I tried a similar experiment in college. Wanted to see how long I could go without any sleep whatsoever. Well, it was exams week and I had four tough classes, so that contributed to the urgency of the experiment. I've never needed a LOT of sleep anyway, so I wanted to see how long I could sustain a constant waking state.
Anyway, what I discovered at the time was that I could function pretty well for about 5 days with no sleep. As long as I got plenty of water and ate well (healthy foods, no "quick burn" sugars, etc), I felt reasonably functional. Easily functional enough to do well on my exams and manage the 1/2 hour drive back and forth between school and work. If I ate sugary crap or had even a little caffeine, it helped in the short term but the sugar crash and/or caffeine letdown was really rough.
I found that concentrating on something really helped. While driving, I'd examine the cars around me and count random attributes about them, or review what I was studying in my head by doing random math problems with the license plate numbers, or whatever. Studying dry material was hard, but I'd take frequent short breaks and draw or read for short periods.
However, as the days progressed, even an intense focus on things had a gradually decreasing effect. The night after exams, I managed to get through my work shift at my second job but even doing everything I could to be focusing on something interesting, I found my thought processes wandering. After work, I went home and slept 24 hours straight, and had a mild headache and a kind of "hangover" feeling for about 2 days.
Today, 20+ years later, I don't know how well I'd fare on the experiment. I routinely get about 6 hours of sleep (fall asleep around 1AM, wake up at 7), with occasional nights in the 7-9 hour range (maybe once a week. if I can manage to fall asleep earlier than 1AM, which is rare). I am relatively functional with as little as 3 hours of sleep for a night or two, but I'm much better off with 6.
I seem to go through "cycles" every couple of months where I can only manage to fall asleep late (1:30AM or so), then later and later until I'm down to 2-3 hours, then I "crash" to 9 hours for a night, then reset to about 6 for a while, then after some time it starts getting shorter again. When the insomnia cycle start hitting, I find myself depressed and unmotivated, then it gets really bad immediately after the "crash", then I get my equilibrium once I reestablish the 6-hour cycle again.
I have had to do "all nighters" recently and I don't feel a profound lack of sleep, but I don't know if I could maintain it for anything longer than a night or two any more and still feel functional.
As someone who avoids giving SSN to every company that wants it, here are a few tips on how to avoid giving your SSN:
1. Work with the business. Sometimes, there is a valid reason why they'd want a Social Security number (tax purposes, credit check, etc). Sometimes there's just the need for a unique identifier. And sometimes they just collect it because someone thought it'd be a good idea. If you ask (politely) why they need it, sometimes the rep you are talking to will say that they really don't and that they are just required to ask. But even if there's a valid reason, there are sometimes ways around it.
2. Many companies want to do a credit check on you. This can be a reasonable request for someone you want to open an account with (phone company, cable company, etc) since they are offering you a line of credit. They want some assurance that you will pay them. However, they will also accept an escrow payment in lieu of SSN if you ask. Yes, you have to tie up some money in escrow, but if you're concerned about your SSN this is a viable alternative that I've used several times in the past. Some companies will also accept a credit card number on file, though this is less secure since you could just close the credit card account.
3. There are some cases where the company has no business doing a credit check. If I'm ordering some non-recurring service (fuel tank refill), then I simply tell them that I do not want SSN in their databases, but that I will meet the driver with a check, or give them a credit card to put on file that they can use in the case of non-payment. With most of these services, they happen at my home, so the vendor knows where I live if there is a dispute - they rarely insist on it.
4. If a business absolutely insists on SSN, I give them one last opportunity then hang up and call a competitor. You'll generally find someone who wants to do business with you. If you really want to do business with a particular company, call them back and tell them that their competitor is willing to play ball. Giving them one final chance to get your business generally works.
5. Finally, for those cases where you have to give it up, consider the circumstances under which you give out the SSN. If you end up needing to give someone an SSN, consider a few details. Are you on an unencrypted (most are, even the digital ones) cordless phone? Might want to switch over to a wired phone, or ask if they have a secure website you can enter the information. Also, never EVER give out your SSN to someone who has called YOU.
As far as removing it, some companies will resist it, because they want to retain your information forever. If your business relationship with the company has ended, it's generally worth sending them a registered letter requesting that the database information be removed, and requesting a response when this has been accomplished or a valid technical reason why it cannot. If you get a reason that sounds bogus, pay a lawyer a few bucks to sign the same letter and re-send it with some legalese about record retention and privacy liabilities at the end. Some companies will just have someone purge the data out to make it go away. Some will say "yeah, we deleted it" and not, but you've at least tried (and you might want to call back and ask about your account a few weeks later, then have your lawyer send a somewhat sterner letter the next time).
Unlikely. If you believe the results of this study, you'll find someone who is probably going to be a thoughtful, forward-thinking, planning citizen. In other words, someone who would never be stupid enough to seek elected office, and if they were to do so they'd never get elected.
Both parties would hate to have someone who thinks and plans in the Presidency. He might be smarter than them and actually get something intelligent done, and what's the profit in THAT?
"It was never compulsory. It's only necessary if you don't want a death squad to stop by and make you have your 'last dance' with your musical accompaniment being a machine gun and your partner being some rounds of ammo. The kind of partner that sticks with you for life. The decision is, of course, completely up to you. We'll have a crew stop by to install the software or the bullets, your choice."
Is it good or bad that both of the below statements are true for me?
1) I have no earthly idea what any of the terms you posted even mean, and I'm not about to research them (especially not at work, but even at home I'm just not that curious).
AND
2) I got your sig reference immediately.
But I can mix memes: I suspect if I were to be exposed to any of the subjects of those terms, I'd suddenly become Kryten, making little "memememe" noises while in utter shock before my head exploded. I'm referring to the head located on my shoulders, sicko.
Hold another event the week after or before Burning Man in the same locale, and call it "Crispy Dude".
Or, better yet, go for the opposite. Hold an event in here in Maine in the middle of January (or Alaska, or anywhere it gets pretty cold). Call it "Peoplesickle" or "Frozen Man".
As I stated in another post on another thread (or maybe this one, who knows), "i4i" would be pronounced "Eye for Eye", as in "an eye for an eye".
It could be that the patent troll, in this case, is a group that acquired a few patents so they could stick it to Microsoft for the whole "FAT/NTFS" thing, or whatever. Microsoft's certainly got a lot of patent property and has used it to scare the bejeezus out of a lot of people in Penguinland.
Maybe "i4i" will suddenly announce a cross-licensing settlement with Microsoft where everyone (Microsoft included!) gets XML formats as long as everyone gets FAT, NTFS, and a few other Microsoft properties free for use.
So, yeah, that crack pipe's got some pretty good stuff, man, thanks for sharing. Whoo boy.
It's a relatively inexpensive way to (a) increase the legitimacy of their claim by taking someone to court who cannot afford a proper defense and (b) sending a message that free software with their IP is not tolerated to scare anyone off any attempts to open source the IP.
That way, they direct all uses of their IP to commercial products where they can get their pound of flesh.
They WANT the people who have paid their licensing fees to continue using the stuff, so they keep collecting their fees. So, yes, they could easily do that to avoid competition against their licenseholders' product lines.
Microsoft may yet settle with this company in a licensing agreement. If that happens, Microsoft would be (at that moment) the only company licensed to provide XML-formatted word processing documents. It would be to Microsoft's competitive advantage to help i4i knock down any more troublemakers to maintain their temporary exclusive.:)
They might or might not. If they win the Texas case on appeal, they'll have a great deal of legitimacy when they write threatening "pay $X in licensing fees or we'll sue you for $X times 100 for willful violation."
I don't know if any company would have the stones to sue the US Government or the Court System over it, but if the Courts hand them enough victories beforehand, well, they have to live by the laws they make...
If nothing else, they could sue the pants off anyone maintaining and/or contributing to the project, and anyone who hosts a download for distribution of infringing property.
I suppose they COULD even threaten to sue any end users they could find (businesses who have adopted it, etc), and settle for some form of licensing fee.
IANAL, but I remember there being some talk of one of the patent companies (Microsoft? ISO?) threatening to do that to Linux users for a while. I know Microsoft made saber-rattling noises about it over the distribution of Linux tools to read/write to FAT and NTFS partitions.
I'm not saying it's RIGHT, or that i4i would even bother, but they probably could.
A lot of the impact depends on how important that company is to your daily life. When Hannaford got breached, well, here in Maine there are basically three major food chains. Wally World sells truly awful produce but has decent prices. Shaws sells really good quality stuff but tends to charge a bit more. Hannaford is the "happy medium" for most folks. Then, of course, there are the mom-and-pops and smaller chains who have their loyal following, and that's great too. But a lot of folks went to Hannaford before the breach, and a lot of us do after the breach too. I even use my re-issued Discover card there (had to be reissued because it was on the "suspect" list, even though I fortunately never saw any suspicious activity on the card).
So if Hannaford got breached, so what? Their response was pretty good and they made amends to those affected. Family's still gotta eat. If they are the closest grocer, and/or the one you prefer, will you change your habits over that? A lot did at first, and I'm sure some still do, but the parking lot's still busy.
Now, if this was a high-end luxury item retailer, they'd probably be toast. If they sell something people don't actually need for their daily lives, a temporary boycott of a company like that can quickly turn into a "you know, I really never needed any of that stuff" permanent change. If you're holding on to your customers by anything but their basic needs (food, inexpensive clothing, shelter) then you never want to give your loyal customer base an excuse to try the competition.
It could be, if the patent is held up to scrutiny and the patentholder wants to pursue it.
Now that the injunction is in place, the company has won an initial battle and has a small modicum of credibility to their claims. The next step is to start contacting other "violators" and demanding licensing fees.
The standard deal on this is that you can get a discount if you feed the trolls now, and it'll cost you a lot more if you wait to see if the patent survives appeals. "Pay a little now, or maybe pay a LOT later."
A lot of companies just cough up the money now, and this feeds the trolls enough that their lawyers can keep the case in appeals for a long time.
They could still get an injunction against distribution if the patent is upheld. Intellectual property law is primarily about intellectual property rights (free as in speech), not profits (free as in beer).
This happens with, for example, MP3 decoders. There is a patent on the MP3 format, it's valid, and the patent holders have monetized MP3 by charging a small fee for every player distributed.
That's "distributed", not "sold". It doesn't matter if you're making money off it, it only matters that you are distributing patented work that someone else owns distribution rights to.
So many Linux distros are sent out without an MP3 decoder, because that would mean that the distro manager would have to pay a fee to the MP3 patentholder for every copy distributed.
Some just ignore the licensing issues and either distribute the software "assuming" you have paid or will pay the fee, or distribute it in a country where the relevant patent is invalid (and if you happen to import it into a country where it is a problem, that's your lookout).
OpenOffice could (as others have stated) revert back to the Microsoft DOC format, but there's still a potential issue with the copies that are currently out there.
Note that I said "potential". i4i does not have to sue anyone - they could simply offer anyone using OpenOffice a free license to use XML data formats. Their patent, their rules.
In fact, the name, "i4i", implies the old "eye for an eye" rule. It's possible that this is a group of Free Software folks who have managed to get a patent on something obvious (as Microsoft has done so many times in the past) and wants to stick it to Microsoft the same way Microsoft keeps harassing open source folks with their patents on ones and zeros.
OpenOffice uses XML files by default, the format is openly-documented so anyone can use it, but it's XML. So, assuming i2i's patent is held up, how long before the OpenOffice injunction starts?
Microsoft can simply release a patch that forces Word back to the old proprietary DOC format they've been using variants of since Word 1.0. OpenOffice would have to make up a new document format, if i2i decided to continue their pursuit.
And if there's one thing we've learned about scum-sucking patent trollers, it's that they'll root and root for every penny they can, and don't really care about the damage they do.
No need for a Sandman, just subject them to enough reality TV and they'll either kill themselves or turn into complete vegetables (same difference, except they keep eating food).
Fortunately, at my current company, it's "only" the Intranet. Most of the important stuff happens on mainframe and midrange machines, and the greenscreen telnet apps really don't care what OS they run on. (grin)
But I did work for a large multinational when they were implementing Siebel, and the Siebel guys all had to get their brand-new laptops reloaded with Windows 2000 because Siebel "broke" in XP, even on XP running IE6. This was 4 years ago, in 2005.
I don't know if Siebel got their issues with XP and/or more current browsers worked out, but a lot of businesses probably don't want to pay for an upgrade on that scale even if it is an in-place upgrade.
Right, but any patches would not affect IE6 once IE6 drops off support. When MS drops support on a product, that means you don't get patches for even discovered and documented bugs.
Corporations would scream blue bloody murder.
The same corporations who cannot upgrade from IE6 because so many software vendors made web-enabled applications using then-current Microsoft tools that specifically took advantage of features in IE6 that are not carried forward to IE7 or IE8. Companies purchased these packages because they were Web-enabled, and therefore should be less sensitive to the version of the operating system that the client PCs ran on. Except that software created by Microsoft toolkits back in the early 2000s were NOT "Web Enabled", they were "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Enabled".
So the companies now have to look forward to an upgrade to massively important and multi-user software packages like Siebel, because only the newer versions can run on a newer browser. But the newer version is not an in-place upgrade because packages like that tend to be integrated to other systems, not standalone apps. So you have companies running Windows 2000 desktops and IE6 because an upgrade to either XP or IE7+ will shatter compatibility.
Our company runs IE6 (but at least we are on XP SP2). If you try to use Firefox on the Intranet, a lot of bits don't work, and that is the primary reason we're told the company isn't going IE7 or better anytime soon. We have a massive Intranet that was all built using Microsoft tools, and upgrading it would be a monumental task.
It can go 40 miles before a charge. This is great. Seriously. Fantastic.
If you want to sell me a car that uses mostly electricity, BUT has the capability to burn gasoline when I want to exceed my normal commute, great! Tell me that's what the car does. It's a great idea, because I can own one car that has zero tailpipe emissions all week, but can carry me somewhere further than 40 miles on the weekend without me sweating about battery charge levels. Brilliant!
But I object to the bullshit that this is somehow the equivalent of getting 200+ miles on a gallon of fuel. It. does. not. It gets 50 miles on a gallon of fuel, plus they are claiming that (after a bunch of recharges) it can get an additional 180 miles on electricity to get up to 230 miles. They are then claiming that this electricity costs so incredibly little that the car gets an "equivalent price of fuel" matching 230 miles per gallon of fuel.
The algorithm used to come up with this mileage are severely squirrely, and the mileage is (how shall I put this kindly), "excessively optimistic".
I'm having a lot of trouble with the claim that you can get a car moving at an energy cost of one cent per mile.
Let's break the claim down - they are claiming that the car can go 40 miles on 10 kWH of energy. That's 4 miles on 1 kWh. Or 250 watt-hours per mile. So they are claiming that you can move a car one mile on the amount of electricity burned by a 100W incandescent bulb for two and a half hours.
Batteries also usually have a certain amount of loss between their charge and discharge, and they are supposedly accounting for that by charging the battery and measuring the power going into it, not by measuring battery capacity. Conversion loss, heat loss, etc are going to cut into that 10 kWh, and the battery isn't going to be able to return every watt-hour you gave it. So what that means is you don't really have 10 kWh of power available to go the 40 miles, it just means that's what you put into the batteries. Estimates vary on energy loss, but even under ideal conditions you aren't going to get better than 90% back. So drop another 25 watt-hours per mile.
That's an awful amount of weight to move one mile on 225 watt-hours. It's the energy equivalent of me riding my bicycle for about an hour, or covering 15 miles. Methinks a car weighs somewhat more than 15 times me on my bicycle, and I'm no lightweight.
Giving it some serious thought, I suppose the claim is exaggerated but not ridiculously so. Me moving my 200-pound carcass on efficient road tires 15 miles would probably be approximately the energy equivalent of moving a 1.5-ton car one mile. Of course, I get a lot less friction with my razor-thin tires, but on the other hand my braking is frictional, and doesn't recover any energy. So maybe, just maybe, they are off by less than an order of magnitude on that one.
Second point: Where can you get 4 cent per kWh electricity? According to Detroit's web site, that is a rate reserved for off-peak use on electric heating devices from the months of October through June. The rate you'd pay to recharge an electric car would vary between 6 and 8.6 cents a kWh (general residential rate). In other words, the electricity ranges between being 50% more expensive and over double the rates used for the claim. Here in Maine, electric runs about 16 cents a kWh. Yes, we're some of the most expensive electricity in the US, but still....
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I tried a similar experiment in college. Wanted to see how long I could go without any sleep whatsoever. Well, it was exams week and I had four tough classes, so that contributed to the urgency of the experiment. I've never needed a LOT of sleep anyway, so I wanted to see how long I could sustain a constant waking state.
Anyway, what I discovered at the time was that I could function pretty well for about 5 days with no sleep. As long as I got plenty of water and ate well (healthy foods, no "quick burn" sugars, etc), I felt reasonably functional. Easily functional enough to do well on my exams and manage the 1/2 hour drive back and forth between school and work. If I ate sugary crap or had even a little caffeine, it helped in the short term but the sugar crash and/or caffeine letdown was really rough.
I found that concentrating on something really helped. While driving, I'd examine the cars around me and count random attributes about them, or review what I was studying in my head by doing random math problems with the license plate numbers, or whatever. Studying dry material was hard, but I'd take frequent short breaks and draw or read for short periods.
However, as the days progressed, even an intense focus on things had a gradually decreasing effect. The night after exams, I managed to get through my work shift at my second job but even doing everything I could to be focusing on something interesting, I found my thought processes wandering. After work, I went home and slept 24 hours straight, and had a mild headache and a kind of "hangover" feeling for about 2 days.
Today, 20+ years later, I don't know how well I'd fare on the experiment. I routinely get about 6 hours of sleep (fall asleep around 1AM, wake up at 7), with occasional nights in the 7-9 hour range (maybe once a week. if I can manage to fall asleep earlier than 1AM, which is rare). I am relatively functional with as little as 3 hours of sleep for a night or two, but I'm much better off with 6.
I seem to go through "cycles" every couple of months where I can only manage to fall asleep late (1:30AM or so), then later and later until I'm down to 2-3 hours, then I "crash" to 9 hours for a night, then reset to about 6 for a while, then after some time it starts getting shorter again. When the insomnia cycle start hitting, I find myself depressed and unmotivated, then it gets really bad immediately after the "crash", then I get my equilibrium once I reestablish the 6-hour cycle again.
I have had to do "all nighters" recently and I don't feel a profound lack of sleep, but I don't know if I could maintain it for anything longer than a night or two any more and still feel functional.
As someone who avoids giving SSN to every company that wants it, here are a few tips on how to avoid giving your SSN:
1. Work with the business. Sometimes, there is a valid reason why they'd want a Social Security number (tax purposes, credit check, etc). Sometimes there's just the need for a unique identifier. And sometimes they just collect it because someone thought it'd be a good idea. If you ask (politely) why they need it, sometimes the rep you are talking to will say that they really don't and that they are just required to ask. But even if there's a valid reason, there are sometimes ways around it.
2. Many companies want to do a credit check on you. This can be a reasonable request for someone you want to open an account with (phone company, cable company, etc) since they are offering you a line of credit. They want some assurance that you will pay them. However, they will also accept an escrow payment in lieu of SSN if you ask. Yes, you have to tie up some money in escrow, but if you're concerned about your SSN this is a viable alternative that I've used several times in the past. Some companies will also accept a credit card number on file, though this is less secure since you could just close the credit card account.
3. There are some cases where the company has no business doing a credit check. If I'm ordering some non-recurring service (fuel tank refill), then I simply tell them that I do not want SSN in their databases, but that I will meet the driver with a check, or give them a credit card to put on file that they can use in the case of non-payment. With most of these services, they happen at my home, so the vendor knows where I live if there is a dispute - they rarely insist on it.
4. If a business absolutely insists on SSN, I give them one last opportunity then hang up and call a competitor. You'll generally find someone who wants to do business with you. If you really want to do business with a particular company, call them back and tell them that their competitor is willing to play ball. Giving them one final chance to get your business generally works.
5. Finally, for those cases where you have to give it up, consider the circumstances under which you give out the SSN. If you end up needing to give someone an SSN, consider a few details. Are you on an unencrypted (most are, even the digital ones) cordless phone? Might want to switch over to a wired phone, or ask if they have a secure website you can enter the information. Also, never EVER give out your SSN to someone who has called YOU.
As far as removing it, some companies will resist it, because they want to retain your information forever. If your business relationship with the company has ended, it's generally worth sending them a registered letter requesting that the database information be removed, and requesting a response when this has been accomplished or a valid technical reason why it cannot. If you get a reason that sounds bogus, pay a lawyer a few bucks to sign the same letter and re-send it with some legalese about record retention and privacy liabilities at the end. Some companies will just have someone purge the data out to make it go away. Some will say "yeah, we deleted it" and not, but you've at least tried (and you might want to call back and ask about your account a few weeks later, then have your lawyer send a somewhat sterner letter the next time).
Unlikely. If you believe the results of this study, you'll find someone who is probably going to be a thoughtful, forward-thinking, planning citizen. In other words, someone who would never be stupid enough to seek elected office, and if they were to do so they'd never get elected.
Both parties would hate to have someone who thinks and plans in the Presidency. He might be smarter than them and actually get something intelligent done, and what's the profit in THAT?
"It was never compulsory. It's only necessary if you don't want a death squad to stop by and make you have your 'last dance' with your musical accompaniment being a machine gun and your partner being some rounds of ammo. The kind of partner that sticks with you for life. The decision is, of course, completely up to you. We'll have a crew stop by to install the software or the bullets, your choice."
Is it good or bad that both of the below statements are true for me?
1) I have no earthly idea what any of the terms you posted even mean, and I'm not about to research them (especially not at work, but even at home I'm just not that curious).
AND
2) I got your sig reference immediately.
But I can mix memes: I suspect if I were to be exposed to any of the subjects of those terms, I'd suddenly become Kryten, making little "memememe" noises while in utter shock before my head exploded. I'm referring to the head located on my shoulders, sicko.
Hold another event the week after or before Burning Man in the same locale, and call it "Crispy Dude".
Or, better yet, go for the opposite. Hold an event in here in Maine in the middle of January (or Alaska, or anywhere it gets pretty cold). Call it "Peoplesickle" or "Frozen Man".
I agree. And I'd love to see the law changed. But, for now, we gots ta look at what we gots. And it ain't that pretty at all...
As I stated in another post on another thread (or maybe this one, who knows), "i4i" would be pronounced "Eye for Eye", as in "an eye for an eye".
It could be that the patent troll, in this case, is a group that acquired a few patents so they could stick it to Microsoft for the whole "FAT/NTFS" thing, or whatever. Microsoft's certainly got a lot of patent property and has used it to scare the bejeezus out of a lot of people in Penguinland.
Maybe "i4i" will suddenly announce a cross-licensing settlement with Microsoft where everyone (Microsoft included!) gets XML formats as long as everyone gets FAT, NTFS, and a few other Microsoft properties free for use.
So, yeah, that crack pipe's got some pretty good stuff, man, thanks for sharing. Whoo boy.
It's a relatively inexpensive way to (a) increase the legitimacy of their claim by taking someone to court who cannot afford a proper defense and (b) sending a message that free software with their IP is not tolerated to scare anyone off any attempts to open source the IP.
That way, they direct all uses of their IP to commercial products where they can get their pound of flesh.
They WANT the people who have paid their licensing fees to continue using the stuff, so they keep collecting their fees. So, yes, they could easily do that to avoid competition against their licenseholders' product lines.
Microsoft may yet settle with this company in a licensing agreement. If that happens, Microsoft would be (at that moment) the only company licensed to provide XML-formatted word processing documents. It would be to Microsoft's competitive advantage to help i4i knock down any more troublemakers to maintain their temporary exclusive. :)
NOTE: The patent troll company I referred to as "ISO" above was a brain toot on my part. "SCO" was what I meant.
They might or might not. If they win the Texas case on appeal, they'll have a great deal of legitimacy when they write threatening "pay $X in licensing fees or we'll sue you for $X times 100 for willful violation."
I don't know if any company would have the stones to sue the US Government or the Court System over it, but if the Courts hand them enough victories beforehand, well, they have to live by the laws they make...
If nothing else, they could sue the pants off anyone maintaining and/or contributing to the project, and anyone who hosts a download for distribution of infringing property.
I suppose they COULD even threaten to sue any end users they could find (businesses who have adopted it, etc), and settle for some form of licensing fee.
IANAL, but I remember there being some talk of one of the patent companies (Microsoft? ISO?) threatening to do that to Linux users for a while. I know Microsoft made saber-rattling noises about it over the distribution of Linux tools to read/write to FAT and NTFS partitions.
I'm not saying it's RIGHT, or that i4i would even bother, but they probably could.
A lot of the impact depends on how important that company is to your daily life. When Hannaford got breached, well, here in Maine there are basically three major food chains. Wally World sells truly awful produce but has decent prices. Shaws sells really good quality stuff but tends to charge a bit more. Hannaford is the "happy medium" for most folks. Then, of course, there are the mom-and-pops and smaller chains who have their loyal following, and that's great too. But a lot of folks went to Hannaford before the breach, and a lot of us do after the breach too. I even use my re-issued Discover card there (had to be reissued because it was on the "suspect" list, even though I fortunately never saw any suspicious activity on the card).
So if Hannaford got breached, so what? Their response was pretty good and they made amends to those affected. Family's still gotta eat. If they are the closest grocer, and/or the one you prefer, will you change your habits over that? A lot did at first, and I'm sure some still do, but the parking lot's still busy.
Now, if this was a high-end luxury item retailer, they'd probably be toast. If they sell something people don't actually need for their daily lives, a temporary boycott of a company like that can quickly turn into a "you know, I really never needed any of that stuff" permanent change. If you're holding on to your customers by anything but their basic needs (food, inexpensive clothing, shelter) then you never want to give your loyal customer base an excuse to try the competition.
It could be, if the patent is held up to scrutiny and the patentholder wants to pursue it.
Now that the injunction is in place, the company has won an initial battle and has a small modicum of credibility to their claims. The next step is to start contacting other "violators" and demanding licensing fees.
The standard deal on this is that you can get a discount if you feed the trolls now, and it'll cost you a lot more if you wait to see if the patent survives appeals. "Pay a little now, or maybe pay a LOT later."
A lot of companies just cough up the money now, and this feeds the trolls enough that their lawyers can keep the case in appeals for a long time.
They could still get an injunction against distribution if the patent is upheld. Intellectual property law is primarily about intellectual property rights (free as in speech), not profits (free as in beer).
This happens with, for example, MP3 decoders. There is a patent on the MP3 format, it's valid, and the patent holders have monetized MP3 by charging a small fee for every player distributed.
That's "distributed", not "sold". It doesn't matter if you're making money off it, it only matters that you are distributing patented work that someone else owns distribution rights to.
So many Linux distros are sent out without an MP3 decoder, because that would mean that the distro manager would have to pay a fee to the MP3 patentholder for every copy distributed.
Some just ignore the licensing issues and either distribute the software "assuming" you have paid or will pay the fee, or distribute it in a country where the relevant patent is invalid (and if you happen to import it into a country where it is a problem, that's your lookout).
OpenOffice could (as others have stated) revert back to the Microsoft DOC format, but there's still a potential issue with the copies that are currently out there.
Note that I said "potential". i4i does not have to sue anyone - they could simply offer anyone using OpenOffice a free license to use XML data formats. Their patent, their rules.
In fact, the name, "i4i", implies the old "eye for an eye" rule. It's possible that this is a group of Free Software folks who have managed to get a patent on something obvious (as Microsoft has done so many times in the past) and wants to stick it to Microsoft the same way Microsoft keeps harassing open source folks with their patents on ones and zeros.
OpenOffice uses XML files by default, the format is openly-documented so anyone can use it, but it's XML. So, assuming i2i's patent is held up, how long before the OpenOffice injunction starts?
Microsoft can simply release a patch that forces Word back to the old proprietary DOC format they've been using variants of since Word 1.0. OpenOffice would have to make up a new document format, if i2i decided to continue their pursuit.
And if there's one thing we've learned about scum-sucking patent trollers, it's that they'll root and root for every penny they can, and don't really care about the damage they do.
With reality TV, it's more true than ever.
No need for a Sandman, just subject them to enough reality TV and they'll either kill themselves or turn into complete vegetables (same difference, except they keep eating food).
PS: America suffered significantly when we switched over to the fancy new Imperial system, so I feel your pain.
My car, for example, gets 1,008,000 rd/hhd (rods per U.S. hogshead). But I'm stuck with referring to it as "50 miles per gallon".
So your complaint is about a mere ~60% difference? Dude, you got nothing to gripe about!
Sorry, I do what my South Park overlords do and blame Canada. Oh, wait, I live in Maine, I'm practically Canadian myself.... umm.. , eh? :)
Fortunately, at my current company, it's "only" the Intranet. Most of the important stuff happens on mainframe and midrange machines, and the greenscreen telnet apps really don't care what OS they run on. (grin)
But I did work for a large multinational when they were implementing Siebel, and the Siebel guys all had to get their brand-new laptops reloaded with Windows 2000 because Siebel "broke" in XP, even on XP running IE6. This was 4 years ago, in 2005.
I don't know if Siebel got their issues with XP and/or more current browsers worked out, but a lot of businesses probably don't want to pay for an upgrade on that scale even if it is an in-place upgrade.
Right, but any patches would not affect IE6 once IE6 drops off support. When MS drops support on a product, that means you don't get patches for even discovered and documented bugs.
Corporations would scream blue bloody murder.
The same corporations who cannot upgrade from IE6 because so many software vendors made web-enabled applications using then-current Microsoft tools that specifically took advantage of features in IE6 that are not carried forward to IE7 or IE8. Companies purchased these packages because they were Web-enabled, and therefore should be less sensitive to the version of the operating system that the client PCs ran on. Except that software created by Microsoft toolkits back in the early 2000s were NOT "Web Enabled", they were "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Enabled".
So the companies now have to look forward to an upgrade to massively important and multi-user software packages like Siebel, because only the newer versions can run on a newer browser. But the newer version is not an in-place upgrade because packages like that tend to be integrated to other systems, not standalone apps. So you have companies running Windows 2000 desktops and IE6 because an upgrade to either XP or IE7+ will shatter compatibility.
Our company runs IE6 (but at least we are on XP SP2). If you try to use Firefox on the Intranet, a lot of bits don't work, and that is the primary reason we're told the company isn't going IE7 or better anytime soon. We have a massive Intranet that was all built using Microsoft tools, and upgrading it would be a monumental task.
Hmmmm... good point. D'OH!
It can go 40 miles before a charge. This is great. Seriously. Fantastic.
If you want to sell me a car that uses mostly electricity, BUT has the capability to burn gasoline when I want to exceed my normal commute, great! Tell me that's what the car does. It's a great idea, because I can own one car that has zero tailpipe emissions all week, but can carry me somewhere further than 40 miles on the weekend without me sweating about battery charge levels. Brilliant!
But I object to the bullshit that this is somehow the equivalent of getting 200+ miles on a gallon of fuel. It. does. not. It gets 50 miles on a gallon of fuel, plus they are claiming that (after a bunch of recharges) it can get an additional 180 miles on electricity to get up to 230 miles. They are then claiming that this electricity costs so incredibly little that the car gets an "equivalent price of fuel" matching 230 miles per gallon of fuel.
The algorithm used to come up with this mileage are severely squirrely, and the mileage is (how shall I put this kindly), "excessively optimistic".
I'm having a lot of trouble with the claim that you can get a car moving at an energy cost of one cent per mile.
Let's break the claim down - they are claiming that the car can go 40 miles on 10 kWH of energy. That's 4 miles on 1 kWh. Or 250 watt-hours per mile. So they are claiming that you can move a car one mile on the amount of electricity burned by a 100W incandescent bulb for two and a half hours.
Batteries also usually have a certain amount of loss between their charge and discharge, and they are supposedly accounting for that by charging the battery and measuring the power going into it, not by measuring battery capacity. Conversion loss, heat loss, etc are going to cut into that 10 kWh, and the battery isn't going to be able to return every watt-hour you gave it. So what that means is you don't really have 10 kWh of power available to go the 40 miles, it just means that's what you put into the batteries. Estimates vary on energy loss, but even under ideal conditions you aren't going to get better than 90% back. So drop another 25 watt-hours per mile.
That's an awful amount of weight to move one mile on 225 watt-hours. It's the energy equivalent of me riding my bicycle for about an hour, or covering 15 miles. Methinks a car weighs somewhat more than 15 times me on my bicycle, and I'm no lightweight.
Giving it some serious thought, I suppose the claim is exaggerated but not ridiculously so. Me moving my 200-pound carcass on efficient road tires 15 miles would probably be approximately the energy equivalent of moving a 1.5-ton car one mile. Of course, I get a lot less friction with my razor-thin tires, but on the other hand my braking is frictional, and doesn't recover any energy. So maybe, just maybe, they are off by less than an order of magnitude on that one.
Second point: Where can you get 4 cent per kWh electricity? According to Detroit's web site, that is a rate reserved for off-peak use on electric heating devices from the months of October through June. The rate you'd pay to recharge an electric car would vary between 6 and 8.6 cents a kWh (general residential rate). In other words, the electricity ranges between being 50% more expensive and over double the rates used for the claim. Here in Maine, electric runs about 16 cents a kWh. Yes, we're some of the most expensive electricity in the US, but still....