Imagine a website that you could go to (either at the polls, or at home after the election) where you could key in your super-secret code and verify your vote.
Until your union manager wants your "super-secret code" to make sure you're "part of the family". It doesn't seem right, but you have a stable paycheck and kids to feed. Someone else can rock the boat...
There are no cheat-sheets or sales manuals listing the products in a department, and there are few brochures, if any....and the people with the initiative to dig out the manuals from the floor-display boxes or download them from the manufacturer's website to read them on their lunch break aren't willing to work for the wages Best Buy offers.
Employer-run background checks are not the way to go here. Just get your workers bonded for some amount of money commensurate with the damage they can cause. Bonding agencies have been around for centuries and have experience in this field that the typical firm's HR department does not.
Basically, you pay $smallnum, and if $guywithaccess does $badthing, you get paid $bignum to cover your expenses. Let someone guess the odds.
It seems amazing to me that you could pick up a hammer, use it to do things that are damn near impossible with your hands, and formulate no opinion on the value of hammers in the process. It's a basic part of human learning. This must be why this project is taking so damned long...
Negroponte is avoiding the kiss of death for charities: getting involved in the open market.
For example, imagine you are running the Red Cross, MSF, Salvation Army, or some other large charity that does large amounts of shipping. You may look at Exxon-Mobil's record profits and think, "this is insane...we're lining the pockets of this company's shareholders with money that could otherwise be helping the needy. Our mission burns tons of fuel, but there must be a better way." To fix this you start investing capital in your own not-for-profit private fuel suppliers, just to keep the costs in-house. A little later you look back and realize your suppliers are horridly inefficient because they never had to answer to the open market, all your working capital is tied up in wells, refineries, pipelines, and tankers, and your bureaucracy nightmare puts most banana republics to shame.
This example is excessive, but it demonstrates the simple trap of a good idea ("Lets feed the needy, not Big Oil Inc.") becoming a living hell ("Why are we drilling for oil in Greenland instead of feeding the needy?"). Charities constantly make this mistake on a smaller scale, especially in the printing, mailing, and call-center businesses. The siren-call of "let's keep this in-house" is so tempting, it's hard to realize it's the same as signing an exclusive contract with a supplier that has no competition and no experience.
Negroponte doesn't really care what operating system ends up on the OLPC, so long as it meets requirements. He does want to avoid getting into the operating system business.
Negroponte only cares about the nail getting pounded in. If you can do it cheaper with a different tool, you're hired.
My point is that there is a will, so somebody will find a way...
If it's a pain in the ass, no one will care.
YouTube's success owes to their ease of use and lax copyright handling. If uploaders need to jump through too many hoops to post content circumventing new restrictions, they simply won't bother.
And every fingerprint taken needs to be compared to another. How, prey tell, did they get the Fingerprint? Presumably Russia sent them a copy? Oh no, you say... the CIA/MI5 provided it, and the CIA/MI5 insists it is from Russia, so it must be. Hmmm...
These data have been exchanged on a regular basis for over 30 years. Doing so was a practical necessity for strategic arms treaties.
Every reactor leaves a fingerprint on its produce and waste. Minor differences in the isotope ratios are present in products from separate reactors. Tracing the source of a radioisotope is neither rocket science nor brain surgery.
Often times these heavy elements have worse biological properties from their chemical interactions than from the radiation they emit. It might well be that it will be chemically toxic to you long before radiation becomes a worry.
In most cases it's a combination of the two...the chemical properties will ferry the isotope to a sensitive location where the radiation can wreak havoc.
For example, a weak alpha emitter can be held in the palm of your hand without any effects. An element that acts as a drop-in calcium replacement in the body can benignly sit in your bones. Combine both properties, and you'll have irradiated bone marrow and a world of hurt.
But what a stupid idea. Why have millions of copies of everything when theoretically networks will allow there to be a few replicated copies? Seems a pointless waste of disk space to me.
$10,000 per copyright violation, duh.
"There you go sir, here's your new iPod, your receipt, your cease-and-desist, your subpoena, and here are terms for your settlement. Would you like to sign up for our new service plan? We offer free replacement of your iPod should it ever be seized as evidence."
Re:Forgot another method of Disassembly
on
The Wii Disassembled
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I haven't a clue why people would want to do this, but its their money being wasted.
Yes, using a game console for entertainment is clearly a waste of money.
I was kinda thinking you were talking about Microsoft, but they don't do anything well.
If they sucked so hard, they wouldn't exist.
There are a few Microsoft products that really are best-in-class. Excel comes to mind...it's the lifeblood app of the business world. The majority of hardware with a Microsoft label is pretty damn solid.
Apple cannot be it because they do everything well.
If they did everything well, they'd have a double-digit piece of the pie. Apple has certainly taken their share of boneheaded turns in the past.
In many cases, intellectual property is "production grade" the moment it's written. EG: PHP code.
You are dead wrong, but you aren't going to believe otherwise until you get burned. The optimism of youth may cost you a month of no sleep; maybe it will cost you your first mortgage.
The only way to tell is when, five years down the road, you reread what you wrote and find yourself laughing...or crying.
Re:vertical integration and stovepipes
on
Oracle Linux?
·
· Score: 1
If they offered a complete "vertical stack" from a VMWare platform on up, I'd be happy with that.
If you're thinking of archives we want to be around for centuries, that's easy enough. Put them on a server with a fairly large RAID array, and replicate it over the Internet to another datacenter or two. If one hard drive dies, you swap it out for another. If one RAID controller or whole box goes down, hard, you build a new one and replicate the data back.
Ten years ago, mag-tape was going to last for centuries. Ten years before that, microfiche was going to last for centuries. Ten years for that, microfilm was going to last for centuries.
Ten years from now when your datacenters are hunting for ancient RAID controllers that are not longer made, can't afford the power and A/C bills without charging you pound-me-in-the-ass prices, can't reliably syncronize over a tiered internet, and can't cough up your data any faster than you could drive there and haul it all back on a single plastic chip the size of your thumbnail, you are going to really be wondering how you got yourself into this mess.
Data storage is easy. Retrieval is a bitch. Throwing the techno-fad of the day at the problem doesn't solve it.
but am I alone in thinking that it's peculiar that it's the 21st century and the majority of us are still reading watch dials that were invented 500 years ago?
Yes, you are alone. A standard human brain will read an analog watch far, far, faster than a digital one. While comprehension speed may not be critical for reading the time from a watch, it is certainly important in other places. Why do you think airplane cockpits, cars, nuclear power station control centers, etc. are all full of analog displays? Even the most modern ones with lcd displays are still imitating analog displays.
Doesn't the cosmic background radiation from the big bang create an effective "stationary" frame of reference?
The Big Bang did not happen in a particular location of the universe you perceive; the Big Bang was the entire universe at the time. Cosmic background radiation propogates in all directions from all reference points.
There simply is no such thing as a "stationary" frame of reference...they are all identical.
I think the news publishers are in a worse predicament, given that 90% of non-local articles are verbatim reprints of AP reports. Unless they are all holding firm, the search engines will see the content. Google, et. al, also has the option of subscribing to AP directly and becoming a true publisher themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine a website that you could go to (either at the polls, or at home after the election) where you could key in your super-secret code and verify your vote.
Until your union manager wants your "super-secret code" to make sure you're "part of the family". It doesn't seem right, but you have a stable paycheck and kids to feed. Someone else can rock the boat...
There are no cheat-sheets or sales manuals listing the products in a department, and there are few brochures, if any. ...and the people with the initiative to dig out the manuals from the floor-display boxes or download them from the manufacturer's website to read them on their lunch break aren't willing to work for the wages Best Buy offers.
This guy is elected...By old people.
More aptly, this guy is elected by people who bother to vote
Employer-run background checks are not the way to go here. Just get your workers bonded for some amount of money commensurate with the damage they can cause. Bonding agencies have been around for centuries and have experience in this field that the typical firm's HR department does not.
Basically, you pay $smallnum, and if $guywithaccess does $badthing, you get paid $bignum to cover your expenses. Let someone guess the odds.
As it stands your analogy might as well be comparing asteroids to hemorrhoids. The two things have no relation so the analogy only serves to distract.
No relation? Get either one up your ass and you won't sit down for a week!
Do you find not compensating artists for their work to be morally neutral as well?
Are copyright extensions morally neutral? That sword cuts both ways.
It seems amazing to me that you could pick up a hammer, use it to do things that are damn near impossible with your hands, and formulate no opinion on the value of hammers in the process. It's a basic part of human learning. This must be why this project is taking so damned long...
Negroponte is avoiding the kiss of death for charities: getting involved in the open market.
For example, imagine you are running the Red Cross, MSF, Salvation Army, or some other large charity that does large amounts of shipping. You may look at Exxon-Mobil's record profits and think, "this is insane...we're lining the pockets of this company's shareholders with money that could otherwise be helping the needy. Our mission burns tons of fuel, but there must be a better way." To fix this you start investing capital in your own not-for-profit private fuel suppliers, just to keep the costs in-house. A little later you look back and realize your suppliers are horridly inefficient because they never had to answer to the open market, all your working capital is tied up in wells, refineries, pipelines, and tankers, and your bureaucracy nightmare puts most banana republics to shame.
This example is excessive, but it demonstrates the simple trap of a good idea ("Lets feed the needy, not Big Oil Inc.") becoming a living hell ("Why are we drilling for oil in Greenland instead of feeding the needy?"). Charities constantly make this mistake on a smaller scale, especially in the printing, mailing, and call-center businesses. The siren-call of "let's keep this in-house" is so tempting, it's hard to realize it's the same as signing an exclusive contract with a supplier that has no competition and no experience.
Negroponte doesn't really care what operating system ends up on the OLPC, so long as it meets requirements. He does want to avoid getting into the operating system business.
Negroponte only cares about the nail getting pounded in. If you can do it cheaper with a different tool, you're hired.
Negroponte doesn't care about the hammer.
My point is that there is a will, so somebody will find a way...
If it's a pain in the ass, no one will care.
YouTube's success owes to their ease of use and lax copyright handling. If uploaders need to jump through too many hoops to post content circumventing new restrictions, they simply won't bother.
And every fingerprint taken needs to be compared to another. How, prey tell, did they get the Fingerprint? Presumably Russia sent them a copy? Oh no, you say ... the CIA/MI5 provided it, and the CIA/MI5 insists it is from Russia, so it must be. Hmmm ...
These data have been exchanged on a regular basis for over 30 years. Doing so was a practical necessity for strategic arms treaties.
1) My users are finally getting comfortable with XP.
2) My staff doesn't need the hassles of a mixed environment right now.
3) I'm not seeing what Vista will actually *do* for me over XP.
4) I don't the the budget headroom for an off-cycle hardware overhaul.
5) I'm unwilling to perform the carnal acts necessary to get that extra funding.
6) I'm not deploying another MS OS before the first service pack.
Again ... they didn't. It cannot be done. Period.
Every reactor leaves a fingerprint on its produce and waste. Minor differences in the isotope ratios are present in products from separate reactors. Tracing the source of a radioisotope is neither rocket science nor brain surgery.
Often times these heavy elements have worse biological properties from their chemical interactions than from the radiation they emit. It might well be that it will be chemically toxic to you long before radiation becomes a worry.
In most cases it's a combination of the two...the chemical properties will ferry the isotope to a sensitive location where the radiation can wreak havoc.
For example, a weak alpha emitter can be held in the palm of your hand without any effects. An element that acts as a drop-in calcium replacement in the body can benignly sit in your bones. Combine both properties, and you'll have irradiated bone marrow and a world of hurt.
But what a stupid idea. Why have millions of copies of everything when theoretically networks will allow there to be a few replicated copies? Seems a pointless waste of disk space to me.
$10,000 per copyright violation, duh.
"There you go sir, here's your new iPod, your receipt, your cease-and-desist, your subpoena, and here are terms for your settlement. Would you like to sign up for our new service plan? We offer free replacement of your iPod should it ever be seized as evidence."
I haven't a clue why people would want to do this, but its their money being wasted.
Yes, using a game console for entertainment is clearly a waste of money.
I was kinda thinking you were talking about Microsoft, but they don't do anything well.
If they sucked so hard, they wouldn't exist.
There are a few Microsoft products that really are best-in-class. Excel comes to mind...it's the lifeblood app of the business world. The majority of hardware with a Microsoft label is pretty damn solid.
Apple cannot be it because they do everything well.
If they did everything well, they'd have a double-digit piece of the pie. Apple has certainly taken their share of boneheaded turns in the past.
I think the actual point of the article is:
Ignorance is bliss.
In many cases, intellectual property is "production grade" the moment it's written. EG: PHP code.
You are dead wrong, but you aren't going to believe otherwise until you get burned. The optimism of youth may cost you a month of no sleep; maybe it will cost you your first mortgage.
The only way to tell is when, five years down the road, you reread what you wrote and find yourself laughing...or crying.
If they offered a complete "vertical stack" from a VMWare platform on up, I'd be happy with that.
Cost of replacing an extinct species: priceless.
Would you sacrifice a species to extend the average human lifespan by 20 years?
everything has a price if you are haggling with the right currency.
If you're thinking of archives we want to be around for centuries, that's easy enough. Put them on a server with a fairly large RAID array, and replicate it over the Internet to another datacenter or two. If one hard drive dies, you swap it out for another. If one RAID controller or whole box goes down, hard, you build a new one and replicate the data back.
Ten years ago, mag-tape was going to last for centuries. Ten years before that, microfiche was going to last for centuries. Ten years for that, microfilm was going to last for centuries.
Ten years from now when your datacenters are hunting for ancient RAID controllers that are not longer made, can't afford the power and A/C bills without charging you pound-me-in-the-ass prices, can't reliably syncronize over a tiered internet, and can't cough up your data any faster than you could drive there and haul it all back on a single plastic chip the size of your thumbnail, you are going to really be wondering how you got yourself into this mess.
Data storage is easy. Retrieval is a bitch. Throwing the techno-fad of the day at the problem doesn't solve it.
but am I alone in thinking that it's peculiar that it's the 21st century and the majority of us are still reading watch dials that were invented 500 years ago?
Yes, you are alone. A standard human brain will read an analog watch far, far, faster than a digital one. While comprehension speed may not be critical for reading the time from a watch, it is certainly important in other places. Why do you think airplane cockpits, cars, nuclear power station control centers, etc. are all full of analog displays? Even the most modern ones with lcd displays are still imitating analog displays.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
We've got some new packagings for the new Nano as well. And it's 52% less volume.
Isn't the new Nano about 52% smaller anyways? Wouldn't you naturally expect less packaging?
Doesn't the cosmic background radiation from the big bang create an effective
"stationary" frame of reference?
The Big Bang did not happen in a particular location of the universe you perceive; the Big Bang was the entire universe at the time. Cosmic background radiation propogates in all directions from all reference points.
There simply is no such thing as a "stationary" frame of reference...they are all identical.
I can't imagine a scenario where the webpage is so valuable that the economics would work this way.
Anything sufficiently popular and time-sensitive
nyse
nasdaq
ebay
craigslist
I think the news publishers are in a worse predicament, given that 90% of non-local articles are verbatim reprints of AP reports. Unless they are all holding firm, the search engines will see the content. Google, et. al, also has the option of subscribing to AP directly and becoming a true publisher themselves.