I think there should be some sort of punishment for company execs that put to much into short term growth and not enough into long term growth. Obviously they need to keep enough money coming in to pay everyone and allow modest growth but it's bad for the company, employees, and economy when they quickly inflate their own wallets and then jump ship before the company pops and sinks.
A great deal of our current economic situation was caused by tech companies doing just this. The worst cases are obviously where company execs sell out leaving all other stock holders and employees holding the bag but it really isn't much better falsely inflating these companies. People are still buying tech. Electronics and other techie gizmos are still hot selling items. Companies are still making a profit from them. There is no real reason for the tech market not to be booming. It's just dead because of the few individuals that were greedy and shortsighted.
Also I think the concept of day trading is partly to blame. People don't buy stock for long term value. They buy it, try to make a few quick bucks, and sell it again. They don't care where that company will be in five years. They don't care where the world will be in ten years. It's no better than a get rich quick scheme.
Research and technology drive society forward. They give us new abilities, raise the standard of living, and give people something new to buy. They may not pay out in an immediate obvious way but they are what fuels our economy and lifestyle and should be protected.
Myself I plan to have a specialized utility cloud of nano gizmos that I can remotely control as pleases me and take on any shape I please while sitting in a nice secure location mentally being in cyberspace at the same time. If you're going to be immortal you may as well be god too.:)
If you put the body into stassis and then deatomized it after downloading the mind without ever letting the original change then you'd be effectively moving the original. Sure the original still dies but the mind wouldn't notice it. The whole idea of alive or dead is sort of outdated whenever we get to the point of being able to download minds.
Read Bohr Maked. It has some interesting ideas of AI-minds like this that can be copied, sent out to do stuff, and remerged when finished.
Somebody's been watching to much Red Dwarf..
on
Downloading The Mind
·
· Score: 2
I think this will eventually be possible but not until we've mastered nanotech and reverse engineered the entire human body. The mind isn't only the brain. It's the data stored in the brain, the various parts of your body that cause chemical reactions that affect your brain too. You need a machine capable of not only logic but also emotion if it's going to contain human intelligence.
I do think it'll happen, as will 'brain hacking' and other related topics (a borg-like collective mind for example) but we have quite some time to wait.:) When it does happen it'll shake humankind to the core. It's our next obvious step in evolution as we merge with our own tools but it'll cause untold moral battles. All the sci-fi of AI's fighting man and so on I think is wrong. Man will become the AI and Neo-Man and Man will try to destroy each other. Everyone could make the change (in theory) but many won't for religious reasons and those will most likely want to destroy the new evil. Neo-Man being like all species will defend itself. Obvious battle follows. Is there a movie plot here?:)
I run KDE/Gnome on a P 120Mhz box and UI elements respond faster than my P1.2Ghz box running WinXP. Obviously anybody that has a studly box and still finds X slow must either have a configuration problem or be trying to run at an insane resolution.
Try picking a slimmer window manager, getting rid of unneeded crap on your desktop, changing the res and color depth, etc. There must be something causing whatever slow down is causing you to be slow.
Also, I haven't had an X crash in over a year. Partially this is because I switched from Netscape to Mozilla (and started running Netscape with memory and process limits) but I think X has gotten quite a bit more stable especially on older hardware.
Run VNC, you can do this. I've logged in on one lab machine and as I made the rounds just pulled up what I was working on at different machines through the lab without closing the programs I was running or anything like that.
I think this is the homepage of: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
Make a white-disc copy of the DVD available cheap for anyone with a ticket stub from the movie. As soon as the movie is on the big screen the customer can buy it on DVD this way. That'd boost attendence and help stop piracy.
SW: Clones just sucked. That's why I didn't see it again and again like I had previous Star Wars movies.
I use subtabs all the time so it should work for you. You can also run Chatzilla and other parts of Mozilla in tabs. It's possible to run just about everything in Mozilla as a tab - you don't need multiple windows at all.:)
I'm working on a popup floating navigation bar so I can remove it from navigators toolbars and thus make the subtabs look nicer.
Mozilla provides a framework for developing cross-platform apps that look the same everwhere and are extendable. Anyone can create or change these apps without needing to recompile everything. If you've ported code you know what a pain it can be and porting apps across GUI's is even worse as it's not just getting things technically right.. you have to adjust everything for how it looks in each GUI. A major pain overall. For really good cross-platform apps you need a portable UI and the skins are just the easiest and most extensible method of doing that.
Try loading the navigator chrome inside a browser tab to get an idea how it works. (chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul) Mozilla isn't an app with a skin. It is the skin.
Skin shouldn't make an app any slower. Either way the computer has to redraw the window. It doesn't matter if the OS/GUI tells it how to do that or if the app does.
The easy solution is to publish your work with a date on it. Put it online where a creation date will be noted, go to the bank and have them stamp it with the date and certify it, etc. If you have a copy with the earliest date on it then you are most likely the author. Of course having copies certified in more than one way is a good idea.
There is always the chance of someone trying to rip you off in this way but really it isn't hard in this day to prove you made something first.
I believe there was an article in Rolling Stone about three years ago with a story about how the RIAA did this with the song 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and finally after many years was forced to sent a small payment to the poor guy that actually created the song. IP laws didn't help the guy at all.
This kind of thing certainly does suck. As an inventor/programmer it's a real kick in the ass when your hard work is stolen by others without giving you any award.
I'm afraid that in most cases you'd find that patent law would help little. If you can't afford a good lawyer to fight out your claim for you the best you can do is get a few nickles thrown your way while the licensing corporations get rich. If you charge to much the companies will just snuff you and bury you in legal paperwork and the like.
Also most inventions are claimed by employers, again snuffing the guy that actually did the inventing. I believe this was recently in the news about the inventor of the blue LED or something like that?
So while IP law sounds like a good idea I don't think it really does anything but help the rich corporations stay rich and powerful. If I had to choose a system for helping artists and inventors I'd say grants are the most beneficial. Let the public fund the public works (from individuals and non-profits, not corporations). Maybe then the inventors won't get rich but they'll have enough to keep inventing and far less hassles than under IP laws.
Going by the data and pictures this is at least as small as a laptop.. maybe a little wider but not as high or wide. It also looks like it'll take more abuse than your average laptop. Also the screens, keyboards, and mouse doodads on laptops all sort of suck. Really to me a tiny PC like this is much more interesting than a normal laptop because in theory the same hardware should be cheaper which allows me to add my own i/o devices to fit my needs and location. Why choose between a laptop or a monster box for your office when you can have this and a nice flat panel monitor and a real keyboard and mouse.
The only thing I'd like to see for this is an attachable power pack. A case mod to make it wearable would be interesting too. This has real possibilities as a wearable.:)
For a school project I once modified a very simple robotic arm and handheld scanner to fit over a book and precisely scan the entire two pages (that are exposed at one time) in. Then the pages were ran through OCR to convert to text. Only cost about $20 to build since I already had the scanner. It also would flip through the book for me.. essentially being a book scanner. Worked better on heavy paper than thin paper though as sometimes thin pages stuck together.
A cheap webcam mounted in the yard or house would have done the same thing without invading the privacy of the neighborhood. If you want to be on camera install your own.
I have no problem with cameras in public but the government recording me is an entirely different thing. I don't want a giant database following me around using cameras and face recognition software.
Oh and as somebody who has had friends murdered.. there can never be justice. There can only be revenge. That will never bring the dead back and rarely does it protect others from the same fate.
If you want to protect yourself and those you care about then learn basic self defense, make them learn it, make your home as secure as possible, and don't do stupid things like opening the door to strangers. Basics every child is taught and then forgets when they grow up.
Much better would be to pass out free cd's that let people turn their computers into region-free DVD players without installing anything. Linux bootable discs that only play movies are great things. This lil project seems to be pretty good as a start: MoviX.
Take the massive roof of that shopping mall and cover it with solar panels. The solar energy can charge the cars parked in the lot and help reduce the cost of electricity the mall pays. If you have cars using some sort of id system you could even make it so the more money the person has a history of spending in the mall the faster their car will be charged.
Very true that businesses don't like change but they do like cheap gimicks to get people spending money. Eventually there will be enough EV's on the road to make trials of these kind of programs worth while and then things snowball. People find out they get free fuel and they buy more cars.. more stores find out more of their customers have the cars and are using the program and expand the program throughout more of their parking lots. Enterprising people see demand for EV's and start selling them.. old car companies try to put new car companies out of business and finally make the switch themselves. It's all about coming up with these ideas and trying tor each critical mass.
I've thought of selling preassembeled solar/wind mini charging stations to people that want them. Maybe try to push them to greenies (I'm green but not as much as I'm a geek) as a practical way to help the problem. Buy a piece of roadside land and throw up a free-to-the-public mini charging station and your local club has done something to help the enviroment and hey it's a really cool geek project too.;)
Some have either an external or built-in charger and can also be swapped in/out easily. The external chargers for home are probably the best long-term solution as they don't require every vehicle or every battery to have a charger (cheaper) but your right there is convenience in plugging them in. I've seen a lot that would plug into normal 110V too which is good as you can charge at work easily.
One idea I've had is that parking lots might offer free charges while your parked. Imagine how stores could make use of that especially if they have a renewable energy source instead of using the grid. Free fuel while you shop.. the longer you shop the more fuel you get.
Even the worst electric plants are more effecient than the ebst internal combustion engines at producing and transporting the resulting energy. Even counting the loss of transferring the energy into batteries.. hauling the batteries around in the car.. converting the electricity into making the car go.. the electric is still more effecient. The main downside of electrics however is that it's harder to store at the same space efficency... meaning that batteries need to be a lot bigger that a tank of gas to get the same range. Batteries are getting better but they still can't squeeze as much into the same space. They can also be slow to charge unless you have the money to spend on a fast charger and batteries able to stand being charged that fast. However common EV's can more than provide enough range for the average person to drive to work.. go to lunch.. go back to work.. make a few stops on the way home.. and get home. The cost of fuel is typically way cheaper than gasoline even if you just plug into an outlet in your home and of course you have the option of using solar and wind to recharge your vehicle which of couse costs you nothing other than the upfront cost of installing your system. Insurance is usually cheaper for EV's also as they are usually very safe to drive as they have no parts that can explode and the batteries absorb impact during a crash.
It's true that the EV's that are offered to us by most car makers seem to be designed to make us not want to buy them. They probably don't want us to buy them because they make a lot of profits from the much more complex mechanical systems and many car makers have quite a bit of money invested in the oil market. It's as simple as that. It's against their interest to make good EV's. Hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles and threatening enough to them but at least you still have to deal with complex systems and buy fuel.. things that aren't factors with EV's.
However I've seen some really nice homemade and conversion cars. My favorite are classic and muscle cars that have been rebuilt and converted to electric. I've seen some of those that can do 90mph with a range of about 200 miles per charge and the ability to be recharged in 15-30 minutes. An even better trick I've seen is rack mounted batteries. Pop the hood and a special arm (manual usually but could be robotic) is used to remove the spent pack and a new pack is inserted while the spent pack goes to be charged. It's refueling in the style of portable kerosene tanks or like renting a tape from Blockbuster except with batteries.
For refueling stations electric should be a major boon. Charge a membership fee for the right to exchange battery packs and set up solar/wind to recharge spent packs and you have little ongoing costs.. it's all upfront costs which shouldn't be anymore than starting a gas station. Also as fuel doesn't need to be hauled in to the station you can put the stations in remote locations and make them fully self-service.
What actually keeps 1000 angry geeks from finding some half-assed reasons to sue him back? Harassing mailing lists seems a dangerous idea as there will almost always be more people on the list that will get defensive than will take your side. Piss off a list of 1000 users and have them each file individual suits against you and you'll end up pissing away a huge amount of time defending yourself and very likely piss off a judge or two.
Piss off the population of Slashdot and have even a small portion of them sue and you'll be dealing with a full time job just to defend yourself.
Honestly none of the canidates given as options are even remotely okay in my opinion. I will not vote for any of them. If I were old enough or well off enough I'd consider running myself but I'm not. If I could find somebody, even if they had no chance of winning, that was okay to me I'd vote for them. I've seen a couple such canidates but none of them within a district I lived in. Find me the person and I'll sign my name, punch the dot, or whatever for them.
Also the last time I tried to register to vote they returned my application as invalid the day before the election without explanation. Given I had nobody I wanted to vote for I just shrugged it off. I really had no idea what to do about being denied my vote anyway.
The obvious question is how are meta tags any less suspect than any other part of a web site? I've seen many sites that add extra text, links, etc in just to have them grabbed by search engines.
The best approach to using metatags is to allow users of your search engine to add their own keywords and vote on how appropiate each keyword is for that page. That way new keywords get linked in and bad ones removed but you cans till ue the metatags as an initial data set. Regardless of all your fancy technical tricks users still provide the best information.
Auctions have been around for 1000's of years in some form or another. How can anyone claim to own the idea? I certainly remember online auctions before EBay was even a pipe dream and even before the web came into being. Taking a common idea and slapping 'online', 'electronic', 'web', etc on it does not make it a new idea. Spreadsheets were a new idea.. there really is no real world equivilant.. but online auctions are obvious.
I'm all for screwing the big corporations but get with the show and invent something real and stop trying to get rich off pantenting the obvious.
What better match could exist than opensource tools, game engines, etc and mod programmers? The geeks that are really good at programming can release their code without having to fake their way through producing some half assed artwork and the mod makers can have full access to code, tools, everything. Feedback can go directly from the mod guys to the programmers and new code can be cranked out as needed just to suit their needs. It might take a while before the two sides find the right combo to bring them together but then it'll be a match made in heaven.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there should be some sort of punishment for company execs that put to much into short term growth and not enough into long term growth. Obviously they need to keep enough money coming in to pay everyone and allow modest growth but it's bad for the company, employees, and economy when they quickly inflate their own wallets and then jump ship before the company pops and sinks.
A great deal of our current economic situation was caused by tech companies doing just this. The worst cases are obviously where company execs sell out leaving all other stock holders and employees holding the bag but it really isn't much better falsely inflating these companies. People are still buying tech. Electronics and other techie gizmos are still hot selling items. Companies are still making a profit from them. There is no real reason for the tech market not to be booming. It's just dead because of the few individuals that were greedy and shortsighted.
Also I think the concept of day trading is partly to blame. People don't buy stock for long term value. They buy it, try to make a few quick bucks, and sell it again. They don't care where that company will be in five years. They don't care where the world will be in ten years. It's no better than a get rich quick scheme.
Research and technology drive society forward. They give us new abilities, raise the standard of living, and give people something new to buy. They may not pay out in an immediate obvious way but they are what fuels our economy and lifestyle and should be protected.
Myself I plan to have a specialized utility cloud of nano gizmos that I can remotely control as pleases me and take on any shape I please while sitting in a nice secure location mentally being in cyberspace at the same time. If you're going to be immortal you may as well be god too. :)
If you put the body into stassis and then deatomized it after downloading the mind without ever letting the original change then you'd be effectively moving the original. Sure the original still dies but the mind wouldn't notice it. The whole idea of alive or dead is sort of outdated whenever we get to the point of being able to download minds.
Read Bohr Maked. It has some interesting ideas of AI-minds like this that can be copied, sent out to do stuff, and remerged when finished.
I think this will eventually be possible but not until we've mastered nanotech and reverse engineered the entire human body. The mind isn't only the brain. It's the data stored in the brain, the various parts of your body that cause chemical reactions that affect your brain too. You need a machine capable of not only logic but also emotion if it's going to contain human intelligence.
:) When it does happen it'll shake humankind to the core. It's our next obvious step in evolution as we merge with our own tools but it'll cause untold moral battles. All the sci-fi of AI's fighting man and so on I think is wrong. Man will become the AI and Neo-Man and Man will try to destroy each other. Everyone could make the change (in theory) but many won't for religious reasons and those will most likely want to destroy the new evil. Neo-Man being like all species will defend itself. Obvious battle follows. Is there a movie plot here? :)
I do think it'll happen, as will 'brain hacking' and other related topics (a borg-like collective mind for example) but we have quite some time to wait.
I run KDE/Gnome on a P 120Mhz box and UI elements respond faster than my P1.2Ghz box running WinXP. Obviously anybody that has a studly box and still finds X slow must either have a configuration problem or be trying to run at an insane resolution.
Try picking a slimmer window manager, getting rid of unneeded crap on your desktop, changing the res and color depth, etc. There must be something causing whatever slow down is causing you to be slow.
Also, I haven't had an X crash in over a year. Partially this is because I switched from Netscape to Mozilla (and started running Netscape with memory and process limits) but I think X has gotten quite a bit more stable especially on older hardware.
Run VNC, you can do this. I've logged in on one lab machine and as I made the rounds just pulled up what I was working on at different machines through the lab without closing the programs I was running or anything like that.
I think this is the homepage of: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
Make a white-disc copy of the DVD available cheap for anyone with a ticket stub from the movie. As soon as the movie is on the big screen the customer can buy it on DVD this way. That'd boost attendence and help stop piracy.
SW: Clones just sucked. That's why I didn't see it again and again like I had previous Star Wars movies.
I use subtabs all the time so it should work for you. You can also run Chatzilla and other parts of Mozilla in tabs. It's possible to run just about everything in Mozilla as a tab - you don't need multiple windows at all. :)
I'm working on a popup floating navigation bar so I can remove it from navigators toolbars and thus make the subtabs look nicer.
Mozilla provides a framework for developing cross-platform apps that look the same everwhere and are extendable. Anyone can create or change these apps without needing to recompile everything. If you've ported code you know what a pain it can be and porting apps across GUI's is even worse as it's not just getting things technically right.. you have to adjust everything for how it looks in each GUI. A major pain overall. For really good cross-platform apps you need a portable UI and the skins are just the easiest and most extensible method of doing that.
Try loading the navigator chrome inside a browser tab to get an idea how it works. (chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul) Mozilla isn't an app with a skin. It is the skin.
Skin shouldn't make an app any slower. Either way the computer has to redraw the window. It doesn't matter if the OS/GUI tells it how to do that or if the app does.
The easy solution is to publish your work with a date on it. Put it online where a creation date will be noted, go to the bank and have them stamp it with the date and certify it, etc. If you have a copy with the earliest date on it then you are most likely the author. Of course having copies certified in more than one way is a good idea.
There is always the chance of someone trying to rip you off in this way but really it isn't hard in this day to prove you made something first.
I believe there was an article in Rolling Stone about three years ago with a story about how the RIAA did this with the song 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and finally after many years was forced to sent a small payment to the poor guy that actually created the song. IP laws didn't help the guy at all.
This kind of thing certainly does suck. As an inventor/programmer it's a real kick in the ass when your hard work is stolen by others without giving you any award.
I'm afraid that in most cases you'd find that patent law would help little. If you can't afford a good lawyer to fight out your claim for you the best you can do is get a few nickles thrown your way while the licensing corporations get rich. If you charge to much the companies will just snuff you and bury you in legal paperwork and the like.
Also most inventions are claimed by employers, again snuffing the guy that actually did the inventing. I believe this was recently in the news about the inventor of the blue LED or something like that?
So while IP law sounds like a good idea I don't think it really does anything but help the rich corporations stay rich and powerful. If I had to choose a system for helping artists and inventors I'd say grants are the most beneficial. Let the public fund the public works (from individuals and non-profits, not corporations). Maybe then the inventors won't get rich but they'll have enough to keep inventing and far less hassles than under IP laws.
Going by the data and pictures this is at least as small as a laptop.. maybe a little wider but not as high or wide. It also looks like it'll take more abuse than your average laptop. Also the screens, keyboards, and mouse doodads on laptops all sort of suck. Really to me a tiny PC like this is much more interesting than a normal laptop because in theory the same hardware should be cheaper which allows me to add my own i/o devices to fit my needs and location. Why choose between a laptop or a monster box for your office when you can have this and a nice flat panel monitor and a real keyboard and mouse.
:)
The only thing I'd like to see for this is an attachable power pack. A case mod to make it wearable would be interesting too. This has real possibilities as a wearable.
For a school project I once modified a very simple robotic arm and handheld scanner to fit over a book and precisely scan the entire two pages (that are exposed at one time) in. Then the pages were ran through OCR to convert to text. Only cost about $20 to build since I already had the scanner. It also would flip through the book for me.. essentially being a book scanner. Worked better on heavy paper than thin paper though as sometimes thin pages stuck together.
A cheap webcam mounted in the yard or house would have done the same thing without invading the privacy of the neighborhood. If you want to be on camera install your own.
I have no problem with cameras in public but the government recording me is an entirely different thing. I don't want a giant database following me around using cameras and face recognition software.
Oh and as somebody who has had friends murdered.. there can never be justice. There can only be revenge. That will never bring the dead back and rarely does it protect others from the same fate.
If you want to protect yourself and those you care about then learn basic self defense, make them learn it, make your home as secure as possible, and don't do stupid things like opening the door to strangers. Basics every child is taught and then forgets when they grow up.
Much better would be to pass out free cd's that let people turn their computers into region-free DVD players without installing anything. Linux bootable discs that only play movies are great things. This lil project seems to be pretty good as a start: MoviX.
http://homepower.com
Take the massive roof of that shopping mall and cover it with solar panels. The solar energy can charge the cars parked in the lot and help reduce the cost of electricity the mall pays. If you have cars using some sort of id system you could even make it so the more money the person has a history of spending in the mall the faster their car will be charged.
;)
Very true that businesses don't like change but they do like cheap gimicks to get people spending money. Eventually there will be enough EV's on the road to make trials of these kind of programs worth while and then things snowball. People find out they get free fuel and they buy more cars.. more stores find out more of their customers have the cars and are using the program and expand the program throughout more of their parking lots. Enterprising people see demand for EV's and start selling them.. old car companies try to put new car companies out of business and finally make the switch themselves. It's all about coming up with these ideas and trying tor each critical mass.
I've thought of selling preassembeled solar/wind mini charging stations to people that want them. Maybe try to push them to greenies (I'm green but not as much as I'm a geek) as a practical way to help the problem. Buy a piece of roadside land and throw up a free-to-the-public mini charging station and your local club has done something to help the enviroment and hey it's a really cool geek project too.
Some have either an external or built-in charger and can also be swapped in/out easily. The external chargers for home are probably the best long-term solution as they don't require every vehicle or every battery to have a charger (cheaper) but your right there is convenience in plugging them in. I've seen a lot that would plug into normal 110V too which is good as you can charge at work easily.
One idea I've had is that parking lots might offer free charges while your parked. Imagine how stores could make use of that especially if they have a renewable energy source instead of using the grid. Free fuel while you shop.. the longer you shop the more fuel you get.
Even the worst electric plants are more effecient than the ebst internal combustion engines at producing and transporting the resulting energy. Even counting the loss of transferring the energy into batteries.. hauling the batteries around in the car.. converting the electricity into making the car go.. the electric is still more effecient. The main downside of electrics however is that it's harder to store at the same space efficency... meaning that batteries need to be a lot bigger that a tank of gas to get the same range. Batteries are getting better but they still can't squeeze as much into the same space. They can also be slow to charge unless you have the money to spend on a fast charger and batteries able to stand being charged that fast. However common EV's can more than provide enough range for the average person to drive to work.. go to lunch.. go back to work.. make a few stops on the way home.. and get home. The cost of fuel is typically way cheaper than gasoline even if you just plug into an outlet in your home and of course you have the option of using solar and wind to recharge your vehicle which of couse costs you nothing other than the upfront cost of installing your system. Insurance is usually cheaper for EV's also as they are usually very safe to drive as they have no parts that can explode and the batteries absorb impact during a crash.
It's true that the EV's that are offered to us by most car makers seem to be designed to make us not want to buy them. They probably don't want us to buy them because they make a lot of profits from the much more complex mechanical systems and many car makers have quite a bit of money invested in the oil market. It's as simple as that. It's against their interest to make good EV's. Hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles and threatening enough to them but at least you still have to deal with complex systems and buy fuel.. things that aren't factors with EV's.
However I've seen some really nice homemade and conversion cars. My favorite are classic and muscle cars that have been rebuilt and converted to electric. I've seen some of those that can do 90mph with a range of about 200 miles per charge and the ability to be recharged in 15-30 minutes. An even better trick I've seen is rack mounted batteries. Pop the hood and a special arm (manual usually but could be robotic) is used to remove the spent pack and a new pack is inserted while the spent pack goes to be charged. It's refueling in the style of portable kerosene tanks or like renting a tape from Blockbuster except with batteries.
For refueling stations electric should be a major boon. Charge a membership fee for the right to exchange battery packs and set up solar/wind to recharge spent packs and you have little ongoing costs.. it's all upfront costs which shouldn't be anymore than starting a gas station. Also as fuel doesn't need to be hauled in to the station you can put the stations in remote locations and make them fully self-service.
What actually keeps 1000 angry geeks from finding some half-assed reasons to sue him back? Harassing mailing lists seems a dangerous idea as there will almost always be more people on the list that will get defensive than will take your side. Piss off a list of 1000 users and have them each file individual suits against you and you'll end up pissing away a huge amount of time defending yourself and very likely piss off a judge or two.
Piss off the population of Slashdot and have even a small portion of them sue and you'll be dealing with a full time job just to defend yourself.
Honestly none of the canidates given as options are even remotely okay in my opinion. I will not vote for any of them. If I were old enough or well off enough I'd consider running myself but I'm not. If I could find somebody, even if they had no chance of winning, that was okay to me I'd vote for them. I've seen a couple such canidates but none of them within a district I lived in. Find me the person and I'll sign my name, punch the dot, or whatever for them.
Also the last time I tried to register to vote they returned my application as invalid the day before the election without explanation. Given I had nobody I wanted to vote for I just shrugged it off. I really had no idea what to do about being denied my vote anyway.
The obvious question is how are meta tags any less suspect than any other part of a web site? I've seen many sites that add extra text, links, etc in just to have them grabbed by search engines.
The best approach to using metatags is to allow users of your search engine to add their own keywords and vote on how appropiate each keyword is for that page. That way new keywords get linked in and bad ones removed but you cans till ue the metatags as an initial data set. Regardless of all your fancy technical tricks users still provide the best information.
Auctions have been around for 1000's of years in some form or another. How can anyone claim to own the idea? I certainly remember online auctions before EBay was even a pipe dream and even before the web came into being. Taking a common idea and slapping 'online', 'electronic', 'web', etc on it does not make it a new idea. Spreadsheets were a new idea.. there really is no real world equivilant.. but online auctions are obvious.
I'm all for screwing the big corporations but get with the show and invent something real and stop trying to get rich off pantenting the obvious.
What better match could exist than opensource tools, game engines, etc and mod programmers? The geeks that are really good at programming can release their code without having to fake their way through producing some half assed artwork and the mod makers can have full access to code, tools, everything. Feedback can go directly from the mod guys to the programmers and new code can be cranked out as needed just to suit their needs. It might take a while before the two sides find the right combo to bring them together but then it'll be a match made in heaven.