We formed an HOA. It turned out that our cul-de-sac was owned by the property developer who built our housing development, and was never turned over to the city as an official street. He went belly up, and then went delinquent on the property taxes.
Then the snow stopped getting plowed. Nothing like incentive.
The seven of us homeowners purchased the lot for back taxes, and then we paid for snow plowing, garbage collection, insurance, maintenance and property taxes out of the dues we collect. We were able to strike a multi-family deal with a garbage hauler so that we actually pay less in dues for all of the above services than we did for single family garbage collection! Also, we haven't raised dues once in the 11 years since we formed the association.
When I wrote the association by-laws, I purposely omitted everything related to exterior appearance or maintenance. Sure, I wish the guy across the street would mow his lawn more often, but BFD. It sure beats having a committee decide on your house color, or painting your house then billing you.
I work for a retailer who is looking seriously at RFID. We've been looking at all sorts of different RFID applications throughout our distribution chain from shipping through point of sale through returns and vendor dispositions of defective merchandise (RFID scanners mounted on trash compactors.)
Most of the traffic analysis stuff mentioned above is already being done at the loyalty card level. Your purchase history is already tied to your merchandise, and those items are already being bundled together for market research. Tracking individual serial numbered items is simply a matter of adding a column to an already very large database. And believe it or not, It seems far too unreliable to be useful as described doesn't matter. Even "mostly reliable" is good enough for marketing purposes. So what if we mistakenly send out coupons for diapers to a childless 70-year-old bachelor? Most of those coupons will end up in the hands of parents, and do their jobs.
And for the most part, traffic analysis is "unobtrusive". How many customers question why they received a coupon for discounted diapers? Do any of them give a thought as to how it was possible for the store to know they needed diapers? The vast majority of people will say "who cares, as long as I get 10% off diapers!" Also witness the success of loyalty card discount programs at places like Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and almost every low-end supermarket chain. And Barnes & Noble and Best Buy both make customers PAY to join their loyalty programs! There just isn't likely to be enough backlash to cause a problem.
I think it *is* safe to assume that they'll avoid anything that would raise a really big stink.
Sorry, that one's completely off the mark. Look at Target. They kicked the Salvation Army bell ringers out from in front of their stores. Cutting a popular charity off at the knees at Christmas hardly seems like a "positive PR strategy" yet the third biggest retailer in the nation did it anyway. National backlash? Target's same store sales for December are up 3-5%. Ordinary people don't care about corporate behavior. Privacy wonks like Katherine Albright who do care about stuff like this are typically spun to the media as 'kooks'. For evidence of this spinning 'plot', see this article.
Furthermore, privacy protection is also not as easy to implement as you seem to imply. Just because my stores promise not to track your personal info doesn't mean X-mart will respect that promise. And if my tags can be read at an X-mart, well, there you go. As for the AutoID industry, they're recommending "spin control" rather than "technology control." AutoID magazine had an article on how to "sell" RFID to your customers. Industry is pushing hard to get RFID out there for all the non-privacy reasons.
law enforcement applications -- well, I'm all for that.
So, do you also think that the MPAA should be able to backtrack a ripped DVD to a specific original purchaser? (If so, you're braver than I am, that's kind of an unpopular viewpoint on slashdot these days.) Anyway, unique item tagging makes it possible. Ordinary screened non-unique barcodes don't.
Whether you agree or not with tracking people to this level, RFID provides the tools to enable a surveillance state.
Only if you require everything to be tagged, and make it illegal to remove or deactivate the tags.
No law against deactivating or removing tags needs to exist. Most criminals we apprehend are actually far too stupid to cover tracks like that. TV cop show criminals are just as made-for-TV as the TV cops themselves. Most real world crooks are exceedingly stupid.
Before it gets unleashed on an unprepared public, there are serious questions we need to answer, like "how much are we willing to let oursel
This article mentions "standards groups are looking for a uniform way to "deactivate" the RFID function after clothes with smart labels are purchased by consumers." That line implies there was no standard as of March 2003.
Also, this Wired article mentions "Although Metro told activists the chips worked only while customers were inside the store, activists discovered that a kiosk used to deactivate the chips didn't completely disable the tags."
Katherine Albrecht of CASPIAN fame has also mentioned that three out of four articles she microwaved in order to destroy their tag caused the articles to catch fire.
I stand corrected about the smart card RF reader. I've never seen or used one of those, my only experiences have been with "ordinary" RF door-access cards. They have no "smarts", and the readers seem to be able to discriminate between several in close proximity.
However, RFID tags are a different animal completely. They are made to operate at a distance that allows door security readers to function.
First, whatever makes you think retailers want to deactivate the chips at the point of sale? If the chip remains active, it will make processing returns without receipts easy and precise. They will be able to handle dispositions easily (mark this exact item in the database as "defective" and it won't get put back on the floor.) Receiptless returns won't matter. And there will be no arguments about the price paid, whether it was bought on clearance or sale or if the customer paid full retail.
Other advantages include consumer recalls that will be targeted only to the exact merchandise that is being recalled. For example, if the space heaters produced by Chou-Huan factory on 9/17/2004 were made with defective cords, the exact items that have the defective cords can be identifed at retail. Any that are on the shelves can be "blocked" from being sold. And ordinary RFID will allow the retailer to send notices to the customers who paid via credit card or were a part of a promotional program. But if the RFID tags are intact, when any concerned consumer brings the merchandise back to the store they can be read and determined if they're a part of the recall or not.
Sorry I used such silly examples before. My biggest concern is that of privacy, and I was trying to make the point that people could theoretically abuse this technology and data in completely unforseen ways. It's most likely to be (ab)used by retail stores for marketing purposes.
And whether or not an individual RFID tag indicates a manufacturer, product family, or retailer, active tags can always be used and reused in interesting ways via traffic analysis. Retailers may or may not be able to identify "this guest is swillden" when you walk in the door, but they will probably be able to link "Nike shoes tag#5555 and #5556(left and right) bought by swillden on 11/14/2003", "North Face jacket tag #9999 bought by swillden on 9/15/2004", "T-shirt tag #2222 bought by Mrs.Swillden on 6/20/2004", "unknown tag #1234, associating with swillden and Mrs.Swillden on 12/27/2004". Now, that unknown tag might be a pair of underwear bought at Walmart, or it might be a Swiss army knife bought at REI. Doesn't matter, now it's associated with swillden.
What if it was a Swiss Army Knife bought at REI the same time as a hunting rifle that's now in an evidence locker as a part of a homicide investigation? Will the police issue an APB to retailers to be on the lookout for "Swiss Army Knife tag #1234, purchased the same time as murder weapon A"? Is that an appropriate use of police powers, or of retailers resources? Murder is pretty easy. But now replace "purchased with murder weapon" with "purchased with drug paraphenalia," or "purchased with illegally downloaded music." Or, how about "purchased immediately after transaction selling box cutters to Mohammed Atta?"
Whether you agree or not with tracking people to this level, RFID provides the tools to enable a surveillance state. Before it gets unleashed on an unprepared public, there are serious questions we need to answer, like "how much are we willing to let ourselves be tagged and tracked?"
Is it "worth" the effort? Cynically, considering that the government is probably going to collect millions of dollars in fines from the people involved, the answer would be "Yes. It's worth it."
If you were to "prioritize" all of law enforcement based on the severity of crime, every cop on the street would be fixated on catching every murderer. Once the murderers were all behind bars, the cops would all swoop en masse down on child molesters. Then, once every molester was in prison, they'd focus on rapists, etc. Burglars would never get noticed, and petty street crime like purse snatching, etc, would run rampant.
Obviously, that's silly. Cops spread themselves around, doing the best they can. So, what kinds of priorities do they use? They pick the so-called "low-hanging fruit" when the opportunity arises. Solve the easy cases, lock up as many bad guys as you can. It's kind of based on the idea that if you jail enough petty bad guys they won't have the chance to be really bad guys.
Now throw intellectual property laws into this mix. Hollyweird has managed to purchase enough congresspeople to convince them to consider copyright infringment "theft". Whether you agree that copyright infringment is theft or not, the cops are bound to the laws of the land, not what makes sense to you or I. So, if the RIAA does the work, cracks a case, chases down a "ringleader", sticks a mythical $200,000 price on his misdeeds and presents him to the FBI all tied up in a bow, yeah, they're going to take him in.
If you want to do something about it, send your outrage to your congressperson.
See my previous post about embedded chips. Maximum benefit involves embedding the chip in the item (not the package) as early as possible in the manufacturing process so more links in the chain can benefit.
I have no problem with retailers wanting to use RFID for the prepurchase handling of their merchandise. But I have a huge problem with the tags remaining live after purchase for privacy reasons. As a human being (without having yet evolved an RFID reader) I have no way to confirm if Walmart is actually destroying the tags at purchase, or if they're just marking them as "paid."
As for the shielded wallet, well, that's one step too close to tinfoil beanies for me.:-)
Because the tags are embedded deeply into the product by the manufacturer.
One of the great promises of RFID is that the entire manufacturing and distribution chain will benefit from the single placement of one tag. The idea is the manufacturer will embed the tag right into the sole of the Nike shoes during the injection molding process. Then, the manufacturer can track the shoes through their factory, ensuring that each box contains a matching set of left and right size 11-D Nike Air TraxWalxers Runnerx X-trainerx Jordanx. The shipping company can check the manifest by scanning the containers. The trucking company can check the cargo with a scanner. The store can receive the crate from the trucker and verify that their Nikes are exactly as ordered.
Walmart's benefit is the stores won't have to pay a clerk to stick these tags on in the back room. They won't have to stick barcode labels on the products. They won't have to stick extra RF security tags on the products. They won't accidentally sell me a box with two left shoes in it (and they won't have to teach their cashiers the difference between left and right.) And they'll supposedly have quicker checkout lines by reducing scan time.
By the same token, if the chip is molded in the sole, I can't cut it out.
Ultimately they want these chips in every single product sold. Hitachi's waterproof chip is actually 1/3 the size of a grain of rice, and is intended to be permanently sewn into the waistband of a pair of women's panties. Do you want to go through all your products after you get home, hunting for tiny bumps like a dog checking for fleas?
There are a lot of reasons for consumers to not want RFID tags. The primary reason I can think of is personal security. Would you want to literally broadcast the fact that you had thirteen platinum Visa cards in your wallet? Walk into the wrong bar one night and count yourself lucky to wake up again.
RFID reading is secret -- nobody needs to ask your permission to scan you. (Barcodes require you to expose them to the reader.)
There are also other privacy related reasons you might not want RFID tags in your clothing. What if you walked into a fancy restaurant and they scanned you on the way in, realized you had on Walmart underwear, and refused to serve you? "Excuse me, sir, but we don't serve your kind here. You can play dress-up in an Armani suit, but we know who you really are." Or, would you want that restaurant to throw you out before they seated you because they saw your Visa cards were maxed out? "Hey, I was just here to meet a friend!" "Sorry, sir; may I suggest you meet him at McDonalds instead?"
For severe corrosion I used a pink pencil eraser, and polished the copper till it shone.
Always worked.
I seriously think most of the corrosion these carts suffered from was caused by excessive humidity due to all the spitting and hot breath. The kids who spit on them all the time were doing it out of habit, not because of a real reason.
I stayed with friends in Glasgow once. We took a day trip to Edinburgh, and I thought it was really pretty. (Actually it was sunny the day we were in Edinburgh, and I found that anywhere in the entire country is simply spectacular on the odd days when sunlight strikes.)
On a different day we went to Inverness (tourists that we were, we had to see the loch) and we returned via Aberdeen and Dundee to visit with some people. I'm afraid I simply don't remember anything about Aberdeen.
"The Highlands looked pretty lonely," he said sheepishly.
Because I'm just a pet owner and not a breeder, I don't have the experience to know if littermates tend to have similar personalities. If they aren't always in lockstep, then isn't this really just a big gamble of $50,000 in the hope that the clone will be "as good as" a littermate of the original? Or are littermates almost always identically behaved?
The other thing is if environment plays a large part in the behavioral patterns of the animals (as your own personal evidence suggests,) then why spend this kind of money when you're likely to bring them up in the same fashion anyway?
I dunno. We have a now one-year-old shitzu that we named the same as our previous shitzu that died 10 years ago. There's a bit of physical resemblance between the two in their coloring, but mostly it's just easier for a pre-senile old goat like myself to remember the same old names.
By the way, I wanted to thank you for listing the strong points of Forte...
Great point -- RNA transcription is already done in crime labs around the country (it's how they duplicate enough biological evidence to have enough DNA to test.)
Simply collect a sample from whatever poor schmuck you want to frame (hair, spit, blood, mucous, whatever), spray a squirt bottle full of his DNA all over a black leather glove cleverly left behind at the scene, then just add Ito.
It's weird that people have become so "undisciplined" that they can't accept death at the end of life. It lives, it breathes, it loves, but eventually it dies. All pets do, all people do. Does it hurt? Of course it does, I've cried so hard at the loss of a pet that I thought I'd never want another out of fear of the pain of the loss in the future. But it hasn't stopped me from getting other pets.
Anyway, this is still a clone -- it's a different "instance" of the original animal (even if it's made via a copy constructor.) It won't have "genetic memory" of its new owner, it will be a completely different pet. Why spend $50,000? Why not spend $100 at the pound, or a few hundred from a quality breeder, or even a "FREE KITTYS" from a farm?
I see this as only catering to the clinically insane. The rich, clinically insane, but insane nonetheless. Oh, well, I suppose if there's cash to be made, why not make it?...
While I was still young and naive, I would have believed you. Even now, I want to agree completely with you that IBM values their reputation more than the almighty buck.
But businesses are run for money and by money. I've seen outrageous things take place in the name of money, where reviews are driven by cost-avoidance above all else. Remember, managerial jobs are not measured by customer satisfaction: They are measured by budgetary acumen. Picture this mythical performance review: "You pissed off 100 customers who have sworn blood oaths that they'll never return to your store, and who have pledged their childrens' children will never see the inside of your buildings in their lifetime? Hey, you did it within budget! Congratulations, here's your bonus."
It may not be that bad, but you need to understand that IBM has no doubt carefully measured the cost of the lawsuit versus the cost of settling. If they thought a settlement wouldn't damage them too badly (by whatever yardstick they use to measure damage,) I think they probably would have.
I'd like to believe that IBM has enough upper management who still have the longevity to understand reputation capital, and who will Do The Right Thing. They certainly used to, because they leveraged it so successfully in the opposite direction for so many years. After all, IBM elevated the practice of FUD to an art form in the 1960, and the carrot to FUD's stick is reputation. But the bottom line is always a consideration in business -- Right Thing or not.
Slashdot readers have long had a "thing" for SCO because of this ongoing lawsuit that has indeed effected not only the industry but threatened the validity of the GPL, among many other sacred cows.
If you have a thing for companies circling the drain, check out these guys." They have neither mercy nor shame (nor literate comment posters as far as I can tell.) Consider them the vultures looking for corpses in the desert.
Why does anyone ever settle? Money. Even when companies are totally in the right, they'll frequently settle simply because it's cheaper than winning a legal battle, especially one where the loser is not likely to have any assets after the battle.
IBM probably considers settling every day. I imagine they're weighing their current legal expenses against whatever settlement offers they've imagined SCO might extend (or may have already extended.) IBM is almost certainly tabluating all their legal expenses up in a countersuit that's going to get slapped onto SCO once this is all done. However, given SCO's current inability to make money via their historic path of license extortion, I'm betting that there won't be enough of SCO left to sue when it's all said and done. That's why IBM might consider settling -- to put a cap on their losses.
They'll probably never settle, but according to their shareholder statement on November 4th they placed a $31 million dollar cap on their legal fees. That means there is an end in sight, either through settlement (or more likely another summary judgement against them.) It also means the end might come really quickly -- just ask IBM how long it takes a pack of rabid IP lawyers to devour $31 million:-)
I suppose $31 million dollars just doesn't go as far as it used to...
He can get on any plane he wants to. Who's going to stop MechaCarlos? Puny airport security guards? Bah! They are but the buzzing of flies to MechaCarlos!
Now, you get the TSA to hire Gundam, then we'll have security.
I wasn't particularily interested in the camera / Java aspects of owning a phone, but I was insistent that I get Bluetooth on it so I could use it as a network gateway. I already owned a Tungsten T, so I had all the handheld computing power I needed in a comfortable form factor.
Unfortunately, Bluetooth was only an option on multi-function phones. I ended up getting an S-E T637, which includes a camera, Java, etc. At least the phone's form factor is still small enough that it's not uncomfortable to wear.
I use SMS messaging frequently. I've played a little bit with the camera, and given it a few MIDI files for ringtones, but haven't used the games or other features much. I've never used the calendar, timer or calculator, for example (didn't really know or care if it had those things.) I do find that I use the WAP browser fairly frequently, but mostly for quick checks to my weather station. For any "real" portable browsing, I pull out the Tungsten. Basically, I would have been much happier with a quad-band that included Bluetooth but omitted the camera and the power-sucking color screen.
Different form factors for different jobs. A phone needs to be "phone-sized", and that requirement is completely different for a palmtop computer, which needs to be be "palm-sized." I used to think I wanted both in one device, but a phone makes a tiny, lousy palmtop, and a palmtop makes a huge, clunky phone. I carry both.
I personally think DRM is already this bad, and the particular example the author of the original article mentions is good corroboration.
By themseleves, we geeks will never be listened to by the record companies. Even if we all ditched purchasing DVDs and non-CD-discs en masse, and each and every one of us wrote a coherent letter of complaint, signed and notarized and delivered via registered mail, their bottom lines still wouldn't be affected by any statistically significant amout that they couldn't already use as a "write off to losses due to piracy."
However, when it finally hits Tanya Teenager that "y'know, these Britney discs never work" and she begins complaining to Walm*rt, that's when the backlash will finally have gained momentum to the point where the xxAA will be forced to revisit their mechanisms. At first, their changes are likely to be "let's patch the Britney discs so this one bug doesn't bite us, but we gotta keep DRM in place!" But once it's taken notice by the absolute lowest common denominator, that's when everyone will take interest -- news media, congress, etc. It's just a long road ahead before the bandwagon ever gains that much momentum.
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Then the snow stopped getting plowed. Nothing like incentive.
The seven of us homeowners purchased the lot for back taxes, and then we paid for snow plowing, garbage collection, insurance, maintenance and property taxes out of the dues we collect. We were able to strike a multi-family deal with a garbage hauler so that we actually pay less in dues for all of the above services than we did for single family garbage collection! Also, we haven't raised dues once in the 11 years since we formed the association.
When I wrote the association by-laws, I purposely omitted everything related to exterior appearance or maintenance. Sure, I wish the guy across the street would mow his lawn more often, but BFD. It sure beats having a committee decide on your house color, or painting your house then billing you.
Most of the traffic analysis stuff mentioned above is already being done at the loyalty card level. Your purchase history is already tied to your merchandise, and those items are already being bundled together for market research. Tracking individual serial numbered items is simply a matter of adding a column to an already very large database. And believe it or not, It seems far too unreliable to be useful as described doesn't matter. Even "mostly reliable" is good enough for marketing purposes. So what if we mistakenly send out coupons for diapers to a childless 70-year-old bachelor? Most of those coupons will end up in the hands of parents, and do their jobs.
And for the most part, traffic analysis is "unobtrusive". How many customers question why they received a coupon for discounted diapers? Do any of them give a thought as to how it was possible for the store to know they needed diapers? The vast majority of people will say "who cares, as long as I get 10% off diapers!" Also witness the success of loyalty card discount programs at places like Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and almost every low-end supermarket chain. And Barnes & Noble and Best Buy both make customers PAY to join their loyalty programs! There just isn't likely to be enough backlash to cause a problem.
I think it *is* safe to assume that they'll avoid anything that would raise a really big stink.
Sorry, that one's completely off the mark. Look at Target. They kicked the Salvation Army bell ringers out from in front of their stores. Cutting a popular charity off at the knees at Christmas hardly seems like a "positive PR strategy" yet the third biggest retailer in the nation did it anyway. National backlash? Target's same store sales for December are up 3-5%. Ordinary people don't care about corporate behavior. Privacy wonks like Katherine Albright who do care about stuff like this are typically spun to the media as 'kooks'. For evidence of this spinning 'plot', see this article.
Furthermore, privacy protection is also not as easy to implement as you seem to imply. Just because my stores promise not to track your personal info doesn't mean X-mart will respect that promise. And if my tags can be read at an X-mart, well, there you go. As for the AutoID industry, they're recommending "spin control" rather than "technology control." AutoID magazine had an article on how to "sell" RFID to your customers. Industry is pushing hard to get RFID out there for all the non-privacy reasons.
law enforcement applications -- well, I'm all for that.
So, do you also think that the MPAA should be able to backtrack a ripped DVD to a specific original purchaser? (If so, you're braver than I am, that's kind of an unpopular viewpoint on slashdot these days.) Anyway, unique item tagging makes it possible. Ordinary screened non-unique barcodes don't.
Whether you agree or not with tracking people to this level, RFID provides the tools to enable a surveillance state.
Only if you require everything to be tagged, and make it illegal to remove or deactivate the tags.
No law against deactivating or removing tags needs to exist. Most criminals we apprehend are actually far too stupid to cover tracks like that. TV cop show criminals are just as made-for-TV as the TV cops themselves. Most real world crooks are exceedingly stupid.
Before it gets unleashed on an unprepared public, there are serious questions we need to answer, like "how much are we willing to let oursel
Also, this Wired article mentions "Although Metro told activists the chips worked only while customers were inside the store, activists discovered that a kiosk used to deactivate the chips didn't completely disable the tags."
Katherine Albrecht of CASPIAN fame has also mentioned that three out of four articles she microwaved in order to destroy their tag caused the articles to catch fire.
However, RFID tags are a different animal completely. They are made to operate at a distance that allows door security readers to function.
First, whatever makes you think retailers want to deactivate the chips at the point of sale? If the chip remains active, it will make processing returns without receipts easy and precise. They will be able to handle dispositions easily (mark this exact item in the database as "defective" and it won't get put back on the floor.) Receiptless returns won't matter. And there will be no arguments about the price paid, whether it was bought on clearance or sale or if the customer paid full retail.
Other advantages include consumer recalls that will be targeted only to the exact merchandise that is being recalled. For example, if the space heaters produced by Chou-Huan factory on 9/17/2004 were made with defective cords, the exact items that have the defective cords can be identifed at retail. Any that are on the shelves can be "blocked" from being sold. And ordinary RFID will allow the retailer to send notices to the customers who paid via credit card or were a part of a promotional program. But if the RFID tags are intact, when any concerned consumer brings the merchandise back to the store they can be read and determined if they're a part of the recall or not.
Sorry I used such silly examples before. My biggest concern is that of privacy, and I was trying to make the point that people could theoretically abuse this technology and data in completely unforseen ways. It's most likely to be (ab)used by retail stores for marketing purposes.
And whether or not an individual RFID tag indicates a manufacturer, product family, or retailer, active tags can always be used and reused in interesting ways via traffic analysis. Retailers may or may not be able to identify "this guest is swillden" when you walk in the door, but they will probably be able to link "Nike shoes tag#5555 and #5556(left and right) bought by swillden on 11/14/2003", "North Face jacket tag #9999 bought by swillden on 9/15/2004", "T-shirt tag #2222 bought by Mrs.Swillden on 6/20/2004", "unknown tag #1234, associating with swillden and Mrs.Swillden on 12/27/2004". Now, that unknown tag might be a pair of underwear bought at Walmart, or it might be a Swiss army knife bought at REI. Doesn't matter, now it's associated with swillden.
What if it was a Swiss Army Knife bought at REI the same time as a hunting rifle that's now in an evidence locker as a part of a homicide investigation? Will the police issue an APB to retailers to be on the lookout for "Swiss Army Knife tag #1234, purchased the same time as murder weapon A"? Is that an appropriate use of police powers, or of retailers resources? Murder is pretty easy. But now replace "purchased with murder weapon" with "purchased with drug paraphenalia," or "purchased with illegally downloaded music." Or, how about "purchased immediately after transaction selling box cutters to Mohammed Atta?"
Whether you agree or not with tracking people to this level, RFID provides the tools to enable a surveillance state. Before it gets unleashed on an unprepared public, there are serious questions we need to answer, like "how much are we willing to let ourselves be tagged and tracked?"
If you were to "prioritize" all of law enforcement based on the severity of crime, every cop on the street would be fixated on catching every murderer. Once the murderers were all behind bars, the cops would all swoop en masse down on child molesters. Then, once every molester was in prison, they'd focus on rapists, etc. Burglars would never get noticed, and petty street crime like purse snatching, etc, would run rampant.
Obviously, that's silly. Cops spread themselves around, doing the best they can. So, what kinds of priorities do they use? They pick the so-called "low-hanging fruit" when the opportunity arises. Solve the easy cases, lock up as many bad guys as you can. It's kind of based on the idea that if you jail enough petty bad guys they won't have the chance to be really bad guys.
Now throw intellectual property laws into this mix. Hollyweird has managed to purchase enough congresspeople to convince them to consider copyright infringment "theft". Whether you agree that copyright infringment is theft or not, the cops are bound to the laws of the land, not what makes sense to you or I. So, if the RIAA does the work, cracks a case, chases down a "ringleader", sticks a mythical $200,000 price on his misdeeds and presents him to the FBI all tied up in a bow, yeah, they're going to take him in.
If you want to do something about it, send your outrage to your congressperson.
I have no problem with retailers wanting to use RFID for the prepurchase handling of their merchandise. But I have a huge problem with the tags remaining live after purchase for privacy reasons. As a human being (without having yet evolved an RFID reader) I have no way to confirm if Walmart is actually destroying the tags at purchase, or if they're just marking them as "paid."
As for the shielded wallet, well, that's one step too close to tinfoil beanies for me. :-)
One of the great promises of RFID is that the entire manufacturing and distribution chain will benefit from the single placement of one tag. The idea is the manufacturer will embed the tag right into the sole of the Nike shoes during the injection molding process. Then, the manufacturer can track the shoes through their factory, ensuring that each box contains a matching set of left and right size 11-D Nike Air TraxWalxers Runnerx X-trainerx Jordanx. The shipping company can check the manifest by scanning the containers. The trucking company can check the cargo with a scanner. The store can receive the crate from the trucker and verify that their Nikes are exactly as ordered.
Walmart's benefit is the stores won't have to pay a clerk to stick these tags on in the back room. They won't have to stick barcode labels on the products. They won't have to stick extra RF security tags on the products. They won't accidentally sell me a box with two left shoes in it (and they won't have to teach their cashiers the difference between left and right.) And they'll supposedly have quicker checkout lines by reducing scan time.
By the same token, if the chip is molded in the sole, I can't cut it out.
Ultimately they want these chips in every single product sold. Hitachi's waterproof chip is actually 1/3 the size of a grain of rice, and is intended to be permanently sewn into the waistband of a pair of women's panties. Do you want to go through all your products after you get home, hunting for tiny bumps like a dog checking for fleas?
RFID reading is secret -- nobody needs to ask your permission to scan you. (Barcodes require you to expose them to the reader.)
There are also other privacy related reasons you might not want RFID tags in your clothing. What if you walked into a fancy restaurant and they scanned you on the way in, realized you had on Walmart underwear, and refused to serve you? "Excuse me, sir, but we don't serve your kind here. You can play dress-up in an Armani suit, but we know who you really are." Or, would you want that restaurant to throw you out before they seated you because they saw your Visa cards were maxed out? "Hey, I was just here to meet a friend!" "Sorry, sir; may I suggest you meet him at McDonalds instead?"
Trust me, this guy's true overclock mod looks much much easier. Jamming that CD-ROM drive under the cartrige cover looks tough.
Always worked.
I seriously think most of the corrosion these carts suffered from was caused by excessive humidity due to all the spitting and hot breath. The kids who spit on them all the time were doing it out of habit, not because of a real reason.
On a different day we went to Inverness (tourists that we were, we had to see the loch) and we returned via Aberdeen and Dundee to visit with some people. I'm afraid I simply don't remember anything about Aberdeen.
"The Highlands looked pretty lonely," he said sheepishly.
The other thing is if environment plays a large part in the behavioral patterns of the animals (as your own personal evidence suggests,) then why spend this kind of money when you're likely to bring them up in the same fashion anyway?
I dunno. We have a now one-year-old shitzu that we named the same as our previous shitzu that died 10 years ago. There's a bit of physical resemblance between the two in their coloring, but mostly it's just easier for a pre-senile old goat like myself to remember the same old names.
By the way, I wanted to thank you for listing the strong points of Forte ...
[ /me ducks and covers!!! :-) ]
Now, if you properly cleaned up memory and specifically didn't memcpy() it in the copy constructor, that'd be closer.
BTW, why do you have to PutToSleep(myCat) if it's already dead?
Simply collect a sample from whatever poor schmuck you want to frame (hair, spit, blood, mucous, whatever), spray a squirt bottle full of his DNA all over a black leather glove cleverly left behind at the scene, then just add Ito.
Why do you think the first thing the Scottish scientist cloned was a sheep?
A girrrrllllll sheep...
This is going to be the best prom EVER!
Anyway, this is still a clone -- it's a different "instance" of the original animal (even if it's made via a copy constructor.) It won't have "genetic memory" of its new owner, it will be a completely different pet. Why spend $50,000? Why not spend $100 at the pound, or a few hundred from a quality breeder, or even a "FREE KITTYS" from a farm?
I see this as only catering to the clinically insane. The rich, clinically insane, but insane nonetheless. Oh, well, I suppose if there's cash to be made, why not make it? ...
But businesses are run for money and by money. I've seen outrageous things take place in the name of money, where reviews are driven by cost-avoidance above all else. Remember, managerial jobs are not measured by customer satisfaction: They are measured by budgetary acumen. Picture this mythical performance review: "You pissed off 100 customers who have sworn blood oaths that they'll never return to your store, and who have pledged their childrens' children will never see the inside of your buildings in their lifetime? Hey, you did it within budget! Congratulations, here's your bonus."
It may not be that bad, but you need to understand that IBM has no doubt carefully measured the cost of the lawsuit versus the cost of settling. If they thought a settlement wouldn't damage them too badly (by whatever yardstick they use to measure damage,) I think they probably would have.
I'd like to believe that IBM has enough upper management who still have the longevity to understand reputation capital, and who will Do The Right Thing. They certainly used to, because they leveraged it so successfully in the opposite direction for so many years. After all, IBM elevated the practice of FUD to an art form in the 1960, and the carrot to FUD's stick is reputation. But the bottom line is always a consideration in business -- Right Thing or not.
If you have a thing for companies circling the drain, check out these guys." They have neither mercy nor shame (nor literate comment posters as far as I can tell.) Consider them the vultures looking for corpses in the desert.
IBM probably considers settling every day. I imagine they're weighing their current legal expenses against whatever settlement offers they've imagined SCO might extend (or may have already extended.) IBM is almost certainly tabluating all their legal expenses up in a countersuit that's going to get slapped onto SCO once this is all done. However, given SCO's current inability to make money via their historic path of license extortion, I'm betting that there won't be enough of SCO left to sue when it's all said and done. That's why IBM might consider settling -- to put a cap on their losses.
I suppose $31 million dollars just doesn't go as far as it used to ...
It could only be better if it happened In Soviet Russia!
Now, you get the TSA to hire Gundam, then we'll have security.
Y'know, it occurs to me that this is someone you don't want to piss off with a slashdotting. He's developing the perfect retaliation suit!
Unfortunately, Bluetooth was only an option on multi-function phones. I ended up getting an S-E T637, which includes a camera, Java, etc. At least the phone's form factor is still small enough that it's not uncomfortable to wear.
I use SMS messaging frequently. I've played a little bit with the camera, and given it a few MIDI files for ringtones, but haven't used the games or other features much. I've never used the calendar, timer or calculator, for example (didn't really know or care if it had those things.) I do find that I use the WAP browser fairly frequently, but mostly for quick checks to my weather station. For any "real" portable browsing, I pull out the Tungsten. Basically, I would have been much happier with a quad-band that included Bluetooth but omitted the camera and the power-sucking color screen.
Different form factors for different jobs. A phone needs to be "phone-sized", and that requirement is completely different for a palmtop computer, which needs to be be "palm-sized." I used to think I wanted both in one device, but a phone makes a tiny, lousy palmtop, and a palmtop makes a huge, clunky phone. I carry both.
By themseleves, we geeks will never be listened to by the record companies. Even if we all ditched purchasing DVDs and non-CD-discs en masse, and each and every one of us wrote a coherent letter of complaint, signed and notarized and delivered via registered mail, their bottom lines still wouldn't be affected by any statistically significant amout that they couldn't already use as a "write off to losses due to piracy."
However, when it finally hits Tanya Teenager that "y'know, these Britney discs never work" and she begins complaining to Walm*rt, that's when the backlash will finally have gained momentum to the point where the xxAA will be forced to revisit their mechanisms. At first, their changes are likely to be "let's patch the Britney discs so this one bug doesn't bite us, but we gotta keep DRM in place!" But once it's taken notice by the absolute lowest common denominator, that's when everyone will take interest -- news media, congress, etc. It's just a long road ahead before the bandwagon ever gains that much momentum.