Depends how you define failure. Since the government doesn't push it and make a decent amount, everybody expected the $1 to stay. For the $1 coin to become a "success" it has to be on full production with the $1 stopped, and perhaps pulled out of circulation (though just pulling the old, tattered one like they normally do might be kinder and let in more of a transition time).
Anyway, if you want less coins in your pocket, carry around $5 bills and advocate abolishing the penny - since that worthless thing is also costing everybody money. This will have the double benefit of freeing a coin slot in the register for the $1 coin:P
And I have not seen a $2 bill the last ten years. Maybe 10 times in my life in normal transactions. It would have even more resistance as that would require another slot in the existing cash registers (especially troublesome if you don't get rid of any existing currency.)
That's funny - the EU countries had no problem changing their vending machines around once the Euro came. They didn't even change the machines, the money accepting mechanism is modular (woah!).
Keeping the $1 is costing money for taxpayers. If it becomes standard, vending machines will start accepting it fast. The government has the power in this case of the chicken or the egg.
I forgot to add, also raised the portrait in the middle through imprinting and make it slightly 3d. This will help if the dots get worn or screwed with.
and turn it into a coin. Not this half-assed production of a few coins and predominantly bills. Get it over with and make it purely coins. It'll make vending machines more convenient. Coins are easily distinguishable.
On mony, just have an imprinted (raised) mark whereever the denomination number is printed. It doesn't have to be elaborate - just dots like braile.
I'm surprised this didn't come sooner with the Americans with disabilities act, or some such.
[quote]Looking at the future- in 10-20 years none of this will matter. It's already cheap enough to record your own music at decent enough quality that anybody can do it, and there are a gazillion companies that will happily press CDs for a few hundred bucks. Suddenly the total cost of making a CD is down to under a grand and anybody can afford it.[/quote]
In 10 to 20 years, they will look for webhosting and someone who can design a decent website or upload to iTunes or whatever site (whatever is like what mp3.com used to be like) that lets them sell music.
CDs will be a secondary concern, for those nostalgists. Sort of what vinyl is seen as today. Sad but true.
once it's affordable, I can't even see this stuff competing - and it'll probably be expensive compare to the actual practicality. Instead of mass copies, people will send and recieve wirelessly to each other's readers. Well, that's how I think it will be in 10 years, maybe 20.
The only problem epaper will have is if the writing utility on it has a god awful implementation - though that will vary by reader.
as a way to advance science and copyrights the arts.
In exchange for opening the information, inventors were given a limited time monopoly on said invention. What the founding fathers wanted to get beyond were secretive guilds and the hording of information - instead encouraging a free flow of ideas. One historical objective is to avoid the technological stagnation that accompanied the middle ages.
But with the original aim of inventions in mind - now that it seems that there is a lot of unintentional infringing of patents - it suggests that the original intention is outdated - the patents are protecting knowledge not worth protecting since others stumble onto the ideas at roughly the same time, negating the need to open the information. Even if it is not stumbled upon, reverse engineering can and does often provide the information needed for someone to duplicate many of the results - again negating the original need for patents.
Could it be that patents should only have been training wheels for the industrial revolution until a technological society is achieved - because once a certain level is achieved, there is no easy way of going back, of ceasing the competition for better products, advances, etcetera? That they should have been discarded after a time?
Could there be another way to promote an open exchange of ideas? Which was the original intention of patents. Because it seems that patents, in their current state, are setting us behind other countries (China) in terms of the future, dragging our economies down, and not at all fulfilling their original purpose. And from what I have read - the purpose of the patent was an ultimately social function, not to protect businesses or let them rest on their laurel in perpetuity (Atari).
The most effective birth control is tied with richer 1st world countries, perhaps whitecollar jobs and education. Western European countries and Japan have generally low native birth rates, middle-class+ America probably is too to an extent though it's population keeps growing with immigrants (as it always has).
I don't know the dynamics, but probably it has to do with the cost of bring up kids as a middle/upper class family (it's more expensive to pay for college/toys/etcetera than what a low income family usually gives their kids), the fact that women are more likely to work a job, and other such factors.
So China really just has to become a 1st world country to reliably lower the birthrate. The other factors I have seen don't seem to count for much.
Actually, Unix and Linux together occupy the #2 and #3 spots respectively and overshadow MS's ~33% marketplace together.
Also, as far as sales go, I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't be happy if Ubuntu took a significant portion of the market, even though it's free and that isn't "exactly Microsoft's target market". Mindshare is important, especially as it'll influence what people use in the future.
(BTW, IBM seems to doing well making money with Linux, even though the OS itself is free).
Companies back patents because it allows them to kill various small start-up. They are immune from each other for the most part because of patent portfolios they exchange (Mutual Assured Destruction) though there are exceptions (Amazon/IBM). Small companies can benefit from genuine patents, but not against the big guys who can outspend them at the litigation game.
The only thing that the large corps haven't figured out in this game rigged in their advantage are the patent trolls designed only to extract money as they don't actually do anything else. Atari is a prominent example.
Patents used to be good, but 17 years is too long a generic period - different industries need different periods - ala the drug industry should have a reasonable period while the software industry is so fluid and rapid flowing patents don't even begin to make sense.
Because people seem worried, maybe some hyperventilating, and even some panicking.
Relax everyone, Linux is backed by pretty big companies, like IBM, that in the case Microsoft ever actually tries something, they'll get their ass handed to them and the Windows OS will be seen in the same infringing light.
Microsoft won't actually do anything until Linux starts eating up Desktop Sales, and even then, I don't see it happening unless MS is really going the drain, ala SCO - which won't be for many many years.
Afterall, if Microsoft really wanted the cash that badly, they would have already sued because Linux absolutely dominates in the server space, which is a market that MS wants.
This is all just a ploy to keep CIOs pondering Linux in line with the Microsoft way.
People are quite right to be skeptical or they will be fleeced every time a con artist announces a promises a great sounding technology. (BTW, this isn't the first time I read about someone promising similiar solid state chips on/.)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
That said, just because someone is a skeptic doesn't mean we are impossible to convince. Just show us the tech - put up or shut up, that simple. I think that is a fair test.
Afterall, it's good enough for skeptic James Randi with paranormal claims, it's good enough for me.
However, most of moral dillemas we face day to day has been with us since the dawn of man, before the rise of the current major religions. And by accounts of archaeologist, we had cities before the rise of any of today's religions - so we must have had rules.
Religions codified pre-existing morality (though not always as strict as you make it seem - eye for an eye - contradictions abound enough so that one can go multiple paths without being wrong), just like Christianity adopted Pagan rituals in Europe and gave them a Christian Wrapping (Winter Solstice -> Christmas).
To me, it seems natural that much of what we consider right and wrong arose from being a social species and having to live in groups. When man progress to tribes->villages->cities, the call of the wild (doing whatever one pleases) became less and less acceptable to the group dynamic.
So just because one is a pure atheist, does not preclude them from believing in inherent right or wrong - as in our view morality was built from the bottom-up (how we evolved and function in a society), not a top-down way (God declaring a set of rules).
Indeed, I heard one pastor say that almost all the rules of the bible, even the ten commandments, could be summed up and extracted from "Love thy neighbor as you do yourself." That sounds to me like an awful lot to me like what any group/social species has to practice on some level to remain a cohesive unit.
Nothing against midwesterners, but Gas is what powers my car, not ethanol when I can help it.
Ethanol is pushed upon us by the corngrowers, and my area requires that 15% be put in during the summer. Of course, everybody thinks it's nice and ecofriendly, but Consumer Reports recently reported that with even that low percentage of ethanol it lowered gas mileage by a significant percent, so much so, that during the summers' prices, a $3.20 gallon of 85%/15% gas/ethanol was comparable to buying a $4.00 gallon of regular gas.
Also, since producing ethanol is an energy loss, it doesn't do much of anything in the scheme of things. Except help the midwest build refineries for ethanol and farmers sell their corn.
The more I think Bill Gate is the ultimate PHB. Yes, he knows some tech, but does he get it? I read his book years back (his first book) and have found nothing insightful.
The Zune and the Xbox and the Microsoft school in Philadelphia lead me to believe that he will throw money at problems and bring minimum vision - I would also cite he derogatory statements about the $100 laptop, but then I don't know how much of that opinion was intertwined with business interests.
In any case, if you have watched South Park lately, with episode of Cartman waiting for a Wii, one of the points it made, with its atheist skeptic future was that atheists/skeptics can be just as intolerant as religious fanatics - these people are just directing their zeal in other beliefs.
I don't know if Gates is religious, but it's my opinion he does have a zealous and rigid belief system shaped around Microsoft/Software_Patents, and other things that I find it incredibly disturbing that he could wield presidential power. I'd almost rather give Bush a 3rd term.
That's what I was thinking. Perhaps the success of this is because it is limited to several areas.
Most drivers know the rules of the road from all the other places and keep them in mind when encountering such a situation as these towns. But what happens when these become the norm and the protocols aren't there, and there is only so much "unsafe driving" I can take before I start to feel comfortable and hit the pedal.
Protocal is there for a reason.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to have them do away with all the speed limits in the US that are under 10mph of reality, just so the coppers can ticket you when they want..... but to swing to the other extreme makes no sense.
And imagine the mess when the courts are faced with accident where there was no clear protocol. Who is in the right? Who is in the wrong?
Talk to me about free market when I can take my dandy time selecting a hospital - a casual search due to some semi to fully egregious injury - and when I can ask them for a quote to fix it up front - give or take 10%. I would also like readable bills minus the bullshit.
Then I'd be interested in this premise of a free market healthcare system.
Google bought what could be the future of the internet's video content distribution. It could compete with TV in a few years. Shows might be available for sale there with Google's micropayments. Etcetera.
It's a risk, yes, but a calculated gamble.
It's not particularly expensive, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com in the billions (5bn, though I don't know how much of that was overinflated stock) and that seems to be a total dud:
When people escaped the DDR (East Germany), specifically over the Berlin Wall - the West Germans helped them in any way possible with open arms, short of provoking war.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like Wikipedia has fulfilled that niche better and perhaps they are giving up because of that?
Depends how you define failure. Since the government doesn't push it and make a decent amount, everybody expected the $1 to stay. For the $1 coin to become a "success" it has to be on full production with the $1 stopped, and perhaps pulled out of circulation (though just pulling the old, tattered one like they normally do might be kinder and let in more of a transition time).
Anyway, if you want less coins in your pocket, carry around $5 bills and advocate abolishing the penny - since that worthless thing is also costing everybody money. This will have the double benefit of freeing a coin slot in the register for the $1 coin:P
And I have not seen a $2 bill the last ten years. Maybe 10 times in my life in normal transactions. It would have even more resistance as that would require another slot in the existing cash registers (especially troublesome if you don't get rid of any existing currency.)
That's funny - the EU countries had no problem changing their vending machines around once the Euro came. They didn't even change the machines, the money accepting mechanism is modular (woah!).
Keeping the $1 is costing money for taxpayers. If it becomes standard, vending machines will start accepting it fast. The government has the power in this case of the chicken or the egg.
I forgot to add, also raised the portrait in the middle through imprinting and make it slightly 3d. This will help if the dots get worn or screwed with.
and turn it into a coin. Not this half-assed production of a few coins and predominantly bills. Get it over with and make it purely coins. It'll make vending machines more convenient. Coins are easily distinguishable.
On mony, just have an imprinted (raised) mark whereever the denomination number is printed. It doesn't have to be elaborate - just dots like braile.
I'm surprised this didn't come sooner with the Americans with disabilities act, or some such.
[quote]Looking at the future- in 10-20 years none of this will matter. It's already cheap enough to record your own music at decent enough quality that anybody can do it, and there are a gazillion companies that will happily press CDs for a few hundred bucks. Suddenly the total cost of making a CD is down to under a grand and anybody can afford it.[/quote]
In 10 to 20 years, they will look for webhosting and someone who can design a decent website or upload to iTunes or whatever site (whatever is like what mp3.com used to be like) that lets them sell music.
CDs will be a secondary concern, for those nostalgists. Sort of what vinyl is seen as today. Sad but true.
Thank you for saying what I was thinking. Also add hype to that list.
once it's affordable, I can't even see this stuff competing - and it'll probably be expensive compare to the actual practicality. Instead of mass copies, people will send and recieve wirelessly to each other's readers. Well, that's how I think it will be in 10 years, maybe 20.
The only problem epaper will have is if the writing utility on it has a god awful implementation - though that will vary by reader.
as a way to advance science and copyrights the arts.
In exchange for opening the information, inventors were given a limited time monopoly on said invention. What the founding fathers wanted to get beyond were secretive guilds and the hording of information - instead encouraging a free flow of ideas. One historical objective is to avoid the technological stagnation that accompanied the middle ages.
But with the original aim of inventions in mind - now that it seems that there is a lot of unintentional infringing of patents - it suggests that the original intention is outdated - the patents are protecting knowledge not worth protecting since others stumble onto the ideas at roughly the same time, negating the need to open the information. Even if it is not stumbled upon, reverse engineering can and does often provide the information needed for someone to duplicate many of the results - again negating the original need for patents.
Could it be that patents should only have been training wheels for the industrial revolution until a technological society is achieved - because once a certain level is achieved, there is no easy way of going back, of ceasing the competition for better products, advances, etcetera? That they should have been discarded after a time?
Could there be another way to promote an open exchange of ideas? Which was the original intention of patents. Because it seems that patents, in their current state, are setting us behind other countries (China) in terms of the future, dragging our economies down, and not at all fulfilling their original purpose. And from what I have read - the purpose of the patent was an ultimately social function, not to protect businesses or let them rest on their laurel in perpetuity (Atari).
The most effective birth control is tied with richer 1st world countries, perhaps whitecollar jobs and education. Western European countries and Japan have generally low native birth rates, middle-class+ America probably is too to an extent though it's population keeps growing with immigrants (as it always has).
I don't know the dynamics, but probably it has to do with the cost of bring up kids as a middle/upper class family (it's more expensive to pay for college/toys/etcetera than what a low income family usually gives their kids), the fact that women are more likely to work a job, and other such factors.
So China really just has to become a 1st world country to reliably lower the birthrate. The other factors I have seen don't seem to count for much.
Actually, Unix and Linux together occupy the #2 and #3 spots respectively and overshadow MS's ~33% marketplace together.
Also, as far as sales go, I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't be happy if Ubuntu took a significant portion of the market, even though it's free and that isn't "exactly Microsoft's target market". Mindshare is important, especially as it'll influence what people use in the future.
(BTW, IBM seems to doing well making money with Linux, even though the OS itself is free).
Companies back patents because it allows them to kill various small start-up. They are immune from each other for the most part because of patent portfolios they exchange (Mutual Assured Destruction) though there are exceptions (Amazon/IBM). Small companies can benefit from genuine patents, but not against the big guys who can outspend them at the litigation game.
The only thing that the large corps haven't figured out in this game rigged in their advantage are the patent trolls designed only to extract money as they don't actually do anything else. Atari is a prominent example.
Patents used to be good, but 17 years is too long a generic period - different industries need different periods - ala the drug industry should have a reasonable period while the software industry is so fluid and rapid flowing patents don't even begin to make sense.
Because people seem worried, maybe some hyperventilating, and even some panicking.
Relax everyone, Linux is backed by pretty big companies, like IBM, that in the case Microsoft ever actually tries something, they'll get their ass handed to them and the Windows OS will be seen in the same infringing light.
Microsoft won't actually do anything until Linux starts eating up Desktop Sales, and even then, I don't see it happening unless MS is really going the drain, ala SCO - which won't be for many many years.
Afterall, if Microsoft really wanted the cash that badly, they would have already sued because Linux absolutely dominates in the server space, which is a market that MS wants.
This is all just a ploy to keep CIOs pondering Linux in line with the Microsoft way.
The scientific method is just a formal version of put up or shut up, if you haven't noticed.
People are quite right to be skeptical or they will be fleeced every time a con artist announces a promises a great sounding technology. (BTW, this isn't the first time I read about someone promising similiar solid state chips on /.)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
That said, just because someone is a skeptic doesn't mean we are impossible to convince. Just show us the tech - put up or shut up, that simple. I think that is a fair test.
Afterall, it's good enough for skeptic James Randi with paranormal claims, it's good enough for me.
Actually, we had 2 Quakers, I'd venture we have had far more than 2 Quackers.
However, most of moral dillemas we face day to day has been with us since the dawn of man, before the rise of the current major religions. And by accounts of archaeologist, we had cities before the rise of any of today's religions - so we must have had rules.
Religions codified pre-existing morality (though not always as strict as you make it seem - eye for an eye - contradictions abound enough so that one can go multiple paths without being wrong), just like Christianity adopted Pagan rituals in Europe and gave them a Christian Wrapping (Winter Solstice -> Christmas).
To me, it seems natural that much of what we consider right and wrong arose from being a social species and having to live in groups. When man progress to tribes->villages->cities, the call of the wild (doing whatever one pleases) became less and less acceptable to the group dynamic.
So just because one is a pure atheist, does not preclude them from believing in inherent right or wrong - as in our view morality was built from the bottom-up (how we evolved and function in a society), not a top-down way (God declaring a set of rules).
Indeed, I heard one pastor say that almost all the rules of the bible, even the ten commandments, could be summed up and extracted from "Love thy neighbor as you do yourself." That sounds to me like an awful lot to me like what any group/social species has to practice on some level to remain a cohesive unit.
Nothing against midwesterners, but Gas is what powers my car, not ethanol when I can help it.
Ethanol is pushed upon us by the corngrowers, and my area requires that 15% be put in during the summer. Of course, everybody thinks it's nice and ecofriendly, but Consumer Reports recently reported that with even that low percentage of ethanol it lowered gas mileage by a significant percent, so much so, that during the summers' prices, a $3.20 gallon of 85%/15% gas/ethanol was comparable to buying a $4.00 gallon of regular gas.
Also, since producing ethanol is an energy loss, it doesn't do much of anything in the scheme of things. Except help the midwest build refineries for ethanol and farmers sell their corn.
The more I think Bill Gate is the ultimate PHB. Yes, he knows some tech, but does he get it? I read his book years back (his first book) and have found nothing insightful.
The Zune and the Xbox and the Microsoft school in Philadelphia lead me to believe that he will throw money at problems and bring minimum vision - I would also cite he derogatory statements about the $100 laptop, but then I don't know how much of that opinion was intertwined with business interests.
In any case, if you have watched South Park lately, with episode of Cartman waiting for a Wii, one of the points it made, with its atheist skeptic future was that atheists/skeptics can be just as intolerant as religious fanatics - these people are just directing their zeal in other beliefs.
I don't know if Gates is religious, but it's my opinion he does have a zealous and rigid belief system shaped around Microsoft/Software_Patents, and other things that I find it incredibly disturbing that he could wield presidential power. I'd almost rather give Bush a 3rd term.
That's what I was thinking. Perhaps the success of this is because it is limited to several areas.
Most drivers know the rules of the road from all the other places and keep them in mind when encountering such a situation as these towns. But what happens when these become the norm and the protocols aren't there, and there is only so much "unsafe driving" I can take before I start to feel comfortable and hit the pedal.
Protocal is there for a reason.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to have them do away with all the speed limits in the US that are under 10mph of reality, just so the coppers can ticket you when they want..... but to swing to the other extreme makes no sense.
And imagine the mess when the courts are faced with accident where there was no clear protocol. Who is in the right? Who is in the wrong?
I think I'll need an armored car too.
And those who understand Unix moved onto Plan9.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however......
Talk to me about free market when I can take my dandy time selecting a hospital - a casual search due to some semi to fully egregious injury - and when I can ask them for a quote to fix it up front - give or take 10%. I would also like readable bills minus the bullshit.
Then I'd be interested in this premise of a free market healthcare system.
Google bought what could be the future of the internet's video content distribution. It could compete with TV in a few years. Shows might be available for sale there with Google's micropayments. Etcetera.
+ acquisition/2100-1023_3-228762.html
It's a risk, yes, but a calculated gamble.
It's not particularly expensive, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com in the billions (5bn, though I don't know how much of that was overinflated stock) and that seems to be a total dud:
http://news.com.com/Yahoo+completes+Broadcast.com
When people escaped the DDR (East Germany), specifically over the Berlin Wall - the West Germans helped them in any way possible with open arms, short of provoking war.
Now we shoot them?