Is me, or does it seem like there are an awful lot more of these law suits going on these days?
It sounds like the legal eagles are trying to make sure that they stay employed by constantly drumming up new angles and new things to worry about. This means that the comapanies have to pay the lawyers (naturally) to protect them from this new threat, real or imagineD.
It actually seems like another form of blackmail, or extorion, playing off the fear. I have heard of several situations where once a suit was filed, it HAD to continue because if it was settled, then the lawyers would not get their fees, and so they would sue the corporations!
In any case I applauded the action of Daily Radar, as seen in this snippet
It seems to us that Nintendo has filed this lawsuit in an effort to bully us into ceasing coverage of its properties in ways that it does not like (unofficial strategy guides, for instance). We refuse to be bullied -- both for our sake, and for the sake of our readers. A company that desires press coverage of its products, but only when it is pleased by that coverage, should not be allowed to litigate its way to happiness. To let Nintendo bully us by continuing to write about Nintendo games on Nintendo's terms would mean that you, the reader, would receive compromised coverage (i.e. "Here's the news about Nintendo that won't get us sued"), and that we, the game critics, end up pulling our punches, watching our backs and fearing lawsuits from a company that, essentially, we were spending our days praising and advocating.
I recall other articles recently where certain non-disclosures were offered by various companies which essentially forbade writing about the product in a negative fashion. The upshot being, honest reviews where not the ones you saw in advance on the product release, but some months after. I even understand that EULAs are getting into the act as well.
[rant]
After a while, Microsoft just really ticks me off
Why don't they do something like patent pollution? Then they could sew all the polluters on the planet for patent infringement. And make a mint on the licensing fees
I swear, every time I start to relax about MS, they go and do something to wind me all over again [/rant]
Standard Disclosure: IANAL
Excellent tutorial on non-disclosures here, and here
Special Note: In some states, including California, noncompete agreements generally can't be enforced against employees. The problem is that because noncompete agreements come in so many shapes and sizes, and because you've got very conflicting societal interests, the courts tend to analyze these things on a case-by-case basis, which means predictability is very low.
What most people dont seem to realize is how much power the Internet needs. First, information-rich ore must be shipped
from the East Coast and overseas to Silicon Valley. California has attempted using their own data mines, but apparently the
filming of so many decades of saccharine romantic comedies in and around Hollywood has left the ore in the area light on
information and rich on complex sugar compounds.
etc etc
somebody find the parent to this comment and mod it up as funny please
I tried to find a story or a parable that would be funny, and would fit this situation. Sadly, none is quite right.
The situation reminds me of bullies at a playground. It used to be that all the kids would play there, but now the bullies want it for themselves. It elvolves into things like gangs, and the regular folks go away.
Unfortunately, I can't think of anything to make that seem funny
All these lawsuits remind me children fighting over something screaming "mine!", "mine!", "mine!". At it never was theirs in the first place. And they will all cry and blame the other guy when they break it.
Ubersoft seems less of a satire, and this sequence (about ten strips) in Sinfest seems strangely appropriate.
Here is something from the article, for those who don't have time to plough through it:
Mark Mills and Peter Huber are the Chicken Littles of the debate over electricity and the Internet. The two conservative analysts publish the Digital Power Report and have testified about the increased demand for electricity occasioned by the Net everywhere from the pages of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal to a congressional regulatory subcommittee. A year and a half ago, Mills published a report for the Greening Earth Society, a nonprofit backed by coal interests, asserting that by 1998 the Internet was already consuming about 8 percent of U.S. electricity and that the entire "digital economy" accounted for fully 13 percent. Moreover, he forecasted that in the next 20 years the Internet -- "directly and indirectly" -- would come to consume 30 to 50 percent of all electricity in the country.
So what's the explanation for Mills and Huber's 8 percent figure? "If the claims that they're making are true, you'd expect to see vast increases in electricity demand and you are not," says Koomey. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley have refuted Mills and Huber's assertions point by point, based on their own research. They put the figure for all office, telecommunications and networking equipment at 3 percent of the total electricity used in the United States.
It comes down to a war of watts. For example, Mills and Huber argue that after factoring in all the networking and telecommunications equipment required on the back end, like routers and servers, a PC and its peripherals connected to the Net use 1,000 watts of power, which is as much the electricity used by 10 100-watt light bulbs. But Koomey and his group think that figure is wildly exaggerated. Koomey says that a PC consumes only 50 to 200 watts and that factoring in the back-end equipment adds only about 15 watts to the PC's electricity consumption.
Mills and Huber also assert that a Palm Pilot that is plugged into the Net consumes as much energy as a refrigerator -- a nice sound bite that has been widely quoted. But is it true? Koomey says he sent an e-mail to Mills requesting documentation: "I am trying to reproduce your estimate about the electricity use of a Palm Pilot equaling that of a refrigerator, because of the network electricity use. Is there a place where this calculation is documented?" Koomey says he repeated this collegial request eight times over two months, but got no response.
sounds like someone is trying to make money by trolling the society to me
whenever I put a system together for someone I avoid the integrated chipset motherboards unless I know it is going to be an appliance, a throw-away system. And I tell the person getting the machine that as well. The last thing I need is to be married to a machine
typically, you see this in people who want to get high power performance out of something designed to be an office workstation.
I saw this recently where someone (a lawyer) who had a stroke managed to get a half decent system donated so that he could continue working. Had to have speech recognition.
but now all the family wants is all the games, which is not what it was donated for in the first place. and which it is not really set up for, not the fancy stuff. It doesn't have the high end performance.
That is the problem you see. Someone gets the 500 dollar system, and then goes and buys the game that runs best on a system with 128meg video ram, etc etc etc
True for now, but when the 21 million AOL users upgrade to the version using Netscape instead of IE and find that many pages don't work, they're going to be a bit upset.
well, I know that AOL is using IE because then it gets included in the online services offered by MS in Windows.
So is AOL going to give up this bit of marketing advantadge to be able to use the browser product that they own?
They haven't so far.
I suspect that they will not until MS obsoletes Windows, or else intergrates Windows into later versions of MSN, as part of the MSN operating system that will be the consumer version of the.NET initiative.
MS says that.NET is going to be oriented to the small business. But do you really think that they will ignore the consumer market?
the idea of MSN compatibility requirements makes me shudder.
Even Microshaft people are insulted to be associated with politics. They're not _completely_ immoral.
actually, maybe there isn't enough money in it for them. It would be too hard to get a monopoly.
now that we have the obligatory bashing done, I can imagine the hassles of using a MS system for voting. Can you imagine the legal fights because of a blue screen or two on
election day in Florida?
Microsoft Electonic Chads leave no unsightly mess on your counting room floor!
Part of what made/makes Apple great is innovative technologies. This goes back to the original line of the product being "Insanely Great", and earlier.
Now some of the strategies may go back to the 80's. Personally I do not care. If it still works, why drop it?
True, you have to watch the new technologies, and make sure you do not get obsoleted out. But I wonder if part of Apples' problems came from some sort of departure from the original core idea of "Insanely Great" etc. i.e. - Focusing on innovative, almost inspirational technology.
There is this weird possibility too, that if MS goes forward with the.NET strategy, in effect abandoning Windows as a desktop only product, that companies like Apple may wind up owning the desktop. A long shot, to be sure, but weirder things have happened. And Apple does not have to abandon the desktop to expand as a company.
In the weirdest of all scenarios, Apple could survive MS.
All things comsidered, I tend to be more partial to some sort of solid state media, rather than delicate rotating media like that in a portable situation.
Although it is not difficult to see someone making it, just because they might make a few bucks off it.
[shrug]
This may be another case of media wars, and the maxim of not buying version 1.0 of something has got to apply somehow as well.
I am going to presume that things will drag on enough that Microsoft will have time to minimize the damage from a potential breakup.
The end result could be, via the.NET initiative, that Windows is an empty shell. And the government is left with an empty victory.
That being said, does this open the door for Microsoft to be regulated as a public utility. With the use of Microsoft services, all those businesses depending on MS to be up and reliable 100% of the time, there is going to be one huge stink if it isn't close to 99.999 percent reliable (about 5 minutes of down time per year)
Microsoft, I am sure will have all kinds of legal language absolving them of any and all possible damage for using their system. This is what lawyers are for, and is very standard these days in EULAs. With enough outrage, and law suits, regulation would be sure to come.
It is easy to imagine a new kind of public utility, based on information technology. It would be interesting to see regulated prices for software services, since they are a monoploy.
I wonder if this would have to be done via local commitees on a town by town basis, for example. something similar to cable tv.
Actually, the time for action on something like this would be now.
As reported here, and seen on the VIA website, VIA began shipping its high-bandwidth today [15.jan.2001], 266MHz DDR SDRAM and Athlon-supporting two-chip chipset, the Apollo KT266.
Demo'd at Comdex last November, the KT266 supports AMD's Socket A chip interface, connecting the processor to the rest of the world via a 266MHz frontside bus. The chipset supports up to 266MHz DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM on the memory side for maximum data throughput rate of 2.1GBps, but will also work with PC-133 SDRAM. It can cope with 4GB of RAM, according to VIA's press release, but only 2GB if the company's Web site is to be believed. Go figure...
In any case I can hardly wait for this technology to also be available for the mobile world. AMD and Via are probably working closely together on this, and it would be nice to see some of this for the road warriors out there.
According to the Guiness Book of World Records, the world's largest truck is in Sparwood British Columbia. Based on info below, this may well be an old copy of the book
The six wheeler shown there is obviously larger than the 4 wheeler above, and fully loaded is 610 tons. this is 260 tons vehicle and 350 payload
This is vs the 500 tons specified for the vehicle shown at ZZZ online
This is not all. There is an interesting news release here about a company placing an order with Caterpillar for a truck that would be 380 tons vehicle, and the development of several 400 ton vehicles. This was in 1999.
So a truck that would spec out to 500 tonnes fully loaded is rather small
I have been concerned about the heat problem and the rise in frequencies. The Frequencies have been rising well into the microwave range.
While everything is obviously shielded, it is still amusing to speculate on the cooking potentials of the insides of your PC.
What is more worrisome is the problem of heat. I recall reading someplace that right now a typical processor runs the energy of a 60 watt light bulb through that piece of ceramic.
When we multiply this with the frequency shifts and the number of transistors, it becomes worrisome.
I occasionally have visions of computers glowing like a flying saucer [smile]
I can imagine, with all of this attention, that somebody is going to seriously satire the originally targeted police sites, and host it out of US.
Someplace like Russia, for example.
"This site is being hosted in Russia because has more freedom than is commonly available in small town in US like Salem NH
I can also imagine that the satire would be ever so more viscious than something a teenager could come up with. The photo gallery offers some potential, for example.
Some things require a practiced hand to be done right.
"What is happening to the net now is similar to what happened in the fertile crescent of the Near East some 7000
years ago, and will have similar beneficial repercusions for us all. The net needs to be civilised, and this is
something that should be welcomed by us all."
We should not react as the barbarians did in 5000 BC, or we shall become as redundant and outmoded as they did. We should accept the benefits, and move on."
The major form of civilization that was the prefered system of choice at the time was a hereditary dictatorship with a large segment of the local population in some form of slavery. There is some truth to the idea of an oriental despotism.
For that matter, take a look at the caste system that dominated Ancient Rome. Your generally could only go into the same occupation that your father had. Also, in Rome, if you wanted to leave, there was no where you could go, really, unless you went to live among the barbarians. It was a closed system. China, etc. were quite a far distance away.
Certain barbarians objected to this, you could say. Democracy was a very rare thing indeed.
Without wanting to get into a huge distro war thing, it is probably better that people are enthusiastic about Linux, even if favoring one distro over another.
Debate is a healthy thing
And besides, people who are expert can even offer valid insightful opinions about features and technologies, rather than roboticly mouthing a party line.
The last thing we need is an army of thoughtless marketing droids.
In many communications of this type, the aim is to try to make could be intelligible speech indistinguishable from noise.
Note that many politicians and spin doctor seem to have this done to a fine art.
The reverse is slightly more difficult, which is the fine art of taking something indistinguishable from noise, and try to extract intelligible speech from it.
How similar this is to public forums such as slashdot, etc is left as a exercise for the reader.
Here we have a man who did good in the world, and who is responsible for many of the good things that technologists look forward to and enjoy today.
That his inheritance and legacy might be not as skillfully managed as could be desired is lamentable, but understandable. Not everyone is particularly gifted.
So now is a time to honor the good he did, not to puke on his grave because his successors are not as skilled.
Hind-sight is 20-20. How many of us got out of the dotcom bubble before it burst? Should we pick on you because you didn't? Probably not.
We would probably do well to try and figure out what we would or could have done different given a particular engineering problem. It would probably be a good educational execercise.
Well the military and police forces have been trying to come up with something resembling science fiction beam weapons for a while.
Someone has even figured a way to come up with "phasers" that stun a person. Two laser beams ionize the air enough to provide the path of an electric current. sort of like a taser(?) without the wires.
In any case, I am sure we will here more of this sort of thing.
The US looks like it is walking in the direction of high tech beam weapons, etc. while the under developed nations go in the direction of bioweapons.
An interesting balance of power, to say the least.
Although here is this interesting bit from the middle of the article:
The harm in the New York case was arguably less than that demonstrated in the eBay case. Register.com offered evidence that its computer system's resources were diminished by about
2.3 percent owing to Verio's robot. In her opinion, Judge Jones said that the harm estimate was "thoroughly undercut" by Vario in
pretrial discovery, however. She added that Register.com's evidence of harm was "imprecise." Nevertheless, Judge Jones concluded that Verio's search robot occupied "some" of Register.com's system capacity. And because some unmeasured
portion of Register.com's computer property was not available to the company, that was harm enough, she said -- especially when combined with the eBay notion that the failure to issue an
injunction risks a pile-on from other robots in the wings.
Michael A. Jacobs, a lawyer for Vario, said in an interview that Judge Jones, in effect, said that a showing of present harm was no longer a necessary requirement for trespassing on a computer web site. "In eBay, they showed a 1 or 2 percent" crunch on eBay's system capacity, he said. In his case, even though Register.com's allegation of 2 percent "blew up," he added, "the judge found a sufficient risk of harm. It was literally unprecedented."
William F. Patry, a lawyer for Register.com, said that it was reasonable for Judge Jones to rule that a sufficient showing of harm was made. "If your property is the computer system and somebody comes in and uses it in a way that violates the terms of use," he asserted, the owner can say, " 'Wait, you're using my system under conditions that I said you couldn't.' "
It may be true that the particular use "won't crash my system," Patry said, but any use of the personal property diminishes the owner's rights to a degree. He added that it was not "so crazy" for the court to rule that Register.com's computer response time might be significantly slowed if other companies began to use robots to hammer on Register.com's database.
Think about it: AOL Time Warner is now the world's most powerful mass media entity, something right out of the James Bond movie TOMORROW NEVER DIES. Look at what they will own now:
This is why I can see Microsoft looking to model themselves after AOL in the coming years, with their.NET proposal, etc.
Question is, is this enough to stop Microsoft? Are they a big enough opponent?
and is this something we would even want?
Or should we look forward to the rumored AOL OS in the works? (more spam, more often!)
Has any group ever attempted the equivalent of the "space elevator" but for underwater exploration? Perhaps it wouldn't be useful for humans who suffer from pressure ailments, but for certain machines it could prove to be an effective mode of transport.
Water is more turbulent than a vacuum or an atmosphere. So it would be more stressfull on mechanical items
Plus there is the old maxim about the ocean. Put something in the ocean, and either something will grow on it, something will try to eat it, or it will corrode.
This provides for a number of interesting engineering problems.
the simplest solution is what is used right now. You drop the submarine to the bottom, and release ballast to float to the top.
For example, some managers get into a statified way of looking at things. This is called mushroom management. As in, "keep the mushrooms in the dark, and watch them grow".
You also have this in various comments such as "Time to stir the pot and watch the vegetables go around in circles"
Obviously, the attitudes develop into "Us vs Them"(tm) philosophies.
I would tend to believe that actual communication would be fairly low in situations like that. What passes for communication might be no more than the usual grunting that serves to designate who is the alpha male.
Real communication may not have taken place, just posturing and noises. This would show up in charts as described in the article.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like the legal eagles are trying to make sure that they stay employed by constantly drumming up new angles and new things to worry about. This means that the comapanies have to pay the lawyers (naturally) to protect them from this new threat, real or imagineD.
It actually seems like another form of blackmail, or extorion, playing off the fear. I have heard of several situations where once a suit was filed, it HAD to continue because if it was settled, then the lawyers would not get their fees, and so they would sue the corporations!
In any case I applauded the action of Daily Radar, as seen in this snippet
I recall other articles recently where certain non-disclosures were offered by various companies which essentially forbade writing about the product in a negative fashion. The upshot being, honest reviews where not the ones you saw in advance on the product release, but some months after. I even understand that EULAs are getting into the act as well.maybe someone can provide some links.
After a while, Microsoft just really ticks me off
Why don't they do something like patent pollution? Then they could sew all the polluters on the planet for patent infringement. And make a mint on the licensing fees
I swear, every time I start to relax about MS, they go and do something to wind me all over again
[/rant]
Standard Disclosure: IANAL
Excellent tutorial on non-disclosures here, and here
Non-disclosures are different from noncompetes:
Excellent discussions on noncompetes here
Special Note: In some states, including California, noncompete agreements generally can't be enforced against employees. The problem is that because noncompete agreements come in so many shapes and sizes, and because you've got very conflicting societal interests, the courts tend to analyze these things on a case-by-case basis, which means predictability is very low.
There is also this interesting site:
www.breakyournoncompete.com
which has an agreement on the front end.
I am sure there are others out there as well.
etc etc
somebody find the parent to this comment and mod it up as funny please
The situation reminds me of bullies at a playground. It used to be that all the kids would play there, but now the bullies want it for themselves. It elvolves into things like gangs, and the regular folks go away.
Unfortunately, I can't think of anything to make that seem funny
All these lawsuits remind me children fighting over something screaming "mine!", "mine!", "mine!". At it never was theirs in the first place. And they will all cry and blame the other guy when they break it.
Ubersoft seems less of a satire, and this sequence (about ten strips) in Sinfest seems strangely appropriate.
typically, you see this in people who want to get high power performance out of something designed to be an office workstation.
I saw this recently where someone (a lawyer) who had a stroke managed to get a half decent system donated so that he could continue working. Had to have speech recognition.
but now all the family wants is all the games, which is not what it was donated for in the first place. and which it is not really set up for, not the fancy stuff. It doesn't have the high end performance.
That is the problem you see. Someone gets the 500 dollar system, and then goes and buys the game that runs best on a system with 128meg video ram, etc etc etc
well, I know that AOL is using IE because then it gets included in the online services offered by MS in Windows.
So is AOL going to give up this bit of marketing advantadge to be able to use the browser product that they own?
They haven't so far.
I suspect that they will not until MS obsoletes Windows, or else intergrates Windows into later versions of MSN, as part of the MSN operating system that will be the consumer version of the .NET initiative.
MS says that .NET is going to be oriented to the small business. But do you really think that they will ignore the consumer market?
the idea of MSN compatibility requirements makes me shudder.
actually, maybe there isn't enough money in it for them. It would be too hard to get a monopoly.
now that we have the obligatory bashing done, I can imagine the hassles of using a MS system for voting. Can you imagine the legal fights because of a blue screen or two on election day in Florida?
Microsoft Electonic Chads leave no unsightly mess on your counting room floor!
I can see it now . . .
Now some of the strategies may go back to the 80's. Personally I do not care. If it still works, why drop it?
True, you have to watch the new technologies, and make sure you do not get obsoleted out. But I wonder if part of Apples' problems came from some sort of departure from the original core idea of "Insanely Great" etc. i.e. - Focusing on innovative, almost inspirational technology.
There is this weird possibility too, that if MS goes forward with the .NET strategy, in effect abandoning Windows as a desktop only product, that companies like Apple may wind up owning the desktop. A long shot, to be sure, but weirder things have happened. And Apple does not have to abandon the desktop to expand as a company.
In the weirdest of all scenarios, Apple could survive MS.
Although it is not difficult to see someone making it, just because they might make a few bucks off it.
[shrug]
This may be another case of media wars, and the maxim of not buying version 1.0 of something has got to apply somehow as well.
The end result could be, via the .NET initiative, that Windows is an empty shell. And the government is left with an empty victory.
That being said, does this open the door for Microsoft to be regulated as a public utility. With the use of Microsoft services, all those businesses depending on MS to be up and reliable 100% of the time, there is going to be one huge stink if it isn't close to 99.999 percent reliable (about 5 minutes of down time per year)
Microsoft, I am sure will have all kinds of legal language absolving them of any and all possible damage for using their system. This is what lawyers are for, and is very standard these days in EULAs. With enough outrage, and law suits, regulation would be sure to come.
It is easy to imagine a new kind of public utility, based on information technology. It would be interesting to see regulated prices for software services, since they are a monoploy.
I wonder if this would have to be done via local commitees on a town by town basis, for example. something similar to cable tv.
Actually, the time for action on something like this would be now.
Demo'd at Comdex last November, the KT266 supports AMD's Socket A chip interface, connecting the processor to the rest of the world via a 266MHz frontside bus. The chipset supports up to 266MHz DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM on the memory side for maximum data throughput rate of 2.1GBps, but will also work with PC-133 SDRAM. It can cope with 4GB of RAM, according to VIA's press release, but only 2GB if the company's Web site is to be believed. Go figure...
In any case I can hardly wait for this technology to also be available for the mobile world. AMD and Via are probably working closely together on this, and it would be nice to see some of this for the road warriors out there.
According to the Guiness Book of World Records, the world's largest truck is in Sparwood British Columbia. Based on info below, this may well be an old copy of the book
Specs can be found here:
http://www.sparwood.bc.ca/titaninf.htm
The six wheeler shown there is obviously larger than the 4 wheeler above, and fully loaded is 610 tons. this is 260 tons vehicle and 350 payload
This is vs the 500 tons specified for the vehicle shown at ZZZ online
This is not all. There is an interesting news release here about a company placing an order with Caterpillar for a truck that would be 380 tons vehicle, and the development of several 400 ton vehicles. This was in 1999.
So a truck that would spec out to 500 tonnes fully loaded is rather small
While everything is obviously shielded, it is still amusing to speculate on the cooking potentials of the insides of your PC.
What is more worrisome is the problem of heat. I recall reading someplace that right now a typical processor runs the energy of a 60 watt light bulb through that piece of ceramic.
When we multiply this with the frequency shifts and the number of transistors, it becomes worrisome.
I occasionally have visions of computers glowing like a flying saucer [smile]
Someplace like Russia, for example.
"This site is being hosted in Russia because has more freedom than is commonly available in small town in US like Salem NH
I can also imagine that the satire would be ever so more viscious than something a teenager could come up with. The photo gallery offers some potential, for example.
Some things require a practiced hand to be done right.
heck maybe someplace like Kosovo.
Take your pick
Is this now a new species?
and as such, is it subject to the endangered species act?
(Waitaminute - they're russians!)
or is this going a bad movie version of the Andromenda Strain?
I imagine that this fungus problem will be something that they will have plenty of time to sort out on the new space station.
That may be the ultimate problem to long distance space travel.
Avoiding being consumed by space fungus.
We should not react as the barbarians did in 5000 BC, or we shall become as redundant and outmoded as they did. We should accept the benefits, and move on."
The major form of civilization that was the prefered system of choice at the time was a hereditary dictatorship with a large segment of the local population in some form of slavery. There is some truth to the idea of an oriental despotism.
For that matter, take a look at the caste system that dominated Ancient Rome. Your generally could only go into the same occupation that your father had. Also, in Rome, if you wanted to leave, there was no where you could go, really, unless you went to live among the barbarians. It was a closed system. China, etc. were quite a far distance away.
Certain barbarians objected to this, you could say. Democracy was a very rare thing indeed.
Debate is a healthy thing
And besides, people who are expert can even offer valid insightful opinions about features and technologies, rather than roboticly mouthing a party line.
The last thing we need is an army of thoughtless marketing droids.
"Check out this years' new color scheme!"
Note that many politicians and spin doctor seem to have this done to a fine art.
The reverse is slightly more difficult, which is the fine art of taking something indistinguishable from noise, and try to extract intelligible speech from it.
How similar this is to public forums such as slashdot, etc is left as a exercise for the reader.
;-)
Here we have a man who did good in the world, and who is responsible for many of the good things that technologists look forward to and enjoy today.
That his inheritance and legacy might be not as skillfully managed as could be desired is lamentable, but understandable. Not everyone is particularly gifted.
So now is a time to honor the good he did, not to puke on his grave because his successors are not as skilled.
Hind-sight is 20-20. How many of us got out of the dotcom bubble before it burst? Should we pick on you because you didn't? Probably not.
We would probably do well to try and figure out what we would or could have done different given a particular engineering problem. It would probably be a good educational execercise.
Someone has even figured a way to come up with "phasers" that stun a person. Two laser beams ionize the air enough to provide the path of an electric current. sort of like a taser(?) without the wires.
In any case, I am sure we will here more of this sort of thing.
The US looks like it is walking in the direction of high tech beam weapons, etc. while the under developed nations go in the direction of bioweapons.
An interesting balance of power, to say the least.
http://channel.nytimes.com/2001/01/12/technology/1 2CYBERLAW.html
Although here is this interesting bit from the middle of the article:
This is why I can see Microsoft looking to model themselves after AOL in the coming years, with their .NET proposal, etc.
Question is, is this enough to stop Microsoft? Are they a big enough opponent?
and is this something we would even want?
Or should we look forward to the rumored AOL OS in the works? (more spam, more often!)
Water is more turbulent than a vacuum or an atmosphere. So it would be more stressfull on mechanical items
Plus there is the old maxim about the ocean. Put something in the ocean, and either something will grow on it, something will try to eat it, or it will corrode.
This provides for a number of interesting engineering problems.
the simplest solution is what is used right now. You drop the submarine to the bottom, and release ballast to float to the top.
For example, some managers get into a statified way of looking at things. This is called mushroom management. As in, "keep the mushrooms in the dark, and watch them grow".
You also have this in various comments such as "Time to stir the pot and watch the vegetables go around in circles"
Obviously, the attitudes develop into "Us vs Them"(tm) philosophies.
I would tend to believe that actual communication would be fairly low in situations like that. What passes for communication might be no more than the usual grunting that serves to designate who is the alpha male.
Real communication may not have taken place, just posturing and noises. This would show up in charts as described in the article.