Technology, as much as we think when it's disruptive and ground breaking is rarely ever revolutionary. It's not like everyone started to use Windows instead of DOS, or that in one fell swoop the mobile market switched from dumb phones to smart phones overnight.
In that sense, Better Place seemed indeed to have focused on the wrong problem. Yes, electric charging stations are far and in between. Right now. But unlike gas pumps, practically every residential unit and business location can have one. So, for now, your Tesla has an effective drive radius of, what, 150 miles? That's good enough for most daily commutes. Maybe not if you're a salesman, but I think Tesla has envisioned this. They're not catering for the entire car market; after all, the car is not really a good deal for Joe Average who has to live on $50,000 and bring two kids to college on that either.
There is the uncertainty of electric cars becoming a success, but given the development of fuel prices and M&R that is much higher with gasoline engines (all those moving parts) it surely is attractive. So let's assume Tesla sells well. What will happen? The $100,000 price point will ensure that certain business will scramble to get charge stations. Four and five star hotels and restaurants for instance. Where will Mr. Executive stay overnight? Why, where he can charge his Tesla, of course!
Movie theaters, malls... any place where it's likely you're going to stay for a prolonged time will offer charging. Once the market of charging station installing businesses has risen, why not coffee and fast food? One thing that everyone seems to forget in the discussion—you don't need to charge the battery all the way up in most cases. You need to make it home—or at worst to the next charging station. That can bring down the charging time needed considerable. If as a business it will lure in five or ten customers every afternoon the decision to get a charging station might be an easy one.
Better Place is opposite: the process seems cumbersome, and as shown in the video more akin to going through a carwash than getting a tank full of gas. Here's why I don't go through the car wash on a daily basis: it takes too much time and I can't do another thing. On the other hand, getting a short charge-up for the batteries while getting breakfast, or stopping for a drink on the way home—perfectly acceptable to me.
For the gentleman who drives 800 miles per day: if you make ten stops, you only have to "charge 80 miles" on each stop on average. And if you only make three stops, I'm sure that those are not five minute ones. Once charging stations are everywhere, doing 800 miles visiting customers shouldn't be a problem anymore.
Without RTFA, not sure if retention rate is the be-all-end-all. I can easily get a retention rate of 100%--hire all the incompetent idiots nobody else wants. They'll never leave my company, because they'd be out of a job. Voila!
Not saying this guy is doing it wrong; just saying that retention rate alone isn't that much of a useful indicator.
The US is one of the bigger countries and is #1 in agri culture. The Netherlands is one of the smallest countries and is #2 in agri culture. Why? Every American black and white cow was created by a dutch boy sticking his arm up a cow. And jerking of a bull. The US exports low value agri cultural products, the Netherlands high value.
But it means the SAME industry, is COMPLETELY different. Baby cow production US style is cowboys and homo sexuality in the prairy. Dutch baby cow production is bestiality and high tech in the desolate north.
I think the high value of Dutch agricultural products has more to do with the gigantic high-yield flower industry than with jerking of cows. Go over the Dutch border and try to find Dutch cheese. Famous as it is, you will not find the entire dairy island stacked with Dutch cheese outside the Benelux. Visit any flower store in the world, and it's a different picture: you're likely to find a good amount of Dutch flowers. My ghetto neighborhood supermarket sells more packets with Dutch flower seeds than it sells Dutch cheese (most of that made in the US anyway; there's no "regional" protection like that in the EU)
(1) Likely, they didn't use drag-and-drop to copy the cells, but double-clicking on the fill handle (the same widget used for drag&drop copying) which stops extending the range up to but not including the first neighboring empty cell, not at the end of the table. As such it's perfectly possible to not include the entire cell range while realizing that.
(2) Having said that, one would expect that whoever makes a model with that much impact double checks their model against n00b errors like that. A good model has some functionality built in for cross-checking data, making sure everything adds up, etc.
In the end, this is as much Excel's fault as blaming your calculator when you don't enter all the numbers. But when you release it to the press, "Excel" makes it sound better. Everyone knows that Excel is a Micro$oft product, and that they're evil and conspiring to take over the world.
"Oooh, it's Excel that made the mistake, not you. We'll forgive you for that. We know how evil and sinister they are"
And why one would need to navigate in a tunnel? (Other then how deep one's in...).
Certainly more applications are possible as I'd expect it will have much higher sampling rates and precision than GPS and hence can be use in control applications more than in navigation.
Troops with colorful berets (green, red, black, etc) navigating through a sewer system, needing to know what manhole to get out.
Or navigating quickly through a large building. Urban combat is combat too
Or simply knowing *where* you are when you leave the tunnel without having to wait two minutes for acquisition. Well, you might know where you are, but the nav system of your car needs to know too.
DC8 jets had inertial navigation systems back in the '60s. You could fly from LAX to Tokyo without touching the controls and the plane would only be a few hundred yards off alignment from the runway. Not bad for a 5000+ mile flight.
A few hundreds yards off when aligning with the runway can make a good flight a really bad one. But I get your point:)
Let's see... professional DSLR's to be used for spying
That's going to be hard with the camera in the camera bag, where most SLR's are when not in use. But let's assume this one's not.
That's going to be hard with the lens cap on the lens, which is the case with most SLR's that are not in use but not in the bag. But let's assume this one's not.
That's going to be hard with the camera pointing in the right direction, which is pretty hard given the form factor (vertical grip) of a "casual laying around" SLR. But let's assume for some godforsaken reason I tend to store my SLR, without a lens cap, in my living room, mounted on a tripod.
That's going to be pretty hard, unless I have *exactly* the right lens mounted on my camera. Ok, so let's assume that I randomly leave my SLR in my living room, mounted on a tripod, with wide angle lens mounted on it, pointing in the right direction.
That's going to be pretty hard, unless I happen to have it focused on whatever I want to see. Ok, granted, hyperfocal distance on WA lenses is pretty short. But still.
That's going to be pretty hard. Because even though my professional SLR, mounted casually on a tripod in my living room, capturing most of that room, set to hyperfocal distance, without a lens cap, is ready to go, keeping it on "live view" is going to run the battery down pretty seriously, even with the serious batteries those flagship cameras have. You're not going to take pictures in regular SLR mode, right? Because you will hear the shutter on a camera like that. So battery sucking, sensor overheating live view it is.
Mmmh. I guess it's a risk. I always have my SLR with the lens cap off, wide angle lens, covering the entire room, hyperfocal distance, camera on, tethered into a power plug. Wait. If I have my camera tethered in, then why wouldn't I also be tethering it to my PC. Why is it that wireless is a risk? If we're going to make all these half-ass assumptions about using an SLR for spying, why not assume it's hooked up to a computer with a cable? We might as well.
I don't think *wireless* is going to be that much of a security risk.
Every single computer that the above comments have been typed on, has been manufactured in China. And they've all been shipped all over the world in freight containers. Wrap things in a plastic bag, put them in a cardboard box and let the moving company take care of it. Don't worry about temperature, humidity, etc - just make sure what you pack is dry or you'll be greeted by a big furry mass when opening the boxes.
There is a remote chance that the container will get lost. Assume 5000 boxes on a large vessel. One might get lost during a voyage, on average. So divide the value of your belongings by 5000 and that's, on average, what you should be paying on insurance, likely less than more.
And it's worth doing some research and use a reputable moving company. Skimping a few dollars and not getting your stuff is not worth it.
Currently millions of people are unemployed. Are we really going to give them all jobs as developers?
Consider Zynga. You can't open Facebook or be slapped in the face with Farmville, Cityville, Suckville or Mafiawars. Apparently it's one of the largest companies (revenue-wise) in what is one of the largest segments (gaming) of software development. In other words, this is one of those 800 pound gorilla's in the industry.
Total number of jobs: 1,200 and I bet a large part of that is in India and China. The toilet paper factory in my town employs half of that (and likely more if we're looking at USA jobs only) and that's only a small regional player. How can software development replace millions of low-schooled manufacturing jobs, especially with education in the USA going down the crapper?
"Nichols found free customers are higher maintenance and more demanding than the paying customers. 20 or so paying customers asked questions while "hundreds" of free ones did"
That, of course, are meaningless statistics to draw conclusions from, without knowing the ratio between paying and non-paying customers. We also don't know what the questions were. If there are 50 freeloaders for every paying customer and each class of customer is asking questions at the same rate, those 20 paying customer questions will be matched by 1,000 non-paying customers -- "hundreds" would suggest that non-paying customers are less demanding.
Also, the questions itself might differ. Maybe those non-paying customers where asking questions about the benefits of paying?
...of having an ad on the cover of a device when it is turned off. Thank god your tablet, smartphone or laptop does not have a big logo on the cover, advertising its manufacturer.
I wouldn't mind getting a $25 discount for that. The two problems that I have with it are:
* Are the ads related to what I bought on Amazon? If I buy, say, a dozen dildos, do I have advertisments for sex toys on the cover of my kindle for the next two weeks (or until I buy something else)
* Is Amazon going to pull a bezos on me? After two months reverting and saying "you know what, we are going to insert advertisements inside your e-book on second thought. You know, a bit like "an e-book on the kindle is just like a real book. Except that we can yank it from your shelf if we decide that's a good idea".
Microsoft has been working very hard over the last few versions to make the use of VBA less and less attractive.
The strategy behind this must be (I cannot imagine anything else) to promote the use of.NET but I don't think that is happening. What is happening, is that it's forcing more and more users to work with macro-less solutions. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that macros are great way to lock their customers in. Instead of getting a small group of developers moving to.NET they are now confronted with a large group of customers moving to OpenOffice. Once you break the VBA barrier there's nothing that will stop you after all.
This was discussed ad nauseum at photography forums last year. Key is to read the actual proposal and not depend on the warmongerings of a journalist trying to attract more traffic to his site: Cartridges packed with equipment to be packed in intermediate packagings together with the equipment they are capable of powering.
The fuel cell cartridges and the equipment must be packaged with cushioning material or dividers or inner packaging so that the fuel cell cartridges are protected against damage that may be caused by the shifting or placement of the equipment and the cartridges within the outer packaging.
All the rule is basically doing is requiring that batteries are transported in such a way that they cannot short out. Either by putting them in the device they are made for (so your gameboy is safe) or by putting them in a special container (the big Li-Ion batteries for SLR's come like that in the box anyway).
After the Great Battery Scare last year with all those laptops combusting spontaneously their was little choice but to start with at least some regulation regarding the combustable nature of these batteries. The requirements are minimal and reasonable and quite frankly I have yet to see anything shipped commercially that doesn't meet those standards.
The outrageous price for moonrocks is largely based on how incredible rare they are (on earth, at least).
When you start bringing in those rocks by the ton, price will drop significantly. Nobody is going to pay $2000 per gram when they know you're sitting on 5 tons of that stuff. They'll just wait until you are forced to sell at a lower price.
While you're at it, pick up a box with the "Robo Rally" board game. It's great fun to play and forces the players to think and concentrate in a playful way.
All the other things aside - I agree with them - the #1 reason for a Gaming Review magazine is... the reviews, right?
Well, that's where they truly, 10 on a 1-10 scale, suck. I've yet had to see a game that was advertised for that would score less than 70%. In fact, I would usually subtract 60% and divide by 4 to see how the game would rate on a 1-10 score in a more realistic way.
Combine that with enthousiastic "previews" of games in production where the lads of the redaction had a good time with the programmers (read: the review will not dip below 90%) that where always 6 month ahead of when the game had the vaguest chance of appearing and one wonders how they managed to last so long.
So, copying software is theft, "just like stealing an apple, or stealing a car. There is no difference; you're stealing a product". And yet, when it comes to reselling those products, different rules apply? Once I've bought my apple, or car, or furbie, I can sell it to whoever I want for whatever price I want. Why would software be different if you want it to be treated as a tangible object?
I didn't realize that 95% of the Canadians still went to a tailor to get new clothes. You're right, I did assume that, just like in the US, the vast majority of the people would go to a clothing store instead.
I stand corrected, thank you for pointing that out. And now I know: the vast majority of Canadians goes to a tailor for clothes, unlike Americans and northern Europeans.
But services do get replaced by goods. Goods that are produced cheaply in foreign countries. I'm not saying that plumbing goes that way, but other services do, or did.
Shoemakers and tailors are virtually non-existent in the US - when clothes and shoes are worn out we simply replace them with something new. Heck, we replace them with something new way before that.
Electronics: same thing. Who is spending money to have their 8 year old tv repaired when it starts to smoke. Who has an 8 year old TV?
I can imagine that at one point it is going to be cheaper to have your dishwasher swapped out for a loaner unit while your broken copy gets sent to Bangladesh and back for repairs.
But I agree that being a repairman or electrician is far more secure than being a programmer.
I was wondering how they were checking the immigration status to make sure that they weren't selling to non-us citizens living in the US...
"selling to US-residents" makes a lot more sense.
Of course someone who is stripping the exif data will never resize the image and run some sharpening over the image just to cover their traces, right?
Which would be st00pid because now they know you are (and I quote):
"He says that because digital cameras have a shelf life of only 18 months, this can help to narrow down when and where it was sold."
"Yep, this one was taken by a Canon Powershot A510 of which only 5.7 million were sold. We also know that this particular model was either sold in North America, Japan, Europe, Africa, Australia, South East Asia and South America. That should narrow it down."
Slashdot Mirror
Technology, as much as we think when it's disruptive and ground breaking is rarely ever revolutionary. It's not like everyone started to use Windows instead of DOS, or that in one fell swoop the mobile market switched from dumb phones to smart phones overnight.
In that sense, Better Place seemed indeed to have focused on the wrong problem. Yes, electric charging stations are far and in between. Right now. But unlike gas pumps, practically every residential unit and business location can have one. So, for now, your Tesla has an effective drive radius of, what, 150 miles? That's good enough for most daily commutes. Maybe not if you're a salesman, but I think Tesla has envisioned this. They're not catering for the entire car market; after all, the car is not really a good deal for Joe Average who has to live on $50,000 and bring two kids to college on that either.
There is the uncertainty of electric cars becoming a success, but given the development of fuel prices and M&R that is much higher with gasoline engines (all those moving parts) it surely is attractive. So let's assume Tesla sells well. What will happen? The $100,000 price point will ensure that certain business will scramble to get charge stations. Four and five star hotels and restaurants for instance. Where will Mr. Executive stay overnight? Why, where he can charge his Tesla, of course!
Movie theaters, malls... any place where it's likely you're going to stay for a prolonged time will offer charging. Once the market of charging station installing businesses has risen, why not coffee and fast food? One thing that everyone seems to forget in the discussion—you don't need to charge the battery all the way up in most cases. You need to make it home—or at worst to the next charging station. That can bring down the charging time needed considerable. If as a business it will lure in five or ten customers every afternoon the decision to get a charging station might be an easy one.
Better Place is opposite: the process seems cumbersome, and as shown in the video more akin to going through a carwash than getting a tank full of gas. Here's why I don't go through the car wash on a daily basis: it takes too much time and I can't do another thing. On the other hand, getting a short charge-up for the batteries while getting breakfast, or stopping for a drink on the way home—perfectly acceptable to me.
For the gentleman who drives 800 miles per day: if you make ten stops, you only have to "charge 80 miles" on each stop on average. And if you only make three stops, I'm sure that those are not five minute ones. Once charging stations are everywhere, doing 800 miles visiting customers shouldn't be a problem anymore.
I bet they'll have to go out next to replace that defective AE-35 unit.
Without RTFA, not sure if retention rate is the be-all-end-all. I can easily get a retention rate of 100%--hire all the incompetent idiots nobody else wants. They'll never leave my company, because they'd be out of a job. Voila!
Not saying this guy is doing it wrong; just saying that retention rate alone isn't that much of a useful indicator.
The US is one of the bigger countries and is #1 in agri culture. The Netherlands is one of the smallest countries and is #2 in agri culture. Why? Every American black and white cow was created by a dutch boy sticking his arm up a cow. And jerking of a bull. The US exports low value agri cultural products, the Netherlands high value.
But it means the SAME industry, is COMPLETELY different. Baby cow production US style is cowboys and homo sexuality in the prairy. Dutch baby cow production is bestiality and high tech in the desolate north.
I think the high value of Dutch agricultural products has more to do with the gigantic high-yield flower industry than with jerking of cows. Go over the Dutch border and try to find Dutch cheese. Famous as it is, you will not find the entire dairy island stacked with Dutch cheese outside the Benelux. Visit any flower store in the world, and it's a different picture: you're likely to find a good amount of Dutch flowers. My ghetto neighborhood supermarket sells more packets with Dutch flower seeds than it sells Dutch cheese (most of that made in the US anyway; there's no "regional" protection like that in the EU)
There are two factors in play here.
(1) Likely, they didn't use drag-and-drop to copy the cells, but double-clicking on the fill handle (the same widget used for drag&drop copying) which stops extending the range up to but not including the first neighboring empty cell, not at the end of the table. As such it's perfectly possible to not include the entire cell range while realizing that.
(2) Having said that, one would expect that whoever makes a model with that much impact double checks their model against n00b errors like that. A good model has some functionality built in for cross-checking data, making sure everything adds up, etc.
In the end, this is as much Excel's fault as blaming your calculator when you don't enter all the numbers. But when you release it to the press, "Excel" makes it sound better. Everyone knows that Excel is a Micro$oft product, and that they're evil and conspiring to take over the world.
"Oooh, it's Excel that made the mistake, not you. We'll forgive you for that. We know how evil and sinister they are"
And why one would need to navigate in a tunnel? (Other then how deep one's in...).
Certainly more applications are possible as I'd expect it will have much higher sampling rates and precision than GPS and hence can be use in control applications more than in navigation.
Troops with colorful berets (green, red, black, etc) navigating through a sewer system, needing to know what manhole to get out.
Or navigating quickly through a large building. Urban combat is combat too
Or simply knowing *where* you are when you leave the tunnel without having to wait two minutes for acquisition. Well, you might know where you are, but the nav system of your car needs to know too.
DC8 jets had inertial navigation systems back in the '60s. You could fly from LAX to Tokyo without touching the controls and the plane would only be a few hundred yards off alignment from the runway. Not bad for a 5000+ mile flight.
A few hundreds yards off when aligning with the runway can make a good flight a really bad one. But I get your point :)
Let's see... professional DSLR's to be used for spying
That's going to be hard with the camera in the camera bag, where most SLR's are when not in use. But let's assume this one's not.
That's going to be hard with the lens cap on the lens, which is the case with most SLR's that are not in use but not in the bag. But let's assume this one's not.
That's going to be hard with the camera pointing in the right direction, which is pretty hard given the form factor (vertical grip) of a "casual laying around" SLR. But let's assume for some godforsaken reason I tend to store my SLR, without a lens cap, in my living room, mounted on a tripod.
That's going to be pretty hard, unless I have *exactly* the right lens mounted on my camera. Ok, so let's assume that I randomly leave my SLR in my living room, mounted on a tripod, with wide angle lens mounted on it, pointing in the right direction.
That's going to be pretty hard, unless I happen to have it focused on whatever I want to see. Ok, granted, hyperfocal distance on WA lenses is pretty short. But still.
That's going to be pretty hard. Because even though my professional SLR, mounted casually on a tripod in my living room, capturing most of that room, set to hyperfocal distance, without a lens cap, is ready to go, keeping it on "live view" is going to run the battery down pretty seriously, even with the serious batteries those flagship cameras have. You're not going to take pictures in regular SLR mode, right? Because you will hear the shutter on a camera like that. So battery sucking, sensor overheating live view it is.
Mmmh. I guess it's a risk. I always have my SLR with the lens cap off, wide angle lens, covering the entire room, hyperfocal distance, camera on, tethered into a power plug. Wait. If I have my camera tethered in, then why wouldn't I also be tethering it to my PC. Why is it that wireless is a risk? If we're going to make all these half-ass assumptions about using an SLR for spying, why not assume it's hooked up to a computer with a cable? We might as well.
I don't think *wireless* is going to be that much of a security risk.
I'm sure there's an app for that.
Every single computer that the above comments have been typed on, has been manufactured in China. And they've all been shipped all over the world in freight containers. Wrap things in a plastic bag, put them in a cardboard box and let the moving company take care of it. Don't worry about temperature, humidity, etc - just make sure what you pack is dry or you'll be greeted by a big furry mass when opening the boxes.
There is a remote chance that the container will get lost. Assume 5000 boxes on a large vessel. One might get lost during a voyage, on average. So divide the value of your belongings by 5000 and that's, on average, what you should be paying on insurance, likely less than more.
And it's worth doing some research and use a reputable moving company. Skimping a few dollars and not getting your stuff is not worth it.
Currently millions of people are unemployed. Are we really going to give them all jobs as developers?
Consider Zynga. You can't open Facebook or be slapped in the face with Farmville, Cityville, Suckville or Mafiawars. Apparently it's one of the largest companies (revenue-wise) in what is one of the largest segments (gaming) of software development. In other words, this is one of those 800 pound gorilla's in the industry.
Total number of jobs: 1,200 and I bet a large part of that is in India and China. The toilet paper factory in my town employs half of that (and likely more if we're looking at USA jobs only) and that's only a small regional player. How can software development replace millions of low-schooled manufacturing jobs, especially with education in the USA going down the crapper?
"Nichols found free customers are higher maintenance and more demanding than the paying customers. 20 or so paying customers asked questions while "hundreds" of free ones did"
That, of course, are meaningless statistics to draw conclusions from, without knowing the ratio between paying and non-paying customers. We also don't know what the questions were. If there are 50 freeloaders for every paying customer and each class of customer is asking questions at the same rate, those 20 paying customer questions will be matched by 1,000 non-paying customers -- "hundreds" would suggest that non-paying customers are less demanding.
Also, the questions itself might differ. Maybe those non-paying customers where asking questions about the benefits of paying?
...of having an ad on the cover of a device when it is turned off. Thank god your tablet, smartphone or laptop does not have a big logo on the cover, advertising its manufacturer.
I wouldn't mind getting a $25 discount for that. The two problems that I have with it are:
* Are the ads related to what I bought on Amazon? If I buy, say, a dozen dildos, do I have advertisments for sex toys on the cover of my kindle for the next two weeks (or until I buy something else)
* Is Amazon going to pull a bezos on me? After two months reverting and saying "you know what, we are going to insert advertisements inside your e-book on second thought. You know, a bit like "an e-book on the kindle is just like a real book. Except that we can yank it from your shelf if we decide that's a good idea".
Microsoft has been working very hard over the last few versions to make the use of VBA less and less attractive. The strategy behind this must be (I cannot imagine anything else) to promote the use of .NET but I don't think that is happening. What is happening, is that it's forcing more and more users to work with macro-less solutions. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that macros are great way to lock their customers in. Instead of getting a small group of developers moving to .NET they are now confronted with a large group of customers moving to OpenOffice. Once you break the VBA barrier there's nothing that will stop you after all.
This was discussed ad nauseum at photography forums last year. Key is to read the actual proposal and not depend on the warmongerings of a journalist trying to attract more traffic to his site:
Cartridges packed with equipment to be packed in intermediate packagings together with the equipment they are capable of powering.
The fuel cell cartridges and the equipment must be packaged with cushioning material or dividers or inner packaging so that the fuel cell cartridges are protected against damage that may be caused by the shifting or placement of the equipment and the cartridges within the outer packaging.
All the rule is basically doing is requiring that batteries are transported in such a way that they cannot short out. Either by putting them in the device they are made for (so your gameboy is safe) or by putting them in a special container (the big Li-Ion batteries for SLR's come like that in the box anyway).
After the Great Battery Scare last year with all those laptops combusting spontaneously their was little choice but to start with at least some regulation regarding the combustable nature of these batteries. The requirements are minimal and reasonable and quite frankly I have yet to see anything shipped commercially that doesn't meet those standards.
The outrageous price for moonrocks is largely based on how incredible rare they are (on earth, at least).
When you start bringing in those rocks by the ton, price will drop significantly. Nobody is going to pay $2000 per gram when they know you're sitting on 5 tons of that stuff. They'll just wait until you are forced to sell at a lower price.
While you're at it, pick up a box with the "Robo Rally" board game. It's great fun to play and forces the players to think and concentrate in a playful way.
All the other things aside - I agree with them - the #1 reason for a Gaming Review magazine is... the reviews, right?
Well, that's where they truly, 10 on a 1-10 scale, suck. I've yet had to see a game that was advertised for that would score less than 70%. In fact, I would usually subtract 60% and divide by 4 to see how the game would rate on a 1-10 score in a more realistic way.
Combine that with enthousiastic "previews" of games in production where the lads of the redaction had a good time with the programmers (read: the review will not dip below 90%) that where always 6 month ahead of when the game had the vaguest chance of appearing and one wonders how they managed to last so long.
Good riddance!
So, copying software is theft, "just like stealing an apple, or stealing a car. There is no difference; you're stealing a product". And yet, when it comes to reselling those products, different rules apply? Once I've bought my apple, or car, or furbie, I can sell it to whoever I want for whatever price I want. Why would software be different if you want it to be treated as a tangible object?
I didn't realize that 95% of the Canadians still went to a tailor to get new clothes. You're right, I did assume that, just like in the US, the vast majority of the people would go to a clothing store instead.
I stand corrected, thank you for pointing that out. And now I know: the vast majority of Canadians goes to a tailor for clothes, unlike Americans and northern Europeans.
But services do get replaced by goods. Goods that are produced cheaply in foreign countries. I'm not saying that plumbing goes that way, but other services do, or did.
Shoemakers and tailors are virtually non-existent in the US - when clothes and shoes are worn out we simply replace them with something new. Heck, we replace them with something new way before that.
Electronics: same thing. Who is spending money to have their 8 year old tv repaired when it starts to smoke. Who has an 8 year old TV?
I can imagine that at one point it is going to be cheaper to have your dishwasher swapped out for a loaner unit while your broken copy gets sent to Bangladesh and back for repairs.
But I agree that being a repairman or electrician is far more secure than being a programmer.
I was wondering how they were checking the immigration status to make sure that they weren't selling to non-us citizens living in the US... "selling to US-residents" makes a lot more sense.
Of course someone who is stripping the exif data will never resize the image and run some sharpening over the image just to cover their traces, right? Which would be st00pid because now they know you are (and I quote): "He says that because digital cameras have a shelf life of only 18 months, this can help to narrow down when and where it was sold." "Yep, this one was taken by a Canon Powershot A510 of which only 5.7 million were sold. We also know that this particular model was either sold in North America, Japan, Europe, Africa, Australia, South East Asia and South America. That should narrow it down."
...while we're talking about exciting new technology that's been "around the corner" for years now.
Not until I see a fuel cell working I'll believe it.