preach it bro! How many *millions* of laws on the books now? Extrapolate 20 years from now. How the heck would ANYONE avoid being a "criminal"? All new laws should have automatic sunset clauses, they all should be vetted as to being lawful FIRST, not passed then some poor dude has to go "break" a law and get it heard in front of the supreme court, there shouldn't be multiple laws passed hidden inside of unrelated bills, etc. We have a lot of ways to improve this system. I think an immediate freeze on any new laws and several years of review would work for a starter.
As to patents and reform, a good start is no more software patents or business process patents. witness: software is allegedly patentable, and they get granted, yet has *no warranty required*. Only "product" out there with such a deal. El wrong-o. If it is worthy of a patent and is called a product, it needs to come with a warranty. If anyone-you can't handle a warranty because it would be "impossible" to code that good, no probs, give up patents then because it is obviously not a workable product, it is a work of art, and stick to copyrights, as every other written *thing* is.
I'd bet a buck that within a month or so of mass deployment of them that clones start hitting the market. And as such, they certainly couldn't charge a whole lot for them either. and maybe they will be easier to upgrade (more RAM and Flash memory, etc, as options). I mean, with millions out there, how are they going to avoid it? There's an obvious good market for something like these things, given all the commentary on every OLPC article here.
I know I'd like to have a low energy usage, built tough, self powered, mesh network enabled laptop thing like they are building, without paying full new laptop prices. Just the self charging aspect is pretty spiffy. I'd just think of it as a good $deal large PDA rather than thinking of it as a full fledged laptop and be done with it. At double their cost @ $260 then, they would be very competitive in the PDA market I think, given a little "adultfying" design tweaks, but keeping the same basic parameters. and ya, that innovative clear screen is one of those reasons..
And for that matter, is this manufacturer Quanta under any obligation to NOT sell variants? I have not read one way or the other on that subject. Maybe if there is enough interest they will offer a near-close clone machine.
I would agree, although not with your assessment of him personally, he's about as stuck as anyone. If he did though, and he could, it would place put tremendous pressure on the talent to complain to their distributors, *loudly*, and on consumers to do the same, because iTunes is now at the unique position of being topdog on legit download music. If they put up a notice that affected parties need to be proactive as well and lobby for unencumbered music,so as to be reintroduced to iTunes, it would get global press coverage and really put the whole DRM issue under the spotlight. And yes, the entire idea of DRM is blatantly illegal as to the original sense and design of it going way way back, as material "protected" by DRM will never come out of copyright in a legitimate useful and practical sense, as copyright, as long as the term is, is still supposed to be limited in time and eventually go to public domain/open.
Last century's business models are no longer useful or fair, and need to be radically changed. The cost of duplication now is incredibly cheap, they should adapt to changing technology and therefore offer *very cheap* copies to reflect tech changes, and make their profits on huge volume sales.
I have a friend used to own a lot of gas stations, but gas at the retail level only makes a few pennies a gallon, a rather pitiful small amount, yet he made lots of cash.. The deal is, he made a lot because he sold millions of gallons a year.
The music and movie industry could easily do the same, rather than trying to make those huge markups on each "unit" they push. Charge much much less, sell way way more, actually make more money than now and have happy customers with cheaper prices.
I know why they haven't done it yet either, simple psychology. Millionaires make the ultimate pricing decisions in those industries, they live at the highest end of the economic food chain, and simply have lost touch with what a ten or twenty dollars means to the other 99% of the population who aren't multi-millionaires, to them, a ten or a twenty is like one or two cents. They think it is about free-no frame of reference they can relate to. Sure, semi intellectually they might be able to consider it, but realistically, no, they can't, it is obvious. They really think 15-20 bucks for a plastic disk is some kind of "deal", or 10 bucks for a download ten song album is somehow a deal. Nuts, it is not, it is a huge markup over manufacturing costs. Maybe to their country club drinking buddies it seems a deal, to about everyone else it is a blatant pricing gouge. I am amazed they sell what they do now frankly.
I was a constant buyer of pre-recorded entertainment media (starting with 33 and 45 speed LP albums and singles in the 50s and 60s) until I finally just had to acknowledge I was being outright gouged. When I saw CDs being peddled for what cassetes or 8 tracks cost, that was clue enough for me to see they had gone full bore into outright greed and their trying to enforce technological luddism on everyone else in various industries but them. Prices just never dropped adequately as regards technological innovation, and what newer techniques would allow. And then they discovered "new shiny format of the year", wanting you to re-buy the same stuff, plus DRM, plus lobby for the laws to be changed for planned obsoletion. They want locked in price structures from decades ago, even though cost of duplication is absurdly low now.
I'd pay double manufacturing costs for copies of stuff, that's it, and I don't want weird "protection" BS embedded. If I am paying for music or movies, I don't want extra-value malware with it passing itself off as "protection". The only protection they want is for their wallets and middleman skimming "business".. I am *not* going to pay 20 times manufacturing costs to protect their business models from half a century ago, because they have this economic fetish that they "need" to make so much per unit. That's just nuts, and flies in the face of other manufactured items. And also shows that by and large it is a price fixing cartel, and needs to be broken up. If they can't live on 100% markup, screw 'em! If they can't grok "volume sales", with selling a hella lot more units, albeit with much smaller net per unit, to come up with decent and fair profit for them PLUS happy camper customers, then double screw 'em! And digital downloads, they want to charge near the same as hard copy on pressed disks??? Sorry, that is beyond gouging into engineering/technical insult.
Science is fully entwined with politics, academia, government, taxes and business. It just "is" is all. Want money for your research? Get a job, self fund as an individual or business, get VC money, or apply for grants, or get the Uni to help fund you. Them's your choices right there. Outside of getting a job and self funding your research, the other guys with the pocketbook are going to get a say in what you do. And the reason is many-fold, not the least of which is if you want to run a decade long study to see if choclate, strawberry or vanilla is the most popular ice cream, you'll have to come up with a reason for the research that makes sense to anyone else when you got your hand out. If you say government should do it all, now you are talking taxes, and why should people who like pistachio fund your top three flavor study again? If it is private business, what's in it for them?
Society as a whole can fund some research, just like society as whole can have some full time professional artists, musicians, etc, rappers, pro ball players, etc.but it gets to the point that someone has to do the ordinary work, too, the day to day stuff that lets our society function. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could just have unlimited funds and budgets to go off and study everything they wanted to, but until all of life's necessities are automagically present for everyone, we got this gosh darn "choices" and "hard decisions" deal to contend with. At best, I think you'll wind up with a system remarkably like what we have now, a blend that really satisfies no one completely, but pisses off the least amount of people in the smallest way possible.
With that said, sure, the system for R and D could be tweaked more (personally I am against business process patents, software patents and patenting natural "things"), and I think that is what we as humans are doing, precisely from arguing about who gets what funding for what purpose, etc, and if politics and money is involved-oh well, that's how it goes. Look at this last big controversial UN climate study, EVERY single word in that study had to be vetted through political bureaucrats in different nations before it was released. Why? Their nickle, that's why. They have political and business ramifications to contend with, so they release a study that is still probably flawed to some extent, but satisfies the most people with pissing off the least amount, back to the normal human compromise deal. We need to still debate things, we need to always be open to even fringe viewpoints, because the "system" is inherently flawed, because humans run this system, and we are really imperfect, argumentative and ornery critters, and I say RIGHT ON, we NEED to be that way. Keeps everyone on their toes and stuff. I'm certainly more than aware of all the old 1970s "ZOMG, ICE AGE COMING, RUN FER THE HILLS!" jazz we had shoved at us. then we has the endless "agent orange-harmless as the dew, safe as momma's milk!" and so on, a lot of examples from "scientific experts".
I tend to take a lot of dire predictions with more than a pinch of salt once I notice little political clues tied to them like "gee,gosh darn it, looks like we might need world government and a CARBON TAX now", and stuff like that. You can't tell me there aren't a lot of little power mad schemers in their pushing this stuff, you can *see* it.
There are always scheming wheels inside of wheels, even with alleged "pure" science, whioch has never existed anyway so it is silly to think it exists now. That's why we need dudes like Crichton, guys able to look at situations and go "waitaminnit-just a minnit, let's really think about this and look at all the agendas here"
Now I am a big conservationist and alternative and decentralized energy advocate, but I can still see some pretty large scale "big bro" action coming with this "emergency climate change" deal. I get more than a touch nervous when some werll known scientific goofball drops little hints that maybe the world would be better off with billion
...besides the fact the millions of people DON'T use IE? Isn't "millions" a large enough number? Now I can see if it was mere thousands, but really, this is 2007, the numbers of people who use anything but IE grows daily and it is a nice fat large number. Yes, it is not as large as IE, but IE is no longer as large a dominating factor as it used to be either and that particular trend is just continuing. If you don't give a crap about those folks-your competition sure will. Ya, it's more work, so what? You potentially want every possible set of eyeballs to hit your site, why tell a section of them to go pound sand? All you will do is save a few bucks now being picky about if it is 10% or 11%, for the fantastic business opportunity of losing business in the future, and alienating potential customers/clients. It is beyond annoying to go to some website and be told you MUST be using such and such a browser, or "go to hell", because that is exactly what you are telling folks, just "go away, we don't like you, we think you are insignificant to us, because you fail to use the most insecure browser ever with features years behind everyone else".
That is not a good way to "win hearts and minds".
There's an old saying that fits, "penny wise, pound foolish". Would a gas station have a color code to get gas "sorry, we don't serve blue or green cars, only red cars".
Ya more work, suck it up. It'll pay off in the future for you.
Snapper didn't, they refused to make their stuff crappier for walmart in order to "compete". We had an article here to that effect. Granted, one supplier out of thousands, but it proves it is still possible, and the demographic that buys riding lawnmowers (very broadly speaking) is the same one that rents or buys a lot of media and electronic devices. And I know in my rural area that the independent small engine shops are still doing great business, even though the local walmart sells small engine stuff too, they don't sell the quality that most guys want once they have been burned by craptastic stuff for a few bucks less. Nothing more annoying than to be out on the job and your mower goes TU, your string trimmer won't start, etc. I buy a LOT of that stuff, and walmart gets zero business on that score from me, because they carry nothing at the decent high end that is actually functional for more than one season with heavy use.
Walmart is weird. they have the potential to do a lot of good, witness their latest "green" push where they want to sell 100 million (whatever) compact fluorescent bulbs, and are going to solar and wind power for their stores as much as possible. Then they turn around and use those lao gai near slave labor factories and import junk that breaks all the time. It's like they can't make up their minds.
Businesses open to the public can not arbitrarily restrict people based on certain criteria-race and religion for example. That issue has been fought in the courts and those who maintained that because it was "private property" lost (bus lines, restaurants, hotels, country clubs, etc), because they allowed the general public in and had a government granted license to operate, either a business license and/or/with a corporate charter, either for profit or non profit. and because corporations are not citizens. they have a near person-hood, but they are not protected "citizens', and as such can be regulated a lot more heavily than a single named flesh and blood person can be, at least in theory. The government can't censor your speech, but they sure as heck can restrict what corporations do or can't do, especially as it applies to the civil rights act and some more, enacted under the provisions of the commerce clause in the constitution.
There's a difference between your private residence and an open to the public business in the court's eyes. And I know because I was involved in trying to change that situation in ye olden days, back when it was still fairly common to have "private" businesses discriminate arbitraily.
Youtube/google allows the general public in, and they are businesses, even if it is just showing you ads.. It's a pretty fine line to say they can't based on *talking* about race or religion, because those are two of the magic bingo words that (can or may) trigger discrimination charges in a legal sense. Googtoob is saying they won't let such and such a person in based solely on religious commentary-looks to me like a pretty large no-no.
I think if this was really pushed all the way in the court system that Youtube/Google would lose based on the in-place discrimination laws. Probably be one of those major precedent setting cases. (along with disability access at commercial websites, another issue but one that needs addressing, IMO)
But-who knows really, no predicting the court systems any more.
I know I have seeds from 95 that sprouted last year for the garden, some flowers and stuff. But I do tend to just harvest new ones every year from the better looking specimens. We don't do anything more exotic than dry the seed, stick it in jars, and store in the dark.
With that said, we also have some professionally canned up in steel cans that are said to last a long time, precisely for a "seed bank" reason, all open pollinated stuff. And we also have long term storage food,packed in nitrogen, which a large part consists of just dried grains, beans, peas, etc, which is "seed" as well if needs be for any emergency uses.
I still think their remote cyro vault is a good idea though, can't hurt to have backups for backups, especially with stuff like *food*.
I don't know other than getting toyota to make computers. Like I said, takes a little more then mediocrity level corporate intelligence and balls. It takes a company willing to take a chance, and not just talking about it and engaging in self destructive behavior, like GM did with the EV1. Gm play acted at offering an alternative car, ya they built a few and then only leased them, whereas toyota built one and shipped it to all their dealers and actually sold them because they made it affordable enough and functional enough that people actually tried it and liked it. They didn't play act at it or engage in deliberate sabotage, which a lot of folks thought GM did when they killed the electric car.
There are no major vendors doing anything with linux other than play-acting at it with the desktop, and one might think there might be a bit of behind the scenes sabotage going on to make sure that it never happens. Can't help but be suspicious there.
And here's the deal-even if they made a lot of them and they didn't sell, they could always be wiped and sold as windows OEM like they were originally designed to be. It's not like there's any huge difference with the hardware, all the major vendors use the same crap for most practical reasons. This *strongly* leads me to believe that there still remains the strong arm of the 800 lb gorilla corporate monopolist at work, any "lawsuits" notwithstanding. I think that is your 8 year "why hasn't it happened?" answer. This is 2007, the linux desktop is as ready as it is ever going to be.
I guess I would disagree on useability for normal home consumers-what is it missing again beyond specialised games? And how long would the game guys wait if they saw a market there? We have online games, consoles, etc and there is at least a nascent linux gaming scene. Everything else is in there already, available. What do folks at home do really, surf the web, type school reports and email, IM, view and listen to entertainment media? Ya got all that already. Works fine. and you can look at any of the top contenders, they come with a huge variety of apps that windows doesn't come with, end users have to go hunt them down and install them, and pay serious money for a lot of them.. In that circumstance I would say desktop linux is way, way ahead, not behind.
warning, many bad car analogies ahead....
As soon as one of the major mainstream vendors crack the MS monopoly and offer a linux on the consumer desktop large scale critical mass will be reached in short order. And I think the combination of the newly announced linspire and ubuntu deal will be the one that gets picked. Linspire has wedged the door open a crack with some lower tier vendors for OEM placement, they have a small but viable track record there, and a winner in one click click-n-run, and ubuntu has shown that offering a one CD version that works and is really pushed hard with just a mere modicum of advertising (compared to a lot of other products) can get people's attention. From no where to topdog on distrowatch in a short time frame and no signs of it losing that position any time soon either. I mean, AFAIK, you have windows and mac being advertised heavy where most people can see it, as soon as they become aware that this thing called linux even exists-you'll get interest. You as joe consumer can't get something if it isn't there to see or you even don't know about it. Stuff takes availability plus adveritsing, that's the minimum needed. And there are any number of cutsie commercial angles, guy getting his car filled with gas, two stations, one with real expensive gas, the cars get filled up, make it a block down the street and thick clouds of black smoke coming out. Another station across the street, normal gas,1/4th the price for the "high test-full version", the car drives away just fine. I mean a good advertising firm could just beat hell on the 400 bucks for vista imperial warlord deluxe version whatever that is called, oh, and you also want to type up ofice reports? that's an extra few hundred bucks there, your imperial warlordship..neener, and conversely show how pitiful the hundred buck version is with the complete lack of features for joe lowball at home, crippled version hobbling along on crutches. Then rub it in saying the full version is on the disk but they want to gouge you to use all of it, whereas our brand of linux stuff comes with all these apps, and etc.....
Advertising guys can get pretty creative.
You see, most people aren't even *aware* that they can put different OS-gas in the car-computer. Make them aware, have it there to get-things'll change quickly.
That and when the OLPC starts really shipping in million unit chunks will do it. I would say don't understimate what that will do globally with linux adoption in general, it *is* going to have an impact.
Sometimes changes start really slow then *wham* it goes fast as anything. Witness hybrid cars-nearly all the so called economic experts and car companies said that it would remain a tiny niche product, they laughed at the notion, weren't interested, etc, now, across the board with all the big manufacturers it is the fastest rising type of transportation, getting the most buzz and interest, and it has only taken a relatively few years. It took one company-in this case toyota, to bite the bullet, to actually use some corporate nads, and take a chance and ship in quantity. They got freekin' swamped, orders backlogged, waiting lists, there was so much pent-up demand for something/anything/please, just something beyond the same old tire
Don't they do burn-ins anymore? Or is that no longer cost effective, they just ghost the image onto zillions of drives and hope enough of them work? Seems most smaller shops still do 24 hour burn ins.
Anyway, I always thought that was the last real quality assurance before something went out the door, so to sell with no OS, you'd have to load one, burn it in to see if it worked, then wipe the disk several times.
But I agree, they should sell blank computers, I just don't think the cost would be zero extra, it seems like it would have to be a few bucks a machine anyway regardless, just from the extra work.
The real bottom line is though, you CAN get blank machines or machines with linux, etc from any number of vendors now, even in large quantities. they just aren't dell or hp or at bestbuy, etc, but you can get them. The tier 2 and 3 and 4 vendors are out there, just needs to look.
SF has good filters, you can narrow down thousands (whatever, big number) of hits to just a few with a few clicks, following a host of parameters, including development stage. Same with google on general searches if you get good with the -minus excludes.
Lawyers cost money. In this nation, if you don't have enough money, chances are you will lose in court, even if you deserve to win. Just is is all. Helps to be a rich powerful company or organization as well.
With that said, firin' up my DIY Z meter I constructed to detect truthiness in cults...hmmm raelians hit at coo-coo level.... kim ill dung and his cult of one true leader of exaltation falls into dangerous retardoville...and yes, scientologists off the scale, pegged at total nutjobs!
Possibly, but given the scale of his request, it falls outside of one of my parameters and goes back to corporation-sized. Now one of those individual employees of his, if they gave that person a break, that would be precedent setting.
He'd be much better off literally just buying up some country someplace.
A lot of companies do this. Look at some of the recently opened car plants (as oposed to the closed ones). They all negotiated sweetheart deals with the state and local governments.
The real scandal here is that they can do this at all. Why should corporations be allowed to negotiate taxes? Can individuals do that? "Hello, state! I am thinking of moving to your state and being productively employed! And some of the money I make will be spent in the local economy! Promise! I will do so if you cut me some slack on property taxes and state income taxes!"
You'd get laughed at. Scale? so what, could 200 independent single individuals do the same? Nope. But a corporation can.
The same with those land seizures. XYZ corp wants to put in an import*mart or golf course, the local government seizes some poor guys land, forces him to move or close his business, so the bigger corp can put their crap there. Nuts. Does the opposite ever happen? "Hiya state! I want you to seize this local golf course/stripmall/sports stadium for me. I will bulldoze out all the lamer energy hog neon sign enhanced buildings and ugly crap in the way, and then plow it up at my expense with my tractor and make free community gardens, saving local consumers millions a year with the grocery bill". Go ahead, try to do something like that, see what happens.
It is not "getting to the point", it is well past the point that governments exist to cater to large corporations for the most part. "Hiya largest government! I have a problem" You see, I have been in the entertainment redistribution business for generations. It was costly to do this, every copy cost a lot of money to reproduce and distribute, but we did it and made a lot of profit. Unfortunately recent technological advances have made this sort of business almost completely obsolete, which threatens our bottom line. It is now technically possible to do what we did in the past 100 to 1000 times cheaper, and get the product to the consumer. But we are so used to making so much net profit a "unit" for our products that we can't allow this dangerous replicator technology out there without severe restrictions on the consumers, else we would lose our traditional profit structure, and we certainly couldn't charge the 2 cents a unit that would be possible now..it's UnAmerican! So please pass laws that force our business model to stay in place in perpetuity. Oh, and we need to extend the limits on this "IP" stuff as well, after all, even with the tech restrictions, we want todo this forever! We'll get back to you once that time limit approaches again, and we'll extend it even further! Thanks! Oh ya, here's some completely unrelated huge bags of cash, just an amazing coincidence that we are handing this to you, really, no strings attached!"
There's no profit (I have to assume you mean "net profit" here) with a product until you break even then surpass your gross costs of development/production/marketing/shipping, etc.
showcase your *tech* somehow. You are trying to attract the smart guys, not the ones distracted by "oooh shiny!". I worked tradeshows for a long long time, the sellers/exhibitors (mostly) treat the buyers like carnies treat the marks, and you don't want any of those short attention span folks. I've seen them all, from giant whizzbang booths and full stage productions on giant rotating stages, to little plain vanilla simple backwall booths like one I saw with (who I think was now in retrospect) Dean Kamen and an *amazing* wheelchair. Once on a car show I was working on, the single vehicle that got the most attention had nothing but a rug the car was sitting on and one of those little velvet rope barricades a few feet away and a little sign on an easel. A lamborghini jeep/suv looking thing (a long time ago before there were many different kinds of SUVs). It had more guys standing around gawking than any of the other-some quite elaborate-displays and vehicles, including concept vehicles. Because the gearhead tech and the fit and finish (including hard point pintles if you were some rich guy over in whoknow's-wheristan and needed to mount weapons on it) was *slick* for the time.(found it, it was the v-12 model) I mean damn impressive compared to the competition back then for that, which consisted of like a suburban or a jeep station wagon or a land rover. Of course the price was much higher than any of the others of that kind, but shazzam it was cool. The tech was cool. that's what stood out, the all around just "better" aspects of their tech compared to the available competition.
Ya, booth babes and schmooze/schwag are nice..but you are trying to attract the cream on a budget so the only way you are going to stand out from the blinkenlights crowd is to show what you got so far, and the interested guys will notice it, so set it up so it is comfy for them to sit down and play with what you have and then you can talk to them comfortably, to see if they can help you with where you want to go. And they will obviously want to see how you can help *them*, so don't be cheap, but don't promise what you can't deliver, either.
You probably or maybe (depends on the local school and job situations and lotsa variables there of course) won't get a ton of interest, but what interest you do get will be very narrowly focused and tuned to what you are apparently looking for.
That's the kind of stuff that needs to go to the FTC comments on this case. Encourage your friend (and he to any of his friends who might also have gone through the same deal) to write in what happened to them. This, in his case now, became part of accessibility laws, he is being discriminated against because of the extra cost and hassle of having to use that particular software, yet the settlement makes no provisions for that. Use that angle.
"who do I want to take the blame?" The named humans in the mob, as has been already proven when such things did occur in the past and when the cops nabbed anyone or ones. You don't fill out a warrant for "a mob". They arrest a person or persons, named humans. The humans may be in a group, the group may have a name, but they arrest humans.
And yes, I'll keep saying it because it's true, a corporation doesn't do anything, people inside a corporate structure do things. Named human beings. If some crime comes out of your corporate "mob", I expect the heat to deal with whomever made the decision. That they don't do that now and allow them to skate and hide behind a fictious name on a piece of paper is completely bogus. Eventually if the crime is big enough and blatant enough they will go after names, ken lay-enron, but it doesn't happen often enough. They need to do it every single time. Cingular, should have been a human being charged. sony rootkit, same deal.
You can defend crimes by mobs by saying because some official "inc" mob did a crime so no humans are responsible, just the "inc", but I just completely disagree, so we'll have to leave it at that, and my original modding shows what a lot of folks think-they agree with me, humans need to be responsible, not some fairy tale pseudo person "inc" thing. Fine and dandy to be an inc for organizational structure, but your organization is made up of REAL humans, no matter how much you want to hallucinate or believe some "inc" is a person, it's not, it's a legal document. Take your own example, but your contention, and "inc" could actually go and do a murder, but because there is no "inc" to tyhrow in jail for the murder, the most that could happen is some monetary fine to the "inc" and a promise that they shouldn't do it again.
I disagree and I think most rational people would agee with me, so I say make it apply to all laws and not just pick and choose which laws you want to charge a named human to or not just because an "inc" is involved. There is no rationality to that-broken law-a human is responsible eventually someplace up that "inc" command structure, end stop. The legal document doesn't climb out of the drawer and go do a crime.
There is no "gun violence", humans who may seriously misuse a gun can cause violent crime. There is human violence. Guns don't jump out of a holster or gun rack and start randomly shooting.
There is no war on drugs, there is an ongoing effort to arrest *drug smugglers and dealers*, human beings.
There is no corporate crime, humans who may belong to a corporation might commit a crime. I use language and words, I completely understand what a corporation is about, I just vehemently disagree when they aloow that "mob" to hide behind a piece of paper and get away with crimes.
If you or I installed as many trojans on people's computers as sony did,and got blatantly caught, we'd be facing serious hacking charges and more likely than not, pokey time. Some doofuses inside Sony and at their subcontractor's do it and the "inc" just gets a fine that they can then go ahead and pay out of their next consumers purchases.
In your own theoretical you show where the problem is. Any lower level flunky who does something he is ordered to do is *under orders*. He didn't make the decision, his superior being made it for him. If the flunky thinks it is dodgy, he damn sure should keep records or if it looks *real* dodgy, get the orders in writing. And make firing people for insisting on important edicts being recorded a crime as well.
No matter who is the front public facing person for some bogus action, the boss above him would be charged if it was his call, or above him, until you get to the real ultimate order-giver. If it turns out to be the whole board, swell, they all get equal fines and/or pokey time.
The whole idea is, re-establish where the buck stops with a named human being or beings. No mort "acme inc did such and such" when it comes to liability. Acme would never get charged, civilly or criminally, named humans *only* because a corporation is just a set of documents sitting in a box in delaware, and that's it. A corporation doesn't *do* anything, human beings do.
And this isn't about penny ante stuff, just the biggees, stuff that gets news press about corporate wrongness. Sony rootkit-whomever signed off on that needs to be charged same as any other malicious hacker gets charged, not just a fine that the next customers pay. In this article, same deal, and no robbing the stockholders and lower level employees and the next set of customers from their cash and stake in the corporation-the decisions get made by the fatcats, they all certainly want to be individually compensated thoroughly, and are, so let them be also individually responsible for whichever area of the corporate fiefdom they are in charge of and give orders to. Make the buck stop at an individual, don't let it dead end at a table full of lawyers representing anything "Inc." while the real crooks are jetting off for a little golf and executive asistant action.
That's what is broken, and it needs to be fixed, and that is the way to fix it. Bring back the concept of humans. A corporation is not a human, it is just a construct recorded down on paper and digitally to outline an organizational set up- OF HUMANS. A little better thought out and implemented SOX on steroids in other words is what is needed.
yep, along those lines. How about...pondering, there's a ton of possibilites for some reform here.....after their third conviction for being jerks (the legal term there...), all the top management is canned (along with having to pay the fines out of their wallet, along with pokey time if it was that bad), and the company is turned over to the employees who then hold a secret ballot neutrally observed election to see who does what for management? Just selling it off is too immediate and would hurt the bulk of the normal workers there, doesn't seem right either.
Stockholders I am less concerned with, because it is part of their duty to supervise their management they hire and maintain, and if they fail to do that, and the current management makes it to the "three strikes" level in convictions, then that means the stockholders aren't paying good enough attention to reality, so they get to squirm awhile too, just to wake them up a little.
As to trading, I have long been of the opinion there needs to be old fashioned "investment class" holding periods before stocks can be sold. Say two years hold period at a minimum. None of this buy in at the IPO or at some market news story and then sell 18.5 hours later deal, make stock holding a real "investment", and eliminate as much of the casino action as possible.
...a criminal felony. And it would get back to that decision thing again, it will still take a named human to issue that order to try and hide the first guys fine payment. Just keep bumping up the penalities for playing dodgeball. We throw enough Cxx whatevers in the pokey and they will start to realise that sometimes your "profts" ain't worth it, maybe it's a better idea to be content with already being a millionaire.
I got nuthin against makin a buck, we all do it, but I got a lot against being a greedy sniveling cheating bunghole. And these big guys are always hiding behind that incorporation charter so they can pull little cute stunts like that. Put that at risk, the ability to stay a corporation, such as the "three strikes and you are out" deal we already use to "get tough on crime!!1!" (they say it's de law for the little guy,so it might as well include corporations, IMO), and always make a named human being responsible for actions, not this thing that end with the last name Inc., and we could sort this stuff out better.
Ya, it ain't perfect, but the current situation where they fine companies, then they pay that fine out of whatever they charge their suckers..err, I mean valued customers down the line..is nuts. It ain't working too well. We need something else.
...humans do. They need to stop fining "corporations" and instead determine which named human made the offending decision, the guy who finally issued the order to do such and such offending thing, then freeze that guy's salary and compensation for five years (or more, to make sure they don't just raise it quickly to cover the loss to his check) and make that human pay the fine out of his own wallet, exactly the same as when joe sixpack gets a fine.
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preach it bro! How many *millions* of laws on the books now? Extrapolate 20 years from now. How the heck would ANYONE avoid being a "criminal"? All new laws should have automatic sunset clauses, they all should be vetted as to being lawful FIRST, not passed then some poor dude has to go "break" a law and get it heard in front of the supreme court, there shouldn't be multiple laws passed hidden inside of unrelated bills, etc. We have a lot of ways to improve this system. I think an immediate freeze on any new laws and several years of review would work for a starter.
As to patents and reform, a good start is no more software patents or business process patents. witness: software is allegedly patentable, and they get granted, yet has *no warranty required*. Only "product" out there with such a deal. El wrong-o. If it is worthy of a patent and is called a product, it needs to come with a warranty. If anyone-you can't handle a warranty because it would be "impossible" to code that good, no probs, give up patents then because it is obviously not a workable product, it is a work of art, and stick to copyrights, as every other written *thing* is.
I'd bet a buck that within a month or so of mass deployment of them that clones start hitting the market. And as such, they certainly couldn't charge a whole lot for them either. and maybe they will be easier to upgrade (more RAM and Flash memory, etc, as options). I mean, with millions out there, how are they going to avoid it? There's an obvious good market for something like these things, given all the commentary on every OLPC article here.
I know I'd like to have a low energy usage, built tough, self powered, mesh network enabled laptop thing like they are building, without paying full new laptop prices. Just the self charging aspect is pretty spiffy. I'd just think of it as a good $deal large PDA rather than thinking of it as a full fledged laptop and be done with it. At double their cost @ $260 then, they would be very competitive in the PDA market I think, given a little "adultfying" design tweaks, but keeping the same basic parameters. and ya, that innovative clear screen is one of those reasons..
And for that matter, is this manufacturer Quanta under any obligation to NOT sell variants? I have not read one way or the other on that subject. Maybe if there is enough interest they will offer a near-close clone machine.
I would agree, although not with your assessment of him personally, he's about as stuck as anyone. If he did though, and he could, it would place put tremendous pressure on the talent to complain to their distributors, *loudly*, and on consumers to do the same, because iTunes is now at the unique position of being topdog on legit download music. If they put up a notice that affected parties need to be proactive as well and lobby for unencumbered music,so as to be reintroduced to iTunes, it would get global press coverage and really put the whole DRM issue under the spotlight. And yes, the entire idea of DRM is blatantly illegal as to the original sense and design of it going way way back, as material "protected" by DRM will never come out of copyright in a legitimate useful and practical sense, as copyright, as long as the term is, is still supposed to be limited in time and eventually go to public domain/open.
Last century's business models are no longer useful or fair, and need to be radically changed. The cost of duplication now is incredibly cheap, they should adapt to changing technology and therefore offer *very cheap* copies to reflect tech changes, and make their profits on huge volume sales.
I have a friend used to own a lot of gas stations, but gas at the retail level only makes a few pennies a gallon, a rather pitiful small amount, yet he made lots of cash.. The deal is, he made a lot because he sold millions of gallons a year.
The music and movie industry could easily do the same, rather than trying to make those huge markups on each "unit" they push. Charge much much less, sell way way more, actually make more money than now and have happy customers with cheaper prices.
I know why they haven't done it yet either, simple psychology. Millionaires make the ultimate pricing decisions in those industries, they live at the highest end of the economic food chain, and simply have lost touch with what a ten or twenty dollars means to the other 99% of the population who aren't multi-millionaires, to them, a ten or a twenty is like one or two cents. They think it is about free-no frame of reference they can relate to. Sure, semi intellectually they might be able to consider it, but realistically, no, they can't, it is obvious. They really think 15-20 bucks for a plastic disk is some kind of "deal", or 10 bucks for a download ten song album is somehow a deal. Nuts, it is not, it is a huge markup over manufacturing costs. Maybe to their country club drinking buddies it seems a deal, to about everyone else it is a blatant pricing gouge. I am amazed they sell what they do now frankly.
I was a constant buyer of pre-recorded entertainment media (starting with 33 and 45 speed LP albums and singles in the 50s and 60s) until I finally just had to acknowledge I was being outright gouged. When I saw CDs being peddled for what cassetes or 8 tracks cost, that was clue enough for me to see they had gone full bore into outright greed and their trying to enforce technological luddism on everyone else in various industries but them. Prices just never dropped adequately as regards technological innovation, and what newer techniques would allow. And then they discovered "new shiny format of the year", wanting you to re-buy the same stuff, plus DRM, plus lobby for the laws to be changed for planned obsoletion. They want locked in price structures from decades ago, even though cost of duplication is absurdly low now.
I'd pay double manufacturing costs for copies of stuff, that's it, and I don't want weird "protection" BS embedded. If I am paying for music or movies, I don't want extra-value malware with it passing itself off as "protection". The only protection they want is for their wallets and middleman skimming "business".. I am *not* going to pay 20 times manufacturing costs to protect their business models from half a century ago, because they have this economic fetish that they "need" to make so much per unit. That's just nuts, and flies in the face of other manufactured items. And also shows that by and large it is a price fixing cartel, and needs to be broken up. If they can't live on 100% markup, screw 'em! If they can't grok "volume sales", with selling a hella lot more units, albeit with much smaller net per unit, to come up with decent and fair profit for them PLUS happy camper customers, then double screw 'em! And digital downloads, they want to charge near the same as hard copy on pressed disks??? Sorry, that is beyond gouging into engineering/technical insult.
Science is fully entwined with politics, academia, government, taxes and business. It just "is" is all. Want money for your research? Get a job, self fund as an individual or business, get VC money, or apply for grants, or get the Uni to help fund you. Them's your choices right there. Outside of getting a job and self funding your research, the other guys with the pocketbook are going to get a say in what you do. And the reason is many-fold, not the least of which is if you want to run a decade long study to see if choclate, strawberry or vanilla is the most popular ice cream, you'll have to come up with a reason for the research that makes sense to anyone else when you got your hand out. If you say government should do it all, now you are talking taxes, and why should people who like pistachio fund your top three flavor study again? If it is private business, what's in it for them?
Society as a whole can fund some research, just like society as whole can have some full time professional artists, musicians, etc, rappers, pro ball players, etc.but it gets to the point that someone has to do the ordinary work, too, the day to day stuff that lets our society function. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could just have unlimited funds and budgets to go off and study everything they wanted to, but until all of life's necessities are automagically present for everyone, we got this gosh darn "choices" and "hard decisions" deal to contend with. At best, I think you'll wind up with a system remarkably like what we have now, a blend that really satisfies no one completely, but pisses off the least amount of people in the smallest way possible.
With that said, sure, the system for R and D could be tweaked more (personally I am against business process patents, software patents and patenting natural "things"), and I think that is what we as humans are doing, precisely from arguing about who gets what funding for what purpose, etc, and if politics and money is involved-oh well, that's how it goes. Look at this last big controversial UN climate study, EVERY single word in that study had to be vetted through political bureaucrats in different nations before it was released. Why? Their nickle, that's why. They have political and business ramifications to contend with, so they release a study that is still probably flawed to some extent, but satisfies the most people with pissing off the least amount, back to the normal human compromise deal. We need to still debate things, we need to always be open to even fringe viewpoints, because the "system" is inherently flawed, because humans run this system, and we are really imperfect, argumentative and ornery critters, and I say RIGHT ON, we NEED to be that way. Keeps everyone on their toes and stuff. I'm certainly more than aware of all the old 1970s "ZOMG, ICE AGE COMING, RUN FER THE HILLS!" jazz we had shoved at us. then we has the endless "agent orange-harmless as the dew, safe as momma's milk!" and so on, a lot of examples from "scientific experts".
I tend to take a lot of dire predictions with more than a pinch of salt once I notice little political clues tied to them like "gee,gosh darn it, looks like we might need world government and a CARBON TAX now", and stuff like that. You can't tell me there aren't a lot of little power mad schemers in their pushing this stuff, you can *see* it.
There are always scheming wheels inside of wheels, even with alleged "pure" science, whioch has never existed anyway so it is silly to think it exists now. That's why we need dudes like Crichton, guys able to look at situations and go "waitaminnit-just a minnit, let's really think about this and look at all the agendas here"
Now I am a big conservationist and alternative and decentralized energy advocate, but I can still see some pretty large scale "big bro" action coming with this "emergency climate change" deal. I get more than a touch nervous when some werll known scientific goofball drops little hints that maybe the world would be better off with billion
...besides the fact the millions of people DON'T use IE? Isn't "millions" a large enough number? Now I can see if it was mere thousands, but really, this is 2007, the numbers of people who use anything but IE grows daily and it is a nice fat large number. Yes, it is not as large as IE, but IE is no longer as large a dominating factor as it used to be either and that particular trend is just continuing. If you don't give a crap about those folks-your competition sure will. Ya, it's more work, so what? You potentially want every possible set of eyeballs to hit your site, why tell a section of them to go pound sand? All you will do is save a few bucks now being picky about if it is 10% or 11%, for the fantastic business opportunity of losing business in the future, and alienating potential customers/clients. It is beyond annoying to go to some website and be told you MUST be using such and such a browser, or "go to hell", because that is exactly what you are telling folks, just "go away, we don't like you, we think you are insignificant to us, because you fail to use the most insecure browser ever with features years behind everyone else".
That is not a good way to "win hearts and minds".
There's an old saying that fits, "penny wise, pound foolish". Would a gas station have a color code to get gas "sorry, we don't serve blue or green cars, only red cars".
Ya more work, suck it up. It'll pay off in the future for you.
Snapper didn't, they refused to make their stuff crappier for walmart in order to "compete". We had an article here to that effect. Granted, one supplier out of thousands, but it proves it is still possible, and the demographic that buys riding lawnmowers (very broadly speaking) is the same one that rents or buys a lot of media and electronic devices. And I know in my rural area that the independent small engine shops are still doing great business, even though the local walmart sells small engine stuff too, they don't sell the quality that most guys want once they have been burned by craptastic stuff for a few bucks less. Nothing more annoying than to be out on the job and your mower goes TU, your string trimmer won't start, etc. I buy a LOT of that stuff, and walmart gets zero business on that score from me, because they carry nothing at the decent high end that is actually functional for more than one season with heavy use.
Walmart is weird. they have the potential to do a lot of good, witness their latest "green" push where they want to sell 100 million (whatever) compact fluorescent bulbs, and are going to solar and wind power for their stores as much as possible. Then they turn around and use those lao gai near slave labor factories and import junk that breaks all the time. It's like they can't make up their minds.
Businesses open to the public can not arbitrarily restrict people based on certain criteria-race and religion for example. That issue has been fought in the courts and those who maintained that because it was "private property" lost (bus lines, restaurants, hotels, country clubs, etc), because they allowed the general public in and had a government granted license to operate, either a business license and/or/with a corporate charter, either for profit or non profit. and because corporations are not citizens. they have a near person-hood, but they are not protected "citizens', and as such can be regulated a lot more heavily than a single named flesh and blood person can be, at least in theory. The government can't censor your speech, but they sure as heck can restrict what corporations do or can't do, especially as it applies to the civil rights act and some more, enacted under the provisions of the commerce clause in the constitution.
There's a difference between your private residence and an open to the public business in the court's eyes. And I know because I was involved in trying to change that situation in ye olden days, back when it was still fairly common to have "private" businesses discriminate arbitraily.
Youtube/google allows the general public in, and they are businesses, even if it is just showing you ads.. It's a pretty fine line to say they can't based on *talking* about race or religion, because those are two of the magic bingo words that (can or may) trigger discrimination charges in a legal sense. Googtoob is saying they won't let such and such a person in based solely on religious commentary-looks to me like a pretty large no-no.
I think if this was really pushed all the way in the court system that Youtube/Google would lose based on the in-place discrimination laws. Probably be one of those major precedent setting cases. (along with disability access at commercial websites, another issue but one that needs addressing, IMO)
But-who knows really, no predicting the court systems any more.
I know I have seeds from 95 that sprouted last year for the garden, some flowers and stuff. But I do tend to just harvest new ones every year from the better looking specimens. We don't do anything more exotic than dry the seed, stick it in jars, and store in the dark.
With that said, we also have some professionally canned up in steel cans that are said to last a long time, precisely for a "seed bank" reason, all open pollinated stuff. And we also have long term storage food,packed in nitrogen, which a large part consists of just dried grains, beans, peas, etc, which is "seed" as well if needs be for any emergency uses.
I still think their remote cyro vault is a good idea though, can't hurt to have backups for backups, especially with stuff like *food*.
I don't know other than getting toyota to make computers. Like I said, takes a little more then mediocrity level corporate intelligence and balls. It takes a company willing to take a chance, and not just talking about it and engaging in self destructive behavior, like GM did with the EV1. Gm play acted at offering an alternative car, ya they built a few and then only leased them, whereas toyota built one and shipped it to all their dealers and actually sold them because they made it affordable enough and functional enough that people actually tried it and liked it. They didn't play act at it or engage in deliberate sabotage, which a lot of folks thought GM did when they killed the electric car.
There are no major vendors doing anything with linux other than play-acting at it with the desktop, and one might think there might be a bit of behind the scenes sabotage going on to make sure that it never happens. Can't help but be suspicious there.
And here's the deal-even if they made a lot of them and they didn't sell, they could always be wiped and sold as windows OEM like they were originally designed to be. It's not like there's any huge difference with the hardware, all the major vendors use the same crap for most practical reasons. This *strongly* leads me to believe that there still remains the strong arm of the 800 lb gorilla corporate monopolist at work, any "lawsuits" notwithstanding. I think that is your 8 year "why hasn't it happened?" answer. This is 2007, the linux desktop is as ready as it is ever going to be.
I guess I would disagree on useability for normal home consumers-what is it missing again beyond specialised games? And how long would the game guys wait if they saw a market there? We have online games, consoles, etc and there is at least a nascent linux gaming scene. Everything else is in there already, available. What do folks at home do really, surf the web, type school reports and email, IM, view and listen to entertainment media? Ya got all that already. Works fine. and you can look at any of the top contenders, they come with a huge variety of apps that windows doesn't come with, end users have to go hunt them down and install them, and pay serious money for a lot of them.. In that circumstance I would say desktop linux is way, way ahead, not behind.
warning, many bad car analogies ahead....
As soon as one of the major mainstream vendors crack the MS monopoly and offer a linux on the consumer desktop large scale critical mass will be reached in short order. And I think the combination of the newly announced linspire and ubuntu deal will be the one that gets picked. Linspire has wedged the door open a crack with some lower tier vendors for OEM placement, they have a small but viable track record there, and a winner in one click click-n-run, and ubuntu has shown that offering a one CD version that works and is really pushed hard with just a mere modicum of advertising (compared to a lot of other products) can get people's attention. From no where to topdog on distrowatch in a short time frame and no signs of it losing that position any time soon either. I mean, AFAIK, you have windows and mac being advertised heavy where most people can see it, as soon as they become aware that this thing called linux even exists-you'll get interest. You as joe consumer can't get something if it isn't there to see or you even don't know about it. Stuff takes availability plus adveritsing, that's the minimum needed. And there are any number of cutsie commercial angles, guy getting his car filled with gas, two stations, one with real expensive gas, the cars get filled up, make it a block down the street and thick clouds of black smoke coming out. Another station across the street, normal gas,1/4th the price for the "high test-full version", the car drives away just fine. I mean a good advertising firm could just beat hell on the 400 bucks for vista imperial warlord deluxe version whatever that is called, oh, and you also want to type up ofice reports? that's an extra few hundred bucks there, your imperial warlordship..neener, and conversely show how pitiful the hundred buck version is with the complete lack of features for joe lowball at home, crippled version hobbling along on crutches. Then rub it in saying the full version is on the disk but they want to gouge you to use all of it, whereas our brand of linux stuff comes with all these apps, and etc.....
Advertising guys can get pretty creative.
You see, most people aren't even *aware* that they can put different OS-gas in the car-computer. Make them aware, have it there to get-things'll change quickly.
That and when the OLPC starts really shipping in million unit chunks will do it. I would say don't understimate what that will do globally with linux adoption in general, it *is* going to have an impact.
Sometimes changes start really slow then *wham* it goes fast as anything. Witness hybrid cars-nearly all the so called economic experts and car companies said that it would remain a tiny niche product, they laughed at the notion, weren't interested, etc, now, across the board with all the big manufacturers it is the fastest rising type of transportation, getting the most buzz and interest, and it has only taken a relatively few years. It took one company-in this case toyota, to bite the bullet, to actually use some corporate nads, and take a chance and ship in quantity. They got freekin' swamped, orders backlogged, waiting lists, there was so much pent-up demand for something/anything/please, just something beyond the same old tire
Don't they do burn-ins anymore? Or is that no longer cost effective, they just ghost the image onto zillions of drives and hope enough of them work? Seems most smaller shops still do 24 hour burn ins.
Anyway, I always thought that was the last real quality assurance before something went out the door, so to sell with no OS, you'd have to load one, burn it in to see if it worked, then wipe the disk several times.
But I agree, they should sell blank computers, I just don't think the cost would be zero extra, it seems like it would have to be a few bucks a machine anyway regardless, just from the extra work.
The real bottom line is though, you CAN get blank machines or machines with linux, etc from any number of vendors now, even in large quantities. they just aren't dell or hp or at bestbuy, etc, but you can get them. The tier 2 and 3 and 4 vendors are out there, just needs to look.
SF has good filters, you can narrow down thousands (whatever, big number) of hits to just a few with a few clicks, following a host of parameters, including development stage. Same with google on general searches if you get good with the -minus excludes.
Lawyers cost money. In this nation, if you don't have enough money, chances are you will lose in court, even if you deserve to win. Just is is all. Helps to be a rich powerful company or organization as well.
With that said, firin' up my DIY Z meter I constructed to detect truthiness in cults...hmmm raelians hit at coo-coo level.... kim ill dung and his cult of one true leader of exaltation falls into dangerous retardoville...and yes, scientologists off the scale, pegged at total nutjobs!
Possibly, but given the scale of his request, it falls outside of one of my parameters and goes back to corporation-sized. Now one of those individual employees of his, if they gave that person a break, that would be precedent setting.
He'd be much better off literally just buying up some country someplace.
A lot of companies do this. Look at some of the recently opened car plants (as oposed to the closed ones). They all negotiated sweetheart deals with the state and local governments.
The real scandal here is that they can do this at all. Why should corporations be allowed to negotiate taxes? Can individuals do that? "Hello, state! I am thinking of moving to your state and being productively employed! And some of the money I make will be spent in the local economy! Promise! I will do so if you cut me some slack on property taxes and state income taxes!"
You'd get laughed at. Scale? so what, could 200 independent single individuals do the same? Nope. But a corporation can.
The same with those land seizures. XYZ corp wants to put in an import*mart or golf course, the local government seizes some poor guys land, forces him to move or close his business, so the bigger corp can put their crap there. Nuts. Does the opposite ever happen? "Hiya state! I want you to seize this local golf course/stripmall/sports stadium for me. I will bulldoze out all the lamer energy hog neon sign enhanced buildings and ugly crap in the way, and then plow it up at my expense with my tractor and make free community gardens, saving local consumers millions a year with the grocery bill". Go ahead, try to do something like that, see what happens.
It is not "getting to the point", it is well past the point that governments exist to cater to large corporations for the most part. "Hiya largest government! I have a problem" You see, I have been in the entertainment redistribution business for generations. It was costly to do this, every copy cost a lot of money to reproduce and distribute, but we did it and made a lot of profit. Unfortunately recent technological advances have made this sort of business almost completely obsolete, which threatens our bottom line. It is now technically possible to do what we did in the past 100 to 1000 times cheaper, and get the product to the consumer. But we are so used to making so much net profit a "unit" for our products that we can't allow this dangerous replicator technology out there without severe restrictions on the consumers, else we would lose our traditional profit structure, and we certainly couldn't charge the 2 cents a unit that would be possible now..it's UnAmerican! So please pass laws that force our business model to stay in place in perpetuity. Oh, and we need to extend the limits on this "IP" stuff as well, after all, even with the tech restrictions, we want todo this forever! We'll get back to you once that time limit approaches again, and we'll extend it even further! Thanks! Oh ya, here's some completely unrelated huge bags of cash, just an amazing coincidence that we are handing this to you, really, no strings attached!"
There's no profit (I have to assume you mean "net profit" here) with a product until you break even then surpass your gross costs of development/production/marketing/shipping, etc.
I really doubt Vista is profitable yet.
showcase your *tech* somehow. You are trying to attract the smart guys, not the ones distracted by "oooh shiny!". I worked tradeshows for a long long time, the sellers/exhibitors (mostly) treat the buyers like carnies treat the marks, and you don't want any of those short attention span folks. I've seen them all, from giant whizzbang booths and full stage productions on giant rotating stages, to little plain vanilla simple backwall booths like one I saw with (who I think was now in retrospect) Dean Kamen and an *amazing* wheelchair. Once on a car show I was working on, the single vehicle that got the most attention had nothing but a rug the car was sitting on and one of those little velvet rope barricades a few feet away and a little sign on an easel. A lamborghini jeep/suv looking thing (a long time ago before there were many different kinds of SUVs). It had more guys standing around gawking than any of the other-some quite elaborate-displays and vehicles, including concept vehicles. Because the gearhead tech and the fit and finish (including hard point pintles if you were some rich guy over in whoknow's-wheristan and needed to mount weapons on it) was *slick* for the time.(found it, it was the v-12 model) I mean damn impressive compared to the competition back then for that, which consisted of like a suburban or a jeep station wagon or a land rover. Of course the price was much higher than any of the others of that kind, but shazzam it was cool. The tech was cool. that's what stood out, the all around just "better" aspects of their tech compared to the available competition.
Ya, booth babes and schmooze/schwag are nice..but you are trying to attract the cream on a budget so the only way you are going to stand out from the blinkenlights crowd is to show what you got so far, and the interested guys will notice it, so set it up so it is comfy for them to sit down and play with what you have and then you can talk to them comfortably, to see if they can help you with where you want to go. And they will obviously want to see how you can help *them*, so don't be cheap, but don't promise what you can't deliver, either.
You probably or maybe (depends on the local school and job situations and lotsa variables there of course) won't get a ton of interest, but what interest you do get will be very narrowly focused and tuned to what you are apparently looking for.
That's the kind of stuff that needs to go to the FTC comments on this case. Encourage your friend (and he to any of his friends who might also have gone through the same deal) to write in what happened to them. This, in his case now, became part of accessibility laws, he is being discriminated against because of the extra cost and hassle of having to use that particular software, yet the settlement makes no provisions for that. Use that angle.
"who do I want to take the blame?" The named humans in the mob, as has been already proven when such things did occur in the past and when the cops nabbed anyone or ones. You don't fill out a warrant for "a mob". They arrest a person or persons, named humans. The humans may be in a group, the group may have a name, but they arrest humans.
And yes, I'll keep saying it because it's true, a corporation doesn't do anything, people inside a corporate structure do things. Named human beings. If some crime comes out of your corporate "mob", I expect the heat to deal with whomever made the decision. That they don't do that now and allow them to skate and hide behind a fictious name on a piece of paper is completely bogus. Eventually if the crime is big enough and blatant enough they will go after names, ken lay-enron, but it doesn't happen often enough. They need to do it every single time. Cingular, should have been a human being charged. sony rootkit, same deal.
You can defend crimes by mobs by saying because some official "inc" mob did a crime so no humans are responsible, just the "inc", but I just completely disagree, so we'll have to leave it at that, and my original modding shows what a lot of folks think-they agree with me, humans need to be responsible, not some fairy tale pseudo person "inc" thing. Fine and dandy to be an inc for organizational structure, but your organization is made up of REAL humans, no matter how much you want to hallucinate or believe some "inc" is a person, it's not, it's a legal document. Take your own example, but your contention, and "inc" could actually go and do a murder, but because there is no "inc" to tyhrow in jail for the murder, the most that could happen is some monetary fine to the "inc" and a promise that they shouldn't do it again.
I disagree and I think most rational people would agee with me, so I say make it apply to all laws and not just pick and choose which laws you want to charge a named human to or not just because an "inc" is involved. There is no rationality to that-broken law-a human is responsible eventually someplace up that "inc" command structure, end stop. The legal document doesn't climb out of the drawer and go do a crime.
There is no "gun violence", humans who may seriously misuse a gun can cause violent crime. There is human violence. Guns don't jump out of a holster or gun rack and start randomly shooting.
There is no war on drugs, there is an ongoing effort to arrest *drug smugglers and dealers*, human beings.
There is no corporate crime, humans who may belong to a corporation might commit a crime.
I use language and words, I completely understand what a corporation is about, I just vehemently disagree when they aloow that "mob" to hide behind a piece of paper and get away with crimes.
If you or I installed as many trojans on people's computers as sony did,and got blatantly caught, we'd be facing serious hacking charges and more likely than not, pokey time. Some doofuses inside Sony and at their subcontractor's do it and the "inc" just gets a fine that they can then go ahead and pay out of their next consumers purchases.
That's just slap wrong.
... what a great name for a microbrew in the right high tech community.
In your own theoretical you show where the problem is. Any lower level flunky who does something he is ordered to do is *under orders*. He didn't make the decision, his superior being made it for him. If the flunky thinks it is dodgy, he damn sure should keep records or if it looks *real* dodgy, get the orders in writing. And make firing people for insisting on important edicts being recorded a crime as well.
No matter who is the front public facing person for some bogus action, the boss above him would be charged if it was his call, or above him, until you get to the real ultimate order-giver. If it turns out to be the whole board, swell, they all get equal fines and/or pokey time.
The whole idea is, re-establish where the buck stops with a named human being or beings. No mort "acme inc did such and such" when it comes to liability. Acme would never get charged, civilly or criminally, named humans *only* because a corporation is just a set of documents sitting in a box in delaware, and that's it. A corporation doesn't *do* anything, human beings do.
And this isn't about penny ante stuff, just the biggees, stuff that gets news press about corporate wrongness. Sony rootkit-whomever signed off on that needs to be charged same as any other malicious hacker gets charged, not just a fine that the next customers pay. In this article, same deal, and no robbing the stockholders and lower level employees and the next set of customers from their cash and stake in the corporation-the decisions get made by the fatcats, they all certainly want to be individually compensated thoroughly, and are, so let them be also individually responsible for whichever area of the corporate fiefdom they are in charge of and give orders to. Make the buck stop at an individual, don't let it dead end at a table full of lawyers representing anything "Inc." while the real crooks are jetting off for a little golf and executive asistant action.
That's what is broken, and it needs to be fixed, and that is the way to fix it. Bring back the concept of humans. A corporation is not a human, it is just a construct recorded down on paper and digitally to outline an organizational set up- OF HUMANS. A little better thought out and implemented SOX on steroids in other words is what is needed.
yep, along those lines. How about...pondering, there's a ton of possibilites for some reform here.....after their third conviction for being jerks (the legal term there...), all the top management is canned (along with having to pay the fines out of their wallet, along with pokey time if it was that bad), and the company is turned over to the employees who then hold a secret ballot neutrally observed election to see who does what for management? Just selling it off is too immediate and would hurt the bulk of the normal workers there, doesn't seem right either.
Stockholders I am less concerned with, because it is part of their duty to supervise their management they hire and maintain, and if they fail to do that, and the current management makes it to the "three strikes" level in convictions, then that means the stockholders aren't paying good enough attention to reality, so they get to squirm awhile too, just to wake them up a little.
As to trading, I have long been of the opinion there needs to be old fashioned "investment class" holding periods before stocks can be sold. Say two years hold period at a minimum. None of this buy in at the IPO or at some market news story and then sell 18.5 hours later deal, make stock holding a real "investment", and eliminate as much of the casino action as possible.
...a criminal felony. And it would get back to that decision thing again, it will still take a named human to issue that order to try and hide the first guys fine payment. Just keep bumping up the penalities for playing dodgeball. We throw enough Cxx whatevers in the pokey and they will start to realise that sometimes your "profts" ain't worth it, maybe it's a better idea to be content with already being a millionaire.
I got nuthin against makin a buck, we all do it, but I got a lot against being a greedy sniveling cheating bunghole. And these big guys are always hiding behind that incorporation charter so they can pull little cute stunts like that. Put that at risk, the ability to stay a corporation, such as the "three strikes and you are out" deal we already use to "get tough on crime!!1!" (they say it's de law for the little guy,so it might as well include corporations, IMO), and always make a named human being responsible for actions, not this thing that end with the last name Inc., and we could sort this stuff out better.
Ya, it ain't perfect, but the current situation where they fine companies, then they pay that fine out of whatever they charge their suckers..err, I mean valued customers down the line..is nuts. It ain't working too well. We need something else.
...humans do. They need to stop fining "corporations" and instead determine which named human made the offending decision, the guy who finally issued the order to do such and such offending thing, then freeze that guy's salary and compensation for five years (or more, to make sure they don't just raise it quickly to cover the loss to his check) and make that human pay the fine out of his own wallet, exactly the same as when joe sixpack gets a fine.