and the patents in question should all be invalidated by prior art — even, in some cases, by previous Honeywell patents Nest claims the company hid from the Patent Office.
How did Honeywell hide previous patents that are, by the very nature of patents, publicly available? If they are expired patents that are relevant in proving prior art, Nest themselves should have found the patents in their own prior-art search. It's clear from the many patents that have been issued despite clear prior art that the patent office themselves does not do a sufficient job of searching for prior art.
While I do think that Honeywell is trying to shut out the competition, if they have a patent covering the technology that Nest is using, that's well within their rights. And since Honeywell does sell programmable thermostats, I think what they are doing is far less insidious than patent trolls that gather patent portfolios and using them to extract money from companies even though the troll has no intention of ever producing a product that uses the patent.
What part of NYC? A lot of difference between the Village, the Upper East and West Sides, Washington Heights, different parts of Brooklyn, etc.
Then just give a few representative prices.
A 3 bedroom 1200 ft^2 apartment in San Francisco is way out of my price range. You can get a decent 2 bedroom 900 ft^2 apartment for $2200 - $2700/month.
If you want a luxury apartment in a new building, then you can spend $3000 - $5000 (or more)
And the more bigger, heavier SUV's, the quicker the roads wear out... same with them hybrids, they're a few hundred kilograms heavier than a similar sized non-hybrid car.
Toyota Yaris - 2295 lbs - 153 inches long Toyota Corolla - 2800 lbs - 179 inches Toyota Prius - 3042 lbs - 175 inches Toyota Camry - 3190 lbs - 189 inches Toyota RAV4 SUV - 3360 lbs - 181 inches Toyota Sequoia SUV - 5670 lbs - 205 inches
So the Prius is closest to the Corolla in size, and weighs only about 110 kg more. It's lighter than the Camry and around half the weight of the Sequoia. It's only 2 inches shorter than the RAV4, but the Prius is 140 kg *lighter*. (sorry for mixing metric and non-metric units, but the poster was talking about kg, but Toyota uses lbs and inches when they publish specs)
Perhaps you meant a full electric car...the Nissan Leaf is 175 inches long and weights 3300 lbs, or about 220kg heavier than the similarly sized Corolla.
Just try out the app and if you like it, then go on Facebook and "Like" it.
If you don't like it, then start looking for a job, why would you want to keep working at a company that produces apps that even its own employees don't like?
Returns Tracking When you return or exchange an item in store, we require a valid photo ID. Some of the information from your ID may be stored in a secure database used to track returns and exchanges. Based on return/exchange patterns, some customers will be warned that subsequent purchases will not be eligible for returns or exchanges for 90 days. Customers who are warned or have been denied an exchange/return may request a copy of their Return Activity Report by calling 1-800-652-2331 or by mail at P.O. Box 51373, Irvine, CA 92619-1373. Please be prepared to provide your transaction ID, ID number, full name, address and phone number.
Valid forms of ID accepted are: US, Canadian or Mexican Driver's License, US State ID, Canadian Province ID, Matricula Consular, US Military ID, Passport, US Laser Visa, or US Permanent Resident Card.
It sounds like only certain customers will be subject to the 90 day policy, depending on their return history.
I use a small clip on light on my Kindle, but there's still significant spillover to the wall when I'm laying down with the Kindle - my partner gets to watch the shadow of my kindle playing on the wall or ceiling while she tries to sleep. That's with the light on "low" setting, *and* a small piece of kleenex taped to the light head to diffuse and reduce it - the stock light is even brighter with more spilover. When I roll over to my side, the light slides so I need to re-position it, which takes some doing to keep from seeing a hotspot of glare from the light on the screen.
It would be so much nicer if the light was built-in and was always positioned perfectly with no glare and no excess light shining on the wall.
I just hope it's dimmable nearly all the way to zero - neither my Android phone nor my Nook dim far enough for me in a pitch-dark room.
Aside from clearly marking ads, how about using a professional production team, script, and editing for these infomercials? I've been in more than one promo video, and they've all been shot with a team of at least 6 people - there was the presenter, a cameraman, soundman, makeup artist, light man and one or two other people (producers?). It was a question/answer session and the presenter had his part completely scripted. They shot about 5 times more video than they used (60 minutes of taping for 10 minutes of final product).
If you don't use a professional team, you end up with that Polycom video. I can't believe their PR department even approved it.
Of course, the occasional unscripted video when you've caught an engineer at a conference talking about some interesting new product is fine, as long as there is actual, interesting content. But if you're going to let a PR person talk about fluff, at least make it look professional.
I have to take a Windows laptop home so I can use a VPN to start a putty session to log into a terminal to do unix system maintenance instead of just ssh'ing from my home linux box (yes , I know I can put VPN on linux but its hassle).
When I've asked why they can't just have an open ssh port they start waffling about security. I'm sorry , since when are VPNs more secure than ssh? Never, thats when. I'm sick and tired of know-nothing Windows admins running IT infrastructure.
Sounds like IT supports a VPN server for all of its corporate users. One of them (you) says that a VPN is too hard for him to set up, so you want IT to set up a dedicated machine just for you that runs SSH and provides access into the secure network. And they have to keep that machine patched and updated. And integrate it with their IDS. And configure it to authenticate against Active Directory. Can they use access lists on this SSH server to restrict what resources different groups of VPN users can access (i.e. a user from accounting might only be able to reach the web interface on their financial reporting server, while an IT user might have more access to the network)?
I'm sorry , since when are VPNs more secure than ssh?
Every port opened to the world adds risk, so the fewer services that are exposed to the outside world, the lower the risk. If there's a one in a million chance of a critcal vulnerability in the VPN and SSH server, if I publish both services, then suddenly I have a 2 in a million chance of a critcal vulnerability being exposed to the world -- it's always better to limit risk by reducing services exposed to the world.
I'm sick and tired of know-nothing Windows admins running IT infrastructure
IT Admins are sick and tired of know-it-all Linux users that don't understand everything that we are mandated to do behind the scenes to meet various regulatory requirements in providing a secure network.
I agree this is pretty blatant. But what can we do about it? Slashdot is owned by thinkgeek which trades on nasdaq. That means they eventually have to answer to shareholders who care about one thing. Like it or not, advertising makes the internet go round (although how this is economically sustainable, I have absolutely no idea). Is there some way we can avoid it? There are several million UIDs now. If everyone bought a few shares, slashdot users could dominate think geek's $95mil market capital. Would that even do anything? Is that better than a subscription model? In the end the guys running the servers gotta get their hot pockets from somewhere...
Well I suppose that trying to buy up a controlling interest in Slashdot's parent company and then pressuring the board to stop hiding blatant ads as stories on is one option, the option I'll take is to just stop reading Slashdot if these ads keep up.
It's not like I can't find many many other ways to waste time online.
WTF? This isn't even a thinly veiled slashvertisement, it's a full-on ad. I can't wait for the "Watch this 30 second advertisement before Slashdot will load" ads to come.
"Why do people keep arguing 'My commute is not well suited for an electric car, so electric cars are a waste of money'."
That's not what he said. Why don't you save your pointless rant for someone who expresses that opinion?
If that's not what he said, then what did he mean by this:
Since electric cars are still more than $20,000 more than conventional vehicles, plus you are asking tax payers, many who make less money than you to subsidize an additional $10,000 or more of your auto purchase. that does not seem like much of a bargain to me. Batteries have to be replaced every 5 years. You are not really doing this to save money.
I thought he was using his sister's commute to show that electric cars are a waste of taxpayer money.
Is it any easier to transport hydrogen from where the sun shines to where it's needed as fuel as compared to electricity? It seems that the energy needed for compression and leakage from storage tanks, fittings, and transmission lines would result in significant energy losses. Plus a 200 mile hydrogen pipeline from the sunny desert to a populated area seems prohibitively more expensive than a power line.
Is this hydrogen plant really any better than just creating electricity? Granted, electricity can be hard to store in large quantities, but storing hydrogen is not cheap or easy.
Why does everyone feel the need to evaluate an eelctric car on price alone? People buy cars on more than price or everyone would be driving a Yugo - things like style, performance, image, and yes, even gas mileage all factor into it.
Spacious interior; plentiful standard features; good power and fuel economy from the turbocharged V6.
Lackluster base V6; strange combination of soggy handling and firm ride; mediocre interior materials; overpriced for what you get.
If someone is willing to spend $40K for a car and likes the added independence from the gas station the Volt provides, why is the Volt a worse purchase than say, a Lincoln?
My commute is too short to make any electric or hybrid car worthwhile (since I usually commute by bike), Instead of putting money into a car, I'll put it into a solar system for home, so when I do need to make a car purchase, I can power it myself. Should cost around $33K ($23K with tax incentives) to put up a system to provide 600KWh/month to power my home and car. (the Nissan Leaf gets around 3 miles/kwh so 150Kwh would power a 20 mile/day commute)
Why do people keep arguing "My commute is not well suited for an electric car, so electric cars are a waste of money".
Since your sister's round trip commute far exceeds the range of any current electric car (unless she has a charge station at work), she's better off with a hybrid, since even if she bought a Volt, it would be acting as a gas-electric hybrid for most of her commute.
The Prius is reported to get around 50mpg on the highway (consumer reports' milage in their highway test was 55mpg).
So, using 50mpg and assuming she only drives 60 miles each way to work 3 times each week, your sister's monthly gas bill at $5/gal would be:
You didn't mention what car she drives currently. If it's got a $10,000 trade-in value, and if she qualifies for 4% financing, her monthly payment on a $23,000 Prius (price ignores tax+title fees) would be around $238/month so the car would effectively be free after the fuel savings. If her current car is older and has only $5000 trade-in value, then her payment would be around $330 so she'd be paying $100/month after the fuel savings (which may still be a good deal to get a nice new car for only $100/month)
How about countries where age of consent is 12 and 13? (There are a number of them and America was one as recently as the past decade or so -- when Delaware and New Mexico had consent ages of 12 years old - yeah, you read that gross shit right. 12.)
Given that this case is about a current case in the USA, and no state currently has the age of consent lower than 16, then I really don't think it's relevant. And even when the age of consent is 16, I believe it's still classified as child porn if the subject is younger than 18 - a child under 18 may still be legally able to consent to having sex (perhaps subject to age restrictions for his/her partner), but not consent to being photographed and published.
Child porn is judged by the laws that govern the land in which it's possessed, not where the photos were taken. Otherwise that opens a huge loophole where some crazed dictator could lower the age of consent to zero in his land and make a fortune as a child porn king.
I'm not going to pay $4 - $5 to rent a movie from Google for 48 hours when for $12/month I can have 2 DVD's at a time from Netflix. Their turnaround time is so fast that I can easily get 8 movies in a month. And if I wanted to be less ethical, I could rip them to a hard drive to watch at my leisure. Netflix thought they could coerce me to move entirely to streaming, but their streaming catalog seems to keep getting smaller, so I stlil rely on DVDs.
If movie rentals were $1 - $2 then I might consider it, but why can Redbox rent me a physical disk for less than the studios want for a digital download?
You may just be trolling, but if not, get your head out your ass and realise that kids start school at different ages in different countries.
Does the exact age really matter? Age 5 to 12, 3 to 13, 2 to 11, it's all about the same. Is there any country where it would make a significant difference in the context of this article?
...but then I realized the article itself was a factor of 3 off on the number of Instagram users.
From Instagram's own press release today, they have over 30 million users on their service, not 10 million. The citation for the 10 million number the article uses is an Instagram blog post from 6 months ago. Lazy journalism if they can't even take the time to read the press release for the topic they're writing about.
That's ok since the numbers of active users published by any company are already inflated (by a factor of 10?) so being off by a factor of 3 doesn't mean much.
There once was a time when a news source was being lazy when they only reported on what was in the press release, I guess we've sunk even farther when now a journalist is lazy because they didn't even read the press release. I guess eventually we'll reach the point where news articles will read "Something happened today, go google it yourself"
You're making the wild assumption that every school and board will get together, manage to squeeze a buck or two out of their local taxes, and agree upon a single organization to develop and provide the system. That's even before the cost of hardware and infrastructure-- affluent school boards aren't exactly leaping at the opportunity to help schools that can't afford to supply paper and pencils, let alone computer labs.
There is no hardware or infrastructure - this type of system is best left as a SaaS system since (most) schools don't have the manpower or infrastructure to support it.
If it's inexpensive enough and saves time for teachers, it's a net win for the school district. Or they can sell subscriptions to parents for $5/year.
I never thought a school would develop this themselves, I figured an enterprising software developer would do it.
This question fundamentally underestimates the incredible effort and expense required to develop, operate and maintain modern social networking and communication systems.
Schools don't need to develop and run it themselves - there are 49M students in the USA, a dollar or two per student per year could easily pay for the system.
"signature of a parent (field trip authorization, etc.) it will have to be paper anyway."
No, there are many ways to electronically sign things. The point of a sig. is not that they can trace the ink back to your pen but that the design is not easy to copy.
How do you positively validate the identity of a parent in a household where the student is the most computer literate (and perhaps the only English speaker), thus responds to all of the parent's email? Give the parent a secureID dongle and hope they don't share the PIN with their much more computer savvy child?
Special treatment can be made for the few who cannot access the internet off of school grounds.
I am sure there are a few armless children who go to school as well. Should we ban all school work that requires writing or typing because of this minority?
If you have 2 systems, then you're doubling the workload of the teachers since now they have to manage notices using 2 systems. I don't know where you go to school, but in many public schools, there are more than just a "few" students who either can't afford home internet, or whose parents are not computer literate.
And just wait until the lawsuit comes claiming that the wealthy students are being given additional opportunities over the poor students - is it fair to relieve the wealthy student of the burden to take paperwork home to have it signed while requiring poor students to walk the paper home, get their parents to sign it, then make sure the teacher receives it?
The article says that one reason the ultimate goal of a 1MW laser is not feasible right now is because no ship can power it, and even a 100KW laser may stress the power systems on current ships.
However, you can fit 2MW worth of generating capacity in a single 48 foot 30 ton container (and I'm sure a 500' destroyer could find some place to stash this generator), so the power demands much be much greater than the delivered power of the laser suggests.
So, how much power does it take to drive a 1MW or 100KW laser?
Slashdot Mirror
TFA says:
and the patents in question should all be invalidated by prior art — even, in some cases, by previous Honeywell patents Nest claims the company hid from the Patent Office.
How did Honeywell hide previous patents that are, by the very nature of patents, publicly available? If they are expired patents that are relevant in proving prior art, Nest themselves should have found the patents in their own prior-art search. It's clear from the many patents that have been issued despite clear prior art that the patent office themselves does not do a sufficient job of searching for prior art.
While I do think that Honeywell is trying to shut out the competition, if they have a patent covering the technology that Nest is using, that's well within their rights. And since Honeywell does sell programmable thermostats, I think what they are doing is far less insidious than patent trolls that gather patent portfolios and using them to extract money from companies even though the troll has no intention of ever producing a product that uses the patent.
What part of NYC? A lot of difference between the Village, the Upper East and West Sides, Washington Heights, different parts of Brooklyn, etc.
Then just give a few representative prices.
A 3 bedroom 1200 ft^2 apartment in San Francisco is way out of my price range. You can get a decent 2 bedroom 900 ft^2 apartment for $2200 - $2700/month.
If you want a luxury apartment in a new building, then you can spend $3000 - $5000 (or more)
And the more bigger, heavier SUV's, the quicker the roads wear out... same with them hybrids, they're a few hundred kilograms heavier than a similar sized non-hybrid car.
Toyota Yaris - 2295 lbs - 153 inches long
Toyota Corolla - 2800 lbs - 179 inches
Toyota Prius - 3042 lbs - 175 inches
Toyota Camry - 3190 lbs - 189 inches
Toyota RAV4 SUV - 3360 lbs - 181 inches
Toyota Sequoia SUV - 5670 lbs - 205 inches
So the Prius is closest to the Corolla in size, and weighs only about 110 kg more. It's lighter than the Camry and around half the weight of the Sequoia. It's only 2 inches shorter than the RAV4, but the Prius is 140 kg *lighter*. (sorry for mixing metric and non-metric units, but the poster was talking about kg, but Toyota uses lbs and inches when they publish specs)
Perhaps you meant a full electric car...the Nissan Leaf is 175 inches long and weights 3300 lbs, or about 220kg heavier than the similarly sized Corolla.
Just try out the app and if you like it, then go on Facebook and "Like" it.
If you don't like it, then start looking for a job, why would you want to keep working at a company that produces apps that even its own employees don't like?
Here's the returns policy found on their website:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Help-Topics/Returning-Online-Purchases/pcmcat260800050014.c?id=pcmcat260800050014
Returns Tracking
When you return or exchange an item in store, we require a valid photo ID. Some of the information from your ID may be stored in a secure database used to track returns and exchanges. Based on return/exchange patterns, some customers will be warned that subsequent purchases will not be eligible for returns or exchanges for 90 days. Customers who are warned or have been denied an exchange/return may request a copy of their Return Activity Report by calling 1-800-652-2331 or by mail at P.O. Box 51373, Irvine, CA 92619-1373. Please be prepared to provide your transaction ID, ID number, full name, address and phone number.
Valid forms of ID accepted are: US, Canadian or Mexican Driver's License, US State ID, Canadian Province ID, Matricula Consular, US Military ID, Passport, US Laser Visa, or US Permanent Resident Card.
It sounds like only certain customers will be subject to the 90 day policy, depending on their return history.
I use a small clip on light on my Kindle, but there's still significant spillover to the wall when I'm laying down with the Kindle - my partner gets to watch the shadow of my kindle playing on the wall or ceiling while she tries to sleep. That's with the light on "low" setting, *and* a small piece of kleenex taped to the light head to diffuse and reduce it - the stock light is even brighter with more spilover. When I roll over to my side, the light slides so I need to re-position it, which takes some doing to keep from seeing a hotspot of glare from the light on the screen.
It would be so much nicer if the light was built-in and was always positioned perfectly with no glare and no excess light shining on the wall.
I just hope it's dimmable nearly all the way to zero - neither my Android phone nor my Nook dim far enough for me in a pitch-dark room.
Aside from clearly marking ads, how about using a professional production team, script, and editing for these infomercials? I've been in more than one promo video, and they've all been shot with a team of at least 6 people - there was the presenter, a cameraman, soundman, makeup artist, light man and one or two other people (producers?). It was a question/answer session and the presenter had his part completely scripted. They shot about 5 times more video than they used (60 minutes of taping for 10 minutes of final product).
If you don't use a professional team, you end up with that Polycom video. I can't believe their PR department even approved it.
Of course, the occasional unscripted video when you've caught an engineer at a conference talking about some interesting new product is fine, as long as there is actual, interesting content. But if you're going to let a PR person talk about fluff, at least make it look professional.
I have to take a Windows laptop home so I can use a VPN to start a putty session to log into a terminal to do unix system maintenance instead of just ssh'ing from my home linux box (yes , I know I can put VPN on linux but its hassle).
When I've asked why they can't just have an open ssh port they start waffling about security. I'm sorry , since when are VPNs more secure than ssh? Never, thats when. I'm sick and tired of know-nothing Windows admins running IT infrastructure.
Sounds like IT supports a VPN server for all of its corporate users. One of them (you) says that a VPN is too hard for him to set up, so you want IT to set up a dedicated machine just for you that runs SSH and provides access into the secure network. And they have to keep that machine patched and updated. And integrate it with their IDS. And configure it to authenticate against Active Directory. Can they use access lists on this SSH server to restrict what resources different groups of VPN users can access (i.e. a user from accounting might only be able to reach the web interface on their financial reporting server, while an IT user might have more access to the network)?
I'm sorry , since when are VPNs more secure than ssh?
Every port opened to the world adds risk, so the fewer services that are exposed to the outside world, the lower the risk. If there's a one in a million chance of a critcal vulnerability in the VPN and SSH server, if I publish both services, then suddenly I have a 2 in a million chance of a critcal vulnerability being exposed to the world -- it's always better to limit risk by reducing services exposed to the world.
I'm sick and tired of know-nothing Windows admins running IT infrastructure
IT Admins are sick and tired of know-it-all Linux users that don't understand everything that we are mandated to do behind the scenes to meet various regulatory requirements in providing a secure network.
I agree this is pretty blatant. But what can we do about it? Slashdot is owned by thinkgeek which trades on nasdaq. That means they eventually have to answer to shareholders who care about one thing. Like it or not, advertising makes the internet go round (although how this is economically sustainable, I have absolutely no idea). Is there some way we can avoid it? There are several million UIDs now. If everyone bought a few shares, slashdot users could dominate think geek's $95mil market capital. Would that even do anything? Is that better than a subscription model? In the end the guys running the servers gotta get their hot pockets from somewhere...
Well I suppose that trying to buy up a controlling interest in Slashdot's parent company and then pressuring the board to stop hiding blatant ads as stories on is one option, the option I'll take is to just stop reading Slashdot if these ads keep up.
It's not like I can't find many many other ways to waste time online.
WTF? This isn't even a thinly veiled slashvertisement, it's a full-on ad. I can't wait for the "Watch this 30 second advertisement before Slashdot will load" ads to come.
"Why do people keep arguing 'My commute is not well suited for an electric car, so electric cars are a waste of money'."
That's not what he said. Why don't you save your pointless rant for someone who expresses that opinion?
If that's not what he said, then what did he mean by this:
Since electric cars are still more than $20,000 more than conventional vehicles, plus you are asking tax payers, many who make less money than you to subsidize an additional $10,000 or more of your auto purchase. that does not seem like much of a bargain to me. Batteries have to be replaced every 5 years. You are not really doing this to save money.
I thought he was using his sister's commute to show that electric cars are a waste of taxpayer money.
Is it any easier to transport hydrogen from where the sun shines to where it's needed as fuel as compared to electricity? It seems that the energy needed for compression and leakage from storage tanks, fittings, and transmission lines would result in significant energy losses. Plus a 200 mile hydrogen pipeline from the sunny desert to a populated area seems prohibitively more expensive than a power line.
Is this hydrogen plant really any better than just creating electricity? Granted, electricity can be hard to store in large quantities, but storing hydrogen is not cheap or easy.
Why does everyone feel the need to evaluate an eelctric car on price alone? People buy cars on more than price or everyone would be driving a Yugo - things like style, performance, image, and yes, even gas mileage all factor into it.
Here's what Edmunds said about the Volt:
http://www.edmunds.com/chevrolet/volt/2011/?sub=hatchback
Pros
Low monthly fuel cost in normal driving; useful 300-mile maximum range; appealing standard features; high-tech cabin.
Cons
Questionable value; small backseat for two people only; touchy brakes; no power front seats; home charger is a necessity.
And here's what they said about the $41,000 17/24mpg Lincoln MKS:
http://www.edmunds.com/lincoln/mks/2012/?sub=sedan
Pros
Spacious interior; plentiful standard features; good power and fuel economy from the turbocharged V6.
Lackluster base V6; strange combination of soggy handling and firm ride; mediocre interior materials; overpriced for what you get.
If someone is willing to spend $40K for a car and likes the added independence from the gas station the Volt provides, why is the Volt a worse purchase than say, a Lincoln?
My commute is too short to make any electric or hybrid car worthwhile (since I usually commute by bike), Instead of putting money into a car, I'll put it into a solar system for home, so when I do need to make a car purchase, I can power it myself. Should cost around $33K ($23K with tax incentives) to put up a system to provide 600KWh/month to power my home and car. (the Nissan Leaf gets around 3 miles/kwh so 150Kwh would power a 20 mile/day commute)
Why do people keep arguing "My commute is not well suited for an electric car, so electric cars are a waste of money".
Since your sister's round trip commute far exceeds the range of any current electric car (unless she has a charge station at work), she's better off with a hybrid, since even if she bought a Volt, it would be acting as a gas-electric hybrid for most of her commute.
The Prius is reported to get around 50mpg on the highway (consumer reports' milage in their highway test was 55mpg).
So, using 50mpg and assuming she only drives 60 miles each way to work 3 times each week, your sister's monthly gas bill at $5/gal would be:
360 mi * (52 weeks/year) / (12 months/year) / (50 miles/gal) * (5 dollars/gallon) = $156
Versus 20mpg:
360 mi * (52 weeks/year) / (12 months/year) / (50 miles/gal) * (5 dollars/gallon) = $390
Or a net savings of $234/month
You didn't mention what car she drives currently. If it's got a $10,000 trade-in value, and if she qualifies for 4% financing, her monthly payment on a $23,000 Prius (price ignores tax+title fees) would be around $238/month so the car would effectively be free after the fuel savings. If her current car is older and has only $5000 trade-in value, then her payment would be around $330 so she'd be paying $100/month after the fuel savings (which may still be a good deal to get a nice new car for only $100/month)
How about countries where age of consent is 12 and 13? (There are a number of them and America was one as recently as the past decade or so -- when Delaware and New Mexico had consent ages of 12 years old - yeah, you read that gross shit right. 12.)
Given that this case is about a current case in the USA, and no state currently has the age of consent lower than 16, then I really don't think it's relevant. And even when the age of consent is 16, I believe it's still classified as child porn if the subject is younger than 18 - a child under 18 may still be legally able to consent to having sex (perhaps subject to age restrictions for his/her partner), but not consent to being photographed and published.
Child porn is judged by the laws that govern the land in which it's possessed, not where the photos were taken. Otherwise that opens a huge loophole where some crazed dictator could lower the age of consent to zero in his land and make a fortune as a child porn king.
I'm not going to pay $4 - $5 to rent a movie from Google for 48 hours when for $12/month I can have 2 DVD's at a time from Netflix. Their turnaround time is so fast that I can easily get 8 movies in a month. And if I wanted to be less ethical, I could rip them to a hard drive to watch at my leisure. Netflix thought they could coerce me to move entirely to streaming, but their streaming catalog seems to keep getting smaller, so I stlil rely on DVDs.
If movie rentals were $1 - $2 then I might consider it, but why can Redbox rent me a physical disk for less than the studios want for a digital download?
You may just be trolling, but if not, get your head out your ass and realise that kids start school at different ages in different countries.
Does the exact age really matter? Age 5 to 12, 3 to 13, 2 to 11, it's all about the same. Is there any country where it would make a significant difference in the context of this article?
...but then I realized the article itself was a factor of 3 off on the number of Instagram users.
From Instagram's own press release today, they have over 30 million users on their service, not 10 million. The citation for the 10 million number the article uses is an Instagram blog post from 6 months ago. Lazy journalism if they can't even take the time to read the press release for the topic they're writing about.
That's ok since the numbers of active users published by any company are already inflated (by a factor of 10?) so being off by a factor of 3 doesn't mean much.
There once was a time when a news source was being lazy when they only reported on what was in the press release, I guess we've sunk even farther when now a journalist is lazy because they didn't even read the press release. I guess eventually we'll reach the point where news articles will read "Something happened today, go google it yourself"
You're making the wild assumption that every school and board will get together, manage to squeeze a buck or two out of their local taxes, and agree upon a single organization to develop and provide the system. That's even before the cost of hardware and infrastructure-- affluent school boards aren't exactly leaping at the opportunity to help schools that can't afford to supply paper and pencils, let alone computer labs.
There is no hardware or infrastructure - this type of system is best left as a SaaS system since (most) schools don't have the manpower or infrastructure to support it.
If it's inexpensive enough and saves time for teachers, it's a net win for the school district. Or they can sell subscriptions to parents for $5/year.
I never thought a school would develop this themselves, I figured an enterprising software developer would do it.
This question fundamentally underestimates the incredible effort and expense required to develop, operate and maintain modern social networking and communication systems.
Schools don't need to develop and run it themselves - there are 49M students in the USA, a dollar or two per student per year could easily pay for the system.
"signature of a parent (field trip authorization, etc.) it will have to be paper anyway."
No, there are many ways to electronically sign things.
The point of a sig. is not that they can trace the ink back to your pen but that the design is not easy to copy.
How do you positively validate the identity of a parent in a household where the student is the most computer literate (and perhaps the only English speaker), thus responds to all of the parent's email? Give the parent a secureID dongle and hope they don't share the PIN with their much more computer savvy child?
Yes but they are the minority.
Special treatment can be made for the few who cannot access the internet off of school grounds.
I am sure there are a few armless children who go to school as well. Should we ban all school work that requires writing or typing because of this minority?
If you have 2 systems, then you're doubling the workload of the teachers since now they have to manage notices using 2 systems. I don't know where you go to school, but in many public schools, there are more than just a "few" students who either can't afford home internet, or whose parents are not computer literate.
And just wait until the lawsuit comes claiming that the wealthy students are being given additional opportunities over the poor students - is it fair to relieve the wealthy student of the burden to take paperwork home to have it signed while requiring poor students to walk the paper home, get their parents to sign it, then make sure the teacher receives it?
This isn't exactly a new idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#Relative_position_of_the_Sun_to_the_center_of_the_Galaxy_and_14_pulsars
The article says that one reason the ultimate goal of a 1MW laser is not feasible right now is because no ship can power it, and even a 100KW laser may stress the power systems on current ships.
However, you can fit 2MW worth of generating capacity in a single 48 foot 30 ton container (and I'm sure a 500' destroyer could find some place to stash this generator), so the power demands much be much greater than the delivered power of the laser suggests.
So, how much power does it take to drive a 1MW or 100KW laser?
. . . surgical help and no desire to stay alive for more than 12 hours . . .
There have been a number of stories about TSA getting very curious about fresh surgical scars.
I've never had to disrobe for a TSA scan, how would they even know I have a fresh sugical scar?