Pricing is dependent on usage and sure, in the short term, the cheap way to make a "smart" grid is to share information about expected load/price so consumers can try to time their appliance to plug into the grid at the optimal time, which then, in theory, could leads exactly to the problem you stated of everyone pluging in at the same time. But that would soon be evident, and people would understand that it's a gamble determining when you should plug in (since few people are actually watching real-time information, and at best are using the previous night or some kind of historical average). Lottery players might choose to chase the 2am "jackpot", but the rest of us would know that an hour earlier or later yields better odds.
But plugging in at 2am isn't feasible anyway, not in aggregate across the entire population - few people will set their alarm to 2am every night to save a nickel. The long-term answer to is to simply plug in your Chevy when you get home and let the grid itself determine the scheduling of appliances so that the load is evenly distributed proactively, efficiency is optimal and cost drops as low as possible throughout the night so it no longer makes a difference when your car gets charged (as long as it happens before you have to leave for work). That would actually be "smart". Unfortunately, it also requires that devices (or at least "smart" outlets) can communicate their needs (Wattage and no-later-than) and their designated timeslot with the grid and turn on&off appropriately, so that'll take some time and have to pass a cost/benefit test first.
Most games recently just kind of suck and rest upon the shoulders of innovative graphics. This does not make me hopeful for the future of gaming.
Generally speaking, I'm in agreement on the suck part, but hold on a second there with the conclusion. If this technology is real and games do see a massive jump forward in graphics, wouldn't that allow for an end to each successive title needing to simply out-polygon the competition? Isn't it equally likely this would force a paradigm shift, where if nothing else art- real art, would supplant technical graphics specs?
Did you get that nonsense off a stick of gum? I hear Ethiopia is lovely this time of year. You'll love it there- shutdowns are the status quo. France is a good alternative- segments of their economy come to a standstill on an almost predictable schedule.
If a shutdown serves a purpose, that's perfectly fine by me. An economy grinding to a halt, market instability, and people who can't feed their kids aren't my idea of a good time.
Certainly, as well as to go beyond literal translation and learn the implications of the content of the text (literal translation is great for performing statistical analysis but that won't help you discover much of anything). On the accuracy side that's why you would first establish a minimum threshold of reliability by having the work done by more than one amateur and requiring consensus. Same as with CAPTCHA and other crowdsourcing mechanisms.
"Just remember, this is the United States of America. We write 80 million checks a month. There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner
Well, THERE's your problem.
I have no idea what your point actually was, if you even had one, but assuming it was intended to be related to the post you responded to here goes... 80 million checks a month has little to do with the poor and suggesting otherwise reeks of ignorance and/or intentional deceit. That number includes active duty, reserves, VA, federal employees, student loans, as well tens of thousands of federal contractors and other service providers (doctors who are paid by medicare/medicaid) who otherwise would not have the ability to meet private payrolls. Social security (which is a large part of the 80) isn't strictly related to poverty. I'm comfortably above the median household income and I qualify to get one of those checks when I retire. So I may be among the few who don't strictly "depend" on a check per the Geithner quote. Then, if the 80 million figure is based on a yearly average including tax refunds, those would account for over ten million checks a month (111M individual refunds a year, which is before counting businesses & non-profits), which again is not related to poverty. Again, many of these aren't included in the "depending on" category but many are, including small private businesses. Rhetoric-debunking aside, shutting down government, which the Republicans nearly did on the budget, and are so casually playing around with again now is a serious short-term issue to millions of citizens even before the longer-term implications of default. If those millions properly attributed their hardship to the Tea Party and its blind faith in a ridiculous economic anti-theory and acted on it, election results would be obvious, as Lumpy pointed out.
As for your quip about people not liking Obama because of his speeches, the WaPo article doesn't state that. Rather, it's that people are eating up his opponents' rhetoric about a supposed lack of job increases and an "obsession with tax hikes" as well as the usual misattributed economic conditions (e.g. the $80 gasoline bit, which isn't under presidential control, yet they always get blamed for it). If anything reflects on the president himself it's his lack of ability to act (the expectation built during his campaign) which is distressing those who voted for him. There's no evidence that people are turned off by what he has to say- that's just you pushing the right-wing agenda in portraying Obama as the extreme leftist he most certainly is not.
The whole reason we overspend on contractors is so mistakes don't occur. When they do there's rarely a good excuse, so it's no longer a mistake- it's generally due to negligence or corruption. That doesn't fall under the category of "shit happens."
The quote you used was editorialization and supposition, not a known fact, claim, or report. There is no information on why the charge of falsifying was made. Here's the only mention of "falsifying" in the Telegraph article:
Reynolds was charged with falsifying physical evidence and resisting arrest, police said.
Note that "Reynolds" is the woman receiving, fleeing with, and hiding the camera, not the guy who allegedly made the recording. So the knee-jerk anti-authoritarian populist accusation is obviously wrong- he, by recording the police, wasn't charged with falsifying. Rather:
Gannon was charged with resisting arrest, simple assault on a police officer and disorderly conduct.
In fact, there's absolutely nothing in these charges related to recording police, so this whole discussion is irrelevant to this event.
Considering how the suspect has a history provoking trouble and videotaping, I'd be as inclined to believe a charge that he was yelling something into the camcorder like "stop hitting me" prior to any physical contact, as I would to actual police misconduct. I'm not in any rush to judge without watching the video tape, reading an official police report, and hearing testimonies of the accused.
Of course, we don't care about evidence and truth here on the Internet, since it's easier to simply convict whichever party with which we don't sympathize in order to promote our own agenda. It's scary to think politicians might listen to idiots like the submitter and other commentators here when deciding to vote on nominees to the supreme court.
You are full of shit because you're not here talking about liberties being taken away by the government. You're here making hypocritical statements about what my opinions may or may not be, when what I said was very limited and very specific.
My single point was the "arguments" for this repeal bill are complete lies. Economic lies (not actually efficient, major job losses), liberty lies (illegal to purchase), and petty, petty, petty lies (CFLs are all ugly pig-tail things). There's no serious debate to be had here, because Barton is not interested in discussing science or aesthetics. He only wants a WIN.
This isn't a bill where libertarians are saying "we're making our stand here". It's just a gimmicky bunch of pandering to people who have been brainwashed into believing that "Obama is turning America into a socialist shari'a state and we need to TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!". That mentality is so obvious a fabrication when you just take a minute to count the number of times Obama has acted in a very moderate, if not conservative fashion: endless reaching out and negotiation, no public option, lots of compromises with Republicans on spending cuts with not a single tax break repealed and on and on and on.
The reason I said "anti-Democratic" is because the Republicans HAVE NO POLITICAL PLATFORM. No ideas. No proposals. Their voters love strong-looking "leaders" so to gain political support, they have to resort to bashing on Democrats, who can't fight back to save their lives. That you chose to read that as my taking that party's agenda as my own is projection on your own part, nothing more. You're here trying to pick a partisan fight. Not me. So why don't you grow up?
I don't accept the committee argument. Sounds too much like a "not my job" cop-out.
It's also not a necessity to be on the committee to hold sway over the negotiations. In fact, that's not the case here. The Tea Party is a major political block (as are the Blue Dogs and various other caucuses) which is forcing the hand of the Republican leadership to negotiate against raising the debt ceiling (or at least pretend to, as it seems may be happening) They're not in ways & means (other than Paul Ryan, and he's been in hiding for weeks), but they have enough voting power to block any partisan vote. Modern politics then dictates that the remaining Republicans cannot simply ignore them and vote in bipartisan fashion on what has never been a very controversial issue.
And here's how it should work: There are only 435 people in the country with that kind of access. 441 when you count the non-voting delegates (who actually contribute far to the legislative process than most of the voting members in the house). In theory, they're supposed to be smart and knowledgeable, granted, not all experts in specific fields like the committee members but bright enough to be of use funneling the best ideas the country has to offer to committee members who participate in negotiations as the final step in a much bigger process. Why the American public doesn't expect this of them continues to baffle me. Of course it's no wonder lobbyists are the ones at the table. We're not because we're too busy watching the Capitol Hill soap opera.
Exactly. I think that detail is a little too complex for most responders here, who couldn't figure out their position on a bill if they limited their input to reading commentary-free legislation.
The repeal bill is identical in nature to the nonsense Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Tea Party claimed was their #1 priority- repeal of PPACA. It wasn't a substantive promise- there was no way they could pass it in the Senate, let alone get both houses to override a presidential veto. Likewise this bill- it doesn't have significant support. As I said- it's simply political theater.
That'd be more convincing if you found an instance where I'm rooting for something equally stupid being pushed by a Democrat. Or if this wasn't in fact an idiotic repeal bill. Or if my post had any intention, not to mention capacity to whip anybody into anything.
Are you starting to get how obvious it is you're just a partisan who's full of shit?
Congress has to handle more than one issue at a time...If they were to drop everything and deal with only one important issue at a time, there would be stasis, and the nation would descend into Anarchy.
True. But under that statement the repeal of lightbulb efficiency law, nor most other legislation, qualify as "important", posing absolutely no risk of anarchy. So congress should not allocate equal time to nonsensical things like this at a time when there's a looming debt ceiling deadline (the "Rome burns" reference). Not that I expect a loon like Barton to contribute meaningfully to complex economic issues, but he could at least sit still in his high chair sucking his lolly while the adults in congress solved the pressing issue (yes, that "adult" was generous). Instead, our august leaders are reportedly wasting time by voting on this nonsense today.
This legislation has nothing to do with lightbulbs. It's all about political theatrics and whipping the dumbest of voters into an anti-Democratic frenzy.
Present the facts to me, then, you well-oiled propaganda machine.
Don't post AC, make a respectful request and I'll share some history. If you're going to be a dick who won't read it anyway, no- I've got better things to do.
Considering that they are going to pay 1/2 the yearly licensing fee, umm... yes, we will and it's true.
Umm... No. They'd be saving money compared to if they didn't get a subsidy and all other details were set in stone. You don't understand ROI if you forget that not-so-minor second part. And considering you're choosing between Microsoft and an in-place system, the savings have to be even more substantial since the cost to "transition" to IBM is $0.
Hopefully you weren't the PHB behind the deal or we're going to be seeing another story pretty soon.
I suppose we'll soon enough see an endless stream of magazine ads including a "testimonial", about how Nebraska U. "saved" hundreds of thousands of dollars by "choosing" Office over IBM's product.
What's with this liberty trip? You're not a slave. Nobody "owns" your liberty and can tell you what to do or not do here. You're free to create a social network if you want. You're even free to call it "Facebook". You have the "liberty to profit" and make a million dollars off of your copy of Facebook. Go right ahead if you feel the need to exercise your liberty. You can do whatever you want- the government can't arrest you and send you to jail for infringing on a patent. The government can't even bring a criminal case against you. But that's as far as liberty goes- protection from government action.
Liberty cannot protect you from a civil copyright, trademark or patent infringement lawsuit. Unless invalidated, patent holders have ownership over their invention because Congress has constitutional authority to grant such exclusive rights for a limited period. This means the patent holder will take that million dollars away from you in court because you violated their property rights.
When it comes to cars I couldn't agree more. Vehicles constitute a status symbol where spending too much money makes people feel better. Screw the cool factor - that's what makes people buy inefficient vehicles and drive in a wasteful fashion.
I used to be scared driving next to sports car-driving idiots who insist on getting to 80mph in moderate traffic while leaving only half a car length of room in front of them. Since I upgraded a car which shows my MPG, I watch their brake lights flicker constantly and I'm very aware of how much money I'm saving by not being as reckless.
Knowing not just your MPG, but having it translated directly into USD would make it so much more visceral.
Intentional or not, that was one hell of a strawman. I wasn't talking about the end-user writing the parser, and certainly not the least technical of end users. I only mentioned end-users in the response to your nonsensical definition of an "end-user system". My original response to you was "no, but her grand-kid could".
Other than this nonsense you've ignored all my points, which really sucks, especially on the ones which were answering your own question.
Please see the other fork of this thread for the long version.
As I've said there- this isn't a terribly difficult problem we're talking about solving. People are capable of much if they have a need and overcome their fear of the unknown. For car analogies, see "changing your oil" or "jump-starting your car" - it's only scary until you actually try it. I didn't mean to imply the average person could hack the Linux kernel with ease, just that the population as a whole can have sufficient access to minor custom programming. These days programming doesn't require a four-year degree, a high-end computer, or a Visual Studio license. You don't even have to buy a book anymore.
Take a worldwide random sample of a hundred kids in middle school. You'll be able to get this task done. That's all I'm suggesting.
Apologies for being hasty yet again. Please read "could program" as meaning "has the mental capacity to learn to" (or some variant including "not rocket science") rather than "has twenty years of experience doing so".
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that parsing HTML would have been any more complex (or simple) 40 years ago?
I wasn't, explicitly, but since you insist - yes, it's far easier now with languages like Perl and Python where text parsing is a key feature, as well as mashup tools which generate regular expressions with layman-friendly interfaces. The free availability of knowledge in pretty much every major language, via book, tutorials, screencasts, et cetera on the Internet makes such learning true even in the third world. (Please don't waste both our time arguing that HTML can be non-trivial to parse HTML, because we are talking about exported data, not a webpage generated in Frontpage and loaded with Javascript and CSS, I'd be happy to concede that irrelevant point.)
Any end-user system requiring the end-user to program an HTML parser, fails to be end-user.
Nonsense- it requires no such thing. We're talking about performing data migration, not standard operations of composing an email or uploading a photo. Take Outlook and PST files. Good luck getting an "end-user" to migrate that data to another mail application (and let's be real- even when moving it to another desktop running Outlook they'll call IT to copy and connect their PST). Doesn't stop Outlook from being considered end-user software.
I'll make a guess: 99% of the world's population does not know, and never will know, how to program a parser.
The number of programmers isn't the point, nor is knowing one personally. The key words were "wizardry" and "barrier". I answered a duplicate of your previous post here. Same answer- irrelevant if the value to you is high enough. If you don't care enough about moving your data around, your data has no considerable value and this line of argument is pointless since there's no reason to expect an "end-user system" to implement for you.
Lately? Security has never been a sufficiently significant concern to managers or even technical people. Do you think decades-old problems like SQL injections and buffer overflows are extinct? And this "security breach" was a matter of putting sensitive data in a publicly accessible directory.
I blame our short-term memory for this epidemic. The prevalence of short-term thinking (you want how many billion bloody dollars for this unproven business model???) likely deserves some "credit" too.
Slashdot Mirror
Pricing is dependent on usage and sure, in the short term, the cheap way to make a "smart" grid is to share information about expected load/price so consumers can try to time their appliance to plug into the grid at the optimal time, which then, in theory, could leads exactly to the problem you stated of everyone pluging in at the same time. But that would soon be evident, and people would understand that it's a gamble determining when you should plug in (since few people are actually watching real-time information, and at best are using the previous night or some kind of historical average). Lottery players might choose to chase the 2am "jackpot", but the rest of us would know that an hour earlier or later yields better odds.
But plugging in at 2am isn't feasible anyway, not in aggregate across the entire population - few people will set their alarm to 2am every night to save a nickel. The long-term answer to is to simply plug in your Chevy when you get home and let the grid itself determine the scheduling of appliances so that the load is evenly distributed proactively, efficiency is optimal and cost drops as low as possible throughout the night so it no longer makes a difference when your car gets charged (as long as it happens before you have to leave for work). That would actually be "smart". Unfortunately, it also requires that devices (or at least "smart" outlets) can communicate their needs (Wattage and no-later-than) and their designated timeslot with the grid and turn on&off appropriately, so that'll take some time and have to pass a cost/benefit test first.
Most games recently just kind of suck and rest upon the shoulders of innovative graphics. This does not make me hopeful for the future of gaming.
Generally speaking, I'm in agreement on the suck part, but hold on a second there with the conclusion. If this technology is real and games do see a massive jump forward in graphics, wouldn't that allow for an end to each successive title needing to simply out-polygon the competition? Isn't it equally likely this would force a paradigm shift, where if nothing else art- real art, would supplant technical graphics specs?
Did you get that nonsense off a stick of gum? I hear Ethiopia is lovely this time of year. You'll love it there- shutdowns are the status quo. France is a good alternative- segments of their economy come to a standstill on an almost predictable schedule.
If a shutdown serves a purpose, that's perfectly fine by me. An economy grinding to a halt, market instability, and people who can't feed their kids aren't my idea of a good time.
Certainly, as well as to go beyond literal translation and learn the implications of the content of the text (literal translation is great for performing statistical analysis but that won't help you discover much of anything). On the accuracy side that's why you would first establish a minimum threshold of reliability by having the work done by more than one amateur and requiring consensus. Same as with CAPTCHA and other crowdsourcing mechanisms.
"Just remember, this is the United States of America. We write 80 million checks a month. There are millions and millions of Americans that depend on those checks coming on time," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner
Well, THERE's your problem.
I have no idea what your point actually was, if you even had one, but assuming it was intended to be related to the post you responded to here goes...
80 million checks a month has little to do with the poor and suggesting otherwise reeks of ignorance and/or intentional deceit. That number includes active duty, reserves, VA, federal employees, student loans, as well tens of thousands of federal contractors and other service providers (doctors who are paid by medicare/medicaid) who otherwise would not have the ability to meet private payrolls.
Social security (which is a large part of the 80) isn't strictly related to poverty. I'm comfortably above the median household income and I qualify to get one of those checks when I retire. So I may be among the few who don't strictly "depend" on a check per the Geithner quote. Then, if the 80 million figure is based on a yearly average including tax refunds, those would account for over ten million checks a month (111M individual refunds a year, which is before counting businesses & non-profits), which again is not related to poverty. Again, many of these aren't included in the "depending on" category but many are, including small private businesses.
Rhetoric-debunking aside, shutting down government, which the Republicans nearly did on the budget, and are so casually playing around with again now is a serious short-term issue to millions of citizens even before the longer-term implications of default. If those millions properly attributed their hardship to the Tea Party and its blind faith in a ridiculous economic anti-theory and acted on it, election results would be obvious, as Lumpy pointed out.
As for your quip about people not liking Obama because of his speeches, the WaPo article doesn't state that. Rather, it's that people are eating up his opponents' rhetoric about a supposed lack of job increases and an "obsession with tax hikes" as well as the usual misattributed economic conditions (e.g. the $80 gasoline bit, which isn't under presidential control, yet they always get blamed for it). If anything reflects on the president himself it's his lack of ability to act (the expectation built during his campaign) which is distressing those who voted for him. There's no evidence that people are turned off by what he has to say- that's just you pushing the right-wing agenda in portraying Obama as the extreme leftist he most certainly is not.
The whole reason we overspend on contractors is so mistakes don't occur. When they do there's rarely a good excuse, so it's no longer a mistake- it's generally due to negligence or corruption. That doesn't fall under the category of "shit happens."
The quote you used was editorialization and supposition, not a known fact, claim, or report. There is no information on why the charge of falsifying was made. Here's the only mention of "falsifying" in the Telegraph article:
Reynolds was charged with falsifying physical evidence and resisting arrest, police said.
Note that "Reynolds" is the woman receiving, fleeing with, and hiding the camera, not the guy who allegedly made the recording. So the knee-jerk anti-authoritarian populist accusation is obviously wrong- he, by recording the police, wasn't charged with falsifying. Rather:
Gannon was charged with resisting arrest, simple assault on a police officer and disorderly conduct.
In fact, there's absolutely nothing in these charges related to recording police, so this whole discussion is irrelevant to this event.
Considering how the suspect has a history provoking trouble and videotaping, I'd be as inclined to believe a charge that he was yelling something into the camcorder like "stop hitting me" prior to any physical contact, as I would to actual police misconduct. I'm not in any rush to judge without watching the video tape, reading an official police report, and hearing testimonies of the accused.
Of course, we don't care about evidence and truth here on the Internet, since it's easier to simply convict whichever party with which we don't sympathize in order to promote our own agenda. It's scary to think politicians might listen to idiots like the submitter and other commentators here when deciding to vote on nominees to the supreme court.
You are full of shit because you're not here talking about liberties being taken away by the government. You're here making hypocritical statements about what my opinions may or may not be, when what I said was very limited and very specific.
My single point was the "arguments" for this repeal bill are complete lies. Economic lies (not actually efficient, major job losses), liberty lies (illegal to purchase), and petty, petty, petty lies (CFLs are all ugly pig-tail things). There's no serious debate to be had here, because Barton is not interested in discussing science or aesthetics. He only wants a WIN.
This isn't a bill where libertarians are saying "we're making our stand here". It's just a gimmicky bunch of pandering to people who have been brainwashed into believing that "Obama is turning America into a socialist shari'a state and we need to TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!". That mentality is so obvious a fabrication when you just take a minute to count the number of times Obama has acted in a very moderate, if not conservative fashion: endless reaching out and negotiation, no public option, lots of compromises with Republicans on spending cuts with not a single tax break repealed and on and on and on.
The reason I said "anti-Democratic" is because the Republicans HAVE NO POLITICAL PLATFORM. No ideas. No proposals. Their voters love strong-looking "leaders" so to gain political support, they have to resort to bashing on Democrats, who can't fight back to save their lives. That you chose to read that as my taking that party's agenda as my own is projection on your own part, nothing more. You're here trying to pick a partisan fight. Not me. So why don't you grow up?
I don't accept the committee argument. Sounds too much like a "not my job" cop-out.
It's also not a necessity to be on the committee to hold sway over the negotiations. In fact, that's not the case here. The Tea Party is a major political block (as are the Blue Dogs and various other caucuses) which is forcing the hand of the Republican leadership to negotiate against raising the debt ceiling (or at least pretend to, as it seems may be happening) They're not in ways & means (other than Paul Ryan, and he's been in hiding for weeks), but they have enough voting power to block any partisan vote. Modern politics then dictates that the remaining Republicans cannot simply ignore them and vote in bipartisan fashion on what has never been a very controversial issue.
And here's how it should work: There are only 435 people in the country with that kind of access. 441 when you count the non-voting delegates (who actually contribute far to the legislative process than most of the voting members in the house). In theory, they're supposed to be smart and knowledgeable, granted, not all experts in specific fields like the committee members but bright enough to be of use funneling the best ideas the country has to offer to committee members who participate in negotiations as the final step in a much bigger process. Why the American public doesn't expect this of them continues to baffle me. Of course it's no wonder lobbyists are the ones at the table. We're not because we're too busy watching the Capitol Hill soap opera.
Exactly. I think that detail is a little too complex for most responders here, who couldn't figure out their position on a bill if they limited their input to reading commentary-free legislation.
The repeal bill is identical in nature to the nonsense Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Tea Party claimed was their #1 priority- repeal of PPACA. It wasn't a substantive promise- there was no way they could pass it in the Senate, let alone get both houses to override a presidential veto. Likewise this bill- it doesn't have significant support. As I said- it's simply political theater.
That'd be more convincing if you found an instance where I'm rooting for something equally stupid being pushed by a Democrat. Or if this wasn't in fact an idiotic repeal bill. Or if my post had any intention, not to mention capacity to whip anybody into anything.
Are you starting to get how obvious it is you're just a partisan who's full of shit?
Congress has to handle more than one issue at a time...If they were to drop everything and deal with only one important issue at a time, there would be stasis, and the nation would descend into Anarchy.
True. But under that statement the repeal of lightbulb efficiency law, nor most other legislation, qualify as "important", posing absolutely no risk of anarchy. So congress should not allocate equal time to nonsensical things like this at a time when there's a looming debt ceiling deadline (the "Rome burns" reference). Not that I expect a loon like Barton to contribute meaningfully to complex economic issues, but he could at least sit still in his high chair sucking his lolly while the adults in congress solved the pressing issue (yes, that "adult" was generous). Instead, our august leaders are reportedly wasting time by voting on this nonsense today.
Being an idiot is a Texan's God-given right.
This legislation has nothing to do with lightbulbs. It's all about political theatrics and whipping the dumbest of voters into an anti-Democratic frenzy.
Present the facts to me, then, you well-oiled propaganda machine.
Don't post AC, make a respectful request and I'll share some history. If you're going to be a dick who won't read it anyway, no- I've got better things to do.
Considering that they are going to pay 1/2 the yearly licensing fee, umm... yes, we will and it's true.
Umm... No. They'd be saving money compared to if they didn't get a subsidy and all other details were set in stone. You don't understand ROI if you forget that not-so-minor second part. And considering you're choosing between Microsoft and an in-place system, the savings have to be even more substantial since the cost to "transition" to IBM is $0.
Hopefully you weren't the PHB behind the deal or we're going to be seeing another story pretty soon.
I suppose we'll soon enough see an endless stream of magazine ads including a "testimonial", about how Nebraska U. "saved" hundreds of thousands of dollars by "choosing" Office over IBM's product.
What's with this liberty trip? You're not a slave. Nobody "owns" your liberty and can tell you what to do or not do here. You're free to create a social network if you want. You're even free to call it "Facebook". You have the "liberty to profit" and make a million dollars off of your copy of Facebook. Go right ahead if you feel the need to exercise your liberty. You can do whatever you want- the government can't arrest you and send you to jail for infringing on a patent. The government can't even bring a criminal case against you. But that's as far as liberty goes- protection from government action.
Liberty cannot protect you from a civil copyright, trademark or patent infringement lawsuit. Unless invalidated, patent holders have ownership over their invention because Congress has constitutional authority to grant such exclusive rights for a limited period. This means the patent holder will take that million dollars away from you in court because you violated their property rights.
When it comes to cars I couldn't agree more. Vehicles constitute a status symbol where spending too much money makes people feel better. Screw the cool factor - that's what makes people buy inefficient vehicles and drive in a wasteful fashion.
I used to be scared driving next to sports car-driving idiots who insist on getting to 80mph in moderate traffic while leaving only half a car length of room in front of them. Since I upgraded a car which shows my MPG, I watch their brake lights flicker constantly and I'm very aware of how much money I'm saving by not being as reckless.
Knowing not just your MPG, but having it translated directly into USD would make it so much more visceral.
As even in average, society roughly 40% of people will steal if they feel they can get away with it
Come on, our society isn't 40% bankers.
40% includes politicians.
It'd be pretty unreasonable since I'm not taking on any more work right now, and you're not my grandmother. :)
Not exactly. Liberty is actually irrelevant here. "Right to capitalize" is the key phrase in my earlier post.
You have the liberty to create one. But if you try to profit from it in any way, you can be sued by the patent owner.
Intentional or not, that was one hell of a strawman. I wasn't talking about the end-user writing the parser, and certainly not the least technical of end users. I only mentioned end-users in the response to your nonsensical definition of an "end-user system". My original response to you was "no, but her grand-kid could".
Other than this nonsense you've ignored all my points, which really sucks, especially on the ones which were answering your own question.
Please see the other fork of this thread for the long version.
As I've said there- this isn't a terribly difficult problem we're talking about solving. People are capable of much if they have a need and overcome their fear of the unknown. For car analogies, see "changing your oil" or "jump-starting your car" - it's only scary until you actually try it. I didn't mean to imply the average person could hack the Linux kernel with ease, just that the population as a whole can have sufficient access to minor custom programming. These days programming doesn't require a four-year degree, a high-end computer, or a Visual Studio license. You don't even have to buy a book anymore.
Take a worldwide random sample of a hundred kids in middle school. You'll be able to get this task done. That's all I'm suggesting.
Apologies for being hasty yet again. Please read "could program" as meaning "has the mental capacity to learn to" (or some variant including "not rocket science") rather than "has twenty years of experience doing so".
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that parsing HTML would have been any more complex (or simple) 40 years ago?
I wasn't, explicitly, but since you insist - yes, it's far easier now with languages like Perl and Python where text parsing is a key feature, as well as mashup tools which generate regular expressions with layman-friendly interfaces. The free availability of knowledge in pretty much every major language, via book, tutorials, screencasts, et cetera on the Internet makes such learning true even in the third world. (Please don't waste both our time arguing that HTML can be non-trivial to parse HTML, because we are talking about exported data, not a webpage generated in Frontpage and loaded with Javascript and CSS, I'd be happy to concede that irrelevant point.)
Any end-user system requiring the end-user to program an HTML parser, fails to be end-user.
Nonsense- it requires no such thing. We're talking about performing data migration, not standard operations of composing an email or uploading a photo. Take Outlook and PST files. Good luck getting an "end-user" to migrate that data to another mail application (and let's be real- even when moving it to another desktop running Outlook they'll call IT to copy and connect their PST). Doesn't stop Outlook from being considered end-user software.
I'll make a guess: 99% of the world's population does not know, and never will know, how to program a parser.
The number of programmers isn't the point, nor is knowing one personally. The key words were "wizardry" and "barrier". I answered a duplicate of your previous post here. Same answer- irrelevant if the value to you is high enough. If you don't care enough about moving your data around, your data has no considerable value and this line of argument is pointless since there's no reason to expect an "end-user system" to implement for you.
Lately? Security has never been a sufficiently significant concern to managers or even technical people. Do you think decades-old problems like SQL injections and buffer overflows are extinct? And this "security breach" was a matter of putting sensitive data in a publicly accessible directory.
I blame our short-term memory for this epidemic. The prevalence of short-term thinking (you want how many billion bloody dollars for this unproven business model???) likely deserves some "credit" too.