taken seriously. Nonetheless, Apple has made a significant investment in portraying itself as a pro-human rights, pro-environment company, and permitting potential abuses to continue would significantly undermine their brand, as well as make a mockery of their own internal standards for suppliers. See the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct [pdf].

wouldn't more effective change come from the US being able to have a global position such that it can exert pressure on the Chinese government and other human rights abusers, rather than trying to mobilize consumers to target US companies?

Would it? The US is not presently in a very good position to exert pressure on human rights abusers and the government is influenced by multinational corporations who have strong financial incentives to maintain the status quo. And in any case, those are not mutally exclusive options. It occurs to me that companies frequently complain about government interfering with their business, but when human rights activists adopt free-market compatible strategies such as publically embarrassing companies, they complain about that too. This gives the impression that corporations are untrustworthy, interested only in covering up their immoral practices.

I will say that it's rather unfair that, in campaigns like these, it's often that one target, however, that bears a hugely disproportionate burden of vilification...

I'm afraid I'm not terribly sympathetic to that argument. How can you argue that people treat corporations fairly when they expend a great deal of effort to evade their own responsibilities? Is it fair for competent employees to lose their jobs for reasons outside of their control? The social contract says that if you work hard and do good work for your company, you will be rewarded, but companies have successfully freed themselves of that and now claim that they actually have no responsibility whatsoever to treat their workers fairly. They should not now make appeals to fairness. If you engage in labor practices to the displeasure of your customers, you run the ri

People with real world business experience going up against young idealists. Guess what? Business always wins. Always has, always will.

Yeah. For example (then) 40-odd year-old megacorp IBM sure finished off these young idealists back in the 80's. That's why you've never heard of them.

This is hardly hypothetical. The CEO of AT&T pretty much announced that as soon as he can get away with it, he's going to hit up Google for money. The CTO for BellSouth said much the same thing.

In a free market where everyone has perfect information the situation would quickly self balance. But not everyone has perfect information. Say SBC penalizes Google with bandwidth throttling. Nothing big, just a slight slowdown. Google starts responding more slowly. Videos stutter a bit more. While techies might notice and get angry and switch providers, is Joe Random User going to? Is MySpace slow because MySpace sucks, or because MySpace refused to pay protection money to AT&T? How can you be sure?

Ultimately these are industries which are already heavily regulated, both on a local and national level. The net neutrality provision is a relatively minor regulation.

There's absolutely no way the Yankee group can claim to be unbiased if they allowed the Didiot within fifteen hundred meters of a report on Open Source or Linux.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/ar chives/2005/04/the_truth_about_1.html
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,82070,00.html
Laura DiDio, an analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston, said she was shown two or three samples of the allegedly copied Linux code, and it appeared to her that the sections were a "copy and paste" match of the SCO Unix code that she was shown in comparison.
DiDio and the other analysts were able to view the code only under a nondisclosure agreement, ... "The courts are going to ultimately have to prove this, but based on what I'm seeing ... I think there is a basis that SCO has a credible case," DiDio said. "This is not a nuisance case."

Watch the "expert" Laura Didio on video from a credible source:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /videos/didio_video.wvx

Enjoy her!

*lol*

Lets look at last years survey being debunked in a business week analysis. ('cause I'm sure not a damn thing's changed since last year's study).

The biggest criticism of the study is this:

Only people running w2k3 AND linux were allowed to respond. Hmmmmmn, so how many MS shops with an evaluation linux server (installed by their clueless MSCE) were included in this "survey"

Yankee group can claim no bias all they like - but I am sick of Laura DiDio fud being posted here (Oh she of 'SCO's claims are justified after looking at the source' fame).

Call this ad-hominem if you like, but if someone pushes a POV year in, year out, you tend to dismiss them.

Hate to break it to you, but it wasn't Verizon.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same fiber. In all the towns around me in MA, Verizon trucks were crawling down every street stringing fiber. When I ordered FIOS, they ran fiber from the pole to my house.

Googling for "Verizon fiber cost" turns up this article, which says Verizon plans to roll out fiber-optic connections to every home and business in its 29-state territory over the next 10 to 15 years...It will cost $20 billion to $40 billion.

I suppose that's "free" for very small values of "billion".

Being a chinese company, I wonder if their government "suggested" they go to using only licenced MS products. New equipment with a paid copy of Windows and Office don't need pirated versions, which has been an issue for them.

If this company bribes the right politicians, and promises some kind of benefit to a given congressman's state, then it WILL happen.

Provided the congresscritter believes the public won't get too freaked out by the results. The folks in Congress are still elected. Also, there are plenty of other private interests that are likely opposed to RFID tagging of immigrants. After all, business lobbies are already putting up a fight against more restrictive immigration controls.

For every private interest or public interest group in favor of particular legislation, there are almost always some on the other side fighting vigorously for their interests. While immigrants don't have a strong lobby, big business makes a buttload of money off them, and don't want to see that revenue stream disappear.

I submitted a story on this yesterday morning. Vonage went on CNBC Wednesday morning and announced that it "is going to let some of its customers off the hook by buying their unwanted shares." The statement said that "While all avenues are available to us we cannot imagine alienating our customers in that way. If certain . . . customers don't pay we expect to repurchase shares from the underwriters if necessary."

People immediately started pointing out that it is illegal for a compnay to treat different shareholders in the same class differently -- Vonage was only offering to "make whole" (Wall Street speak for "absorb the losses of") investors that hadn't yet paid for their shares; people that had paid were SOL.

The whole IPO has basically been a mess, with snafus both in selling shares to their customers and delivering them. Some Vonage customers that they were led to believe that they "weren't allocated shares in the IPO when in fact they had received the shares. Others investors who purchased shares have complained that technical glitches on a Web site set up for Vonage customers prevented them from executing sales in a timely fashion."

I've had good experiences with the Vonage product as a customer, but there are many, many stories of how poorly Vonage customer service treats their customers. They're very slow in sorting out problems -- it took them 3 months to transfer my land-line phone number, and initially the temporary number they gave me was in a different area code than my city, putting me in a long-distance calling zone relative to my friends. It took hours before they fixed it (they kept claiming it wasn't "technically possible" to give me a new number). Analysts are worried that future propects for the company might not look so good, and that screwing over their own customers in the IPO might be the last straw.

It's amazing, isn't it? Japan. Gets twice the leave time that US workers get.

And these guys take their work seriously. Do a little Google searching about corporate suicide in Japan. Occasionally, if a Japanese salaryman screws up at work, he'll kill himself for absolution.

Examples here, here, and here.

These guys take work so seriously they're willing to die for it. And they get twice the vacation time we do.

It's pretty shocking.

I won't comment on the business issue (if it's worth it for you to have that name, the price is actually fairly reasonable), but make sure you document the deal properly. Sign an agreement for the sale that requires the seller to go through the appropriate registrar's process, and make sure you don't pay until the process is moving along. Make sure the seller says it has the rights to the name, and that it will cover your costs (i.e. indemnify you) if someone comes to sue you because the seller was actually an illegal cybersquatter. Also, make sure that, as soon as the name is switched, the seller takes all reference to it out of its print and digital materials.

You can see a really old article I wrote about the process on the BusinessWeek Web site. I hope it's helpful. {Jonathan}

Nature is not an idiot. She did not spend 4 billion years or so evolving homo sapiens just to overlook stem cells as the source of repair for all our medical problems. She has intimate knowledge of stem cells. If she doesn't use them, they don't work. It's not like she doesn't care. She's built, laboriously, a magnificent immune and repair system.

Stem cells are one of the biggest frauds the scientific-industrial-complex has come up with in years. Already, debt-burdened California has been convinced to fund 3 billion dollars for embryonic stem-cell "research." After much breathless reportage on how stem cells would solve all our medical problems, Proposition 71 passed in November of 2005. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov 2004/tc20041115_9013_tc024.htm I bet the gray-haired boys and girls of science are patting each other on the back over this one and guzzling Glenlivet while smoking Cuban cigars.

"It's academic and research institutions like Stanford University, the University of California, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Between them, they're expected to receive the lion's share of California's funding plan."

I put stem cell research right up there with atom smashers, fusion power, and a manned trip to Mars as worthless "busyscience" endeavors designed to drain the public purse and steal standard-of-living from the taxpayer.

News media, stop the scientist worship or we'll end up funding a multi-trillion dollar perpetual motion machine built in the middle of some one of the world's major oceans.

Consider the princelings of China. They and their parents are members of the Chinese communist party. These princelings live, for long stretches, in the West and enjoy its freedoms and prosperity. Yet, the parents of the princelings fully support and enforce the draconian Chinese "laws" that crush human rights in China.

I have personally met some of these princelings.

Do they realize their hypocrisy? Yes. Do they care? No.

Here is another, more damning, example. In 2001 in Northern California, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco sponsored an anti-Falun-Gong meeting conducted in Santa Clara, California. Chinese students from San Jose State University, Stanford University, and other neighboring universities, attended the meeting. The Chinese student associations at the respective universities fully supported the anti-Falun-Gong meeting.

These Chinese students enjoy the freedom and prosperity in the West but, actually, support the draconian Chinese "laws" that crush human rights in China.

Do they realize their hypocrisy? Yes. Do they care? No.

By now, you should realize that the authoritarian government in China exists for one reason: the majority of Chinese either support the authoritarian government or are indifferent to it.

Related article:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul 2005/tc20050728_4517.htm

I'm not a runner, so I really don't know. One hour a day, let's say several times a week, that'd be several years.

Of course, your mileage may vary! Thank you! Tip your waitstaff and try the veal!

A "fraction" is very variable. For the sort of hardware people are buying in the target countries of this idea, the fraction is in the region of ½, and in Brazil at least, poor people are already starting to buy things on credit without needing vendors to step forward and offer lock-in contracts.

Alzira de Oliveira Rangel, who earns $400 a month as a nanny, recently bought her teenage son a computer on credit and opened savings accounts for each of her children.

A "fraction" is very variable. For the sort of hardware people are buying in the target countries of this idea, the fraction is in the region of ½, and in Brazil at least, poor people are already starting to buy things on credit without needing vendors to step forward and offer lock-in contracts.

Alzira de Oliveira Rangel, who earns $400 a month as a nanny, recently bought her teenage son a computer on credit and opened savings accounts for each of her children.

coincidental, not necessarily causal...the entire Nasdaq/Dow, as well as Europe and Japan, have been plunging for the last week.

I dunno, Creative seems to have dropped 2.6% when the straight time's index fell only 0.3%.

Apple was certainly traded a good deal more then usual and it's share price seems to have dropped 4.3% against the nasdaq's 2.4%.

I'd say it's definitely more the coincidence - patents do hurt the market.

Now, you've got this ISP throttling some sites, and making others faster, how does this benefit the user?

Ummm, it doesn't? That's the entire net neutrality point. Absent these safeguards companies like SBC have incentive to offer Google and Yahoo special deals: say, whoever pays us more gets 50% more traffic than your competitor. As long as they're careful, the slowdown will be relatively minor. Your average consumer is completely incapable of determining why Google is a bit slower than Yahoo; maybe Google is overloaded. Maybe your ISP is throttling you.

The claims that some sites will be totally blocked off are implausible; if Google stopped working an ISPs customers would be furious. But a slight throttling of a non-compliant site's bandwidth would work just fine.

This isn't about saving the consumer money. Broadband rates are pretty reasonable already. This is about a new source of revenue for ISPs. This is about figuring out how to charge twice for service. I pay my cable company for my broadband. Google pays for its network pipes. My cable company shouldn't be asking Google for more money.

I dunno, I just see this as being more US-centric FUD, ooh the big bad companies are out to make money by "extorting" the "good guys"....

This isn't hypothetical worrying. The CEO of SBC wants to charge both you and the content provider. The CTO of BellSouth wants the same thing. They're both essentially claiming that because I run a web site that their customers visit, I'm somehow "stealing" from them, completely ignoring that their customers already paid them so they can get access to my site.

BusinessWeek Online:

Trying to strike a middle ground between Microsoft and Nintendo to entice a mainstream audience, Sony Group President Ken Kutaragi at the company's May 8 media briefing unveiled a surprise of his own. In a nod to Nintendo's strategy, Sony announced it will add motion-sensor chip technology to its game controllers that will let players use gestures instead of their thumbs to move around on the screen in some game play. "I'm looking forward to seeing some exciting game applications and innovations with this controller," Kutaragi said.

The move stole thunder from Nintendo's decision not to develop high-priced hardware in favor of its innovative remote-like controller. Nintendo aims to make games easy to use for everyone, with the controller as the centerpiece of that strategy.

Funny, I thought it was an obvious inferior copy of pre-hyped Nintendo technology.

You may have seen more Japanese movies than Indian ones, but that does not make them any less popular or scarce. The chart from BusinessWeek shows 2002 numbers for Bollywood (Indian Hollywood) vs. Hollywood. http://www.businessweek.com//magazine/content/02_4 8/art02_48/a48tab37.gif

If you read the Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood you will see that they are increasingly being translated into English. I would not be suprised to start seeing some of these appear on screens in the US, or more likely the UK, in the next ten years.

All that said, I have seen way more Japanese films than Indian films, but they were almost all older Kurosawa black and white films. India does not have the historical cultural influence on the US like it does in the UK, since it was once a British colony, but that is changing with the growing numbers of Indian nationals moving to the US for college, grad school, and/or work.

Temporary Solution . Your comments are, once again, a wonderful example of avoiding the actual problem we face. Cars designed for ethanol blends will work fine, but that is because they are made of (more expensive) corrosion-resistant parts. Damage will still be done when sediments are dissolved/stripped-off from the gas tank's interior during the change to an ethanol blend. It doesn't get much more efficient than riding your bike. Who knows... you might even get a tan.

This was a standard telephone poll (random digit dial). See methodology details.

AP routinely publishes the complete question wording and topline results to all questions it asks in its polls. See AP-AOL Games poll q&a.

Ironically, there is also this article from Businessweek about "How undercover FBI agents nab the bootleggers who threaten the movie biz". That article goes into some really unjustified sensationalistic nonsense, seems to be mix up movies and warez, and also refers to movie piraters as "bandits".

They look like Aviator Sunglasses, They probably cost about as much as a MIG Fighter Jet on Ebay. On the other hand, they look Dangeresque!

But hasn't Google already pretty much hired up all the experts on search algorithms and data analysis in the world? Well, probably not _all_ of them, but the smartest, and MS is getting second pickings at best (though Yahoo probably knows this space better than MS). I haven't heard of any developer defections from Google to Microsoft -- rather, it's been the other way around.

So what if Microsoft has tons of cash? Money doesn't magically transform into innovation -- it takes brilliant people to do that. Microsoft has some brilliant developers in the OS and middleware spaces (as well as marketing and lawyers) but not search. That talent all works at Google and Yahoo now.

Not to mention a lot of the old UNIX, Internet, and Web gurus work there too: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul 2005/tc20050728_5...

Search is all about results, and it's not easy to fake and fluff over with marketing. And just being able to afford the infrastructure means squat if your algorithms are second-rate.

Check out this news' site's article and online poll about whether people are inclined to use Napster's new free "download" (sic. it's actually on free streaming, not downloading--you have to PAY for any downloads). http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may 2006/tc20060502_659394.htm When I took the poll, more than 80% were saying they wouldn't use Napster's new service.

I'm not a big MS fan, but before you all go sticking your feet in your respective mouths:

From the article:

Sony expects the segment to hemorrhage 100 billion yen ($871.6 million) in operating losses during the business year as it prepares the PS3 for launch.

... they would shut down the factories and stop manufacturing them. Fact is they have a game plan, fact is they are still flying off the shelves, fact is they are gaining market share... that's all that matters. People with consoles buy games. The more colsoles you have out there the more games you potentially sell. You have to spend money to make money.

this article states Microsoft expects to make money in 2007. Also note that all figures on how much microsoft is "actually losing" is speculation by industry analysts. No one actually knows precisely how much Microsoft is paying for what component.

If you want to crack a market you have to pull out the checkbook and take a hit. You can't go in timid. Microsoft has shown that and look at the market share they have gained. They have a good percentage of gamers hooked, now on the third generation consoles they don't have to take as big a hit on the console price.

More mainstream. So like maybe BusinessWeek running a cover story on virtual economies? With the magazine cover being an image of Anshe Chung, one of Second Life's biggest realtors?
The real question isn't the IRS's awareness - it's the amount of virtual money being turned into real money. I doubt you will see taxation of in game transactions, but sure real world money earned through virtual sales is taxable income. In the case of something like Second Life or Sony's Station Exchange you could argue that any state or federal Internet sales tax should apply.

Windows Vista or MacOS X.. which will you choose?

Is MacOS better than Windows Vista?

Businessweek http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_ 19/b3983043.htm and this guy had a bit in forbes... http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/27/sun-mcneely-mcvoy -cx_lmcv_0426mcvoy.html?partner=yahootix but I am sorry, I am sure 'Maximum Linux' has a much better op ed describing the situation.

I suspect reading some of the points of view in this series of postings
the facts will likely be lightly treated...

Here are some interesting articles and other sources of information I've come across that have helped me form my opinion of Walmart.

Do your homework before having an opinion. Google, some judgement and
chosing reputable sources goes a long way.

The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l

Wal-Mart
How big can it grow?
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory .cfm?Story_ID=2593089

Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40 /b3852001_mz001.htm

Is Walmart good for America? US Trade with China: Expectations vs. Reality.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/china/trade.html

For those of you that don't read, check out:
Walmart the high cost of low price.
http://www.walmartmovie.com/

Personally I believe the market only works to the benefit of the consumer in the long run when there is true competition. This is something that becomes very difficult when the competition is the size of Walmart and shops in China.

I see Walmart as part of the negative side globalization that is leading to a hollowing out of America, and in the long run is a significant part of what is feeding the trade deficit with China. What makes Walmart so profitable is that in many areas it has little or no competition (small town America) and effectively has almost a monopoly. A monopoly is a form of market failure, and in the long run is never good for the consumer (although its great for the shareholder). In the short term it has lowered prices in many areas, but then its lowered wages too.

Hey but don't take my word for it. Get your own facts, and then make a decision. That's what democracy is about, be an informed citizen, not an opinionated one.

Actually, no, net neutrality would not eliminate QoS, fair queueing or firewalls. The Telcos wouldn't be able to discriminate between customers, but they could still give interactive and video conferencing packets a higher priority than bulk file transfers.

Basically, net neutrality is what we have now, just codified into law.

Here's what Congressman Boucher, a supporter of net neutrality, said about QoS:

Consistent with these rules, a broadband provider could prioritize a category of its own bits, such as video, if it also prioritized all video bits traveling over its pipes at no cost to other service providers. Internet providers could also take reasonable and nondiscriminatory steps to manage their networks for technical efficiency, to protect network security, and to prevent illegal activity.

Net neutrality may have lost in the House, but it's not too late to stop this. If you're a US citizen, call your senators. Now.

--b9

Everyone's belyaching, nobody here is thinking!

  http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar 2006/tc20060307_164289.htm

Democrats are just constantly reinventing Econ 101 in the wrong way.

Telcos can not cut off the traffic, because connectivity is the very thing
they sell. Candy store refusing to sell candy situation.

They obviously would like to prioritize and discriminate traffic on basis
of profitability. The point is, if they can't do it, but are forced to
essentially subsidize cheap bandwidth, they will cut it. It's the same
situation as 'rolling blackouts' in California, where energy companies
forced to provide energy below costs have been doing "maintenance" of
their generators for 25% of operation time (right).

Bandwidth is cheap, but not free. You can "overgraze" bandwidth, just like
you can overuse energy. The years of overinvestment during dotcom mania
and subsequent glut in the bandwidth have indeed created abundance of
bandwidth, but simultaneously stopped investment and development of this
market. The bandwidth and fiber will be utilized; but the moment will come
when it will be necessary to invest further into it. If companies cannot
increase their revenues dependent on who uses how much bandwidth,
clearly discriminating depending on usage, we're going to find ourselves
in situation of overcrowded public road. Being stuck in traffic jams is a
pack of fun!

Bandwidth hogs obviously love he situation - at expense of the rest of the
users. Their traffic willget through - they are smart enough to arrange this
to happen. The legislation intended to help start-up garage will eventually
end up as a massive, politically forced subsidy from users to Google.

Bandwidth becomes public good. And every half-witted economist is
capable to demonstrate that scarce public goods that are used up tend to
be overused and unverinvested (there are public goods like time signal
or tech standard that do not get used up the more people use them, but
bandwidth is not this type of a public good).

The classic countermeasure against overgrazing such public goods is - you
guessed it - subsidizing it from taxes.

The half-witted wonkish instinct is to subsidize the public road while
neglecting the cost of subsidy to the opportunity cost: ok, we took that
much money on taxes for public roads; hmm, people are unable to pay the
energy bills now; ok, we'll increase taxes and subsidize energy; hmm, for
unclear reason now people somehow find it increasingly difficult to buy
housing; ok, let's subsidize housing for the least wealthy by taxing ...

You get the idea? The doogooder instinct of a wonk requires that at all
times implementing the sum of his good intentions would have to cost, say,
150% of GDP. The higher level of wealth and GDP, the more he exceeds it by
more or less the same ratio.

This, of course, is impossible in the long run: you can't sustainably
spend more than 100% of GDP unless the foreign loaners are willing to
subsidize you (something that current Bush administration should take into
account - in spite of being formally conservative, they spend taxpayer's
money like a drunk sailor).

Our beloved Dems again demonstrate Reagan was right: if it moves, tax it;
if it still moves, regulate it; if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Nintendo looking more and more like a dying Sega

the financial resources to bury Nintendo

For example, one of the assumptions that exists on a semiconductor wafer before it is printed is that it is effectively flat (a typical peak to valley range on a modern wafer within the expected field of a chip is on the order of 175 to 200 nm)

Polishing to that accuracy once structures have been placed on a semiconductor wafer is difficult. Getting a consistent layer of material when you are polishing an uneven surface (uneven due to vias [connections] to the other layers of silicon present) is downright challenging. Another problem with printing transistors on anything but a pure wafer is the issue of reflection. Thin layers of materials on a semiconductor are semi-transparent and not perfectly vertical. Those angled and curved structures produce reflections. Those reflections can cause problems in printing later layers (because of constructive and destructive interference of the light used to expose the photoresist). Those reflections mean that modeling the exposore process of a 3D semiconductor is a VERY challenging task.

Such items are not of concern today, because the later structures placed on the wafer are generally metal lines or capacitors for DRAMs or lenses for image sensors, etc. These are all large and some level of imprecision is acceptable. While variation can cause differnet RC characteristics in metal lines, the timing models in the library or other models can account for this variation. In fact, Matrix Semiconductor has been producing 3D DRAM since about 2004, which shows that heat isn't necessarily the problem, and DRAMs (and memory in general) are a reasonable application for 3D technologies (likely because the capacitors are generally large in relative terms).

Transistors, however, are much more sensitive to variation, and the variation in later polishing used today is too rough for the effective printing of transistors. While I don't doubt that there are situations where the density will be valuable, I think 3D processors and custom chips (in consumer electronics, et al.) are as much an economic issue as a cooling/technical one. (in other words, with my understanding of current roadmaps, you will decrease semiconductor yield to such a degree that 3D may not be economically viable, even if the cooling problem is solved.)

businessweek confirms it -- the slashdot effect is dying.

"Kamen built the iBOT with gyroscopes that are programmed to create balancing capabilities based on an individual's center of gravity. The gyroscopes, in effect, emulate the principle by which humans are able to stand, balance themselves, and navigate around and through various environments and terrain by always offering a counterbalance."

There's a company called Hybrid technologies that's launching this car, which also run on Lithium-based batteries.

Here's a business week story on them. It looks a bit like vaporware though, so a grain of salt is recommended.