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If it's anything like this turbine-electric hybrid Hummer, it gets 60 MPG and can go from 0-60 in 5 seconds.

Maybe it's for a 'Receiver having concealed antenna that suffers poor reception when held the wrong way'?? That would be a little more specific (and a touch less obvious) ;-)

Good thing that Apple avoided that with the iPhone 4 then.

In denial are we?

Falcon

Gee, why did I know that there would be at least one Apple Hater who couldn't help but show us that he doesn't know what "concealed" menas. Somebody should mod you up "Insightful", because that's what your little post is.

Maybe it's for a 'Receiver having concealed antenna that suffers poor reception when held the wrong way'?? That would be a little more specific (and a touch less obvious) ;-)

Good thing that Apple avoided that with the iPhone 4 then.

In denial are we?

Falcon

I never expected to see a day when the EFF would argue in court on Microsoft's behalf. Patent litigation certainly creates strange bedfellows. I'm not sure the Court will go for it, though. The entire patent system is weighted in favor of encouraging the issuance of patents -- which the "clear and convincing" standard is meant to facilitate, and which the EFF obviously wants to debilitate by replacing it with a "preponderance" standard. Odds are that, if Microsoft did win this round, it would later regret it, as soon as it became a plaintiff in some other big-ticket patent enforcement suit.

I hope that Facebook will maintain a fairly defensive stance and won't get terribly aggressive on the patent litigation front. Indeed, there's nothing wrong with engaging in some form of patent enforcement, in the event of infringement of your IP by others. But some (e.g., Microsoft) seem to have taken it to an extreme degree.

This clear enough for you?

"The Wal-Mart Effect" is the name for what you describe. See here and here for a wonderfully informative story on how it works.

--a company known for undercutting their competitors and forcing everyone in their supply chain to work for peanuts..

Nothing stops those competitors from lowering their prices, and businesses can refuse to deal with Walmart. Take for instance The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart.

Yes walmart has a nasty track record of unfair competitive practices.

I've heard this before but I've never seen any actual charges against them.

Falcon

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/144/a-is-for-app.html When the Singer sisters were just 6 months old, they already preferred cell phones to almost any other toy, recalls their mom, Fiona Aboud Singer: "They loved to push the buttons and see it light up." The girls knew most of the alphabet by 18 months and are now starting to read, partly thanks to an iPhone app called First Words, which lets them move tiles along the screen to spell c-o-w and d-o-g. They sing along with the Old MacDonald app too, where they can move a bug-eyed cartoon sheep or rooster inside a corral, and they borrow Mom's tablet computer and photo-editing software for a 21st-century version of finger painting. "They just don't have that barrier that technology is hard or that they can't figure it out," Singer says.

If you were a for-profit entity, you would've gone bankrupt trying to maintain the code that runs the space shuttle (unless you have a sweet gov. contract):

http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

It is *expensive* to right code for mission critical systems.

Actually, the best programmers _ARE_ in america:
http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

Most bug-free and mission critical code on the planet (and beyond).

And for anyone interested here is a story about this. Glad to see there is still a company here and their willing to stand up for their workers rather than sell them out for the bottom line.

Criminal psychologst calls CEOs psychopaths
Sociologist/Criminologist calls CEOs sociopaths

Take your pick. Or maybe they're both. It would explain a lot.

While I'd love to agree with their assessments, the simple fact is that psychology, sociology, and criminology are not sciences.

They're often useful practices, but whenever someone from one of these field tries to push some claim forward, all I see is their opinion, and a glaring lack of scientific method.

Criminal psychologst calls CEOs psychopaths
Sociologist/Criminologist calls CEOs sociopaths

Take your pick. Or maybe they're both. It would explain a lot.

India is trolling - it can announce $35 tablets, even $0.00 tablets, but it sure as hell can't make any for that price. The components alone cost more than $35, and that's when China makes them with slaves paid less than India will pay.

Negroponte has been there, knows the truth, and knows that India is just there to swindle international news media to get attention for its own country. He's going to co-opt that attention for his own project. Good on him.

You are flat out wrong about this.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day-bps-horrifying-safety-record

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety-record/story?id=10763042

http://www.businessinsider.com/bp-has-been-fined-by-osha-760-times-has-an-awful-track-record-for-safety-2010-6

There is every point in singling out BP for this. No one else even comes close to being as cheap about safety as BP. They had 760 willful, egregious safety violations in a three year period where the next worst oil company had 9.

The US government failed because George Bush inserted sleeper agents into Federal agencies. These were people that Bush appointees hired, so they are simply career bureaucrats and were not replaced when Bush left office. Their job was to stand in the way of enforcing regulations.

We create a demand for oil and gas. We do not create a demand for unsafe extraction of oil and gas. Plenty of oil companies make a fine profit while playing it safe. BP did not.

You know, I'm not a dualitic thinker by nature, and I understand that everything affects everything else, but trying to blame everyone but the criminals involved in this disaster is just taking that concept too far.

The iPad does not require fonts in svg. Like other modern browsers it supports @font-face using standard OTF fonts.

Typophile, TypeKit and Fast Company all say the iPhone/iPad don't support TTF or WOFF downloadable fonts, just SVG. Also, selection doesn't work right for SVG fonts on the iPad, and loading multiple weights of the same font is said to crash the browser.

Please disable Jobs Reality Distortion Field before using.

It may have an effect. Especially after the comments Steve Jobs told one iPhone owner.

Steve Jobs tells angry iPhone 4 owner to "relax". Steve Jobs told an owner who posted a video of his problem on YouTube "No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors. Calm down." Get a Life..

Falcon

I was talking about him http://www.fastcompany.com/1656055/falcon-9-spacex-rockets-commercial-space-musk-launch-nasa-obama being broke, not the company. Still SpaceX doesn't have to much to sell just yet, they are still pretty much in the start-up phase.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1649072/foxconn-suicides-mental-health-counsellors-apple-honhai-china-manufacturing-monk Now we know that Foxconn has some 800,000 workers, which makes the situation looks even less conspiratorial. According to the World Health Organization, for every 100,000 people in China every year some 13 men and 14.8 women will commit suicide (compared to 11.8 men and 3.3 women in the U.K, for example). This means Foxconn's statistics are actually commensurate with the suicide rate norms for such a large community as its workforce, and in fact the employee suicide rate is below what you may expect for a random sampling of Chinese citizens.

Sounds to me like using a nuke would create a risk of causing fractures in the sea bed that would release even more oil from different locations. I'm surprised this idea hasn't gotten much attention http://www.fastcompany.com/1646820/could-the-gulf-oil-spill-could-cleaned-up-by-supertankers. Although its just a cleanup idea that wouldn't stop the leak.

You mean the false one?

You cant afford perfect software.

Unless you are NASA:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html
     

Reminds me of a quote by Gene Fowler, "Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum. But hang around .with rich people and you will end up by picking up the tab and dying broke".

Especially given this kind of survival of the assholiest when it comes to who gets to be a CEO in the first place: Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

Don't assume that these guys care about you just because you married their daughter. Not about that daughter in the first place. Or about anyone else than themselves, really. If they did, they wouldn't qualify as psychopaths in the first place.

Though it might be a start if you just want to be their pet sycophant. But then again, if you wanted to be someone's sycophant and were any good at it, you wouldn't need that daughter to rise through the ranks. And you'd have probably become an MBA not a math nerd or a programming geek.

While you made some great points, you're about two years too late:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/internet-and-strip-mall-effect

What do you expect from a company that gets a lot of its funding from Saudi Arabia? Murdoch is also investing in Saudi companies owned by the same person.

If partnering up with one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet is all in a days work, how does your personal information on MySpace rate any concern?

Funny it never dawns on a certain segment of our population that one of our major cable news sources is heavily influenced by the Saudis. That would be particularly noticeable, on topics related to climate change.

But don't confuse self-interest with economic self-interest. I mention the "Economic Man" in my Slashdot/Reddit submissions, and even linked to this which talk about it some more: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/59/ceo.html

I think most here agree to a certain point. Writing software is impossible without errors. I also feel that holding a gun at the head of a developer in order to 'persuade' him or her to write better code is not going to help. We are after all humans, we need motivation and stimulation in order to get better at what it is we need to do.

However, what is more important is that the processes surrounding the software that needs to be produced, whether result of a client requirement or as part of a new idea, is sound and helps to avoid and remove errors.

Developers have an obligation to take note of known exploits, known attack vectors, and make sure to avoid these pitfalls. But it is impossible to predict all types of attacks, so the processes that govern the requirement gathering, designing, development, testing and the continued maintenance on the software once released are equally important. The whole organisation is part of that quality and security process, not just the developer. Plus, the cost of the production of the software is a very important consideration.

In light of this I found the old article about the space shuttle software development extremely interesting. It clearly shows that it IS possible to write near-perfect software, but that has its price. But a well-driven development organisation is in principle capable to produce solid, error-free code. By adjusting the mindset of people and modifying the processes that introduced errors.

Read it if you don't know it yet, it is a very nice article that I keep in my bookmarks...

http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

• Closed Source is a good solution (but there are benefits to building on an Open Source stack) for web apps and Software-as-a-Service. You have to fix your bugs or your users will go to the competition.
• Closed Source is a good solution for military and space -- but again, it benefits from linking to Open Source, running on Open Source OS'es, and funding Open Source research. The closed source software used may actually be secure, but only after 10 times as much money is spent to write it. ($35 million per year just to maintain 420,000 lines already in place for 10 years.)
• Closed Source is a good solution for bad code. If you're sure your product is buggy, and you want to ship it, you don't want your competitors or your customers finding that out!

Read another article here on it, and it's supposed to have a windows XP interface (if you couldn't tell from the video). I can (sort of) understand why the apple fans want their iPad instead of a notebook / laptop - mostly because of the simple interface / simplicity.

Why anyone would buy this instead of a desktop / laptop is beyond me. What's their advertising campaign going to be? "For $450, you can get a device with a 16-64 gig hard drive, 1 gig of ram, and no built in keyboard! It's also slightly cheaper than an iPad, so you may be able to fool your friends into thinking you have an iPad because it kind of looks like same!"

The Fujitsu Flepia has a color e-ink display. It's both expensive and slow.

from your post, I am guessing you have heard about The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart But it is good to read the whole thing, it is not a one sided, "walmart pushes them to produce lower quality", the end. It is just as often a push to produce at a economical quality level. IE its usually better to buy a lawn mower that lasts half as long, but costs 1/3 as much. In that case it also pushed down the price of the quality products, by forcing them to be more efficient as well.

Wal-Mart has been the purveyor of crap for many years now. They push companies close to bankruptcy by insisting that the suppliers' margins be pennies per unit - or they push companies to produce cheaper, crappy Wal-Mart versions of their product with a decent profit margin, but agreeing to do it Wal-Mart's way can ruin your company by tarnishing your reputation. When Joe Sixpack buys your Wal-Mart model TV, your Wal-Mart model computer, or your Wal-Mart lawn mower and the thing turns out to be a piece of crap. Your company's name will be tarnished, and you will get the blame, not Wal-Mart. You might make millions in the short term but over the long term, think about shutting down your company and starting a new one,

Check out the Snapper story (the man who said no to walmart)

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html

I shop at Wal-Mart for some things. I don't buy most appliances there though. I buy underwear, DVDs, and personal care items. Electronics, appliances I want to last for more than six months, and other bigger-ticket items I will buy elsewhere.

Drupal is just not ready for the mainstream.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/
http://www.theonion.com/
http://www.fastcompany.com/
http://www.wfp.org/

ORLY?

*cough*

I'll agree - Drupal does have a steep learning curve. With regards to theming/styling, though, it's no different than any other CMS. Designers will have to fight cross-browser css compatibility issues with whatever CMS or template engine they're using.

The lower 48 CONUS actually has 3 power grids, not just a singular grid

Maybe not for long .. check out the Tres Amigos project

According to an Amazon spokesperson.

Yeah, like Toyota *needs* more publicity, right? I mean, just look at the company...

• Over takes GM as the biggest car manufacturer.
• Became the "name brand" of eco-cars with the Prius. You can't say "hybrid" without thinking "Prius".
• The Corolla is like the best selling car in America.
• Toyota has been named one of the best car brands by folks like readers digest for some time now.

I mean, heck, Toyota needs all the help they can get, amiright?

Though, why the hell they want to do something edgy with the Matrix is beyond me. They should just do a customer loyalty and convenience thing. There's nothing bloody edgy about a sports-wagon.

* Disclaimer, I technically own 2 Toyota cars. A Corolla and a Pontiac Vibe(aka "Matrix"). Both have been great cars.

Yet, at the same time... this is typical American culture. Some woman thinks she deserves 10 million dollars because she got some email. I'd like to see examples of this email. All I can find so far is An ad asking people to sign up and some people who tried it.

It's odd. It appears that the campaign is that you sign yourself up for the website. Then you get phone calls, emails, and other communications from this odd personality (pre-defined and picked from the website). After 5 days of ads, you find out... "PUNK'D" that you did it to yourself by signing up for the website? *boggle*

Ok, dumb prank. I think it could cross the line, particularly with phone calls and what not. But $10 million? Yeah right. Maybe a public scorning, some rolled heads, and an apology. Whatever. "American Dream" of making it rich has been "sue sue sue" for some time now.

Once again, slashdot catching up with old news and making one company in the lagging position look like the frontrunner of a new technology. Fast Company, among other places, have already published on the several research teams who've had operational prototypes for at least a year, and with comparable benefits, challenges, and ineffeciencies to the unit described in this summary.

See "Wireless Electricity Is Here, Seriously", Fast Company, Jan. 2009.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/brilliant.html

Great!

I can use it to power my $10 laptop: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/indias-10-laptop

My BS meter is pinned on this one.

I didn't see anything in the article that said hourly employees or employees who worked less than a full-time role got health insurance. However I did find in the following application to Fast Company a statement from the founder/CEO that he used the term "health benefits to all agents". http://www.fastcompany.com/fast-50-2008-application/fast-50-2008-application-76

I must admit, I too was about to discount the article based on the terminology they used. As it turns out, a little searching transformed my instinctive distaste into a little respect.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah.html

I don't think you're making a particularly valid argument when you equate a handful of battery issues or suing over music downloads to releasing giant clouds of poisonous gas that kill thousands of people.

It sucks if your iPod battery goes up, and it sucks even more if it burns you, but considering that nobody has been killed by one, or even horribly disfigured, or anything that interesting. Apple's handling of the issue hasn't been very good, but to suggest that people should be so outraged about it that they blow up a building is silly.

Here's an interesting article about how many people the ipods have hurt, comparing it to other everyday items: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/chill-out-people-ipods-are-less-dangerous-socks

So the [prducts] I buy from Wal-Mart are some how different and less quality than the same items that I would buy from any other retail or grocery store but probably pay more for?

Mu. The products you buy from Wal-Mart are "less quality" than similar items from the same manufacturers that you buy at other retail outlets and pay more for.

http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

A few years ago I read an excellent article on how NASA develops software for the space shuttle. It focuses on the development process. The article is quite long, but well written, informative and entertaining. Read it here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html?page=0%2C3

This post reminded me of an article that was written a couple years ago about the people who program the space shuttle. I couldn't find a link to it, but I recall a similar article about the software on the Boeing 777; essentially the pilots are sitting in front of a computer screen that they can bring up any piece of data about the airplane, and how these systems must all co-exist without interfering in any way with the flight systems, etc. Pretty interesting reads.

Frankly, the pressure in such an environment has got to be *beyond* intense; you're being asked to write software to, in some cases, cheat physics, and if you get it wrong, everybody dies. I have great sympathy for pilots who have to use the software, knowing that you can train to handle just so much, but I also have sympathy for the developers who have to write the programs that have to handle so much more.

But not any schmuck (or team of schmucks) can folllow a proccess, get CMMI or SEI certified, follow rigorous code\design standards, create robust requirements and design models, etc. This is where real software engineering work is done.

An example:
http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

First, you have to consider the source. Of course Nalgene would say that. What else would you expect them to say?

But, since you brought it up, here are a few papers that contradict what you say.

Endocrine disruptors and reproductive health: the case of bisphenol-A.

Bisphenol A (BPA) has been linked to damage in developing brain tissue.

Scientists issue group warning on plastic chemical's hazards.

The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A

That last one is perhaps the most telling: "... consider this: Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted -- 14 in all -- has found no such effects."

Sometimes it pays to spend just a few minutes on Google, rather than just arguing from ignorance.

Anecdotal evidence time: My family's panasonic microwave that we bought around 1986 or so has only just recently been replaced, and not because it broke down, it just wasn't heating quite as quickly as my mother liked so she decided to replace it. The cheap piece of crap she replaced it with will probably last five years and need to be trashed. Planned obsolescense is, sadly, very real and part of the same Wall Street culture that gave you the current financial crisis, the real estate boom, the S&L scandal, and the dot com crash. There is a good article here that I highly recommend about the practice and how it is being pushed not just by the manufacturers but also by the retailers. You can get another piece of the puzzle here, in an article about how the CEO of CostCo resists pressure from Wal Street (you know, that was a typo but I decided to leave it... shit, now I'm going to have to fire up the gimp when I'm done posting this comment) to drive "growth" at the expense of his employees or the quality of the store (not that CostCo is perfect by any means, still a good article and worth a read though).

Go and look up the process used by the guys that write software for the space shuttle.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html

I get the impression people there aren't just building up their resumes.