It seems the motive is typically to get a "loan" by a lower level employee which will be paid back at some point. It would seem that the employees are in fear to actually ask their own bosses to aid them in a situation of financial strife.
Isn't that what banks are about? Making loans?
It seems that inside the banks their is a pervasive culture of fear/shame/envy by staff of the owners. The fact that management seems to be unable to get inside this situation is indicated of a manager/employee relationship meltdown.
If I owned a bakery and my employees were stealing bread to feed their families cause I pay them nothing -- that in most peoples mind is a hint about how my relationship as owner to my employees is going.
If they are stealing bread but are not starving but in fact well off thats something else - envy and greed.
In any case a Bank which gets public assistance like in "too big to fail" or some other way should begin to be held publicly accountable for internal losses -- tangible assets and data privacy breaches. Till today no one is really reporting this number out of fear in losing the public trust. When the bank fails of course the horse it out the barn doors already.
Was this a huge tax dodge? "Intel had supported Sohi's research with about $90,000 in gifts in the 1990s and argued it was entitled to the intellectual property that resulted from the funding."
So he got at least $90k in unreported income in form of gifts to keep his research going which in turn benefitted Intel?
This appears like a gift/graft which by-passed the administration. Then it's basically a way of scamming income without having to pay taxes as I think you don't have to pay taxes on a gift if its below a certain threshold?
Why isn't anyone picking up on the fact Sohi was possibly working for them illegally? Did the H1B's run out? Why all the subterfuge to hid the payments for work rendered to Intel?
Frankly this is bad academic practice. Intel may try pressuring the next guy to do the same or may be held up in IP court by the next guy due to poor business/academic relations & accounting practices.
"He wrote in a 2000 e-mail uncovered during the litigation that he had a "gentleman's agreement" with Intel in which he would not aggressively seek patents but would keep the company informed if he did." -- Im sure the University's Counsel liked to hear that.
He may be a good scientist but his business ethics - yes the do exist - seem shaky. Wouldn't we all like to get 90k under the table on a gentlemen's agreement from Intel
Now its up to the Post to fail in the same way. Both the DP & RMN were overspecialized and did not really promote a culture of journalism in the region.
Both backed off stories of importance in seeking short team profit gains from info-tainment.
I only cite one example of why most news outlets are failing in Denver. $117k was stolen by cyber-criminals from stanford school district in an obscure corner of Colorado. It was up to the Washington post -- covering a story about money mules to break this good news to the citizens of Colorado.
There is not very good basic gumshoe journalism left in Denver, Colorado or much of the USA. RMN & DP are good about reading police blotters and picking up AP wire but real stories that need to be investigated seem to be beyond their scope.
Perhaps the good journalists will go to Huffingtonpost and evolve to superbloggers
I Didn't trust what I found the local BBS scene I Didn't trust what I found the national BBS scene I Didn't trust what I found on FidoNet I Didn't trust what I found on UseNet I Didn't trust what I found on Gopher What I found on the Internet must be True!!!
Yes, on the Internet no one knows your a dog, take this as a blow to critical thinking.
Libraries and Universities are not about dumping volumes of information inside. There are about dedicated and trained professionals with proven critical thinking skills and dedication to preserving true knowledge; keeping bad facts, poor quality books and outright fallicies and lies from entering the public body of knowledge.
Now as P.T. Barnum said "Now this way to the egress..."
If the Japanese government is going after ring tones it would only be a friendly warning shot that the other behavior of the firms is growing beyond "acceptable" norms. This is a public concession. Acceptable norms means they got greedy and are threatening exposure of the cartel's other devious money grubbing activities.
What about the Japanese music copywrite holders are doing behind the scenes is striving 24x7x365 to ensure every piece of music or audio or video is DRM'ed and you WILL HAVE TO license it.
They cartel to control the music distribution via technology. The reason Minidisc hasn't hit the US is because CD's were such a huge cash-cow that no none wanted to take on Sony; nor did Sony want to kill its own cash cow. This is irregardless of the quality etc. It was about the money and ownership.
In 5 years you won't find analog in/out on anything from Japan, the cartels will have eliminated that.
I think this has already been explored in STNG, language often needs a cultural basis for two entities to communicate
I also can't recall the actual study but there are peoples living in deep jungles that have no words for direction other than that of self reference. There is no east west north south but only from me and towards me, above me and below me.
The tribe's sense of distance in the deep forests was incredibly honed as it's easy to get lost.
Bld City Council Annex moons, declares openspace
on
Two New Saturnian Moons
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Meanwhile to block big box stores the Boulder City council annexes the moons and declares them openspace.
Boulder now 30 some miles surrounded by reality and still hounded by a constant football scandal.
Property tax assessments to rise yet again.
Local bus service to the moons is be nickednamed trek, to compliment the hop, skip, jump and bound routes; However no trek service after midnight.
With MS entering the foray of software patents the start of the privatization of the US patent system has begun in earnest.
I doubt the USPTO will exist in 5-7 years as we know it today, as its likely going to be "suggested" by corporate America that it be privatized under the subtle veil of public interest just like so many other functions of NAFTA the Stock Market and US Government - Prisons, Military Complex, DOT, etc. are already transformed.
The corner stone will be some lobbied adjustment to civil law to allow Corporate IP ownership commencing at hiring time. IE management will no longer have to give you a piece of paper to sign showing, then denying you your rights to your IP... by consenting to work for a corporation they own everything.
The next logical step for the corporations is to lobby to adjust the expiration on software and hardware patents to suit their needs like they did with copyright -- of course the cover being public protection and economic gains.
I'm personally thinking that they will put into a tiered system of 15, 40, 50-70 year lifespans, aka monopolies, citing the good of the public to keep things like encryption, DRM, etc pure and functional.
The final step is treaty and alignment of IP law worldwide via WTO rules which will finally bear out the master plan.
Corporations at will will have inverted capitalism into feudalism; basically indentured technology servants all over parts of the world who can own no IP as it belongs to the company, and have little means to gain capitol or opportunity to manufacture/program for themselves; the corps pay no salary as their workers are buying from the company store its own products or trade partner productsl training, pension, health and other benefits will be given and withdrawn at corporate will depending how the profit margin needs to be adjusted for wall street.
Microsoft aiming to build a portfolio of patents to licences is the product of Marshall Phelps, a very shrewd multiyear plan.
Software programmers, mathematicians and IT architects are either going to have to sell their souls out for a few coins of silver (patent incentive) or stand up now and state that software patents are detrimental to society and only benefit corporation coffers in the long haul.
Be very sure the only ones that truely benefit long term are the corporations.
Sure the initial team gets a $1K each however the 20 year monopoly that a patent ensures the corporate inventor is showered with more than enough management poo.
MS will patent stuff from workers who make $7/us an hour and make millions for 20 years -- that is the truth.
Here's the best way to benefit society with software patents -- Write your governement official to move software patents to a new class of intellectual property which guarentees a slice of the 20year revenue -- to the inventors not the company.
It would be highly interesting how the courts will sort our all the IP obtained through aquisition of employees, technology, etc. Colorado used to be a hot bed of storage technology but somewhere along the lines the 90s saw a consolidation and only the big guys seem to have a chance to play in the field. Surprisingly many of these companies got much of their talent from IBM Boulder refugees or high tech families in the area typically often related to IBM.
It's amazing that in a world where employees in Japan have the balls to sue former employees for shafting them over huge profits -- that American companies actually think that they can totally own an Idea and not share the wealth with the inventor beyond a simple paycheck.
Corporations enjoy an overly indulgent privilage of being treated as a person by the law -- companies can NOT come up with an idea of their own -- humans do.
It will all be tracked down to an employee that came over and used what he/she knew from a former postion or way of doing things. How sad is that for the advancement of science and technology.
Thank goodness dupont didn't patent the use of beakers and tubes in science experiments.
I got a Thinkmobility several years ago. With Gas hitting near $2/gallon in my area its looking to be a decent investment.
However thinkmobility has tanked their bike lines after Ford went back to regular electic vehicles.
Me, I think they took the incentive money for low emmission vehicles and ran.
Lee Iococca also started an entire new company for his bikes.
I think the biggest hold backs to Western adoption of such vehicles 1) Former use of SLA batteries; NextGen LION has just arrived 2) Lack of adequate storage -- dont get a folder buy/rent a shed! Typical bike sheds (home & work) are needed as electric bikes are too big an investment to have someone huck it in the back of the F350 truck. They are much lighter than vespas but still heavy enough to deter most thieves given most come with a key ignition 3) Lack of common components; Battery sets and chargers need to somehow standardize
I can get to work, in an hour, 15mi, with a fully loaded briefcase and work clothes at a mild peddle speed without breaking a sweat. My spandex wearing 21 speeder co-workers have no such luggage ability and must undergo daily scrotum scrunch.
I have to stay off highway and take a bit longer course as my top burst speed is 18mph which kills the battery. I live in a very hilly area and use them to my advantage as I can use the peddle assist on the light hills and use big hills and gravity elsewhere.
The best part is the company is unknowninly paying to charge my battery as it charges under my desk! Who needs cubical lights?
Looking at the photo's EXIF info most of it was either stripped or a very old digital camera was used.
Most people don't know about EXIF so I doubt they conciously stripped out the info. Yes the data is rather banal but it could be useful to track down the make/model of equipment used to lift a finger print or narrow down suspects.
Given the fact Digital evidence is getting very dicey to track down the photographer (although in this case I doubt any investigation is really needed) I suspect that makers will begin to embed much more in EXIF and other features of the photographs that can't be masked.
Stego could be used to imprint the makers mark without the consumer ever knowing anything. It's a reverse of how some scanners/printers/software muck with the moire patterns when you scan money.
Its going to be interesting when the PHB's find out that if there is multi-year patent wait that most of the prinicples will have gone missing due ot attrition by the time an office action or challenge arrives. What use is it to the company when the people that actually know what the invention was about were outsourced, forced into early retirement or left in disgust?
What programmer has stuck around on the same project if not the same company for more than 5 years?
The _NEW_ plan to profit in corporations.
File for random obvious software patents
Rake in the company's IP incentive money
Profit!
Take the severance
Profit!
+5 years -- Um I don't know anything anymore, I work for someone else. leave me alone. BTW he doesn't live here any more
I've been witness to over a decade of persons laying postrate to the idol of computing. The trust given over to automatic decision making is a bit misplaced as typically unless the programmer is savvy or has some idea of the business most business applications are assembled together from a bit a business lore, some business voodoo and a hole bunch of educated guesses.
I've even seen person's outright trust a spreadsheet computation without even questioning the logic or mathematics behind the calculation.
With a spreadsheet you can convince a PHB that dumping toxic waste into the ground can be cheaper than all the lawsuits. Of course its not right but the computer say's its the best business decision.
I think persons confuse brand loyalty with reliable, sound judgement much too often.
Then again there will come a time and I hope my genes make it to the morloks rather than the eloi.
The best advice for any IT person is to stand behind your work as it should be done with pride, efficiency, and professionalism.
Not always is the answer available right away but always ensure your customers get one.
Offer your customer good ideas when they are available and help make them happen, share credit for success and own up to failures.
Lastly, there are slouches and those that really give a black eye to all Programmers and Support teams and Admins. Ensure to weed them out before they see a customer and do damage to the professions.
I've walked in after poor performing teams or individuals that loaded the customer with so much emotional baggage, that they don't trust anyone with their IT. All this due to one sod who got over his head and destroying the servers during a 1am change window that should of been done quickly during the day if she had from the start planned it right.
slouches are worse than outsourced labor. Oursourced slouches are death to a company's IT.
The biggest problem here is that ordering over the phone or tty with stolen credit or ID info is much too easy to scam.
There should be double the punishment for committing the crime of ID fraud than there is now. Thrice when done under the guise of using services for the disabled -- a hate crime of sorts.
A scammer stole a vital resource to an upright member of society; a call to a doctor perhaps for urgent assistance, calling for a ride for personal saftety reasons (night, weather, etc). This would constitute a double theft and causing a societal safety issue that makes it a hate crime as it exploits a protected group, the disabled.
Also many watchdogs urge that society demand that _Free_ credit reports be given to victims of credit/ID theft be given for 5 years after each & every breach. For repeated breaches (when not the user's fault) the credit agency and merchant _not_ the consumer should be held accountable.
Both merchants that took stolen numbers and the credit agencies should be fine each other heavily till they start insisting the everyone improve the authentication mechanisms of their credit systems.
Merchants and Credit bureaus should not by legislation be allowed to pass monetary loss onto consumers.
I'm suspecting that soon TTY centers will have the international calling flags installed like most credit card processing centers. These typically let the operator know the call is somehow not originating from inside the country.
Although with outsourcing this is going to be sticky to impliment.
All this talk of opening up the Power 5 architecture just means to me that IBM is exiting the hard side of the manufacturing business and entering into being a designer and integrator; all the while and letting the poisonous drudge work to be done in various countries where public & workers rights are not well enforced.
IBM has moved assembly of Thinkpad , Netvista/Adaptiva (really Sanmima-SCI), and mid end Servers to outside the US to be a player. Now comes the egress of high end chips design work and assembly/integration.
Eventually IBM won't manufacture supercomputers in the USA at all but will design them, have some subcontractor build them then import them under the IBM name and sell them to the US GOV.
How many broken backs, destroyed environments, and tears for a cheap GFLOP or a MIP?
Countered by J. Elluls and N. Postman
on
The Paradox of Choice
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Go out and read the Technological society, The Technological Bluff (J. Elluls) and Technopoly (N. Postman).
Most choices given by technological progress are an illusion.
Yes we today have 100's of automobiles to choose from but the choice of a mule or horse has been irrevokably removed in the name of technological progress.
This is despite the fact a mule and horse _can_ cross the Nevada desert unlike so many autonomous and piloted vehicles covered recently.
Most Payroll is now done by software and is rarely done by hand to the point I would say business has lost sight of a key process in favor of technological smoke and mirrors. Now we get into areas of how many hours the finance dept can "float" payroll offshore to avoid taxes or keep interest accruing then process it at the last moment. Only technological advances could give us such dangerous practices on a core process of business.
In effect Jacques Elluls and Neil Postman conclude in their books that technology beats you down to accepting the only choice, the one prefered is technologically the one forced upon you.
I remember the uproar on CueCat a few years ago. Give a slow barcode reader to everyone and then watch them use it.
What prevents a 2nd year EE student from publishing a circuit or code openly on how to read and decode the tags? Is this a DCMCA reverse engineering threat?
Could the Prism wireless chipset which has been hacked already under Linux hit RFIDs with the right signal to get a return signal as a result?
Hopefully Congress will force as a concession that RFIDs strings be freely available I think like ISBN numbers. UPCs I think you have to pay the Databases or license the decodeing algorithm especially ones related in manufacturing and parts cataloging and not Point of Sale IDs. IE the stuff that doesn't get read by a check out scanner.
Planet Boulder has probably the most pedestrian friendly setups in all of the West till you hit Seattle.
The reflective signs throughout the downtown core that say "State law Yield to pedestrians." finally sink into the transplants after the 3rd time someone walks out in front of their car.
The I like to walk up and hit the flashing signals on Pearl just to make cars stop during rushhour.
I sure wish Denver had such good setup. Walking downtown is risky especially with the buses and taxis blocking most of the view of crosswalks. The bus may stop but the delivery trucks won't.
An other international success story. These intrepid persons have been quitely working through the ARM tree of Linux to get a working kernel and PDA based on Psions abandoned product lines of PDAs.
"
PsiLinux is a project to port the unix-like operating system Linux to a group of palmtops produced by Psion, and related machines such as the Geofox One. At present, working linux systems can be installed on any of the Series 5, Series 5MX, Series 5MX-Pro, Revo (Revo+, Mako) machines (NOT the Series 3). Linux on the Series 7/netBook is rudimentarily working."
IF Psion is looking at jumpstarting anything Linux they have a very sound basis to work from. If anything the should open or binary source the S5MX 's power code and other nice things like audio recording.
They had a strong following for their proprietary language OPL but burned most of those shops with the demise of the palmtop product line.
There were fantastic pieces of OPL software that I'd love to run under linux but can't such as Plan5 the only project management software useful for a PDA.
While your asking programmers you may actually run into a business savvy person. Can you ask if the contract process between in-country versus international is percieved as a potential problem or benefit of Indian based shops.
Currently the ability for corporations/persons inside Europe and North America to effectively sue under both tort , contract breach, and ethics breach is breaking down. Internationalizing commercial software exacerbates the prosecution situation.
Do the programmers/managers/entrepreneurs you meet feel that India has an effective legislative and justice body to protect their personal and corporate rights? Does India has an effective system to adequately respond to international requests for justice?
Given the fact that International lawsuits are very expensive and hard to enforce judgements across boarders for big crimes (humanity, slavery, trafficing, fraud, etc) how are small companies everywhere going to CYA [cover your arse] their hard cash currancy investments in India development shops?
What is the India's stance on Copywrite enforcment?
It it foreseeable that a SCO like travisty would happen cross boarders. It is also foreseeable that a "legitamate" accusation as in the Racecad/alibre situation.
I also would like to see what would happen in cases like the IBM S.K. bribery case. How effectively are Indian companies and government actually enforcing fraud laws?
Have Indian shops ever been stiffed for non-payment, late payment, under payment by a non regional company [Europe, US]? What was the costs and outcome of legal recourse?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems the motive is typically to get a "loan" by a lower level employee which will be paid back at some point. It would seem that the employees are in fear to actually ask their own bosses to aid them in a situation of financial strife.
Isn't that what banks are about? Making loans?
It seems that inside the banks their is a pervasive culture of fear/shame/envy by staff of the owners. The fact that management seems to be unable to get inside this situation is indicated of a manager/employee relationship meltdown.
If I owned a bakery and my employees were stealing bread to feed their families cause I pay them nothing -- that in most peoples mind is a hint about how my relationship as owner to my employees is going.
If they are stealing bread but are not starving but in fact well off thats something else - envy and greed.
In any case a Bank which gets public assistance like in "too big to fail" or some other way should begin to be held publicly accountable for internal losses -- tangible assets and data privacy breaches. Till today no one is really reporting this number out of fear in losing the public trust. When the bank fails of course the horse it out the barn doors already.
Was this a huge tax dodge?
"Intel had supported Sohi's research with about $90,000 in gifts in the 1990s and argued it was entitled to the intellectual property that resulted from the funding."
So he got at least $90k in unreported income in form of gifts to keep his research going which in turn benefitted Intel?
This appears like a gift/graft which by-passed the administration. Then it's basically a way of scamming income without having to pay taxes as I think you don't have to pay taxes on a gift if its below a certain threshold?
Why isn't anyone picking up on the fact Sohi was possibly working for them illegally? Did the H1B's run out? Why all the subterfuge to hid the payments for work rendered to Intel?
Frankly this is bad academic practice. Intel may try pressuring the next guy to do the same or may be held up in IP court by the next guy due to poor business/academic relations & accounting practices.
"He wrote in a 2000 e-mail uncovered during the litigation that he had a "gentleman's agreement" with Intel in which he would not aggressively seek patents but would keep the company informed if he did." -- Im sure the University's Counsel liked to hear that.
He may be a good scientist but his business ethics - yes the do exist - seem shaky.
Wouldn't we all like to get 90k under the table on a gentlemen's agreement from Intel
Now its up to the Post to fail in the same way.
Both the DP & RMN were overspecialized and did not really promote a culture of journalism in the region.
Both backed off stories of importance in seeking short team profit gains from info-tainment.
I only cite one example of why most news outlets are failing in Denver.
$117k was stolen by cyber-criminals from stanford school district in an obscure corner of Colorado.
It was up to the Washington post -- covering a story about money mules to break this good news to the citizens of Colorado.
There is not very good basic gumshoe journalism left in Denver, Colorado or much of the USA.
RMN & DP are good about reading police blotters and picking up AP wire but real stories that need to be investigated seem to be beyond their scope.
Perhaps the good journalists will go to Huffingtonpost and evolve to superbloggers
I Didn't trust what I found the local BBS scene
I Didn't trust what I found the national BBS scene
I Didn't trust what I found on FidoNet
I Didn't trust what I found on UseNet
I Didn't trust what I found on Gopher
What I found on the Internet must be True!!!
Yes, on the Internet no one knows your a dog,
take this as a blow to critical thinking.
Libraries and Universities are not about dumping volumes of information inside. There are about dedicated and trained professionals with proven critical thinking skills and dedication to preserving true knowledge; keeping bad facts, poor quality books and outright fallicies and lies from entering the public body of knowledge.
Now as P.T. Barnum said "Now this way to the egress..."
If the Japanese government is going after ring tones it would only be a friendly warning shot that the other behavior of the firms is growing beyond "acceptable" norms. This is a public concession. Acceptable norms means they got greedy and are threatening exposure of the cartel's other devious money grubbing activities.
What about the Japanese music copywrite holders are doing behind the scenes is striving 24x7x365 to ensure every piece of music or audio or video is DRM'ed and you WILL HAVE TO license it.
They cartel to control the music distribution via technology. The reason Minidisc hasn't hit the US is because CD's were such a huge cash-cow that no none wanted to take on Sony; nor did Sony want to kill its own cash cow. This is irregardless of the quality etc. It was about the money and ownership.
In 5 years you won't find analog in/out on anything from Japan, the cartels will have eliminated that.
Yes I am paranoid but this is the trend I see
I think this has already been explored in STNG, language often needs a cultural basis for two entities to communicate
I also can't recall the actual study but there are peoples living in deep jungles that have no words for direction other than that of self reference.
There is no east west north south but only from me and towards me, above me and below me.
The tribe's sense of distance in the deep forests was incredibly honed as it's easy to get lost.
Meanwhile to block big box stores the Boulder City council annexes the moons and declares them openspace.
Boulder now 30 some miles surrounded by reality and still hounded by a constant football scandal.
Property tax assessments to rise yet again.
Local bus service to the moons is be nickednamed trek, to compliment the hop, skip, jump and bound routes; However no trek service after midnight.
Boeing seems to make headlings of Boeing Hires 10000 for Program X and when Program X is over or cancelled it promptly fires 10000.
IGS makes IT a project based employement opportunity for most and long term career for few.
With MS entering the foray of software patents the start of the privatization of the US patent system has begun in earnest.
I doubt the USPTO will exist in 5-7 years as we know it today, as its likely going to be "suggested" by corporate America that it be privatized under the subtle veil of public interest just like so many other functions of NAFTA the Stock Market and US Government - Prisons, Military Complex, DOT, etc. are already transformed.
The corner stone will be some lobbied adjustment to civil law to allow Corporate IP ownership commencing at hiring time.
IE management will no longer have to give you a piece of paper to sign showing, then denying you your rights to your IP... by consenting to work for a corporation they own everything.
The next logical step for the corporations is to lobby to adjust the expiration on software and hardware patents to suit their needs like they did with copyright -- of course the cover being public protection and economic gains.
I'm personally thinking that they will put into a tiered system of 15, 40, 50-70 year lifespans, aka monopolies, citing the good of the public to keep things like encryption, DRM, etc pure and functional.
The final step is treaty and alignment of IP law worldwide via WTO rules which will finally bear out the master plan.
Corporations at will will have inverted capitalism into feudalism; basically indentured technology servants all over parts of the world who can own no IP as it belongs to the company, and have little means to gain capitol or opportunity to manufacture/program for themselves; the corps pay no salary as their workers are buying from the company store its own products or trade partner productsl training, pension, health and other benefits will be given and withdrawn at corporate will depending how the profit margin needs to be adjusted for wall street.
Yes I am getting jaded.
Microsoft aiming to build a portfolio of patents to licences is the product of Marshall Phelps, a very shrewd multiyear plan.
Software programmers, mathematicians and IT architects are either going to have to sell their souls out for a few coins of silver (patent incentive) or stand up now and state that software patents are detrimental to society and only benefit corporation coffers in the long haul.
Be very sure the only ones that truely benefit long term are the corporations.
Sure the initial team gets a $1K each however the 20 year monopoly that a patent ensures the corporate inventor is showered with more than enough management poo.
MS will patent stuff from workers who make $7/us an hour and make millions for 20 years -- that is the truth.
Here's the best way to benefit society with software patents -- Write your governement official to move software patents to a new class of intellectual property which guarentees a slice of the 20year revenue -- to the inventors not the company.
It would be highly interesting how the courts will sort our all the IP obtained through aquisition of employees, technology, etc.
Colorado used to be a hot bed of storage technology but somewhere along the lines the 90s saw a consolidation and only the big guys seem to have a chance to play in the field. Surprisingly many of these companies got much of their talent from IBM Boulder refugees or high tech families in the area typically often related to IBM.
Here is an article from the Boulder paper showing the high tech companies that often get over looked in the area; look at #1,2,4,7, and 12.
It's amazing that in a world where employees in Japan have the balls to sue former employees for shafting them over huge profits -- that American companies actually think that they can totally own an Idea and not share the wealth with the inventor beyond a simple paycheck.
Corporations enjoy an overly indulgent privilage of being treated as a person by the law -- companies can NOT come up with an idea of their own -- humans do.
It will all be tracked down to an employee that came over and used what he/she knew from a former postion or way of doing things. How sad is that for the advancement of science and technology.
Thank goodness dupont didn't patent the use of beakers and tubes in science experiments.
I got a Thinkmobility several years ago. With Gas hitting near $2/gallon in my area its looking to be a decent investment.
However thinkmobility has tanked their bike lines after Ford went back to regular electic vehicles.
Me, I think they took the incentive money for low emmission vehicles and ran.
Lee Iococca also started an entire new company for his bikes.
I think the biggest hold backs to Western adoption of such vehicles
1) Former use of SLA batteries; NextGen LION has just arrived
2) Lack of adequate storage -- dont get a folder buy/rent a shed! Typical bike sheds (home & work) are needed as electric bikes are too big an investment to have someone huck it in the back of the F350 truck. They are much lighter than vespas but still heavy enough to deter most thieves given most come with a key ignition
3) Lack of common components; Battery sets and chargers need to somehow standardize
I can get to work, in an hour, 15mi, with a fully loaded briefcase and work clothes at a mild peddle speed without breaking a sweat. My spandex wearing 21 speeder co-workers have no such luggage ability and must undergo daily scrotum scrunch.
I have to stay off highway and take a bit longer course as my top burst speed is 18mph which kills the battery. I live in a very hilly area and use them to my advantage as I can use the peddle assist on the light hills and use big hills and gravity elsewhere.
The best part is the company is unknowninly paying to charge my battery as it charges under my desk!
Who needs cubical lights?
Looking at the photo's EXIF info most of it was either stripped or a very old digital camera was used.
Most people don't know about EXIF so I doubt they conciously stripped out the info. Yes the data is rather banal but it could be useful to track down the make/model of equipment used to lift a finger print or narrow down suspects.
Given the fact Digital evidence is getting very dicey to track down the photographer (although in this case I doubt any investigation is really needed) I suspect that makers will begin to embed much more in EXIF and other features of the photographs that can't be masked.
Stego could be used to imprint the makers mark without the consumer ever knowing anything.
It's a reverse of how some scanners/printers/software muck with the moire patterns when you scan money.
What programmer has stuck around on the same project if not the same company for more than 5 years?
The _NEW_ plan to profit in corporations.
I've even seen person's outright trust a spreadsheet computation without even questioning the logic or mathematics behind the calculation.
With a spreadsheet you can convince a PHB that dumping toxic waste into the ground can be cheaper than all the lawsuits. Of course its not right but the computer say's its the best business decision.
I think persons confuse brand loyalty with reliable, sound judgement much too often.
Then again there will come a time and I hope my genes make it to the morloks rather than the eloi.
Man I would love to have a sim where the punishment for TKing and PKing is that the idiot gets a real court marshall!
The best advice for any IT person is to stand behind your work as it should be done with pride, efficiency, and professionalism.
Not always is the answer available right away but always ensure your customers get one.
Offer your customer good ideas when they are available and help make them happen, share credit for success and own up to failures.
Lastly, there are slouches and those that really give a black eye to all Programmers and Support teams and Admins. Ensure to weed them out before they see a customer and do damage to the professions.
I've walked in after poor performing teams or individuals that loaded the customer with so much emotional baggage, that they don't trust anyone with their IT. All this due to one sod who got over his head and destroying the servers during a 1am change window that should of been done quickly during the day if she had from the start planned it right.
slouches are worse than outsourced labor. Oursourced slouches are death to a company's IT.
The biggest problem here is that ordering over the phone or tty with stolen credit or ID info is much too easy to scam.
There should be double the punishment for committing the crime of ID fraud than there is now. Thrice when done under the guise of using services for the disabled -- a hate crime of sorts.
A scammer stole a vital resource to an upright member of society; a call to a doctor perhaps for urgent assistance, calling for a ride for personal saftety reasons (night, weather, etc). This would constitute a double theft and causing a societal safety issue that makes it a hate crime as it exploits a protected group, the disabled.
Also many watchdogs urge that society demand that _Free_ credit reports be given to victims of credit/ID theft be given for 5 years after each & every breach. For repeated breaches (when not the user's fault) the credit agency and merchant _not_ the consumer should be held accountable.
Both merchants that took stolen numbers and the credit agencies should be fine each other heavily till they start insisting the everyone improve the authentication mechanisms of their credit systems.
Merchants and Credit bureaus should not by legislation be allowed to pass monetary loss onto consumers.
I'm suspecting that soon TTY centers will have the international calling flags installed like most credit card processing centers. These typically let the operator know the call is somehow not originating from inside the country.
Although with outsourcing this is going to be sticky to impliment.
I loved the C64 game PHM Pegasus base on real hardware; A.
Missle equiped hydrofoils
If the USN wants to bust terrorist/pirate bad guys in the costal shallows or the open seas this is a possible weapons system that met an untimely end.
For more info on the PHM program
All this talk of opening up the Power 5 architecture just means to me that IBM is exiting the hard side of the manufacturing business and entering into being a designer and integrator; all the while and letting the poisonous drudge work to be done in various countries where public & workers rights are not well enforced.
IBM has moved assembly of Thinkpad , Netvista/Adaptiva (really Sanmima-SCI), and mid end Servers to outside the US to be a player. Now comes the egress of high end chips design work and assembly/integration.
Eventually IBM won't manufacture supercomputers in the USA at all but will design them, have some subcontractor build them then import them under the IBM name and sell them to the US GOV.
How many broken backs, destroyed environments, and tears for a cheap GFLOP or a MIP?
Go out and read the Technological society, The Technological Bluff (J. Elluls) and Technopoly (N. Postman).
Most choices given by technological progress are an illusion.
Yes we today have 100's of automobiles to choose from but the choice of a mule or horse has been irrevokably removed in the name of technological progress.
This is despite the fact a mule and horse _can_ cross the Nevada desert unlike so many autonomous and piloted vehicles covered recently.
Most Payroll is now done by software and is rarely done by hand to the point I would say business has lost sight of a key process in favor of technological smoke and mirrors. Now we get into areas of how many hours the finance dept can "float" payroll offshore to avoid taxes or keep interest accruing then process it at the last moment. Only technological advances could give us such dangerous practices on a core process of business.
In effect Jacques Elluls and Neil Postman conclude in their books that technology beats you down to accepting the only choice, the one prefered is technologically the one forced upon you.
What Freedom!
I remember the uproar on CueCat a few years ago.
Give a slow barcode reader to everyone and then watch them use it.
What prevents a 2nd year EE student from publishing a circuit or code openly on how to read and decode the tags? Is this a DCMCA reverse engineering threat?
Could the Prism wireless chipset which has been hacked already under Linux hit RFIDs with the right signal to get a return signal as a result?
Hopefully Congress will force as a concession that RFIDs strings be freely available I think like ISBN numbers. UPCs I think you have to pay the Databases or license the decodeing algorithm especially ones related in manufacturing and parts cataloging and not Point of Sale IDs. IE the stuff that doesn't get read by a check out scanner.
Planet Boulder has probably the most pedestrian friendly setups in all of the West till you hit Seattle.
The reflective signs throughout the downtown core that say "State law Yield to pedestrians." finally sink into the transplants after the 3rd time someone walks out in front of their car.
The I like to walk up and hit the flashing signals on Pearl just to make cars stop during rushhour.
I sure wish Denver had such good setup. Walking downtown is risky especially with the buses and taxis blocking most of the view of crosswalks. The bus may stop but the delivery trucks won't.
An other international success story. These intrepid persons have been quitely working through the ARM tree of Linux to get a working kernel and PDA based on Psions abandoned product lines of PDAs.
" PsiLinux is a project to port the unix-like operating system Linux to a group of palmtops produced by Psion, and related machines such as the Geofox One. At present, working linux systems can be installed on any of the Series 5, Series 5MX, Series 5MX-Pro, Revo (Revo+, Mako) machines (NOT the Series 3). Linux on the Series 7/netBook is rudimentarily working."
IF Psion is looking at jumpstarting anything Linux they have a very sound basis to work from. If anything the should open or binary source the S5MX 's power code and other nice things like audio recording.
They had a strong following for their proprietary language OPL but burned most of those shops with the demise of the palmtop product line.
There were fantastic pieces of OPL software that I'd love to run under linux but can't such as Plan5 the only project management software useful for a PDA.
While your asking programmers you may actually run into a business savvy person.
Can you ask if the contract process between in-country versus international is percieved as a potential problem or benefit of Indian based shops.
Currently the ability for corporations/persons inside Europe and North America to effectively sue under both tort , contract breach, and ethics breach is breaking down. Internationalizing commercial software exacerbates the prosecution situation.
Do the programmers/managers/entrepreneurs you meet feel that India has an effective legislative and justice body to protect their personal and corporate rights? Does India has an effective system to adequately respond to international requests for justice?
Given the fact that International lawsuits are very expensive and hard to enforce judgements across boarders for big crimes (humanity, slavery, trafficing, fraud, etc) how are small companies everywhere going to CYA [cover your arse] their hard cash currancy investments in India development shops?
What is the India's stance on Copywrite enforcment?
It it foreseeable that a SCO like travisty would happen cross boarders. It is also foreseeable that a "legitamate" accusation as in the Racecad/alibre situation.
I also would like to see what would happen in cases like the IBM S.K. bribery case. How effectively are Indian companies and government actually enforcing fraud laws?
Have Indian shops ever been stiffed for non-payment, late payment, under payment by a non regional company [Europe, US]? What was the costs and outcome of legal recourse?