First issue - 4th Amendment protections in the US - what search and seizure protections do you have. Despite the so-called newness of the cloud (some of us remember big iron - dumb terminal models from way back) it is another way to electronically transmit information - so it would seem that all the existing wiretap laws would apply. Just like they can tap your phone they can intercept other electronic transmission, with a proper warrant. To the extent such information is publicly available (such as via a Google search), they should be able to get it without w warrant. if you fail to set security to prevent others from seeing it you, IMHO, have no expectation of privacy. To expand on the briefcase example, you may have an expectation of privacy for stuff in the briefcase, but the law can watch and videotape you putting something in in Starbucks.
The other issue, and to me the more important one, is collateral damage. As the referenced article pointed out, the physical search and seizure impacted a lot of innocent third parties. I doubt a court would say "you can't do a seizure because you'll grab other peoples stuff," but might say "you can only look at the target's info." So, rather tahn worry about the 4th companies should ensure their data centers have adequate disaster recovery plans to deal with such situations (along with fires, power outages, etc.) If a data center can't recover from the loss of some servers they have bigger problems than privacy rights.
Shouldn't the same privacy logic apply even more to your laptops and personal electronic devices when you're entering U.S. borders?
Having these people search your hard drive is an invasion of privacy.
Not really - at least not for US citizens, IMHO. Non-citizens are requesting to enter the country, a prerequisite to such permission is to search items being brought in. You should be able to refuse a search and leave on the next flight; entrance is a not a right. It's the same traveling to any country; you either meet their entrance requirements or don't enter.
obsolete -adjective
no longer in general use; fallen into disuse: an obsolete expression.
Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then. Like it or not, AVI is still widely used. Until it isn't, it will not be obsolete. You need a new word. Might I suggest one of the following: anachronous, antiquated, antique, archaic, behind the times, dated, old-hat, out, outdated, outmoded, passé, unfashionable.
Actually, it make sense in the context it was used - English usages morphs and changes, that's part of being a living language. It may nott be the choice you'd make, but then again I dislike "small minority," "large majority," and the ever - popular "proactive." Still, enough people use them that they have become acceptable usage.
Also, if you want to play the dictionary game:
b : of a kind or style no longer current : old-fashioned
"According to Tynt Insight's page, no individually identifiable info is provided."
apparently you don't know how things work... IP address + "list of search topics" is enough to personally ID someone even if they never search for themself or a relative.
IP Address + "things they've highlighted" have a very high probability of being able to do that too
OK, so explain it to me.
IP address plus list of search topics would be able to say "this particular person has interest in this," or "these searches were all done by the same person;" but I fail to see how that says "this is person X." A static IP address would help someone garner more information; but that only means the source, not the individual, is the same for the searches.
To use the required/. car analogy, knowing that a car with a certain tag was seen at x y, and z does not tell you who was there; but you can infer it probably was the same person (although that may or may not be true.)
From what I can see from Tynt's website they do not provide specific IP addresses, which means you'd have to tie Tynt's info to IP logs, even further adding to the uncertainty of who did what. Do they provide IP address with their info?
So, from where I sit the statement "no individually identifiable info is provided" is true; although I would agree the info could be used to build a profile of what users do.
I think it has something to do with Chinese savings now being the foundation of much of the western economy, and the fact that China is a major nuclear power.
What China realised and the USSR didn't, IMO, is that they could forget the cold war and essentially buy the west with the west's own money./crazy theory
Actually, it's a double edged sword. While countries are reliant on Chinese investment; China's economic health becomes more tied to Western countries as well. They are more vulnerable to economic problems and exchange rates by virtue of their significant investments; as well as inflation and devaluation of foreign currency. As the saying goes, I lend yo $100 and you can't pay and you have a problem, I lend you $100 billion and you can't pay and I have a problem.
OK, I'll probably be in a small percentage of/.'rs here; but I don't see how this a privacy issue. According to Tynt Insight's page, no individually identifiable info is provided. It seems reasonable, to me, for a website to want to know what information is actually of interest to viewers; this provides a tool get that information. I realize some people want to be absolutely untrackable and anonymous when surfing; but I happen to think site owners have a right to implement tracking tools as they see fit, and users can chose wether or not to visit a site or to use blocking tools. Ghostery blocks doubleclick on/.; should we be offended that/. tries to make money off their site?
> The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.
More importantly, why would we want such a thing?
Good question - I think the EU is faced with a lot more national identity and independence than the US faced in the 1780's; although our War between the States showed that there was often a stronger identity with one's state than with the concept of America. The US needed a federal system in order to survive as an independent entity; European countries don't need that although for economic reasons a strong EU may make sense.
Sit in the middle of the ocean and turn off GPS. Perhaps you'll quickly see the value of "good enough". I'm all for a backup plan, and a backup plan to the backup plan, especially if we can avoid pissing away a $160M investment.
While I agree with the desirability of keeping LORAN, it's not because otherwise we'll avoid pissing away a $160M investment. That money is spent no matter what we do; the only question is the value of any investment in it going forward. I often hear such sunk cost fallacy arguments made; that doesn't make them correct.
Unfortunately, Galileo is being run by the EU who seems to be able to make the US congress look positively efficient by comparison.
Off topic comment - the EU's main problem is that it is a Confederation, which by nature makes it difficult to accomplish things. The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.
It has an approximately 200m accuracy
Wow, I didn't know it was that inaccurate.
and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war.
If the US implements selective availability of GPS, they can certainly also just turn off Loran-C.
While LORAN was certainly not very accurate by today's standards; it was fine for most navigation at sea. Most navigation was done by dead reckoning anyway; with LORAN / celestial fixes merely position checks. Inertial Navigation on warships is also widely used and very accurate when needed, it still needs periodic checks for when the SINS start walking in different directions. Sure GPS can replace that, but an advantage of LORAN is reliability; especially in high electronic noise environments. Of course, many "sailors" of today probably wouldn't recognize a sextant; let alone be able to use one. Yet if it becomes unusable do to loss of "signal" we have bigger issues than the inability to navigate to worry about.
Well in that case it's working like a Diesel-Electric locomotive so it would be running at fairly constant revs when cruising and increased revs when pulling off or accelerating hard. It is hard to say what kind of power requirements would be needed without the spec of the engine and electric motors but I can't see it being any less fuel efficient than a standard car but I could be wrong.
It should be interesting to see the numbers. They could run the gas engine at max efficiency most of the time it is needed; and with proper power management use the battery for high load demands (acceleration) situations. Regenerative braking would also help economy; it would also extend brake life as well. They've gotten rid of much of the power train losses as well.
One side note - I wonder if it will make car sounds? Years ago I worked at a place doing electric car research; we had a fleet on our campus and the really weird thing was you never heard them; so you were surprised when all of a sudden you see a full size van next to you as you start to cross the street. I think we subconsciously "listen" for sounds that say "be sure to look, there is a car coming;" electric vehicles lack that feedback.
That's crazy. I can sort of understand wanting compensation for something your government created, to recompense taxpayer expense... but to ask recompense for an artistic STYLE your nation was built upon the dead remains of is WAY beyond my usual expectations of baseless money-grabbing.
You forget, there is a government involved; inventing new baseless ways to money grab is their speciality.
Realistically, Starbucks should see if the cost of mugs plus fee less what they expect to get from the sale of the mugs is less than the cost of the mugs. If it is, pay the fee to minimize your loss. While I don't agree with the whole we own all images of our cultural heritage argument; since Starbucks does business in Mexico a fight would probably cost them more in teh long run.
Nurse Nasty is one of the regulars at 419eater.com, I doubt if they did this to generate traffic. The more peopel know about 419 fraud and the various methods used to scam people, the better. Even learning simple things, like why a check "clearing" doesn't, in the US at least, mean it is a good check; and may prevent soemone from being a victim.
You'd be surprised how many people aren't aware of how scams work. I ran into someone selling his bike; he had received a "money order" for the purchase, shipping, and an "opps, I sent to much please send me a Western Union money order for the overage less an a extra $200 for your troubles" overage. I explained to him that it probably was a classic overpayment fraud and either take the MO to his bank or police station and explain his concerns; or to simply send an email saying deal's off bank won't take your MO and tear up the MO. Either way, he was saved from a very expensive mistake.
What's actually happening is that the UK's government is forcing ISPs to warn people who they believe are breaking the law. Of course, ISPs are saying that this is expensive and that they plan to pass the costs along to consumers.
I think this is going to be a laughable clusterfuck.
It's worse than that.
The UK's government is forcing the ISPs to spend money to augment the benefits of the media business.
So, essentially, business A is paying the government to force business B to raise his prices and spend the money in business A's benefit.
And it won't be a clusterfuck because it's currently impossible to prove whether the imagined benefits will in fact exist.
It's called regulatory capture. Companies have been doing it for years, and some guy got a prize for writing an article about.
Seriously, companies have been using regulation to stifle competition and increase profits for a long time, despite their complaints about being over regulated ( which generally means "I don't like this regulation because it helps my competitor instead of me."
Is anyone else a bit frightened that the Guangdong plant picture shows what looks to be simple trusses and corrugated aluminum siding over the turbine section, where others use poured concrete and I-beams?
Did they skimp on anything else, I wonder?
Uh, San Onofree has an open air turbine. Gives a beautiful view of the Pacific just north of San Diego.
Oh no, he's helping the terrorists by showing them what a reactor looks like and how it works. The Iranian people can use that to build 100billion teratons of nukes to kill stuff. Hang him.
*blinks* You can't use a nuclear reactor to build a conventional nuclear device -- the best you'll get is a dirty bomb.
Somebody missed the tag.
As a side note, I remember those drawings well; they really were a work of art. Technical illustration is a very under appreciated art form. I had a friend who did that; he also was a scale model rocket builder par excellance.
Another art form was the scale models built for checking piping routing - miniature models of the entire plant. We had one in the visitor's center.
In the UK we have a service "NHS Direct" which is effectively a triage service which tells you whether you need to go to a doctor. Its in no way shape or form a replacement for a direct doctors appointment its just there to filter out cases that aren't overly serious or are serious enough to need an emergency visit. This service is staffed by nurses and its pretty good and does help with people who are concerned about medical issues.
The idea of someone prescribing drugs via this sort of service is just insane. It would be smarter to delegate prescriptions, or at least re-issuing prescriptions, to pharmacists who will at least see the patient. Or are we going to a world where you don't see the doctor and you get your drugs shipped direct so you never ever see anyone with any sort of medical training who can just briefly add a sanity check to the whole thing.
Its hard to imagine a better example as to why the US system is completely and utterly fucked than this being considered a good thing.
I agree - better to staff a clinic with a Physician / Nurse Practitioner and Nurses who confer with an MD, even virtually to ensure quality of care. A PA/NP is quite capable of delivering primary care (or even specialty care) in a safe and cost effective manner; but there is no real substitute for being seen where they can detect subtle things, that may get unnoticed otherwise, which might indicate a more serious or additional problem.
Now, followup visits or routine test results can often be handled virtually (or even by email); but there is no real substitute for a real examination.
Many years ago a colleague told me a tale (with misty eyes) of a former boss who'd done exactly that - when everyone had to work through a weekend he came in first, left last and appointed himself as chief coffee maker and senior takeout waiter.
It's called leadership. The only way to be a team is to be in the trenches together. No amount of "team building" exercises replaces that.
Your typical low-end laptop does not get 8 hours+ of battery life. The defining characteristic of the netbook in the Atom chip which sacrifices performance for battery life and cost. Even your low-performing Atom chip can handle just about any typical home-user application you can throw it (apart from HD video decoding). IMHO, your typical laptop is overkill for your average home user on the go that simply needs to perform basic web-browsing tasks and watch the occasional video. The ION platform is more or less designed to fix the one deficiency with the netbook, video decoding.
I agree - which is why I think your seeing the evolution of the netbook into a low end notebook with more capabilities than the current generation of notebooks. I think in the future you'll see very few mainstream manufacturers making 8" netbooks; simply because consumers prefer a larger screen and the resulting greater usefulness.
What the netbook did was show consumers you can have a decent laptop with great battery life; at a really good price point. Once they realized that, it's only natural that the desired characteristics such as battery life and price get combined with other desired features such as larger screens to create the next generation of low end laptops; which will squeeze out the original netbooks. As with most tech, performance is increasing at the same price point; and moving away from the small light machine to a slightly bigger one with much more capability. I think the Atom family will simply become the low end processor because it offers a compelling price/ performance ratio; and it's already moving into the desktop space as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Another regulatory agency being gutted right before our eyes. At what point do Americans call 'enough!' on corporate hegemony?
Maybe when the government starts paying the going rate for skilled jobs that are in demand in the private sector?
First issue - 4th Amendment protections in the US - what search and seizure protections do you have. Despite the so-called newness of the cloud (some of us remember big iron - dumb terminal models from way back) it is another way to electronically transmit information - so it would seem that all the existing wiretap laws would apply. Just like they can tap your phone they can intercept other electronic transmission, with a proper warrant. To the extent such information is publicly available (such as via a Google search), they should be able to get it without w warrant. if you fail to set security to prevent others from seeing it you, IMHO, have no expectation of privacy. To expand on the briefcase example, you may have an expectation of privacy for stuff in the briefcase, but the law can watch and videotape you putting something in in Starbucks.
The other issue, and to me the more important one, is collateral damage. As the referenced article pointed out, the physical search and seizure impacted a lot of innocent third parties. I doubt a court would say "you can't do a seizure because you'll grab other peoples stuff," but might say "you can only look at the target's info." So, rather tahn worry about the 4th companies should ensure their data centers have adequate disaster recovery plans to deal with such situations (along with fires, power outages, etc.) If a data center can't recover from the loss of some servers they have bigger problems than privacy rights.
Shouldn't the same privacy logic apply even more to your laptops and personal electronic devices when you're entering U.S. borders? Having these people search your hard drive is an invasion of privacy.
Not really - at least not for US citizens, IMHO. Non-citizens are requesting to enter the country, a prerequisite to such permission is to search items being brought in. You should be able to refuse a search and leave on the next flight; entrance is a not a right. It's the same traveling to any country; you either meet their entrance requirements or don't enter.
obsolete -adjective no longer in general use; fallen into disuse: an obsolete expression.
Guess it was ignorance of the meaning of the word then. Like it or not, AVI is still widely used. Until it isn't, it will not be obsolete. You need a new word. Might I suggest one of the following: anachronous, antiquated, antique, archaic, behind the times, dated, old-hat, out, outdated, outmoded, passé, unfashionable.
Actually, it make sense in the context it was used - English usages morphs and changes, that's part of being a living language. It may nott be the choice you'd make, but then again I dislike "small minority," "large majority," and the ever - popular "proactive." Still, enough people use them that they have become acceptable usage.
Also, if you want to play the dictionary game:
b : of a kind or style no longer current : old-fashioned
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/OBSOLETE
People have owned their own fighter jets for years; including an F104 owned by Red Baron: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1093756/2/index.htm
"According to Tynt Insight's page, no individually identifiable info is provided."
apparently you don't know how things work... IP address + "list of search topics" is enough to personally ID someone even if they never search for themself or a relative.
IP Address + "things they've highlighted" have a very high probability of being able to do that too
OK, so explain it to me.
IP address plus list of search topics would be able to say "this particular person has interest in this," or "these searches were all done by the same person;" but I fail to see how that says "this is person X." A static IP address would help someone garner more information; but that only means the source, not the individual, is the same for the searches.
To use the required /. car analogy, knowing that a car with a certain tag was seen at x y, and z does not tell you who was there; but you can infer it probably was the same person (although that may or may not be true.)
From what I can see from Tynt's website they do not provide specific IP addresses, which means you'd have to tie Tynt's info to IP logs, even further adding to the uncertainty of who did what. Do they provide IP address with their info?
So, from where I sit the statement "no individually identifiable info is provided" is true; although I would agree the info could be used to build a profile of what users do.
I think it has something to do with Chinese savings now being the foundation of much of the western economy, and the fact that China is a major nuclear power.
What China realised and the USSR didn't, IMO, is that they could forget the cold war and essentially buy the west with the west's own money. /crazy theory
Actually, it's a double edged sword. While countries are reliant on Chinese investment; China's economic health becomes more tied to Western countries as well. They are more vulnerable to economic problems and exchange rates by virtue of their significant investments; as well as inflation and devaluation of foreign currency. As the saying goes, I lend yo $100 and you can't pay and you have a problem, I lend you $100 billion and you can't pay and I have a problem.
OK, I'll probably be in a small percentage of /.'rs here; but I don't see how this a privacy issue. According to Tynt Insight's page, no individually identifiable info is provided. It seems reasonable, to me, for a website to want to know what information is actually of interest to viewers; this provides a tool get that information. I realize some people want to be absolutely untrackable and anonymous when surfing; but I happen to think site owners have a right to implement tracking tools as they see fit, and users can chose wether or not to visit a site or to use blocking tools. Ghostery blocks doubleclick on /.; should we be offended that /. tries to make money off their site?
> The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.
More importantly, why would we want such a thing?
Good question - I think the EU is faced with a lot more national identity and independence than the US faced in the 1780's; although our War between the States showed that there was often a stronger identity with one's state than with the concept of America. The US needed a federal system in order to survive as an independent entity; European countries don't need that although for economic reasons a strong EU may make sense.
Sit in the middle of the ocean and turn off GPS. Perhaps you'll quickly see the value of "good enough". I'm all for a backup plan, and a backup plan to the backup plan, especially if we can avoid pissing away a $160M investment.
While I agree with the desirability of keeping LORAN, it's not because otherwise we'll avoid pissing away a $160M investment. That money is spent no matter what we do; the only question is the value of any investment in it going forward. I often hear such sunk cost fallacy arguments made; that doesn't make them correct.
Unfortunately, Galileo is being run by the EU who seems to be able to make the US congress look positively efficient by comparison.
Off topic comment - the EU's main problem is that it is a Confederation, which by nature makes it difficult to accomplish things. The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.
It has an approximately 200m accuracy Wow, I didn't know it was that inaccurate. and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war. If the US implements selective availability of GPS, they can certainly also just turn off Loran-C.
While LORAN was certainly not very accurate by today's standards; it was fine for most navigation at sea. Most navigation was done by dead reckoning anyway; with LORAN / celestial fixes merely position checks. Inertial Navigation on warships is also widely used and very accurate when needed, it still needs periodic checks for when the SINS start walking in different directions. Sure GPS can replace that, but an advantage of LORAN is reliability; especially in high electronic noise environments. Of course, many "sailors" of today probably wouldn't recognize a sextant; let alone be able to use one. Yet if it becomes unusable do to loss of "signal" we have bigger issues than the inability to navigate to worry about.
Well in that case it's working like a Diesel-Electric locomotive so it would be running at fairly constant revs when cruising and increased revs when pulling off or accelerating hard. It is hard to say what kind of power requirements would be needed without the spec of the engine and electric motors but I can't see it being any less fuel efficient than a standard car but I could be wrong.
It should be interesting to see the numbers. They could run the gas engine at max efficiency most of the time it is needed; and with proper power management use the battery for high load demands (acceleration) situations. Regenerative braking would also help economy; it would also extend brake life as well. They've gotten rid of much of the power train losses as well.
One side note - I wonder if it will make car sounds? Years ago I worked at a place doing electric car research; we had a fleet on our campus and the really weird thing was you never heard them; so you were surprised when all of a sudden you see a full size van next to you as you start to cross the street. I think we subconsciously "listen" for sounds that say "be sure to look, there is a car coming;" electric vehicles lack that feedback.
What...
That's crazy. I can sort of understand wanting compensation for something your government created, to recompense taxpayer expense... but to ask recompense for an artistic STYLE your nation was built upon the dead remains of is WAY beyond my usual expectations of baseless money-grabbing.
You forget, there is a government involved; inventing new baseless ways to money grab is their speciality.
Realistically, Starbucks should see if the cost of mugs plus fee less what they expect to get from the sale of the mugs is less than the cost of the mugs. If it is, pay the fee to minimize your loss. While I don't agree with the whole we own all images of our cultural heritage argument; since Starbucks does business in Mexico a fight would probably cost them more in teh long run.
This came after Bono spent hours searching for his music on torrent sites. Apparently he still hasn't found what he's looking for.
He should have searched for Cher - all the good stuff he did was when he was alive and they were a duet.
Nurse Nasty is one of the regulars at 419eater.com, I doubt if they did this to generate traffic. The more peopel know about 419 fraud and the various methods used to scam people, the better. Even learning simple things, like why a check "clearing" doesn't, in the US at least, mean it is a good check; and may prevent soemone from being a victim.
You'd be surprised how many people aren't aware of how scams work. I ran into someone selling his bike; he had received a "money order" for the purchase, shipping, and an "opps, I sent to much please send me a Western Union money order for the overage less an a extra $200 for your troubles" overage. I explained to him that it probably was a classic overpayment fraud and either take the MO to his bank or police station and explain his concerns; or to simply send an email saying deal's off bank won't take your MO and tear up the MO. Either way, he was saved from a very expensive mistake.
What's actually happening is that the UK's government is forcing ISPs to warn people who they believe are breaking the law. Of course, ISPs are saying that this is expensive and that they plan to pass the costs along to consumers.
I think this is going to be a laughable clusterfuck.
It's worse than that.
The UK's government is forcing the ISPs to spend money to augment the benefits of the media business.
So, essentially, business A is paying the government to force business B to raise his prices and spend the money in business A's benefit.
And it won't be a clusterfuck because it's currently impossible to prove whether the imagined benefits will in fact exist.
It's called regulatory capture. Companies have been doing it for years, and some guy got a prize for writing an article about.
Seriously, companies have been using regulation to stifle competition and increase profits for a long time, despite their complaints about being over regulated ( which generally means "I don't like this regulation because it helps my competitor instead of me."
Is anyone else a bit frightened that the Guangdong plant picture shows what looks to be simple trusses and corrugated aluminum siding over the turbine section, where others use poured concrete and I-beams?
Did they skimp on anything else, I wonder?
Uh, San Onofree has an open air turbine. Gives a beautiful view of the Pacific just north of San Diego.
Oh no, he's helping the terrorists by showing them what a reactor looks like and how it works. The Iranian people can use that to build 100billion teratons of nukes to kill stuff. Hang him.
*blinks* You can't use a nuclear reactor to build a conventional nuclear device -- the best you'll get is a dirty bomb.
Somebody missed the tag.
As a side note, I remember those drawings well; they really were a work of art. Technical illustration is a very under appreciated art form. I had a friend who did that; he also was a scale model rocket builder par excellance.
Another art form was the scale models built for checking piping routing - miniature models of the entire plant. We had one in the visitor's center.
Seriously is this a good thing?
In the UK we have a service "NHS Direct" which is effectively a triage service which tells you whether you need to go to a doctor. Its in no way shape or form a replacement for a direct doctors appointment its just there to filter out cases that aren't overly serious or are serious enough to need an emergency visit. This service is staffed by nurses and its pretty good and does help with people who are concerned about medical issues.
The idea of someone prescribing drugs via this sort of service is just insane. It would be smarter to delegate prescriptions, or at least re-issuing prescriptions, to pharmacists who will at least see the patient. Or are we going to a world where you don't see the doctor and you get your drugs shipped direct so you never ever see anyone with any sort of medical training who can just briefly add a sanity check to the whole thing.
Its hard to imagine a better example as to why the US system is completely and utterly fucked than this being considered a good thing.
I agree - better to staff a clinic with a Physician / Nurse Practitioner and Nurses who confer with an MD, even virtually to ensure quality of care. A PA/NP is quite capable of delivering primary care (or even specialty care) in a safe and cost effective manner; but there is no real substitute for being seen where they can detect subtle things, that may get unnoticed otherwise, which might indicate a more serious or additional problem.
Now, followup visits or routine test results can often be handled virtually (or even by email); but there is no real substitute for a real examination.
Many years ago a colleague told me a tale (with misty eyes) of a former boss who'd done exactly that - when everyone had to work through a weekend he came in first, left last and appointed himself as chief coffee maker and senior takeout waiter.
It's called leadership. The only way to be a team is to be in the trenches together. No amount of "team building" exercises replaces that.
Your typical low-end laptop does not get 8 hours+ of battery life. The defining characteristic of the netbook in the Atom chip which sacrifices performance for battery life and cost. Even your low-performing Atom chip can handle just about any typical home-user application you can throw it (apart from HD video decoding). IMHO, your typical laptop is overkill for your average home user on the go that simply needs to perform basic web-browsing tasks and watch the occasional video. The ION platform is more or less designed to fix the one deficiency with the netbook, video decoding.
I agree - which is why I think your seeing the evolution of the netbook into a low end notebook with more capabilities than the current generation of notebooks. I think in the future you'll see very few mainstream manufacturers making 8" netbooks; simply because consumers prefer a larger screen and the resulting greater usefulness.
What the netbook did was show consumers you can have a decent laptop with great battery life; at a really good price point. Once they realized that, it's only natural that the desired characteristics such as battery life and price get combined with other desired features such as larger screens to create the next generation of low end laptops; which will squeeze out the original netbooks. As with most tech, performance is increasing at the same price point; and moving away from the small light machine to a slightly bigger one with much more capability. I think the Atom family will simply become the low end processor because it offers a compelling price/ performance ratio; and it's already moving into the desktop space as well.
So netbooks are essentially moving into the low end notebook space and pushing out the cheap notebooks while leaving the small netbook space empty...
Right. And of course the real names of people who file anonymously NEVER get out.
To me that's a separate issue - anyone filling a Jane/John Doe lawsuit has to expect their name would eventually become public information.
How can a legal-aged adult file as Jane Doe just because of her secret of being 'in the closet'?
Simple - the judge gets to decide if her privacy rights outweigh the public interest in keeping lawsuit information available to the public. for more information see: http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/filing-a-lawsuit-anonymously.html
To me allowing a Jane Doe suit in such cases is not unreasonable; whether or not her name wil eventually become public is another matter.