I wonder if this may be somehow tied to an audit. I remember reading articles a couple year ago regarding Microsoft auditing companies and strong-arming them to buy more licenses to cover the accountability.
For 494,000 computers, I doubt the Army was able to keep track of every single on of its licenses. This may be a convenient way for both sides to look good. Army "consolidates" its IT purchasing, and MS gets a large government press release.
With as many people that tailgate and cut over directly in front of other cars (including just a few feet in front of one they just passed on an empty highway to then just step on the brakes), this should wreek havoc on cruise control systems and also wear through brake pads like sawdust.
At 60 mph, a one second distance gap is 88 feet. So 300 feet is roughly 3.4 seconds. Does anyone even stay that far behind the car in front of them anymore? I remember driver's ed/mva handbook recommending 3 seconds or so in distance, but my observations are that this is rarely more than 1 - 1.5 seconds.
Also, isn't it the last thing people need is a distraction in the event of an emergency. Granted it will take their concentration away from a cell phone or makeup application. How many times has a startled passenger's shrieking caused confusion just enough to distract the driver from the real danger?
What is to stop a consumer from purchasing a self-destructing DVD, then watching it, ripping it, whatever... Then, once it has self-destructed returning it to the retailer complaining that it was defective, wouldn't play on their system, and that they want a new copy or their money back?
Sounds like Netflix is doomed with this new Free Rental program.
I wonder if these people are just that ignorant or are they smarter than they look?
Some people have the practice of proposing several bad or absurd ideas that just don't work or make any sense even to the pointy-haired types. Then after all the naysaying and uproar, put forth their desired option as the now holy-grail solution that would never have been agreed to if proposed as the first solution.
So in the long run, Oregon may end up being able to raise gas tax by 5-cents instead of the originally budgeted 2-cents in addition to making it look like a measely tax raise is such a wonderful option by saving the people from such heinous alternatives. So after the sensationalist media (/. excluded, of course) gets through with this story, the governor will look like a saviour of the people, the state gets a larger tax increase then it asked for, ends up with the ability to say the people came up with the gas-tax idea, and oh, also everyone involved gets re-elected.
Of course, these types of plan is never foolproof, and could backfire horribly.
Nope to obvious and already done. But apparently you CAN patent "a method of simultaneously looking up information, transparent to the user", of course with the exclusion that this would not involve looking up information regarding multiple DNS records with proposed system since that is now patented. Of course you would have to somehow prove that news portals do not constitute prior art before you turn around and collect royalties on the same portals
Another dead idea before it hits market
on
High Density CDs
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Sanyo's technology shouldn't stand a chance in surviving, much like Iomega's 250MB disks/drives. I would bet that most people (excluding techno-elitist) who are still using Zip drives regardless of their drive capacity, use only 100MB disks, since sharing them utilizes the much wider installed base of 100MB drives. Since CDR and CDRW has replace much of Iomega's usefulness, 250MB drives are pretty useless, especially in a cost/size comparison.
Likewise, why would anyone bother to use a technology with a very limited install base to double the capacity of a CD when DVD's are getting cheaper, hold even more data, and the installed base is much more prevalent.
However, plextor's solution should be more ideal despite the smaller 'overburn' rate. Since people can use it right away on the existing install base without worrying too much about compatibility when they go to share their media.
I think a much better, and more truth revealing, study would be to find out the statistics on the spammer's own email habits.
Among others, some simple stats:
* How many email accounts do they own * How much spammer do they receive per day * How much of it do they actually bother to read and not just immediately delete * How often do they use bogus email address when filling out forms
But, more importantly:
* What have they done to opt-out of receiving mail from lists * What filters/blocks do they implement and why when it is such a good legitimate business * What are their opinions on spammers vs. telemarketers
"That's not an earthquake, we eliminated those years ago... That's a _pick_any_device_ recharging cycle."
And, as a bonus, if they could figure out how to bill people for these charging cycles they could have a new 'free' revenue source to help balance the state budget.
Actually, I am being rather clever. Way too often I find that most often the people making the law (and lets throw in patents too) go for things that sound good without fully considering the full ramifications. So maybe if the community were to present these hypothetical proposals that were in my original post to them, then maybe we would be able to show them the light.
According to my interpretation of Godwin's interpretation.
What the Acts Prohibit
1)... use of any "communication device"... without the express authorization of the service provider.
Wouldn't that mean that anytime I changed or upgraded my computer, hardware or software, then I would need to re-obtain express authorization from my ISP to use it to connect?
2) Concealing origin or destination of any communication from the communication servive provider.
This is way to vague. Using a NAT would be no more concealing then say SneakerNet or using a Scanner and forwarding the result. What if I wrote a document and work, copied it on a floppy and then sent it out at home? So any removable media is now against the law. Loosely interpretted, technically a NAT takes my uploaded file from my floppy (read PC) and then is the place of origin and destination.
My argument for using a NAT is that the place of origin was me, my account, my system. Whichever computer I used shouldn't be an issue as long as they can tell that it was my account.
Otherwise, taken a step further would mean I could share an account with anyone else in my household, as the place of origin could be my brain vs. my family member's brain, which obscures the true origin.
Well, its not exactly a computer company. But Rite-Aid's system is near ideal and technologically excellent.
They took the All-In-One rebate a step further and made the entire process online - no mailing involved on the customer side.
To redeem you create a login account at http://riteaid.rebateplus.com/. Then enter certain receipt numbers to their online system (Store #, Receipt ID, Date) and assuming they have gotten the data dump from the store register you can see instantly the details. No bar codes, no rebate forms, nothing, just a couple details off of the receipt. The only downsides is that it is "monthly" single check (to save them postage) and that they probably have data mining all over the place to build a customer information database.
The monthly single check means you need to wait until the last receipt for a particular month to redeem your rebate, unless of course you only purchase once a month. And you only have until one week after the month ends to request the check, so they still have people that forget to do this in time.
The say that you should receive your check within 2-3 weeks after submission. They do not have a way to track the status of your submission though.
There is also the option to mail in a form for those without an computer/internet connection.
This makes sense. The government has been trying to gain access to any and all information about citizens as part of anti-terrorism initiatives. As well as build national databases.
Who better to protect the administrations privacy (or lack thereof) initiatives than the expert at a company with similar privacy philosophies that has been at the forefront of these issues for so many years.
From the article "O'Connor Kelly is well acquainted with the often bitter debate over balancing privacy rights with other interests." (Emphasis added)
Forget wearable computing, the future is ingestable computing!
Better hurry up and sell off all your stock in wearable computing companies, and tell the military to cancel all their grants in this field. Who wants to wear a computer on their belt, or even in the fibers of there clothes.
Now you can have then inserted into your stomach cavity. Move over Atkins, this would also create the next new fad diet program by utilizing a completely renewable and biodegradable energy source.
Even better yet. Remove all the 0's from the bitstream, because hey, they actually represent the 'lack' of data. Going one step further, since it would leave only 1's you could then just count the number of 1's and send the count. This would 'compress' practically any file to just a couple of bytes.
Still working out the uncompression algorithm though...
My alma matter way back when went to implement disk quotas on a VAX which was used by the majority of the 2200 student college, as it also happened the mail accounts. Initially, overnight without warning they set one limit for all accounts, mainly because the average student never purged and compressed their mail file. 2 days later they temporarily suspended the quotas, since the entire computer department could not log in since they couldn't even create temporarily session files to log in with. Nobody could do their programming assignments etc.
Finally after several weeks of thrashing around between staff and very angered students they re-implemented quotas but they varied depending on how many comp. classes you had and the requirements for that particular class. Which was a little better and met the needs of 95% of the students. However, it still stifled the student who liked to tinker and program on his own, especially if he had no computer courses that semester. This led to MUCH sharing of accounts via shared passwords.
Of course in the meantime while quotas were suspended, one of the students ran a program to suck whatever spare bytes he could (from people compressing and deleting) as fast as he could. The box sat at about 0% free space for a week before they finally caught on to him and suspended his computer privileges entirely.
Anyways, the point being that one limit for everyone never works. Ask a Cable ISP. If they set the level right it might be above what 95% of the population really needs, but what about the truly computer savy student who is downloading linux ISOs or various other software that is a more valuable hands-on experience than any class could teach him?
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if this may be somehow tied to an audit. I remember reading articles a couple year ago regarding Microsoft auditing companies and strong-arming them to buy more licenses to cover the accountability.
For 494,000 computers, I doubt the Army was able to keep track of every single on of its licenses. This may be a convenient way for both sides to look good. Army "consolidates" its IT purchasing, and MS gets a large government press release.
With as many people that tailgate and cut over directly in front of other cars (including just a few feet in front of one they just passed on an empty highway to then just step on the brakes), this should wreek havoc on cruise control systems and also wear through brake pads like sawdust.
At 60 mph, a one second distance gap is 88 feet. So 300 feet is roughly 3.4 seconds. Does anyone even stay that far behind the car in front of them anymore? I remember driver's ed/mva handbook recommending 3 seconds or so in distance, but my observations are that this is rarely more than 1 - 1.5 seconds.
Also, isn't it the last thing people need is a distraction in the event of an emergency. Granted it will take their concentration away from a cell phone or makeup application. How many times has a startled passenger's shrieking caused confusion just enough to distract the driver from the real danger?
Yeah, but better start watching out for that year 2100 bug which is just around the corner.
Here's a thought.
What is to stop a consumer from purchasing a self-destructing DVD, then watching it, ripping it, whatever... Then, once it has self-destructed returning it to the retailer complaining that it was defective, wouldn't play on their system, and that they want a new copy or their money back?
Sounds like Netflix is doomed with this new Free Rental program.
I wonder if these people are just that ignorant or are they smarter than they look?
Some people have the practice of proposing several bad or absurd ideas that just don't work or make any sense even to the pointy-haired types. Then after all the naysaying and uproar, put forth their desired option as the now holy-grail solution that would never have been agreed to if proposed as the first solution.
So in the long run, Oregon may end up being able to raise gas tax by 5-cents instead of the originally budgeted 2-cents in addition to making it look like a measely tax raise is such a wonderful option by saving the people from such heinous alternatives. So after the sensationalist media (/. excluded, of course) gets through with this story, the governor will look like a saviour of the people, the state gets a larger tax increase then it asked for, ends up with the ability to say the people came up with the gas-tax idea, and oh, also everyone involved gets re-elected.
Of course, these types of plan is never foolproof, and could backfire horribly.
Nope to obvious and already done. But apparently you CAN patent "a method of simultaneously looking up information, transparent to the user", of course with the exclusion that this would not involve looking up information regarding multiple DNS records with proposed system since that is now patented. Of course you would have to somehow prove that news portals do not constitute prior art before you turn around and collect royalties on the same portals
Sanyo's technology shouldn't stand a chance in surviving, much like Iomega's 250MB disks/drives. I would bet that most people (excluding techno-elitist) who are still using Zip drives regardless of their drive capacity, use only 100MB disks, since sharing them utilizes the much wider installed base of 100MB drives. Since CDR and CDRW has replace much of Iomega's usefulness, 250MB drives are pretty useless, especially in a cost/size comparison.
Likewise, why would anyone bother to use a technology with a very limited install base to double the capacity of a CD when DVD's are getting cheaper, hold even more data, and the installed base is much more prevalent.
However, plextor's solution should be more ideal despite the smaller 'overburn' rate. Since people can use it right away on the existing install base without worrying too much about compatibility when they go to share their media.
I think a much better, and more truth revealing, study would be to find out the statistics on the spammer's own email habits.
Among others, some simple stats:
* How many email accounts do they own
* How much spammer do they receive per day
* How much of it do they actually bother to read and not just immediately delete
* How often do they use bogus email address when filling out forms
But, more importantly:
* What have they done to opt-out of receiving mail from lists
* What filters/blocks do they implement and why when it is such a good legitimate business
* What are their opinions on spammers vs. telemarketers
"That's not an earthquake, we eliminated those years ago... That's a _pick_any_device_ recharging cycle."
And, as a bonus, if they could figure out how to bill people for these charging cycles they could have a new 'free' revenue source to help balance the state budget.
Actually, I am being rather clever. Way too often I find that most often the people making the law (and lets throw in patents too) go for things that sound good without fully considering the full ramifications. So maybe if the community were to present these hypothetical proposals that were in my original post to them, then maybe we would be able to show them the light.
According to my interpretation of Godwin's interpretation.
... use of any "communication device" ... without the express authorization of the service provider.
What the Acts Prohibit
1)
Wouldn't that mean that anytime I changed or upgraded my computer, hardware or software, then I would need to re-obtain express authorization from my ISP to use it to connect?
2) Concealing origin or destination of any communication from the communication servive provider.
This is way to vague. Using a NAT would be no more concealing then say SneakerNet or using a Scanner and forwarding the result. What if I wrote a document and work, copied it on a floppy and then sent it out at home? So any removable media is now against the law. Loosely interpretted, technically a NAT takes my uploaded file from my floppy (read PC) and then is the place of origin and destination.
My argument for using a NAT is that the place of origin was me, my account, my system. Whichever computer I used shouldn't be an issue as long as they can tell that it was my account.
Otherwise, taken a step further would mean I could share an account with anyone else in my household, as the place of origin could be my brain vs. my family member's brain, which obscures the true origin.
Well, its not exactly a computer company. But Rite-Aid's system is near ideal and technologically excellent.
They took the All-In-One rebate a step further and made the entire process online - no mailing involved on the customer side.
To redeem you create a login account at http://riteaid.rebateplus.com/. Then enter certain receipt numbers to their online system (Store #, Receipt ID, Date) and assuming they have gotten the data dump from the store register you can see instantly the details. No bar codes, no rebate forms, nothing, just a couple details off of the receipt. The only downsides is that it is "monthly" single check (to save them postage) and that they probably have data mining all over the place to build a customer information database.
The monthly single check means you need to wait until the last receipt for a particular month to redeem your rebate, unless of course you only purchase once a month. And you only have until one week after the month ends to request the check, so they still have people that forget to do this in time.
The say that you should receive your check within 2-3 weeks after submission. They do not have a way to track the status of your submission though.
There is also the option to mail in a form for those without an computer/internet connection.
This makes sense. The government has been trying to gain access to any and all information about citizens as part of anti-terrorism initiatives. As well as build national databases.
Who better to protect the administrations privacy (or lack thereof) initiatives than the expert at a company with similar privacy philosophies that has been at the forefront of these issues for so many years.
From the article "O'Connor Kelly is well acquainted with the often bitter debate over balancing privacy rights with other interests." (Emphasis added)
Forget wearable computing, the future is ingestable computing!
Better hurry up and sell off all your stock in wearable computing companies, and tell the military to cancel all their grants in this field. Who wants to wear a computer on their belt, or even in the fibers of there clothes.
Now you can have then inserted into your stomach cavity. Move over Atkins, this would also create the next new fad diet program by utilizing a completely renewable and biodegradable energy source.
Even better yet. Remove all the 0's from the bitstream, because hey, they actually represent the 'lack' of data. Going one step further, since it would leave only 1's you could then just count the number of 1's and send the count. This would 'compress' practically any file to just a couple of bytes.
Still working out the uncompression algorithm though...
My alma matter way back when went to implement disk quotas on a VAX which was used by the majority of the 2200 student college, as it also happened the mail accounts. Initially, overnight without warning they set one limit for all accounts, mainly because the average student never purged and compressed their mail file. 2 days later they temporarily suspended the quotas, since the entire computer department could not log in since they couldn't even create temporarily session files to log in with. Nobody could do their programming assignments etc.
Finally after several weeks of thrashing around between staff and very angered students they re-implemented quotas but they varied depending on how many comp. classes you had and the requirements for that particular class. Which was a little better and met the needs of 95% of the students. However, it still stifled the student who liked to tinker and program on his own, especially if he had no computer courses that semester. This led to MUCH sharing of accounts via shared passwords.
Of course in the meantime while quotas were suspended, one of the students ran a program to suck whatever spare bytes he could (from people compressing and deleting) as fast as he could. The box sat at about 0% free space for a week before they finally caught on to him and suspended his computer privileges entirely.
Anyways, the point being that one limit for everyone never works. Ask a Cable ISP. If they set the level right it might be above what 95% of the population really needs, but what about the truly computer savy student who is downloading linux ISOs or various other software that is a more valuable hands-on experience than any class could teach him?