I can't help it, Oh Noes it's a telephone book, run away, run away. Show juts one add and it is commercial and you are responsible for that add, you showed it, you profited by it and you are not entitled to hide from the consequences of it and, that includes emails from that domain that contain an add in any way shape or form. You want net privacy, easy, don't get a domain name.
It is much more accurate to say the US acknowledged that it had no real control at all. The domain name system is nothing more than database entries matching a name to an IP address and as such it is very easy to break up. So either control was surrendered or taken, it was simply more convenient to pretend to surrender control. Otherwise if the international domain name system was broken up with each country maintaining it's own semi-mirrored version, you can bet all those.gov and.mil would all end up pointing locally and put an end to the delusion of the US government and military being the worlds government and military.
Personally I still prefer the idea that each country establish it's own domain registry and mirror or substitute as they deem appropriate and the end users or the typically the ISPs can point browsers at whatever domain registry their prefer much like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root.
Likely it is the better alternative as well. I can't help that feel that the only reason it is being given away free is wasn't selling all that well and as for all security software it installs itself as a boot level driver. Hmm, methinks this software is more about catching out pirates (ballmer's always had paranoid delusions about the billions of dollars that pirates are stealing from him) than securing M$'s errant operating system. Likely the software will continually seek to auto 'validate' the software at each security update and kick multiple licence number copies as they occur into the future.
As an infrastructure investment on of the big advantages of electric vehicles is cleaner smog free cities, this will substantially improve values in the city centre as well as inner suburbs, in affect generating trillions of dollars of growth upon a global basis. Really odd when you think about, electric cars producing cleaner cities, which means people won't be driven to the outer suburbs by pollution and will use those electric cars even less.
The consortium in making the announcement will also likely be looking for additional research support and funding. Interesting in terms of business on the amoral side will be the petroleum companies and service stations who will see this technology as a considerable threat to their profits (the health of their own families be damned) and on the other side will be construction developers who will see this as a major growth opportunity in urban residential development.
For the typical end user, there will be the investment in an overnight induction coil automatic charging station in their garage, otherwise they will always end up forgetting to "charge the car", the soon to be number one most popular excuse for being late into work;).
In some countries there are major restrictions on billboards and roadside signage, including limits on size and, animation. Obviously billboards are designed to attract the drivers attention which of course distracts the drivers attention away from the road and traffic conditions.
Every game gets boring for the mentally agile. The big point is paying $837.20 times two (let's not cheat on household cost) plus $129.98 to buy the game (and before some Blizzard troll goes nuts, if you buy separate games in a household, everyone in the household who wants to play them can and including different games being played at the same time), so $1804.38. So divide that by say $45, and paying for one game has sucked up the same amount of money as buying and playing 40 other games.
It is as lot more fun learning a new game, the mindlessly repeating the same thing over and over again for years, I really don't know how people can do it. For me no contest, I would far rather have 40 different games, in many different genres, with many different game play experiences and of course no compulsion to play because otherwise I am throwing away the subscription money.
The easiest solution is to shift functions from the smart phone to a smartbook. So a smartbook with a quick easy docking station for you smartphone, including charging of course. So smartphone a little less smart and a little more restricted in it's function to keep the size down, the price down and the battery life up.
Carry the smartphone in your pocket and the smartbook in the car/bag/briefcase ie it is close by but not necessarily carried on your person.
Easiest solution to your problem, parallel networks. An internal secure network, accounting, payroll, banking, data management, cad, cam, publishing etc. and an external network email and internet access. Lock down the internal network, tight, no internet access, no portable media, data is either input at the keyboard or uploaded at the IT office after it is reviewed and scanned.
External network, let the children play and create a USB reboot and rebuild stick for each notebook. You will be a whole lot less frustrated and the children will be happy as they get to play without controls and, by children I do mean the executive pool. Keep it simple internal wired and external wireless, in office try to use infra-red for wireless, it is more restricted and safer.
This way only one machine at a time gets infected on the external network and the infection is always from the net rather than internal. Internal a desktop/terminal, external cheap netbooks/smartbook basically a throw away and in affect an extension of a mobile phone.
Best thing about this, passwords not a problem, unless they break into the specific office to gain access to the specific files than they are out of luck and the server room itself can be fully secured and alarmed, basically a vault.
Service and support are not paying for software. The catch is how to do service and support on a global scale versus the simpler selling software on a global market. Whilst companies like IBM are successfully in selling service and support globally, they can only do larger scale jobs and are uncompetitive on the small and medium scale. So likely the first really successful Linux service and support for mid and small installations will be a global cooperative franchise based around a particular distribution (the franchisees also own equal parts of the parent company), this allows much greater flexibility and management involvement in servicing local markets.
Re:What's the Difference Between a Computer Salesm
on
Bad PC Sales Staff Exposed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A used car salesman knew about cars, knew what to hide and what to talk about. The way it works for computer retail sales is quite simple, you see, there are quite a few people who are very knowledgeable about and understand computers, they of course need to be paid quite well and in fact they need to be paid even more to have to work in ugh 'retail sales' as for that group it is a very unpopular segment of the employment market. On the other hand you have a whole group of people that work the counter at junk food outlets, they are very cheap, minimum wage in fact, they will say exactly what they are told to say and sell exactly what they are told to sell, they neither know or understand computers but they are cheap and thus more 'profitable', so smile, be polite, say what you are told to say, make everything else up and try to survive for as long as you can before ending about back behind some fast food sales counter.
Quite some number of years back most computer retail outlets simply sacked their expensive staff and hired new staff for about a third of the prior wage about the same time as computers shifted from technical market to consumer market.
Hackable or unhackable might end up being the least of their concerns. Did they stop to think about the kind of radiation exposure of filling a classroom with wireless notebooks. The NSW Department of Education has launched into a brave new world of medical experimentation, in four years time we all will be able to tell if exposing children to the concentrated sustained levels of wireless radiation, from say 30 netbooks per class say 1.5m apart, times that by the number of classrooms, for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 40 odd weeks per year, now add mobile phones to that and they are turning every high school into extreme radiation hot spots.
I really, really, don't think those idiots stopped to think about the kind of risk they are taking with future generations, you can imagine the kind of satire that will arise from that, the glow in the dark cancer time bomb generation. I would have to say that there is no way I would have taken that medical risk with children, infra red networks inside the classroom with detectors in the four corners of the class room and disabling ionising wireless radiation would have made a hell of a lot more sense in terms of safety.
In would be interesting to do the numbers for the level of radio wave radiation exposure to be created within each school and to monitor that statistical data over the long term especially picking up peak loads and points of extreme concentration, just so we will have real numbers to go with 'tumour time teens and teachers';). Man, what were they thinking, you just know certain fringe parental groups are going to pick up on this and go nuts, hmm, wireless safe faraday classes for the non-consenting and, I really would pause at those sustained, concentrated levels, I don't think anybody anywhere really ever considered this level radiation exposure.
As a person who suffers from tinnitus let me assure you I would quite happily snap your neck if you used a device on me that caused that kind of damage. Hearing damage can not only result in hearing loss but also on the permanent extraordinarily irritating world of never off irritating whistles and screeches. Those idiots better wake up to themselves before they get hit with multi million dollar law suits from innocent bystanders http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/noise.htm.
Lets provide the answers for the most disingenuous of fools.
1) Cheap hi-def video phone calls (typical family times that by four). 2) Typical wedding, christening, birthday, anniversary videos, distributed to all guests. 3) Hi-def web cam feeds from all over the world, the scenery channel like it's never before been seen. 4) Web parties, vid cam links ups with big screen displays. 5) A whole world full of legally free creative commons work, remember it never stops going back and forth because it keeps getting added to, complete with, shock horror, free publishing and, oh my god, an absence of commercials (yes, I know it is the ultimately threat to locked up world of dead end media). 6) Live streams from every political chamber from all over the world, complete with speech feeds from every standing and potential politician, the end of corporate for profit and corruption, broadcasting of political commercials, a new era in politics.
Now I know that someone like you might find that last one the most threatening of them all but you have no idea of my level of contempt for your ignorance. Just think sex, drugs and rock and, roll and it's greedy drunken drugged minstrels and publishers will completely and utterly lose their ability to influence politics via political donations.
Consider this a more of a tax on bad ingredients in what used to be quite not so bad products, until corporate greed drove arse holes to remove expensive reasonably healthy ingredients and replace them with addictive junk chemical substitutes, double bonus not only cheaper but you will be forced to feed your addiction. Don't think it's addictive, you honestly don't think it's addictive, just read some of the comments and if those are not the comments of drug addicts, then it didn't take me four goes to give up smoking and give me the opportunity to learn how to recognise the behavioural patterns of addicts on a first hand basis.
The flip side of this, I had tasted sodas made from all natural ingredients, you the actually really truly 'traditional' not the PR=B$ traditional and the original type sodas taste a whole lot better of course they are also more expensive and for some reason are more satisfying and you feel less of a need to drink any where near of as much of it as the cheap junk fakes.
What a new law, a good law, than make it compulsory for corporate executives and their families to live on nothing but the junk food they create and, perhaps then we might see the 'real' not the marketing quality of the products improve, either that or all the crap executives will bloat up and die off, either way a real win;).
Fake polls also = higher profit, it is far cheaper just to make up the results, than actually conduct the polling. Put you polls out to the lowest bidder and don't be surprised when the answers you get are just the answers the pollsters figures out you want to hear (it'll keep you coming back to them), rather than having anything to do with what people are actually thinking. Think about it, hire all the people to ask the questions of 10,000 citizens of the appropriate demographic spread, of maybe just hire enough to ask say 1,000, do it quite publicly and just multiply the results by 10 with a quick fudge to ensure it still falls within your clients expectations, all for say 80 percent of the price of your nearest competitor.
So as a polling firm are you better off spending money on PR=B$ marketing to convince the public of the sagacity of your polls or to spend that money on accurately carrying out those polls, which is going to be the more profitable especially in the short term. Lie, cheat and steal it is the corporate ethos and bugger the customer, the staff and of course company shareholders.
It's called profit, once you achieve sufficient market dominance than corporate ideology demands that you monetise that market dominance ie. put up prices, reduce development (reduce costs), reduce customer support (test to see how far you can squeeze), leverage that dominance into other markets whether other products or marketing and basically do everything you can to increase profits in the short term, the long term is somebody else's problem.
So typical of M$'s failures in highly competitive markets, Ballmer is carrying on with the typical CEO song and dance to trying to convince that the all new product (basically the same old same old with a new cloak and maybe throw in a new name) will capture the majority of the market, it keeps the share price afloat and his job intact. Pretty much identical to the way M$ markets to the consumer, it new all singing all dancing products against versus it's previous crappy it's not worth supporting products.
The OLPC project is proving to be a very successful project but not necessarily in the way envisaged. It launched the netbook concept which in turn is evolving into smartbooks. Those smartbooks running FOSS of which the help of competitive pressure will drive lower prices and basically point them within reach of school children the world over, not just third world countries but first and second world as well.
Why, FOSS, because you are training a future work force and that work force should absolutely be trained on software that doesn't increase their foreign debt. It would be bloody stupid, to stick countries that can't afford it with billions of dollars per year in licence fees for closed source proprietary applications, operating systems and servers, I know corporate greed has absolutely no moral bounds but they doesn't stop us a individuals from imposing those moral bounds on those corporations.
Now coming from a first world country I would be just as critical of my government should they choose a solution that drives foreign debt, there is absolutely no point in establishing a digital education system that inevitably leads to tens of billions of dollars of foreign debt, you are not solving anything you are creating another problem. Ideology, 'NO', pure and simple economics, adopt FOSS in school, train a workforce in FOSS and, not only have you escaped all those pointless licence fees for fiften years but, you create a commercial environment that won't create a drag on the digital GDP you don't force retraining in order to save money and you guarantee free and open access to the stored data over the long term. I won't even touch being held to digital hostage by a single foreign corporation and any profit based decisions they choose to make regardless to the impact upon the consumer or those countries bound to their software.
Hmm, prove conspiracy, two convicted drugs dealers and reduced sentences, no problem at all and, don't say it doesn't happen. If you really wanted to ship a lot of data across the border in hard format just tape those chips to a cheap remote control model aircraft and fly them across, for fun do it near a border crossing;).
As the size of storage media rises this becomes more and more privacy invasive, people will carry their whole private life with them and without a warrant and limits placed on what data can be viewed or kept this is just an Orwellian invasion of the digital self.
That really brings to mind the idea of data poisoning meets data mining, digitally creating the illusion of terror cells. Even if you did it by more primitive methods, say several people get together to create the illusion of a terror cell, by sending each other 'private' but, suggestive of terrorist acts communications (of course while fully documenting their non-terrorist intent), have they committed a crime when they are raided by government agencies or have the government agencies committed a crime of false prosecution and arrest and there was no intent.
One could imagine the new 'er' non-terrorist tactic, of creating those situations where those are already targeted as a result of racial profiling get various government agencies wasting millions of dollars running around investigating people who in turn mock them ad follow up with enormous civil suit when those agencies get wildly carried away with their wedding cake hunts (if there ain't no bomb, then you have zero evidence, as the rest of it means squat without the bomb or 'all' of it's components).
The dust/topsoil has nothing to do with global warming, it is all about farmers ploughing up their fields without keeping a close eye on weather forecasts (can be tricky), or failing to shift to more modern farming techniques http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming. Sticking them with a fine, especially the large globally owned corporate farms might put an end to these man made storms.
Oddly enough when it comes to green house impact these topsoil storms reduce global warming as they add necessary trace elements to the oceans which promote carbon consuming algae etc. but not really the best way to go about it.
No CSIRO is the department that was created to ensure stupid mistakes did no occur like that ever again. The were the response, to knee jerk quick fix capitalism. The Australian Bureau of Sugar Experimental Stations were the people who failed to undertake a proper scientific study, of course 1935 was a long time ago, so you can't be that harsh on them either. Really rather juvenile to try and blame the CSIRO scientists 0f 2009 for what happened over 70 years ago.
They used to do far more but the Australian Neocons keep stripping it down each time they come into power, why, most heinous crime of all, they kept giving away the publicly funded technologies to the Australian public that funded it, instead of selling it for cents on the dollar to corrupt corporations who could then screw over the people that funded it with 1000 percent profit margins for decades.
Under similar circumstances in Australia the CSIRO http://www.csiro.au/science/PestManagement.html , would investigate the weed species, find it's country of origin, find insects, bacteria or fungi that feed on it and then bring back samples under controlled conditions. These species would then be tested against Australian native plants and commercial species and those imported species that do not predate upon those would then be tested for survivability in the regions most affected by the weed species. Once the optimum control species are found they are released into the environment to control the weed species.
Although this is by far the most cost effective method of control it often not very popular in capitalism first, last and everything in between countries as there is no opportunity for profit in the solution as it must be given away free, to spread on it's own. In the case of the US the USDA http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/ is the likely agency that should be working on those problems on a federal basis. So rather than throwing away money on spraying and, spraying and, spraying, better to pursue the USDA and get them working on long term biological solutions, where it is all about saving money while saving the environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Australia is an island, no neighbours ;).
Yeah, Australia it's just a warmer Canada, without the cranky neighbour ;D.
I can't help it, Oh Noes it's a telephone book, run away, run away. Show juts one add and it is commercial and you are responsible for that add, you showed it, you profited by it and you are not entitled to hide from the consequences of it and, that includes emails from that domain that contain an add in any way shape or form. You want net privacy, easy, don't get a domain name.
It is much more accurate to say the US acknowledged that it had no real control at all. The domain name system is nothing more than database entries matching a name to an IP address and as such it is very easy to break up. So either control was surrendered or taken, it was simply more convenient to pretend to surrender control. Otherwise if the international domain name system was broken up with each country maintaining it's own semi-mirrored version, you can bet all those .gov and .mil would all end up pointing locally and put an end to the delusion of the US government and military being the worlds government and military.
Personally I still prefer the idea that each country establish it's own domain registry and mirror or substitute as they deem appropriate and the end users or the typically the ISPs can point browsers at whatever domain registry their prefer much like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root.
Likely it is the better alternative as well. I can't help that feel that the only reason it is being given away free is wasn't selling all that well and as for all security software it installs itself as a boot level driver. Hmm, methinks this software is more about catching out pirates (ballmer's always had paranoid delusions about the billions of dollars that pirates are stealing from him) than securing M$'s errant operating system. Likely the software will continually seek to auto 'validate' the software at each security update and kick multiple licence number copies as they occur into the future.
As an infrastructure investment on of the big advantages of electric vehicles is cleaner smog free cities, this will substantially improve values in the city centre as well as inner suburbs, in affect generating trillions of dollars of growth upon a global basis. Really odd when you think about, electric cars producing cleaner cities, which means people won't be driven to the outer suburbs by pollution and will use those electric cars even less.
The consortium in making the announcement will also likely be looking for additional research support and funding. Interesting in terms of business on the amoral side will be the petroleum companies and service stations who will see this technology as a considerable threat to their profits (the health of their own families be damned) and on the other side will be construction developers who will see this as a major growth opportunity in urban residential development.
For the typical end user, there will be the investment in an overnight induction coil automatic charging station in their garage, otherwise they will always end up forgetting to "charge the car", the soon to be number one most popular excuse for being late into work ;).
In some countries there are major restrictions on billboards and roadside signage, including limits on size and, animation. Obviously billboards are designed to attract the drivers attention which of course distracts the drivers attention away from the road and traffic conditions.
Every game gets boring for the mentally agile. The big point is paying $837.20 times two (let's not cheat on household cost) plus $129.98 to buy the game (and before some Blizzard troll goes nuts, if you buy separate games in a household, everyone in the household who wants to play them can and including different games being played at the same time), so $1804.38. So divide that by say $45, and paying for one game has sucked up the same amount of money as buying and playing 40 other games.
It is as lot more fun learning a new game, the mindlessly repeating the same thing over and over again for years, I really don't know how people can do it. For me no contest, I would far rather have 40 different games, in many different genres, with many different game play experiences and of course no compulsion to play because otherwise I am throwing away the subscription money.
The easiest solution is to shift functions from the smart phone to a smartbook. So a smartbook with a quick easy docking station for you smartphone, including charging of course. So smartphone a little less smart and a little more restricted in it's function to keep the size down, the price down and the battery life up.
Carry the smartphone in your pocket and the smartbook in the car/bag/briefcase ie it is close by but not necessarily carried on your person.
Easiest solution to your problem, parallel networks. An internal secure network, accounting, payroll, banking, data management, cad, cam, publishing etc. and an external network email and internet access. Lock down the internal network, tight, no internet access, no portable media, data is either input at the keyboard or uploaded at the IT office after it is reviewed and scanned.
External network, let the children play and create a USB reboot and rebuild stick for each notebook. You will be a whole lot less frustrated and the children will be happy as they get to play without controls and, by children I do mean the executive pool. Keep it simple internal wired and external wireless, in office try to use infra-red for wireless, it is more restricted and safer.
This way only one machine at a time gets infected on the external network and the infection is always from the net rather than internal. Internal a desktop/terminal, external cheap netbooks/smartbook basically a throw away and in affect an extension of a mobile phone.
Best thing about this, passwords not a problem, unless they break into the specific office to gain access to the specific files than they are out of luck and the server room itself can be fully secured and alarmed, basically a vault.
Service and support are not paying for software. The catch is how to do service and support on a global scale versus the simpler selling software on a global market. Whilst companies like IBM are successfully in selling service and support globally, they can only do larger scale jobs and are uncompetitive on the small and medium scale. So likely the first really successful Linux service and support for mid and small installations will be a global cooperative franchise based around a particular distribution (the franchisees also own equal parts of the parent company), this allows much greater flexibility and management involvement in servicing local markets.
A used car salesman knew about cars, knew what to hide and what to talk about. The way it works for computer retail sales is quite simple, you see, there are quite a few people who are very knowledgeable about and understand computers, they of course need to be paid quite well and in fact they need to be paid even more to have to work in ugh 'retail sales' as for that group it is a very unpopular segment of the employment market. On the other hand you have a whole group of people that work the counter at junk food outlets, they are very cheap, minimum wage in fact, they will say exactly what they are told to say and sell exactly what they are told to sell, they neither know or understand computers but they are cheap and thus more 'profitable', so smile, be polite, say what you are told to say, make everything else up and try to survive for as long as you can before ending about back behind some fast food sales counter.
Quite some number of years back most computer retail outlets simply sacked their expensive staff and hired new staff for about a third of the prior wage about the same time as computers shifted from technical market to consumer market.
Hackable or unhackable might end up being the least of their concerns. Did they stop to think about the kind of radiation exposure of filling a classroom with wireless notebooks. The NSW Department of Education has launched into a brave new world of medical experimentation, in four years time we all will be able to tell if exposing children to the concentrated sustained levels of wireless radiation, from say 30 netbooks per class say 1.5m apart, times that by the number of classrooms, for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 40 odd weeks per year, now add mobile phones to that and they are turning every high school into extreme radiation hot spots.
I really, really, don't think those idiots stopped to think about the kind of risk they are taking with future generations, you can imagine the kind of satire that will arise from that, the glow in the dark cancer time bomb generation. I would have to say that there is no way I would have taken that medical risk with children, infra red networks inside the classroom with detectors in the four corners of the class room and disabling ionising wireless radiation would have made a hell of a lot more sense in terms of safety.
In would be interesting to do the numbers for the level of radio wave radiation exposure to be created within each school and to monitor that statistical data over the long term especially picking up peak loads and points of extreme concentration, just so we will have real numbers to go with 'tumour time teens and teachers' ;). Man, what were they thinking, you just know certain fringe parental groups are going to pick up on this and go nuts, hmm, wireless safe faraday classes for the non-consenting and, I really would pause at those sustained, concentrated levels, I don't think anybody anywhere really ever considered this level radiation exposure.
As a person who suffers from tinnitus let me assure you I would quite happily snap your neck if you used a device on me that caused that kind of damage. Hearing damage can not only result in hearing loss but also on the permanent extraordinarily irritating world of never off irritating whistles and screeches. Those idiots better wake up to themselves before they get hit with multi million dollar law suits from innocent bystanders http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/noise.htm.
Lets provide the answers for the most disingenuous of fools.
1) Cheap hi-def video phone calls (typical family times that by four).
2) Typical wedding, christening, birthday, anniversary videos, distributed to all guests.
3) Hi-def web cam feeds from all over the world, the scenery channel like it's never before been seen.
4) Web parties, vid cam links ups with big screen displays.
5) A whole world full of legally free creative commons work, remember it never stops going back and forth because it keeps getting added to, complete with, shock horror, free publishing and, oh my god, an absence of commercials (yes, I know it is the ultimately threat to locked up world of dead end media).
6) Live streams from every political chamber from all over the world, complete with speech feeds from every standing and potential politician, the end of corporate for profit and corruption, broadcasting of political commercials, a new era in politics.
Now I know that someone like you might find that last one the most threatening of them all but you have no idea of my level of contempt for your ignorance. Just think sex, drugs and rock and, roll and it's greedy drunken drugged minstrels and publishers will completely and utterly lose their ability to influence politics via political donations.
Consider this a more of a tax on bad ingredients in what used to be quite not so bad products, until corporate greed drove arse holes to remove expensive reasonably healthy ingredients and replace them with addictive junk chemical substitutes, double bonus not only cheaper but you will be forced to feed your addiction. Don't think it's addictive, you honestly don't think it's addictive, just read some of the comments and if those are not the comments of drug addicts, then it didn't take me four goes to give up smoking and give me the opportunity to learn how to recognise the behavioural patterns of addicts on a first hand basis.
The flip side of this, I had tasted sodas made from all natural ingredients, you the actually really truly 'traditional' not the PR=B$ traditional and the original type sodas taste a whole lot better of course they are also more expensive and for some reason are more satisfying and you feel less of a need to drink any where near of as much of it as the cheap junk fakes.
What a new law, a good law, than make it compulsory for corporate executives and their families to live on nothing but the junk food they create and, perhaps then we might see the 'real' not the marketing quality of the products improve, either that or all the crap executives will bloat up and die off, either way a real win ;).
Fake polls also = higher profit, it is far cheaper just to make up the results, than actually conduct the polling. Put you polls out to the lowest bidder and don't be surprised when the answers you get are just the answers the pollsters figures out you want to hear (it'll keep you coming back to them), rather than having anything to do with what people are actually thinking. Think about it, hire all the people to ask the questions of 10,000 citizens of the appropriate demographic spread, of maybe just hire enough to ask say 1,000, do it quite publicly and just multiply the results by 10 with a quick fudge to ensure it still falls within your clients expectations, all for say 80 percent of the price of your nearest competitor.
So as a polling firm are you better off spending money on PR=B$ marketing to convince the public of the sagacity of your polls or to spend that money on accurately carrying out those polls, which is going to be the more profitable especially in the short term. Lie, cheat and steal it is the corporate ethos and bugger the customer, the staff and of course company shareholders.
It's called profit, once you achieve sufficient market dominance than corporate ideology demands that you monetise that market dominance ie. put up prices, reduce development (reduce costs), reduce customer support (test to see how far you can squeeze), leverage that dominance into other markets whether other products or marketing and basically do everything you can to increase profits in the short term, the long term is somebody else's problem.
So typical of M$'s failures in highly competitive markets, Ballmer is carrying on with the typical CEO song and dance to trying to convince that the all new product (basically the same old same old with a new cloak and maybe throw in a new name) will capture the majority of the market, it keeps the share price afloat and his job intact. Pretty much identical to the way M$ markets to the consumer, it new all singing all dancing products against versus it's previous crappy it's not worth supporting products.
The OLPC project is proving to be a very successful project but not necessarily in the way envisaged. It launched the netbook concept which in turn is evolving into smartbooks. Those smartbooks running FOSS of which the help of competitive pressure will drive lower prices and basically point them within reach of school children the world over, not just third world countries but first and second world as well.
Why, FOSS, because you are training a future work force and that work force should absolutely be trained on software that doesn't increase their foreign debt. It would be bloody stupid, to stick countries that can't afford it with billions of dollars per year in licence fees for closed source proprietary applications, operating systems and servers, I know corporate greed has absolutely no moral bounds but they doesn't stop us a individuals from imposing those moral bounds on those corporations.
Now coming from a first world country I would be just as critical of my government should they choose a solution that drives foreign debt, there is absolutely no point in establishing a digital education system that inevitably leads to tens of billions of dollars of foreign debt, you are not solving anything you are creating another problem. Ideology, 'NO', pure and simple economics, adopt FOSS in school, train a workforce in FOSS and, not only have you escaped all those pointless licence fees for fiften years but, you create a commercial environment that won't create a drag on the digital GDP you don't force retraining in order to save money and you guarantee free and open access to the stored data over the long term. I won't even touch being held to digital hostage by a single foreign corporation and any profit based decisions they choose to make regardless to the impact upon the consumer or those countries bound to their software.
Hmm, prove conspiracy, two convicted drugs dealers and reduced sentences, no problem at all and, don't say it doesn't happen. If you really wanted to ship a lot of data across the border in hard format just tape those chips to a cheap remote control model aircraft and fly them across, for fun do it near a border crossing ;).
As the size of storage media rises this becomes more and more privacy invasive, people will carry their whole private life with them and without a warrant and limits placed on what data can be viewed or kept this is just an Orwellian invasion of the digital self.
That really brings to mind the idea of data poisoning meets data mining, digitally creating the illusion of terror cells. Even if you did it by more primitive methods, say several people get together to create the illusion of a terror cell, by sending each other 'private' but, suggestive of terrorist acts communications (of course while fully documenting their non-terrorist intent), have they committed a crime when they are raided by government agencies or have the government agencies committed a crime of false prosecution and arrest and there was no intent.
One could imagine the new 'er' non-terrorist tactic, of creating those situations where those are already targeted as a result of racial profiling get various government agencies wasting millions of dollars running around investigating people who in turn mock them ad follow up with enormous civil suit when those agencies get wildly carried away with their wedding cake hunts (if there ain't no bomb, then you have zero evidence, as the rest of it means squat without the bomb or 'all' of it's components).
The dust/topsoil has nothing to do with global warming, it is all about farmers ploughing up their fields without keeping a close eye on weather forecasts (can be tricky), or failing to shift to more modern farming techniques http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming. Sticking them with a fine, especially the large globally owned corporate farms might put an end to these man made storms.
Oddly enough when it comes to green house impact these topsoil storms reduce global warming as they add necessary trace elements to the oceans which promote carbon consuming algae etc. but not really the best way to go about it.
No CSIRO is the department that was created to ensure stupid mistakes did no occur like that ever again. The were the response, to knee jerk quick fix capitalism. The Australian Bureau of Sugar Experimental Stations were the people who failed to undertake a proper scientific study, of course 1935 was a long time ago, so you can't be that harsh on them either. Really rather juvenile to try and blame the CSIRO scientists 0f 2009 for what happened over 70 years ago.
They used to do far more but the Australian Neocons keep stripping it down each time they come into power, why, most heinous crime of all, they kept giving away the publicly funded technologies to the Australian public that funded it, instead of selling it for cents on the dollar to corrupt corporations who could then screw over the people that funded it with 1000 percent profit margins for decades.
Under similar circumstances in Australia the CSIRO http://www.csiro.au/science/PestManagement.html , would investigate the weed species, find it's country of origin, find insects, bacteria or fungi that feed on it and then bring back samples under controlled conditions. These species would then be tested against Australian native plants and commercial species and those imported species that do not predate upon those would then be tested for survivability in the regions most affected by the weed species. Once the optimum control species are found they are released into the environment to control the weed species.
Although this is by far the most cost effective method of control it often not very popular in capitalism first, last and everything in between countries as there is no opportunity for profit in the solution as it must be given away free, to spread on it's own. In the case of the US the USDA http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/ is the likely agency that should be working on those problems on a federal basis. So rather than throwing away money on spraying and, spraying and, spraying, better to pursue the USDA and get them working on long term biological solutions, where it is all about saving money while saving the environment.