yes, of course it was Costa Rica. I'm dumb, mea culpa, forgive me... was not meant as a troll.
I'm also thinking of the sequence immediately before the first Iraqi goal, from the corner kick... they had 3 or 4 corners in a row, and I thought that the second one was bogus, i.e. that Iraq kicked it out, and everyone was going the other way, and then the ref gave them a corner AGAIN. Overall, the officiating seemed pretty suspect to me.
If you want to be able to LEGALLY download music off the 'net, you need to support valid attempts to bring that to you.
How about I support changing the law instead? They can't put ALL of us in jail. Remember, even prohibition lasted four years in the US. NOBODY wanted prohibition, and lots of people DIED in the violence related to that little social experiment. I think we've come a long way as a society (some notable failures do exist) towards civilized discourse since those days, and I don't see any way that the balance of power can shift back in favor of the RIAA companies for the long term. The only question is how difficult they have to make it legally for people who are obtaining free music before everyone demands widespread changes to the current state of copyright law.
Law is a pendulum. It swings in one direction, and then it goes back the other way. Earl Warren's SOCTUS went way out in left field in the 60's with supplementing the rights of the accused, e.g. Miranda and Gideon v. Wainright. In the 70s, everything went back the other way, with law enforcement gaining more freedom to investigate hippies, crooks, and revolutionaries. The late 90's saw a surge in laws friendly to copyright holders and big business interests. I am confident that the latter half of the noughts will see a corresponding rebound that favors the interests and rights of individuals.
Did anyone watch the coverage of the Puerto Rico / Iraq soccer game on Sunday? The fix was clearly in... the ref called back a PR goal for no apparent reason, and let many many Iraqi fouls go uncalled over the last 20 minutes of the game.
Even NBC's announcers were commenting "The referee needs to take control of this game," and "I don't know what the referee is thinking by not calling that a foul." In contrast, the Iraqis were given free kicks for minor infractions again and again... it's almost like someone told the ref that Iraq needs to win a couple of games, just to show the world how liberated they have become.
yeah, this is a problem, with no easy solution. Most of my customers are what you would call "afraid of new technology." or maybe "afraid of change in general." a typical health care company spends something like 25% of revenues on pharmecuticals, 25-40% on supplies like test tubes, bandages, and scalpel blades, and 3% (no I did not forget the zero, that's 3% not 30%) on IT purchases.
while this 3% doesn't include the computers that come along with a CAT scanner, becuase that falls under "Capital Equipment" in most budgets, it does include things like health information systems, which keep track of a patient from they time they're admitted to the time they're released. Heathcare won't switch to linux unless and until McKesson and Cerner and Stentor and Siemens come out with HIS programs that run on linux. And even then, even if everyone admits that Win2K puts them in breach of HIPAA, it will take most health care orgs 5 or 10 years to change over, becuase (a) they don't have the budget for rapid change, and (b) there is an institutionalized recognition that if it ain't broke, you shouldn't fix it, which translates into strong resistance to new processes.
If you contrast tech spending in health care with tech spending in financial institutions (think Wells Fargo) which typically spend about 20% of revenues on IT, you start to get a better understanding of why healthcare has such bass-ackwards workflow management software, and why people are just starting to think about medical record portability and security while you've been able to write checks online for like the last six years.
I doubt YOU have any customers to deal with, especially with your "my way or the highway" attitude. Get back to being laid off [...]
I work for a GPO. It's my job to write contracts for health care companies. It's a staggeringly boring occupation, but I do get to spend a lot of time thinking about what would happen if someone died because of a failure in a piece of equipment bought through one of my contracts.*
I see a lot of EULA-style documents. You might be surprised how many software companies have simply taken the EULA from Windows98 and adopted it as their own license agreement. You might also be surprised how many suppliers are willing to offer code escrow or source code access to customers. I've certainly seen some things I never would have expected.
But you know what surprises me the most? That some vendors don't seem to care that their slipshod implementation could result in harm to a patient. For example, I recently spoke with a sales rep from a large point-of-care software vendor. He was very very excited to tell me all about the features his web-enabled software offered, like giving me REALTIME! ACCESS! TO! PATIENT! DIAGNOSTICS! but when I asked him about security, his answer was "well, that's the customer's responsibility." The base functionality required for this app is to take a bunch of data from a handheld device over serial port, dump it into a networked database, and then provide reports from that database into a web frontend for multiple users, with a user administration tool tacked on as an afterthought. What did his application run on? IIS, and it requires IE on the client desktop. Do they SSL-encrypt traffic on the network? Of course not. Do they send patient name and ID number in cleartext along with their REALTIME!!! test results? Well, the data wouldn't be much good if you don't know who it belongs to, now would it?
tinfoil-hat concerns aside, healthcare organizations are now required to comply with HIPAA, and if they fail to do so, people can go to jail. If the blood lab at one of my customers' hospitals buys this software, and someone is able to plug a laptop into their network and intercept data sent by their crappy IIS application, that's a clear HIPAA breach - but who is responsible for it? It's my job to make sure my customers aren't going to federal prison as a result of a poorly informed software purchase... you can bet that they're not buying the software.
see, you assume that the customer is always right. In fact, the customer is often wrong, either because they are ignorant, or because they are receiving some kind of incentive (read: bribe) from at least one vendor in order to influence their decisions. When you use Windows in healthcare, the "customer is always right" attitude could land your customer in federal prison.
*(what happens? Somebody gets sued. Usually, the dead patient's family sues the doctor and/or the hospital, and potentially the vendor, and also potentially my company. If the contract is written well, the vendor is obligated to step in and indemnify the doctor, our customer, and us against any claims. The funny thing is that vendors running on windows are NEVER NEVER NEVER willing to volunteer this indemnification- I always have to fight for it, and sometimes we just can't get it. If there's an alternative vendor who will indemnify, they usually end up winning the business, because this is such an important concern for the health care providers...)
Part of the problem is that the vendors chose Windows as a development platform.
um, no. ALL of the blame rests on the software developer. If you all weren't so goddamn lazy and quick to grab dollars at the expense of careful design and reliable architecture, you wouldn't be using windows at all.
The backend for the software I work on actually runs in Unix, and we have hospitals that are thinking of going to NT only [...]
When you get back to 1997, would you call me and tell me to invest in eBay and Yahoo? Tell me to sell in february 2000 while you're at it. And then tell your company that they're fools for thinking that fat-client software has a future in 2004 when everything that's successful now has a web interface.
[...]which means we have to try to port our code to it or loose that customer.
bullshit. Why would their client envronment have any impact on your archtecture for an embedded system? If the customer needs a GUI frontend to your device, do it with Apache. I think there is a version available for QNX, which is the OS you would use (once again) if you weren't so GODDAMN LAZY. Instead, you create a mess, comfortable in your knowledge that you will always have a future cleaning up after yourself.
repeat after me: there is no excuse for using Windows in any embedded system.
Again: there is NO EXCUSE for using Windows in any embedded system.
memory is cheap. CF cards cost around $120/gig, and the 2-gig size is cheaper by the gig. How much bling would it add to the cost of your $70,000 escalade to throw a couple of gigs of compactflash in it, so that the NTSB could require the car to store information every tenth of a second about the last 10,000 seconds of operation? that's less than three hours' worth of continuous driving. Considering I get about 10 hours' drive out of one tank of gas, how many 1-gig CF cards would you need for 100,000 seconds? does anyone know how much space is taken up by one record in the black box db?
Think of a system where the state requires all gas stations to install the equivalent of a CF reader at the pumps. Before you can fill the tank, you have to let it scan your car's memory- no memory, no gas. Sorry! If you have been speeding, the gas station writes you a ticket, and you have to pay it with your credit card before you can fill up...
Realistically, the limit on what you can earn is more like S * (P-$5.00), where S is the number of shares you buy, and P is the current price. Many brokerages will call in your short when the stock falls below $5.00. This may also have something to do with why the price for SCOX has been flatlining near $5.00 for the last three months or so.
Too many people are irresponsible about it, and it ruins it for the rest of us. People need to learn to take responsibility for their actions rather than blame the government or big business for their own indiscretions. That fact is you simply can't have rights if you refuse to take the responsibility to not abuse them.
Yes... but when big business infringes on my rights, it is my DUTY to stand up and complain. When the government refuses to recognize or protect my rights, it is my DUTY to hold that government accountable and replace it with one that will respect those rights.
I think you're getting rights confused with priveledges. Certain rights are guaranteed to you by law and by precedent, unless you do something to forfeit those rights. If you are a US citizen, you are guaranteed the right to vote once you reach the age of 18, unless you forfeit that right by committing a felony. Listening to music isn't a right, in the sense that voting is a right...it is a privelege. I am granted that priveledge when I purchase a tape, or a CD, or a download from ITMS. However, making a backup copy of a copyrighted material I have legally purchased is a right, in almost exactly the same way that voting is a right. The RIAA is trying to downgrade that right into a priveledge, and it is your DUTY just as much as it is mine to make sure that they fail in that effort, no matter what their justification might be.
There are lots of other ways to support music, buying indy music, attending live shows, donating money. Notice that none of those options involve not compensating artists whose livelihoods depend on music.
OK, fine. But at the same time you should notice the phenomenal success of Apple's iTunes store, which has justpassed the 100 million songs mark. The options you offer don't solve the same problem that free music downloads address: going to a concert just doesn't scratch the same itch as hitting "play" on your stereo remote. Apple has solved that problem in an acceptable way, and has reaped the benefits.
At the risk of rehashing countless old slashdot threads, the RIAA's business model is doomed. People have learned that blank CD's cost almost nothing, and that it's easy to make a mix of good songs instead of paying grossly inflated prices for a retail-packaged CD... and the MUSIC SOUNDS THE SAME either way. During the years between Napster's shutdown and the ITMS startup, people said again and again that what we really want is a way to make a small payment to download the one song we wanted. Apple gave it to us, and LO! the market has rewarded them.
So far, the RIAA and the major labels have failed to give the people what they want, and the market is punishing them. Instead of recognizing that there is a legitimate market, albeit a market with much thinner margins than they are used to, and then acting to serve that market, the RIAA is acting to put their current market in shackles to keep their customers from running to buy what they really want.
not only that. I'm sure there will be a market for these "RFID-fryers" once RFID use becomes widespread. If you take a second to look at the story about the METRO Future Store, and you ignore all the paranoid rhetoric but you pay attention to the layout of the RFID readers in the store (here) and the account of the RFID deactivator (here) you'll recognize that the people running the store would be perfectly happy to keep track of every tagged item you bring into the store as well as what you take out. Yes, this is a story about groceries, but they partner with other RFID-using companies. And if the tags are woven into the fabric of your clothes, and they can tie your clothes to you, you can bet that every store you walk into will be able to offer you a personalized shopping experience. Whether or not that is a desireable outcome is left as an exercise for the reader.
But anyhow. In the future where every store in every country has RFID readers at the entrance/exit doors, and individuals can buy RFID readers for less than $100 and use them to read the make of your clothes and the limits on your credit cards from the seat behind you on the subway, the only way you'll be able to protect yourself will be to deactivate the chips yourself. The appliance will be like a microwave- every house will have one, and you'll pop your purchases in it for 30 seconds after you bring them home, to burn out the circuits on the RFID chips.
Can I buy one of these today? If not, (I've always wanted to do this):
1. invent simple push-button RFID burn-out appliance 2. build prototype and sell it 3. ???? 4. PROFIT!!!!
Of course all of the other replies to your thread say essentially the same thing I was going to tell you:
pssssst! pssssssst, hey buddy! only SUCKERS acutally pay for microsoft software.
I haven't spent a dime on MS software, ever. And I never will! I realize that companies are in a different boat, w/r/t liability and licensing, but that's why companies will move to linux in droves over the next 5 years. It's like this: Right now, MS Office 2000 applications suite scores about 98 points out of 100. I personally have encountered one or two things I can do with OO.org that I can't do with Excel or MSWord, but there are LOTS of things that work just fine in Excel and Word that don't quite function correctly in OO.org. So let's say OO.org is at 80% today. But... there's nowhere for MSOffice to improve, because it's "good enough" now, and has been for the last 4 years. There is no rational reason to upgrade to MS Office 2003, ever.
OSS will keep getting better, and MS software will stay at about 98%. Eventually, OO.org will be at 98% too... it's just a matter of time. The bean counters will do the math, and demand that the IT guys justify the MS tax for the nth Office upgrade... and there won't be any clothes on that emperor, folks. I know, I know, preaching to the choir, but it used to be a question of if and now it's a question of when.
i didn't grace that page more than a cursory glance
here is a neat story about RFID misuse, and the political fallout which led to one store changeing it's policy. This is just the kind of stuff the tinfoil-hat crowd has been warning us about for years: centralized database with personal information and your purchase records tied to a unique db key. They give you a "loyalty card" which contains your unique db key coded into an RFID. The RFID is readable from 5 feet away and can be scanned without your knowledge or consent, multiple stores subscribe/contribute to the db, and NONE of them tell you about the RFID in the card when they give it to you. I particularly enjoy the x-ray pic of the RFID tag inside the credit card:-!
yeah, this is OT from the patent question, but it's nice to see the tinfoil hat folks get something right for a change.
rolling in dough from the royalties under such "just compensation"?
exactly. but this isn't about gaining a decisive tactical advantage used to win a freaking war, it's about shiny new inventory managment software packages and logistics systems. Do you really want your tax dollars to make Intermec rich, just so Don Rumsfeld can pull up a database and tell you EXACTLY how many bullets are in the munitions bunker at Fort Bragg at any given time, and where each of those bullets came from, and when they were manufactured, and which truck delievered them, and which shelf they are sitting on now?
'Cos I don't. Seems like a huge waste of money to me in the first place, but then I'm not trying to run the DoD. My point is, DoD is going to do this, and they're going to spend money contributed by you and me in our taxes to make it happen. From this perspective, Intermec is making a shameless bid to steal money out of my pocket, and we should hope that their claims don't stand up in the interest of federal fiscal responsibility (now there's an oxymoron for you).
I guess my point is that all parties currently involved DO have enough money to just license the patent, and will choose to license because it will be cheaper than fighting it in court where they would actually have to PAY lawyers $1000/hour to state their case. So Intermec gets rich, the tags cost Wal-Mart an additional $0.01 per item to use, and any little guys who might have a breakthrough application in the works lose out, because they can't affort the startup license fees...
that's why I suggest that it might merit PubPat interest. Of course, this being/. I don't know anything about prior art for this patent or anything about the validity of the claims therein.
If this patent is valid, and Intermec raises the license fees high enough, it could kill RFID before the technology has really come into its own. What side will CASPIAN come down on? Will IBM stand idly by and let this happen? Will other tinfoil-hat-wearing consumer groups seize on this patent, or try to buy it outright to effectively halt the implementation of RFID?
This has the potential to fracture EFF and PubPat too, seeing as the privacy nuts will be all for anything that makes it harder or more expensive for RFID to become ubiquitous, but this sounds like a job for PubPat (or some other private entitiy) to investigate, to protect the very real benefits that RFID will bring to supply chain management.
or will this be a case where the Feds stand up to fight against a technology patent, now that the DOD has declared that all if its suppliers must use RFID by Jan 1 2005? Can the government claim eminent domain over patents or other IP? This page seems to address the question, but doesn't give me a clear enough picture of the consequences for suppliers when government takes an "eminent domain" license... and it kind of leaves me thinking that if Intermec sues the goverment, and the patent isn't invalidated, taxpayers will be left holding the bag twice.
this is what separates a company that really cares about its office workers from the companies that just pretend to care. On your first day at Pixar, you're not even allowed to log in until the ergo consultant has done your 'fitting.' adjustible chairs are great, but what about trackballs, keyboard trays, desktops, monitors... adjustible furniture is great, but most office workers won't have the chutzpa to come in on the weekend and put bricks under the legs of their desks to make the tabletops the correct height.
there is plenty of information published about how to keep people comfortable for long periods of time, but bodies aren't identical, and what's true for one person isn't true for everyone in your office. If people are going to sit at their desks for hours at a time, you can be a big hero by taking some time to make sure each person has what they need to be comfortable in their new space.
oh, and lighting is important too... flourescents suck.
on a personal note, this is my 3rd week in a new office environment. Last week, my carpal tunnel flared up for the first time in 2 years. I asked if we could get furniture moved, and got the "4 to 6 weeks" answer... so I came in this weekend with a power drill and adjusted the height of the desk in my cubicle to make it 6" higher. Our office planner SHIT herself when she noticed, but now I have room underneath the desk for my knees and my keyboard tray AT THE SAME TIME. My new chair still doesn't fit correctly- the seat pad is too short for my legs, and the back of the chair is too low to support my back (i'm almost 6' tall and the buttpad is only about 20" long.) I'm sure they spent like $800 each on these chairs, but as far as I'm concerned the money was a waste, becuse it just doesn't FIT.
After 2 weeks in this new cube-based "open environment," my biggest complaint apart from the ill-fitting furniture is the noise. we've got bare walls, and I can clearly hear a whisper from 100 feet away. If I have to listen to the goddamn secretary in the next row to the north have one more conversation about her stupid bible study group, I'm going to chop her up and feed her to the guy trying to stick to the Atkins diet two rows to the east.
It's more like $120 in savings a year... Or do you think the taxes on the phone line use and maintenance charges won't apply to your line just because it's data and not voice being carried over it?
in the absence of evidince to the contrary, I'm forced to admit that you're probably right about the maintenance charges, but I would argue that you are very wrong about the taxes. Those taxes are levied by various government bodies on analog line voice communications. If I'm not using that communication mode, why should I pay the taxes? If they want to levy a tax on packets, let them pass a different law. Isn't that the whole point to Vonage?
And w/r/t SBC's billing, the taxes are currently billed on the "phone" portion of my bill and not the "internet" portion, so if this is for real I'll try to disconnect my voice line, and if they tax me anyway I'll try to fight it and see what happens:-)
If this was real, there should have been an announcement from the California Public Utilities Commission. There isn't.
That was my thought as well, somewhat comforted by the link to a article from CNET that I posted in this comment. The CNET story is from June 11, which was what, Friday? Why hasn't anyone else said anything about this? Seems like pretty big news to me. I just found one more article online here which was just lifted from the CNET article and posted today... so that leaves us in the same place, which is hoping that it's for real but lacking an official word...
Google news finally picked this up- interestingly the first link is to overclocker.com, instead of this one which has much better coverage of what actually happened:-/
Yeah, but they're on the same pipe, no? Which is why "Naked" Cable internet w/o cable TV costs slightly more than basic cable + basic data... they don't have the technology to give you data service without giving you access to 36 cable channels as well.
this is one case where I don't think anyone will save money (unless they are willing to put up with a great deal of angst)
Yeah, but I've been asking for this for literally YEARS. I don't need or want a land-line voice connection. The only people who call me on it are f*cking telemarketers from SBC trying to sell my their long-distance service, which I also don't need or want. Even my parents have recognized that they should call my cell phone if they want to talk to me. I haven't answered my land line phone in at least the last six months.
You may like your bundle, but all I want from SBC is DSL for $25/month, without the extra $10 for phone service that I don't use and then additional $10 in taxes and fees that are charged on top of that phone service I don't use.
If it's true, this will immediately save me $250 or more every year.
Slashdot Mirror
yes, of course it was Costa Rica. I'm dumb, mea culpa, forgive me... was not meant as a troll.
I'm also thinking of the sequence immediately before the first Iraqi goal, from the corner kick... they had 3 or 4 corners in a row, and I thought that the second one was bogus, i.e. that Iraq kicked it out, and everyone was going the other way, and then the ref gave them a corner AGAIN. Overall, the officiating seemed pretty suspect to me.
How about I support changing the law instead? They can't put ALL of us in jail. Remember, even prohibition lasted four years in the US. NOBODY wanted prohibition, and lots of people DIED in the violence related to that little social experiment. I think we've come a long way as a society (some notable failures do exist) towards civilized discourse since those days, and I don't see any way that the balance of power can shift back in favor of the RIAA companies for the long term. The only question is how difficult they have to make it legally for people who are obtaining free music before everyone demands widespread changes to the current state of copyright law.
Law is a pendulum. It swings in one direction, and then it goes back the other way. Earl Warren's SOCTUS went way out in left field in the 60's with supplementing the rights of the accused, e.g. Miranda and Gideon v. Wainright. In the 70s, everything went back the other way, with law enforcement gaining more freedom to investigate hippies, crooks, and revolutionaries.
The late 90's saw a surge in laws friendly to copyright holders and big business interests. I am confident that the latter half of the noughts will see a corresponding rebound that favors the interests and rights of individuals.
Did anyone watch the coverage of the Puerto Rico / Iraq soccer game on Sunday? The fix was clearly in... the ref called back a PR goal for no apparent reason, and let many many Iraqi fouls go uncalled over the last 20 minutes of the game.
Even NBC's announcers were commenting "The referee needs to take control of this game," and "I don't know what the referee is thinking by not calling that a foul." In contrast, the Iraqis were given free kicks for minor infractions again and again... it's almost like someone told the ref that Iraq needs to win a couple of games, just to show the world how liberated they have become.
W2K SP3, XP SP1 violate HIPAA.
yeah, this is a problem, with no easy solution. Most of my customers are what you would call "afraid of new technology." or maybe "afraid of change in general." a typical health care company spends something like 25% of revenues on pharmecuticals, 25-40% on supplies like test tubes, bandages, and scalpel blades, and 3% (no I did not forget the zero, that's 3% not 30%) on IT purchases.
while this 3% doesn't include the computers that come along with a CAT scanner, becuase that falls under "Capital Equipment" in most budgets, it does include things like health information systems, which keep track of a patient from they time they're admitted to the time they're released. Heathcare won't switch to linux unless and until McKesson and Cerner and Stentor and Siemens come out with HIS programs that run on linux. And even then, even if everyone admits that Win2K puts them in breach of HIPAA, it will take most health care orgs 5 or 10 years to change over, becuase (a) they don't have the budget for rapid change, and (b) there is an institutionalized recognition that if it ain't broke, you shouldn't fix it, which translates into strong resistance to new processes.
If you contrast tech spending in health care with tech spending in financial institutions (think Wells Fargo) which typically spend about 20% of revenues on IT, you start to get a better understanding of why healthcare has such bass-ackwards workflow management software, and why people are just starting to think about medical record portability and security while you've been able to write checks online for like the last six years.
I doubt YOU have any customers to deal with, especially with your "my way or the highway" attitude. Get back to being laid off [...]
I work for a GPO. It's my job to write contracts for health care companies. It's a staggeringly boring occupation, but I do get to spend a lot of time thinking about what would happen if someone died because of a failure in a piece of equipment bought through one of my contracts.*
I see a lot of EULA-style documents. You might be surprised how many software companies have simply taken the EULA from Windows98 and adopted it as their own license agreement. You might also be surprised how many suppliers are willing to offer code escrow or source code access to customers. I've certainly seen some things I never would have expected.
But you know what surprises me the most? That some vendors don't seem to care that their slipshod implementation could result in harm to a patient. For example, I recently spoke with a sales rep from a large point-of-care software vendor. He was very very excited to tell me all about the features his web-enabled software offered, like giving me REALTIME! ACCESS! TO! PATIENT! DIAGNOSTICS! but when I asked him about security, his answer was "well, that's the customer's responsibility." The base functionality required for this app is to take a bunch of data from a handheld device over serial port, dump it into a networked database, and then provide reports from that database into a web frontend for multiple users, with a user administration tool tacked on as an afterthought. What did his application run on? IIS, and it requires IE on the client desktop. Do they SSL-encrypt traffic on the network? Of course not. Do they send patient name and ID number in cleartext along with their REALTIME!!! test results? Well, the data wouldn't be much good if you don't know who it belongs to, now would it?
tinfoil-hat concerns aside, healthcare organizations are now required to comply with HIPAA, and if they fail to do so, people can go to jail. If the blood lab at one of my customers' hospitals buys this software, and someone is able to plug a laptop into their network and intercept data sent by their crappy IIS application, that's a clear HIPAA breach - but who is responsible for it? It's my job to make sure my customers aren't going to federal prison as a result of a poorly informed software purchase... you can bet that they're not buying the software.
see, you assume that the customer is always right. In fact, the customer is often wrong, either because they are ignorant, or because they are receiving some kind of incentive (read: bribe) from at least one vendor in order to influence their decisions. When you use Windows in healthcare, the "customer is always right" attitude could land your customer in federal prison.
*(what happens? Somebody gets sued. Usually, the dead patient's family sues the doctor and/or the hospital, and potentially the vendor, and also potentially my company. If the contract is written well, the vendor is obligated to step in and indemnify the doctor, our customer, and us against any claims. The funny thing is that vendors running on windows are NEVER NEVER NEVER willing to volunteer this indemnification- I always have to fight for it, and sometimes we just can't get it. If there's an alternative vendor who will indemnify, they usually end up winning the business, because this is such an important concern for the health care providers...)
Part of the problem is that the vendors chose Windows as a development platform.
um, no. ALL of the blame rests on the software developer. If you all weren't so goddamn lazy and quick to grab dollars at the expense of careful design and reliable architecture, you wouldn't be using windows at all.
The backend for the software I work on actually runs in Unix, and we have hospitals that are thinking of going to NT only [...]
When you get back to 1997, would you call me and tell me to invest in eBay and Yahoo? Tell me to sell in february 2000 while you're at it. And then tell your company that they're fools for thinking that fat-client software has a future in 2004 when everything that's successful now has a web interface.
[...]which means we have to try to port our code to it or loose that customer.
bullshit. Why would their client envronment have any impact on your archtecture for an embedded system? If the customer needs a GUI frontend to your device, do it with Apache. I think there is a version available for QNX, which is the OS you would use (once again) if you weren't so GODDAMN LAZY. Instead, you create a mess, comfortable in your knowledge that you will always have a future cleaning up after yourself.
repeat after me: there is no excuse for using Windows in any embedded system.
Again: there is NO EXCUSE for using Windows in any embedded system.
memory is cheap. CF cards cost around $120/gig, and the 2-gig size is cheaper by the gig. How much bling would it add to the cost of your $70,000 escalade to throw a couple of gigs of compactflash in it, so that the NTSB could require the car to store information every tenth of a second about the last 10,000 seconds of operation? that's less than three hours' worth of continuous driving. Considering I get about 10 hours' drive out of one tank of gas, how many 1-gig CF cards would you need for 100,000 seconds? does anyone know how much space is taken up by one record in the black box db?
Think of a system where the state requires all gas stations to install the equivalent of a CF reader at the pumps. Before you can fill the tank, you have to let it scan your car's memory- no memory, no gas. Sorry! If you have been speeding, the gas station writes you a ticket, and you have to pay it with your credit card before you can fill up...
Realistically, the limit on what you can earn is more like S * (P-$5.00), where S is the number of shares you buy, and P is the current price. Many brokerages will call in your short when the stock falls below $5.00. This may also have something to do with why the price for SCOX has been flatlining near $5.00 for the last three months or so.
Too many people are irresponsible about it, and it ruins it for the rest of us. People need to learn to take responsibility for their actions rather than blame the government or big business for their own indiscretions. That fact is you simply can't have rights if you refuse to take the responsibility to not abuse them.
Yes... but when big business infringes on my rights, it is my DUTY to stand up and complain. When the government refuses to recognize or protect my rights, it is my DUTY to hold that government accountable and replace it with one that will respect those rights.
I think you're getting rights confused with priveledges. Certain rights are guaranteed to you by law and by precedent, unless you do something to forfeit those rights. If you are a US citizen, you are guaranteed the right to vote once you reach the age of 18, unless you forfeit that right by committing a felony. Listening to music isn't a right, in the sense that voting is a right...it is a privelege. I am granted that priveledge when I purchase a tape, or a CD, or a download from ITMS. However, making a backup copy of a copyrighted material I have legally purchased is a right, in almost exactly the same way that voting is a right. The RIAA is trying to downgrade that right into a priveledge, and it is your DUTY just as much as it is mine to make sure that they fail in that effort, no matter what their justification might be.
There are lots of other ways to support music, buying indy music, attending live shows, donating money. Notice that none of those options involve not compensating artists whose livelihoods depend on music.
OK, fine. But at the same time you should notice the phenomenal success of Apple's iTunes store, which has just passed the 100 million songs mark. The options you offer don't solve the same problem that free music downloads address: going to a concert just doesn't scratch the same itch as hitting "play" on your stereo remote. Apple has solved that problem in an acceptable way, and has reaped the benefits.
At the risk of rehashing countless old slashdot threads, the RIAA's business model is doomed. People have learned that blank CD's cost almost nothing, and that it's easy to make a mix of good songs instead of paying grossly inflated prices for a retail-packaged CD... and the MUSIC SOUNDS THE SAME either way. During the years between Napster's shutdown and the ITMS startup, people said again and again that what we really want is a way to make a small payment to download the one song we wanted. Apple gave it to us, and LO! the market has rewarded them.
So far, the RIAA and the major labels have failed to give the people what they want, and the market is punishing them. Instead of recognizing that there is a legitimate market, albeit a market with much thinner margins than they are used to, and then acting to serve that market, the RIAA is acting to put their current market in shackles to keep their customers from running to buy what they really want.
umm, it's a joke, son. A pop culture reference. Did you not get it?
Go rent A Few Good Men. It's got Jack Nicholson in it, and a couple of half-assed scientologists who get movie jobs because they're in good with Xenu.
you've been trolled...
not only that. I'm sure there will be a market for these "RFID-fryers" once RFID use becomes widespread. If you take a second to look at the story about the METRO Future Store, and you ignore all the paranoid rhetoric but you pay attention to the layout of the RFID readers in the store (here) and the account of the RFID deactivator (here) you'll recognize that the people running the store would be perfectly happy to keep track of every tagged item you bring into the store as well as what you take out. Yes, this is a story about groceries, but they partner with other RFID-using companies. And if the tags are woven into the fabric of your clothes, and they can tie your clothes to you, you can bet that every store you walk into will be able to offer you a personalized shopping experience. Whether or not that is a desireable outcome is left as an exercise for the reader.
But anyhow. In the future where every store in every country has RFID readers at the entrance/exit doors, and individuals can buy RFID readers for less than $100 and use them to read the make of your clothes and the limits on your credit cards from the seat behind you on the subway, the only way you'll be able to protect yourself will be to deactivate the chips yourself. The appliance will be like a microwave- every house will have one, and you'll pop your purchases in it for 30 seconds after you bring them home, to burn out the circuits on the RFID chips.
Can I buy one of these today? If not, (I've always wanted to do this):
1. invent simple push-button RFID burn-out appliance
2. build prototype and sell it
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!!!
Of course all of the other replies to your thread say essentially the same thing I was going to tell you:
pssssst! pssssssst, hey buddy! only SUCKERS acutally pay for microsoft software.
I haven't spent a dime on MS software, ever. And I never will! I realize that companies are in a different boat, w/r/t liability and licensing, but that's why companies will move to linux in droves over the next 5 years. It's like this: Right now, MS Office 2000 applications suite scores about 98 points out of 100. I personally have encountered one or two things I can do with OO.org that I can't do with Excel or MSWord, but there are LOTS of things that work just fine in Excel and Word that don't quite function correctly in OO.org. So let's say OO.org is at 80% today. But... there's nowhere for MSOffice to improve, because it's "good enough" now, and has been for the last 4 years. There is no rational reason to upgrade to MS Office 2003, ever.
OSS will keep getting better, and MS software will stay at about 98%. Eventually, OO.org will be at 98% too... it's just a matter of time. The bean counters will do the math, and demand that the IT guys justify the MS tax for the nth Office upgrade... and there won't be any clothes on that emperor, folks. I know, I know, preaching to the choir, but it used to be a question of if and now it's a question of when.
i didn't grace that page more than a cursory glance
:-!
here is a neat story about RFID misuse, and the political fallout which led to one store changeing it's policy. This is just the kind of stuff the tinfoil-hat crowd has been warning us about for years: centralized database with personal information and your purchase records tied to a unique db key. They give you a "loyalty card" which contains your unique db key coded into an RFID. The RFID is readable from 5 feet away and can be scanned without your knowledge or consent, multiple stores subscribe/contribute to the db, and NONE of them tell you about the RFID in the card when they give it to you. I particularly enjoy the x-ray pic of the RFID tag inside the credit card
yeah, this is OT from the patent question, but it's nice to see the tinfoil hat folks get something right for a change.
rolling in dough from the royalties under such "just compensation"?
exactly. but this isn't about gaining a decisive tactical advantage used to win a freaking war, it's about shiny new inventory managment software packages and logistics systems. Do you really want your tax dollars to make Intermec rich, just so Don Rumsfeld can pull up a database and tell you EXACTLY how many bullets are in the munitions bunker at Fort Bragg at any given time, and where each of those bullets came from, and when they were manufactured, and which truck delievered them, and which shelf they are sitting on now?
'Cos I don't. Seems like a huge waste of money to me in the first place, but then I'm not trying to run the DoD. My point is, DoD is going to do this, and they're going to spend money contributed by you and me in our taxes to make it happen. From this perspective, Intermec is making a shameless bid to steal money out of my pocket, and we should hope that their claims don't stand up in the interest of federal fiscal responsibility (now there's an oxymoron for you).
I guess my point is that all parties currently involved DO have enough money to just license the patent, and will choose to license because it will be cheaper than fighting it in court where they would actually have to PAY lawyers $1000/hour to state their case. So Intermec gets rich, the tags cost Wal-Mart an additional $0.01 per item to use, and any little guys who might have a breakthrough application in the works lose out, because they can't affort the startup license fees...
/. I don't know anything about prior art for this patent or anything about the validity of the claims therein.
that's why I suggest that it might merit PubPat interest. Of course, this being
Duh. That's consumer groups. Sorry.
If this patent is valid, and Intermec raises the license fees high enough, it could kill RFID before the technology has really come into its own. What side will CASPIAN come down on? Will IBM stand idly by and let this happen? Will other tinfoil-hat-wearing consumer groups seize on this patent, or try to buy it outright to effectively halt the implementation of RFID?
This has the potential to fracture EFF and PubPat too, seeing as the privacy nuts will be all for anything that makes it harder or more expensive for RFID to become ubiquitous, but this sounds like a job for PubPat (or some other private entitiy) to investigate, to protect the very real benefits that RFID will bring to supply chain management.
or will this be a case where the Feds stand up to fight against a technology patent, now that the DOD has declared that all if its suppliers must use RFID by Jan 1 2005? Can the government claim eminent domain over patents or other IP? This page seems to address the question, but doesn't give me a clear enough picture of the consequences for suppliers when government takes an "eminent domain" license... and it kind of leaves me thinking that if Intermec sues the goverment, and the patent isn't invalidated, taxpayers will be left holding the bag twice.
I would describe John Hinckley, as average at best
:-P
yeah, but he didn't acutally KILL Reagan, did he?
The judicirary is supposed to be impartial.
somebody should tell that to Scalia, when he's not too busy duck hunting...
this is what separates a company that really cares about its office workers from the companies that just pretend to care. On your first day at Pixar, you're not even allowed to log in until the ergo consultant has done your 'fitting.' adjustible chairs are great, but what about trackballs, keyboard trays, desktops, monitors... adjustible furniture is great, but most office workers won't have the chutzpa to come in on the weekend and put bricks under the legs of their desks to make the tabletops the correct height.
there is plenty of information published about how to keep people comfortable for long periods of time, but bodies aren't identical, and what's true for one person isn't true for everyone in your office. If people are going to sit at their desks for hours at a time, you can be a big hero by taking some time to make sure each person has what they need to be comfortable in their new space.
oh, and lighting is important too... flourescents suck.
on a personal note, this is my 3rd week in a new office environment. Last week, my carpal tunnel flared up for the first time in 2 years. I asked if we could get furniture moved, and got the "4 to 6 weeks" answer... so I came in this weekend with a power drill and adjusted the height of the desk in my cubicle to make it 6" higher. Our office planner SHIT herself when she noticed, but now I have room underneath the desk for my knees and my keyboard tray AT THE SAME TIME. My new chair still doesn't fit correctly- the seat pad is too short for my legs, and the back of the chair is too low to support my back (i'm almost 6' tall and the buttpad is only about 20" long.) I'm sure they spent like $800 each on these chairs, but as far as I'm concerned the money was a waste, becuse it just doesn't FIT.
After 2 weeks in this new cube-based "open environment," my biggest complaint apart from the ill-fitting furniture is the noise. we've got bare walls, and I can clearly hear a whisper from 100 feet away. If I have to listen to the goddamn secretary in the next row to the north have one more conversation about her stupid bible study group, I'm going to chop her up and feed her to the guy trying to stick to the Atkins diet two rows to the east.
It's more like $120 in savings a year... Or do you think the taxes on the phone line use and maintenance charges won't apply to your line just because it's data and not voice being carried over it?
:-)
in the absence of evidince to the contrary, I'm forced to admit that you're probably right about the maintenance charges, but I would argue that you are very wrong about the taxes. Those taxes are levied by various government bodies on analog line voice communications. If I'm not using that communication mode, why should I pay the taxes? If they want to levy a tax on packets, let them pass a different law. Isn't that the whole point to Vonage?
And w/r/t SBC's billing, the taxes are currently billed on the "phone" portion of my bill and not the "internet" portion, so if this is for real I'll try to disconnect my voice line, and if they tax me anyway I'll try to fight it and see what happens
If this was real, there should have been an announcement from the California Public Utilities Commission. There isn't.
That was my thought as well, somewhat comforted by the link to a article from CNET that I posted in this comment. The CNET story is from June 11, which was what, Friday? Why hasn't anyone else said anything about this? Seems like pretty big news to me. I just found one more article online here which was just lifted from the CNET article and posted today... so that leaves us in the same place, which is hoping that it's for real but lacking an official word...
Google news finally picked this up- interestingly the first link is to overclocker.com, instead of this one which has much better coverage of what actually happened :-/
Yeah, but they're on the same pipe, no? Which is why "Naked" Cable internet w/o cable TV costs slightly more than basic cable + basic data... they don't have the technology to give you data service without giving you access to 36 cable channels as well.
this is one case where I don't think anyone will save money (unless they are willing to put up with a great deal of angst)
Yeah, but I've been asking for this for literally YEARS. I don't need or want a land-line voice connection. The only people who call me on it are f*cking telemarketers from SBC trying to sell my their long-distance service, which I also don't need or want. Even my parents have recognized that they should call my cell phone if they want to talk to me. I haven't answered my land line phone in at least the last six months.
You may like your bundle, but all I want from SBC is DSL for $25/month, without the extra $10 for phone service that I don't use and then additional $10 in taxes and fees that are charged on top of that phone service I don't use.
If it's true, this will immediately save me $250 or more every year.