Its true, I have used some hand me down hardware lately and I am always behind the curve now. I haven't been on top of the technology curve since 2001, then I could play most stuff. Its back to basics for games for me, Sim City. It is too expensive to stay on the cutting edge. I am not going to buy a new computer to play Doom, although it would be fun.
I guess my point is that software used to be have more of a lag, and could be used with more older systems. Now you need to upgrade your video card every year and your processor/mother board every other year to stay current. That cycle used to be new video card every other year and processor every 3 years. It is crazy to buy a top of the line system and become sub-par in one year. Oh well, you can't stop progress.
To follow the same idea of a self injecting virus. What if a virus went a bit more sci-fi based on a bateria like profile. What if someone made a BitTorrent like virus, it uploaded the sharing code to the exloited computer first, then registered itself in an auto generated group and searched the net for other groups or viruses to steal code from. It could upload new virus code to itself over time and intentionally infect itself in parts of its network to test the code. Of course most systems would eventually crash, but the few that didn't would mutate to the next level as they grabbed code and integrated it into the BitTorrent DNA. Eventually it could give itself an immune response, to stay one step ahead of the people trying to patch it once a successful mutation had arrived. The virus could autmatically swap bits of code (much like bateria do) to give itself immunity to the latest patch. The virus could even maintain code for different systems so it could infect anything it touched. The whole net could turn into a churning vat of net goo.
It would be a great B movie screen play. But who would star in it, maybe Daniel Baldwin and Michael Dudikoff who will play hackers? Who would be the villain you ask! A fake Michael Powell played by Louis Gosset Junior who wants to censor all data on the net and a fake whats his name, the head of the FBI played by Patrick Swayze's brother Don Swayze as the incompetant FBI guy who won't listen until its too late! I will call the movie, Datavore. The sequel will be Datavore II, the reboot. Datavore III will have the data come to life. Datavore IV will be Freddy vs. Datavore.
Great! Doom 3 finally comes out, but I am too old and tied down to play it now. And to top it off, my gaming machine is too slow to play it without a new video card. Why couldn't it have come out a year ago when I still had time and the computing power to play games. WHY!!!!!!
What would be better would be to build a tiny ship with robots in it and a small mining machine, maybe it could use a fresnel lens or a large focusing device to smelt ore. They could mine ore on the moon and build more robots and a bigger mining operation. Then they could take those resources and build a luxury moon base. This way we could build a base without having to launch a large payload. We would only need to send people...or perhaps the robots could live there for us so we didn't have to send people there. We could even build a giant rail gun to lauch spaceship parts or raw materials into orbit and build the base there instead. We could send other robots out to find big chunks of space ice and use that for propellant for our space rockts so we can travel. Reallistically, nuclear fusion and better computers would be nice before we try this, the problem is we need large amounts of cheap energy and powerful and robust automated systems for a moon base to work well. Doesn't Magneto have a moon base? How did he build his base?
Thats not true about not getting spam, any unwanted email is spam, every month or so I recieve a crap email for my subscriptions. If you have to subscribe to 10 newspapers, that is 10 crap emails. That is in addition to the other crap you sign up for, like a local blood drive, boy scouts etc. etc., the point is you reach a level of crap where you can't distinguish good information from the bad and you end up trashing everything. They are expecially bad if I donate money. To keep from getting to that place I am selective about my real email address.
For my fake registration I always use a real place I have been some time in my past, a partially fake name and partially fake backgroud with a real garbage can Hotmail account. (no, I am not actually an admiral). Unless you can compare my fake info to a database of real people you will never know I am fake. Try 5 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis MN 55401 and see where you end up...is it a real place? Is my name really Admiral Richard Davies? No...but your database doesn't know that and is happy to believe that he is a real fake person.
It isn't up to the record industry to decide FOR consumers, what they should use. History is littered with failed technologies where companies thoguht they knew best. Forcing a new standard on consumers will fail unless it provides new and better benefits. The new standard is nice, but it isn't 10x as nice as the current standard. This problem is similar to the difference between a medium resolution digital image and a high resolution digital image. The hi res image is much nicer and has better detail, but for the average user the medium res image suffices just fine, they can print off their birthday party images for their photo album and they will be nearly as good as a hi-res image for that purpose. The perceivable quality difference isn't that great unless you are attuned to miniscule details. The data density of the new standard may be 10x that of a CD, but the perceivable quality isn't, its more like 1.5x or 2x. It isn't like the first time you heard a CD and the crystal clarity blew your mind. It will sound exactly the same on your Walkman at work, your car stereo, or in your I-Pod. This isn't a big enough reason to throw your CD player in the trash. They should sell albums on Ram sticks, that would be an advance.
I am curious, aren't bacteria kind of like nano machines. They can do just about anything a nano machine would at a molecular level, the only difference is they can't be controlled by a computer...yet.
The way I figure it, they have about $46 or $47 million in cash or cash in kind they can spend. I don't think the Baystar -$14 million has shown up on their balance sheet yet meaning they have about $30 million on hand that is theirs. They are losing about $6-10 million a quarter. Their revenue outside of SCO Source is collapsing, down about 25% from last year, and probably destined to drop even faster. They have roughly 4 to 6 quarters left before they go under at their current rate without a cash infusion. They are already paying $7 million in law fees a quarter, and they have their new lawsuits that haven't even really been started. If they sue/. they will bleed cash even faster. By the time their lawsuit gets to court they will have been bled dry,/. can countersue, and the only asset they will have left will be Unix V. Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony, to have/. end up owning the rights to Unix V.
I am not a physicist (IANAP), but if the universe is accelerating as it flies apart, wouldn't relativity come into play, and time dialation effects would start to come into play as the universe approaced the speed of light meaning the universe would last nearly forever, meaning as the universe accelerated it would take longer for matter to reach eventual heat death on an exponential time scale. Or it could mean the universe is on a sliding time scale that elongates as it expands, making time dialation parallel to the relativistic effects of expansion. Or the universe could actually be only a few years old, and our acclerating expansion is actually what is making time seem like billions of years. Maybe it won't end in iron. Maybe it will end in chocolate pudding.
I know a sure fire way to short cut your risk to zero. Short the stock and then buy shares in the same stock. It sounds stupid on the surface, but if you buy shares you can control the volatility, your risk is cut to zero. It is basically a 'time out' or 'hedge' strategy until you figure out what you want to do. It can also be useful for tax purposes in a volatile market, you can make a loss or a gain whenever you want. The advantage of this is that you are already positioned, you don't have to waste time buying up or selling positions, you just sell or cover the position you don't want anymore and flip the process in reverse whenever you want whenever conditions change and there is a risk to your position.
For example: SCOX announces a settlement with someone for $5 million, meaning they are going to make a profit this quarter and vast amounts of new FUD will spew forth. You can buy up shares just in case the market decides to reward SCOX. As soon as that fear is past, you sell your shares and maintain your short position if you still believe SCO is in a losing position. If you believe SCO still has upward momentum you eliminate your short position. At that moment you had an upward risk, which you anticipated and eliminated. As soon as that risk is controlled you assume the full risk of your position. The name of the game isn't risk elimination, it is risk management. The process can be reversed at any time to control upward or downward risk.
If having a plotter goes down will cost you tens of thousands of dollars, then you should have more than one of them.
A decent plotter costs at least $10,000. Many companies have several, but use them all at the same time. Why have a printer sitting in a box when it can be printing. Two printers can print twice as fast as one.
Anyway, the point of the article was that Dell was cheap. A $500 Dell would have the same capabilities as a $600 HP. For me, the $100 saved up front is meaningless to me if the Dell is always breaking. It would cost you $50, to take 1/2 hour of work time to call the service company to come pick the printer up and another $50 to take another 1/2 hour to take it when they dropped it off. That isn't including unplugging it and plugging in a new printer. That isn't including time wondering if it isn't working because of a bad ink cartridge or if the printer heads are dirty. The way I figure it, it would cost minimum $200 every time the printer breaks. If it makes streaks forcing you to print graphics over, waste time cleaning printer heads and such, you will probably waste far more. And cheap crap printers have a tendency to crash/ screw up and get errors when you send a massive file at it wheras a decent printer slowly cranks the bloated file out.
I am an architect, I work with large format plotters and printers all day. If the printer breaks, jams badly or the printer head wears out or clogs at a critical time or if there is performance degradation it can be a disaster, and can blow deadlines or we may end up not having critical graphics at important meetings. These are all technical and performance issues which are very important. If the software sucks, it is a constant hassle. HP is the only company I know that has made ink jet printers which last a long time and continue to perform under these high demand situations. I would never buy a Dell unless they can develop rock solid technology that is equal to what HP has. They can't do that by using a Frankenstein collection of technology I don't think, there will always be a critical feature that can fail. Maybe in the future they can do that, but right now I don't trust them.
I have used some other cheap printers, most of them end up in the trash can after 9 months, it is cheaper than trying to fix them. Every HP we have used has lasted a long time and we have had few problems, all we do is switch ink cartridges. I have no doubt Dell will be cheap, but I doubt they will have the same quality as HP. In the end, they will probably end up in the trash bin. Cheap crap doesn't inspire customer loyalty.
That is the bottom line for me, not whether one innovates or not. I really don't care who makes the product as long as it works and works well under demanding circumstances and the print out looks good. That is why HP is the leader IMHO.
I am not a big fan of Autodesk, but they have something similar to the plog in their Buzzsaw program. It is a combination ftp/blog/email/server. I am an architect. Many large projects use this kind of software because the management is insane. You have a 6 year, $2 billion airport or chemical plant project involving consultants from all over the world, 10 thousand people work on the project and organizing the data becomes a problem.
With these plog kinds of tools, the situation is much less hierarchical, everyone can upload information to the entire team at the request of any single individual on the team. If you need whatever specification to whatever widget integrated into the design you can get it in the design fast. You always have access to the most current information.
Where the system breaks is when people get lazy, and stop uploading. You also have consultants who are only tangentially involved and never take the time to learn the system, so upload rarely.
The other problem is idiocy. If a consultant gives you crap, you are only integrating crappy info quickly, you then have to spend two weekends figuring out where exactly did the crap come from that hit the fan.
The other problem is standards. What specs do you use, who is incharge of the spec, how do you test things, quality control, regulation compliance et cetera.
Another problem is who pays for what. When you have 10 consultants, with any 3 of them fighting over $1 million in billable hours you have to create a firm project structure or it all turns to a vicious mush.
My 2 cents on plogs, as I view this world from my peon cubicle.
Those folks used to be based in New York. They sent our racist questionaire polls, of course people probably responeded, but in small type at the bottom was a note informing them that they would be charged $3.95 a minute. Their reply number was also a charge number. These same people seem to have moved over seas and are now at a UK number.
A couple of points on overseas faxes. They are operating a business across international lines, that would mean they would need to have some kind of US subsidiary or they do not have permission to operate here. Send a note to Scotland Yard, informing them of the abuse, I don't know about British law, but I bet it is probably illegal to do these kinds of things from there. I could be wrong, but I believe 1(800) and 1(900) numbers are for the USA and Canada. Someone has to be here in the USA to receive the bills and pay them. Sending a fax from Britain is probably prohibitively expensive, I would wager it came from the US, but the call center was in Britain.
You can also find out who owns the phone number block, and as a result contact their provider, informing them that these people are doing illegal acts. That may be your best option. Simply shut them down at the switch.
For the smug bastards who think they are above the law, I believe the fines the US government levys against them can be applied to their phone bill.
Contact your states Attorney General and US Attorney general to get legal action against them. Also try the British Embassy/consulate, they may be able to tell you their laws better, perhaps fax them a copy of your fax.
Shorting is the exact opposite of believing a stock will go up. Instead of buying a stock to own, you borrow a stock to sell. You then have cash on hand from your sale and an obligation to pay interest on your loan and to give that share back to the original owner. You already have the money, if the share price drops in the toilet, you still have the money, and since you have the money you pick that share up out of the toilet and buy it back and return it to the original owner. You keep the difference. You wonder what a hedge fund is? How they could keep going up while your stock went in the toilet, now you know.
If you have had a consistent short position, you will have gained 50% or so on your money. If you feel confident in your position, buy to cover and take out a new short position at the current share price, if SCOX falls by 50% again you will make a 50% return on your new position, but if you leave it as is you will only see an additional 25% return above the 50% you have already made, the difference is a 125% return vs. a 75% return. Theoretically, if you you cash out and take a new short position every time SCOX drops 50%, you can earn vastly more money.
Example: $1000(SCOX@$18) original short positon in SCOX. SCOX drops 50%, you make $500 and lock that in. You take a your gains and take a $1500(SCOX@$8) short position, that drops 50% and you make $750 and cash out again. You have now made $1250 more in gains, more than doubling your original position. By doing that every time SCOX drops in half, your position grows by half, $1500(SCOX@$8) turns into $2250(SCOX@$4) into $3375(SCOX@$2) into $5062.50(SCOX@$1)into $7593.75(SCOX@$.5) and then you let it ride to zero and victory where you collect! Under your plan the most you can make is $1000, my plan will make huge cash money but unfortunately I am too chicken to do this as I am nearly broke. A way to cut your risk is to sock away some of your gains in cash to protect against a margin call if SCOX momentarily fluxuates upward. A way to magnify your gains is to find an instrument that will go up in direct proportion as SCOX falls, but you will probably need cash on hand if your short position gets called in. A lot of people shorting SCOX can completely obliterate the share price in a matter of hours under the right circumstances. Enron and Worldcom went down that way, the short sellers took over and they went down in flames. You ever wonder why rich people like hedge funds? Now you know!
High pitch sounds are more painful to listen to, but they are easier to block than low pitch sounds which can travel thorugh the ground, especially at ground level where barriers can block noises. High pitch sound doesn't travel as far either. I would wager that being right next to the tracks would indeed be a painful experience, but half a block away I bet it isn't as bad and 2 blocks away is probably easily tolerable. I would bet that it has much less vibration which is a big problem for trains. Some steps they can take to mitigate noise:
1. Planting heavy shrubs near rail lines. Plantings can be designed to absorb specific sound spectrums.
2. Sound blocking berms or fences.
3. Double foundation walls with an air cavity between which don't allow sound transfer through the ground.
4. Larger setbacks from the noise source.
Exactly my point, the threat is planes flying into buildings not missiles into aircraft carriers. We are fighting extremely primitive forces, that survive by concealment not by having big armies or high tech missiles. The only missiles our current enemy has are rocket propelled grenades. To get them we need unconventional forces. That is the new threat profile. Aircraft carriers do have their uses in the new kind of war as a mobile air bases that can go anywhere.
It would take a lot more than one missile to take down a carrier. They have all kinds of redundancies. The point of a carrier isn't to engage these kinds of threats anyway. That is why they come as part of a battle group with a variety of other ships and aircraft. Most targets are engaged before they are a threat. Taken all together a carrier battle group is a floating army, and airforce in addition to the ship based weapons which are the third line of defense. A carrier battle group projects an immense amount of power, larger than most countries entire military and that power can be projected into any coastal region in the world. It is especially useful in todays world where the enemy is terrorists, a carrier group provides the support necessary to send Special Forces/SEALS anywhere in the world. The threat is guys armed with AK-47's sitting in caves plotting to crash airplanes, not pitched battles between massive armies or navies.
As far as nuclear weapons, that is another ballgame entirely, we have MAD for that, and I can't think of a single nation outside of the traditional nuclear powers except for Isreal perhaps that has the capability to launch a missile like that.
In general, a ship is a ship is a ship, and the problem of problems of making it stay afloat and go where you want are the same for military and non-military craft.
I wonder if the equipment is hardened against a nuclear strike EMP. Most off the shelf stuff isn't.
I am glad they aren't using IE to control everything, it would get a virus and crash. But now that the ship is totally automated, we don't need people anymore and if the AI goes haywire......
Slashdot Mirror
Its true, I have used some hand me down hardware lately and I am always behind the curve now. I haven't been on top of the technology curve since 2001, then I could play most stuff. Its back to basics for games for me, Sim City. It is too expensive to stay on the cutting edge. I am not going to buy a new computer to play Doom, although it would be fun.
I guess my point is that software used to be have more of a lag, and could be used with more older systems. Now you need to upgrade your video card every year and your processor/mother board every other year to stay current. That cycle used to be new video card every other year and processor every 3 years. It is crazy to buy a top of the line system and become sub-par in one year. Oh well, you can't stop progress.
To follow the same idea of a self injecting virus. What if a virus went a bit more sci-fi based on a bateria like profile. What if someone made a BitTorrent like virus, it uploaded the sharing code to the exloited computer first, then registered itself in an auto generated group and searched the net for other groups or viruses to steal code from. It could upload new virus code to itself over time and intentionally infect itself in parts of its network to test the code. Of course most systems would eventually crash, but the few that didn't would mutate to the next level as they grabbed code and integrated it into the BitTorrent DNA. Eventually it could give itself an immune response, to stay one step ahead of the people trying to patch it once a successful mutation had arrived. The virus could autmatically swap bits of code (much like bateria do) to give itself immunity to the latest patch. The virus could even maintain code for different systems so it could infect anything it touched. The whole net could turn into a churning vat of net goo.
It would be a great B movie screen play. But who would star in it, maybe Daniel Baldwin and Michael Dudikoff who will play hackers? Who would be the villain you ask! A fake Michael Powell played by Louis Gosset Junior who wants to censor all data on the net and a fake whats his name, the head of the FBI played by Patrick Swayze's brother Don Swayze as the incompetant FBI guy who won't listen until its too late! I will call the movie, Datavore. The sequel will be Datavore II, the reboot. Datavore III will have the data come to life. Datavore IV will be Freddy vs. Datavore.
Great! Doom 3 finally comes out, but I am too old and tied down to play it now. And to top it off, my gaming machine is too slow to play it without a new video card. Why couldn't it have come out a year ago when I still had time and the computing power to play games. WHY!!!!!!
What would be better would be to build a tiny ship with robots in it and a small mining machine, maybe it could use a fresnel lens or a large focusing device to smelt ore. They could mine ore on the moon and build more robots and a bigger mining operation. Then they could take those resources and build a luxury moon base. This way we could build a base without having to launch a large payload. We would only need to send people...or perhaps the robots could live there for us so we didn't have to send people there. We could even build a giant rail gun to lauch spaceship parts or raw materials into orbit and build the base there instead. We could send other robots out to find big chunks of space ice and use that for propellant for our space rockts so we can travel. Reallistically, nuclear fusion and better computers would be nice before we try this, the problem is we need large amounts of cheap energy and powerful and robust automated systems for a moon base to work well. Doesn't Magneto have a moon base? How did he build his base?
Thats not true about not getting spam, any unwanted email is spam, every month or so I recieve a crap email for my subscriptions. If you have to subscribe to 10 newspapers, that is 10 crap emails. That is in addition to the other crap you sign up for, like a local blood drive, boy scouts etc. etc., the point is you reach a level of crap where you can't distinguish good information from the bad and you end up trashing everything. They are expecially bad if I donate money. To keep from getting to that place I am selective about my real email address.
For my fake registration I always use a real place I have been some time in my past, a partially fake name and partially fake backgroud with a real garbage can Hotmail account. (no, I am not actually an admiral). Unless you can compare my fake info to a database of real people you will never know I am fake. Try 5 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis MN 55401 and see where you end up...is it a real place? Is my name really Admiral Richard Davies? No...but your database doesn't know that and is happy to believe that he is a real fake person.
It isn't up to the record industry to decide FOR consumers, what they should use. History is littered with failed technologies where companies thoguht they knew best. Forcing a new standard on consumers will fail unless it provides new and better benefits. The new standard is nice, but it isn't 10x as nice as the current standard. This problem is similar to the difference between a medium resolution digital image and a high resolution digital image. The hi res image is much nicer and has better detail, but for the average user the medium res image suffices just fine, they can print off their birthday party images for their photo album and they will be nearly as good as a hi-res image for that purpose. The perceivable quality difference isn't that great unless you are attuned to miniscule details. The data density of the new standard may be 10x that of a CD, but the perceivable quality isn't, its more like 1.5x or 2x. It isn't like the first time you heard a CD and the crystal clarity blew your mind. It will sound exactly the same on your Walkman at work, your car stereo, or in your I-Pod. This isn't a big enough reason to throw your CD player in the trash. They should sell albums on Ram sticks, that would be an advance.
I am curious, aren't bacteria kind of like nano machines. They can do just about anything a nano machine would at a molecular level, the only difference is they can't be controlled by a computer...yet.
Slashdot is next
/. they will bleed cash even faster. By the time their lawsuit gets to court they will have been bled dry, /. can countersue, and the only asset they will have left will be Unix V. Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony, to have /. end up owning the rights to Unix V.
The way I figure it, they have about $46 or $47 million in cash or cash in kind they can spend. I don't think the Baystar -$14 million has shown up on their balance sheet yet meaning they have about $30 million on hand that is theirs. They are losing about $6-10 million a quarter. Their revenue outside of SCO Source is collapsing, down about 25% from last year, and probably destined to drop even faster. They have roughly 4 to 6 quarters left before they go under at their current rate without a cash infusion. They are already paying $7 million in law fees a quarter, and they have their new lawsuits that haven't even really been started. If they sue
It all ends in Iron.
I am not a physicist (IANAP), but if the universe is accelerating as it flies apart, wouldn't relativity come into play, and time dialation effects would start to come into play as the universe approaced the speed of light meaning the universe would last nearly forever, meaning as the universe accelerated it would take longer for matter to reach eventual heat death on an exponential time scale. Or it could mean the universe is on a sliding time scale that elongates as it expands, making time dialation parallel to the relativistic effects of expansion. Or the universe could actually be only a few years old, and our acclerating expansion is actually what is making time seem like billions of years. Maybe it won't end in iron. Maybe it will end in chocolate pudding.
I know a sure fire way to short cut your risk to zero. Short the stock and then buy shares in the same stock. It sounds stupid on the surface, but if you buy shares you can control the volatility, your risk is cut to zero. It is basically a 'time out' or 'hedge' strategy until you figure out what you want to do. It can also be useful for tax purposes in a volatile market, you can make a loss or a gain whenever you want. The advantage of this is that you are already positioned, you don't have to waste time buying up or selling positions, you just sell or cover the position you don't want anymore and flip the process in reverse whenever you want whenever conditions change and there is a risk to your position.
For example: SCOX announces a settlement with someone for $5 million, meaning they are going to make a profit this quarter and vast amounts of new FUD will spew forth. You can buy up shares just in case the market decides to reward SCOX. As soon as that fear is past, you sell your shares and maintain your short position if you still believe SCO is in a losing position. If you believe SCO still has upward momentum you eliminate your short position. At that moment you had an upward risk, which you anticipated and eliminated. As soon as that risk is controlled you assume the full risk of your position. The name of the game isn't risk elimination, it is risk management. The process can be reversed at any time to control upward or downward risk.
If having a plotter goes down will cost you tens of thousands of dollars, then you should have more than one of them.
A decent plotter costs at least $10,000. Many companies have several, but use them all at the same time. Why have a printer sitting in a box when it can be printing. Two printers can print twice as fast as one.
Anyway, the point of the article was that Dell was cheap. A $500 Dell would have the same capabilities as a $600 HP. For me, the $100 saved up front is meaningless to me if the Dell is always breaking. It would cost you $50, to take 1/2 hour of work time to call the service company to come pick the printer up and another $50 to take another 1/2 hour to take it when they dropped it off. That isn't including unplugging it and plugging in a new printer. That isn't including time wondering if it isn't working because of a bad ink cartridge or if the printer heads are dirty. The way I figure it, it would cost minimum $200 every time the printer breaks. If it makes streaks forcing you to print graphics over, waste time cleaning printer heads and such, you will probably waste far more. And cheap crap printers have a tendency to crash/ screw up and get errors when you send a massive file at it wheras a decent printer slowly cranks the bloated file out.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
I am an architect, I work with large format plotters and printers all day. If the printer breaks, jams badly or the printer head wears out or clogs at a critical time or if there is performance degradation it can be a disaster, and can blow deadlines or we may end up not having critical graphics at important meetings. These are all technical and performance issues which are very important. If the software sucks, it is a constant hassle. HP is the only company I know that has made ink jet printers which last a long time and continue to perform under these high demand situations. I would never buy a Dell unless they can develop rock solid technology that is equal to what HP has. They can't do that by using a Frankenstein collection of technology I don't think, there will always be a critical feature that can fail. Maybe in the future they can do that, but right now I don't trust them.
I have used some other cheap printers, most of them end up in the trash can after 9 months, it is cheaper than trying to fix them. Every HP we have used has lasted a long time and we have had few problems, all we do is switch ink cartridges. I have no doubt Dell will be cheap, but I doubt they will have the same quality as HP. In the end, they will probably end up in the trash bin. Cheap crap doesn't inspire customer loyalty.
That is the bottom line for me, not whether one innovates or not. I really don't care who makes the product as long as it works and works well under demanding circumstances and the print out looks good. That is why HP is the leader IMHO.
I am not a big fan of Autodesk, but they have something similar to the plog in their Buzzsaw program. It is a combination ftp/blog/email/server. I am an architect. Many large projects use this kind of software because the management is insane. You have a 6 year, $2 billion airport or chemical plant project involving consultants from all over the world, 10 thousand people work on the project and organizing the data becomes a problem.
With these plog kinds of tools, the situation is much less hierarchical, everyone can upload information to the entire team at the request of any single individual on the team. If you need whatever specification to whatever widget integrated into the design you can get it in the design fast. You always have access to the most current information.
Where the system breaks is when people get lazy, and stop uploading. You also have consultants who are only tangentially involved and never take the time to learn the system, so upload rarely.
The other problem is idiocy. If a consultant gives you crap, you are only integrating crappy info quickly, you then have to spend two weekends figuring out where exactly did the crap come from that hit the fan.
The other problem is standards. What specs do you use, who is incharge of the spec, how do you test things, quality control, regulation compliance et cetera.
Another problem is who pays for what. When you have 10 consultants, with any 3 of them fighting over $1 million in billable hours you have to create a firm project structure or it all turns to a vicious mush.
My 2 cents on plogs, as I view this world from my peon cubicle.
I already patented that business model.
Those folks used to be based in New York. They sent our racist questionaire polls, of course people probably responeded, but in small type at the bottom was a note informing them that they would be charged $3.95 a minute. Their reply number was also a charge number. These same people seem to have moved over seas and are now at a UK number.
A couple of points on overseas faxes. They are operating a business across international lines, that would mean they would need to have some kind of US subsidiary or they do not have permission to operate here. Send a note to Scotland Yard, informing them of the abuse, I don't know about British law, but I bet it is probably illegal to do these kinds of things from there. I could be wrong, but I believe 1(800) and 1(900) numbers are for the USA and Canada. Someone has to be here in the USA to receive the bills and pay them. Sending a fax from Britain is probably prohibitively expensive, I would wager it came from the US, but the call center was in Britain.
You can also find out who owns the phone number block, and as a result contact their provider, informing them that these people are doing illegal acts. That may be your best option. Simply shut them down at the switch.
For the smug bastards who think they are above the law, I believe the fines the US government levys against them can be applied to their phone bill.
Contact your states Attorney General and US Attorney general to get legal action against them. Also try the British Embassy/consulate, they may be able to tell you their laws better, perhaps fax them a copy of your fax.
Shorting is the exact opposite of believing a stock will go up. Instead of buying a stock to own, you borrow a stock to sell. You then have cash on hand from your sale and an obligation to pay interest on your loan and to give that share back to the original owner. You already have the money, if the share price drops in the toilet, you still have the money, and since you have the money you pick that share up out of the toilet and buy it back and return it to the original owner. You keep the difference. You wonder what a hedge fund is? How they could keep going up while your stock went in the toilet, now you know.
If you have had a consistent short position, you will have gained 50% or so on your money. If you feel confident in your position, buy to cover and take out a new short position at the current share price, if SCOX falls by 50% again you will make a 50% return on your new position, but if you leave it as is you will only see an additional 25% return above the 50% you have already made, the difference is a 125% return vs. a 75% return. Theoretically, if you you cash out and take a new short position every time SCOX drops 50%, you can earn vastly more money.
Example: $1000(SCOX@$18) original short positon in SCOX. SCOX drops 50%, you make $500 and lock that in. You take a your gains and take a $1500(SCOX@$8) short position, that drops 50% and you make $750 and cash out again. You have now made $1250 more in gains, more than doubling your original position. By doing that every time SCOX drops in half, your position grows by half, $1500(SCOX@$8) turns into $2250(SCOX@$4) into $3375(SCOX@$2) into $5062.50(SCOX@$1)into $7593.75(SCOX@$.5) and then you let it ride to zero and victory where you collect! Under your plan the most you can make is $1000, my plan will make huge cash money but unfortunately I am too chicken to do this as I am nearly broke. A way to cut your risk is to sock away some of your gains in cash to protect against a margin call if SCOX momentarily fluxuates upward. A way to magnify your gains is to find an instrument that will go up in direct proportion as SCOX falls, but you will probably need cash on hand if your short position gets called in. A lot of people shorting SCOX can completely obliterate the share price in a matter of hours under the right circumstances. Enron and Worldcom went down that way, the short sellers took over and they went down in flames. You ever wonder why rich people like hedge funds? Now you know!
Just so you all know, I get dibs on Darl's Mercedes when it goes on the RICO auction block.
High pitch sounds are more painful to listen to, but they are easier to block than low pitch sounds which can travel thorugh the ground, especially at ground level where barriers can block noises. High pitch sound doesn't travel as far either. I would wager that being right next to the tracks would indeed be a painful experience, but half a block away I bet it isn't as bad and 2 blocks away is probably easily tolerable. I would bet that it has much less vibration which is a big problem for trains. Some steps they can take to mitigate noise:
1. Planting heavy shrubs near rail lines. Plantings can be designed to absorb specific sound spectrums.
2. Sound blocking berms or fences.
3. Double foundation walls with an air cavity between which don't allow sound transfer through the ground.
4. Larger setbacks from the noise source.
Exactly my point, the threat is planes flying into buildings not missiles into aircraft carriers. We are fighting extremely primitive forces, that survive by concealment not by having big armies or high tech missiles. The only missiles our current enemy has are rocket propelled grenades. To get them we need unconventional forces. That is the new threat profile. Aircraft carriers do have their uses in the new kind of war as a mobile air bases that can go anywhere.
It would take a lot more than one missile to take down a carrier. They have all kinds of redundancies. The point of a carrier isn't to engage these kinds of threats anyway. That is why they come as part of a battle group with a variety of other ships and aircraft. Most targets are engaged before they are a threat. Taken all together a carrier battle group is a floating army, and airforce in addition to the ship based weapons which are the third line of defense. A carrier battle group projects an immense amount of power, larger than most countries entire military and that power can be projected into any coastal region in the world. It is especially useful in todays world where the enemy is terrorists, a carrier group provides the support necessary to send Special Forces/SEALS anywhere in the world. The threat is guys armed with AK-47's sitting in caves plotting to crash airplanes, not pitched battles between massive armies or navies.
As far as nuclear weapons, that is another ballgame entirely, we have MAD for that, and I can't think of a single nation outside of the traditional nuclear powers except for Isreal perhaps that has the capability to launch a missile like that.
I think it would be cheaper to outsource war to other countries.
In general, a ship is a ship is a ship, and the problem of problems of making it stay afloat and go where you want are the same for military and non-military craft.
I wonder if the equipment is hardened against a nuclear strike EMP. Most off the shelf stuff isn't.
I am glad they aren't using IE to control everything, it would get a virus and crash. But now that the ship is totally automated, we don't need people anymore and if the AI goes haywire......
For $1600 I would expect their web page to survive getting slashdotted.