While the initial open source software may be "free," most studies conclude that acquisition costs represent only 5 to 10 percent of total cost of ownership.
Maybe I had a deficient education or something, but where I come from, if 5-10% of something is zero...
This may be a really bad PR move from the perspective of RFID tags... When people realize that Coke could cheaply put unique identifiers on cans and then track them without the user's knowledge, there'll be a lot more public awareness of the threat to privacy.
Was very amused passing through Times Square the other day to see one with a Windows dialog box alerting the user (presumably several million viewers) that SWITCHER.EXE had attempted to execute an illegal instruction... at least it wasn't BSoDing.
But I'd say a smart billboard is a *bad* idea, until they succeed in making it smarter than everybody watching it.
We are in the middle of a paradigm shift equal to the Industrial or Agricultural revolutions. Not just a shift in the economic paradigm, but a social paradigm shift with the same kind of inevitable need for integrated vertical change in the entire structure of human interaction.
This ain't just about mp3s or cell phones or terrorist cells or dot-com stocks or Google being the new encyclopedia or anything else you want to point to. This is yet another clear example of the fact that no centralized control system, including democratic governments, is very comfortable with the possibility of people organizing themselves to achieve their own ends in an unmediated fashion, because the broad distribution of peer-to-peer communications means the breakdown of centralized authority in favor of collective agreement. This is not the Information Age, it is the Age of Consensus.
To the extent that all people everywhere are willing to accept the responsibility that comes with total democracy and unprecedented freedoms, no government nor authority body -- not CERT India, not the RIAA, not TIA or Carnivore -- can stop it. What is left as the barrier to this new social paradigm is authority's most real and most potent weapon -- manipulation of information in order to manufacture consent. More than ever it is important that all information remain free or become free, and that every day we ask ourselves,
where did your thoughts come from today...
for us to gloat over another RIAA PR blunder.
But how much did this poor woman have to spend in legal fees just to get the RIAA to agree not to badger her for a little while?
"Expect to spend lots of time waiting in line for menial work when it is discovered that for your salary, management could hire six workers in Bangalore."...darn.
Hey, look, man. It's no secret that the super-rich get taxed a lot less, even proportionally, than the poor. Why? Because the tax laws are set up against anyone whose income is in salary rather than in investments.
So, "with hard work" you'll wind up paying half of your income in taxes while working like a dog to make somebody else rich. And yes, there is something (called the SEC) stopping you from investing your money the way the rich can; you need either $1mil net assets or $200,000 for several years running before you're an 'accredited investor' legally entitled to take real risks (with chances for real gains, rather than just paying off someone who started on the inside for their stake).
When I say "tax the rich" I really mean, tax investments the same as any other earned income. (Though that would probably shut down business investment in this country -- not that people invest in American companies any more anyways.)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I had a deficient education or something, but where I come from, if 5-10% of something is zero...
... but the real question is, will they be running a Linux port of Starcraft?
This may be a really bad PR move from the perspective of RFID tags... When people realize that Coke could cheaply put unique identifiers on cans and then track them without the user's knowledge, there'll be a lot more public awareness of the threat to privacy.
Mr. Foot, Meet Mr. Bullet...
Was very amused passing through Times Square the other day to see one with a Windows dialog box alerting the user (presumably several million viewers) that SWITCHER.EXE had attempted to execute an illegal instruction...
at least it wasn't BSoDing.
But I'd say a smart billboard is a *bad* idea, until they succeed in making it smarter than everybody watching it.
Well, now it's official:
We are in the middle of a paradigm shift equal to the Industrial or Agricultural revolutions. Not just a shift in the economic paradigm, but a social paradigm shift with the same kind of inevitable need for integrated vertical change in the entire structure of human interaction.
This ain't just about mp3s or cell phones or terrorist cells or dot-com stocks or Google being the new encyclopedia or anything else you want to point to. This is yet another clear example of the fact that no centralized control system, including democratic governments, is very comfortable with the possibility of people organizing themselves to achieve their own ends in an unmediated fashion, because the broad distribution of peer-to-peer communications means the breakdown of centralized authority in favor of collective agreement. This is not the Information Age, it is the Age of Consensus.
To the extent that all people everywhere are willing to accept the responsibility that comes with total democracy and unprecedented freedoms, no government nor authority body -- not CERT India, not the RIAA, not TIA or Carnivore -- can stop it.
What is left as the barrier to this new social paradigm is authority's most real and most potent weapon -- manipulation of information in order to manufacture consent. More than ever it is important that all information remain free or become free, and that every day we ask ourselves,
where did your thoughts come from today...
for us to gloat over another RIAA PR blunder. But how much did this poor woman have to spend in legal fees just to get the RIAA to agree not to badger her for a little while?
So... if you get a telemarketer call over a VoIP network, does it fall under the control of anti-spam legislation?
Yeah, though no fortune-teller gets rich telling people things they don't want to hear, esp. when they're probably true.
the sad thing is that if things go according to the current plan, "overtime compensation" will be a fairytale here [USA] too...
"Expect to spend lots of time waiting in line for menial work when it is discovered that for your salary, management could hire six workers in Bangalore." ...darn.
Hey, look, man. It's no secret that the super-rich get taxed a lot less, even proportionally, than the poor. Why? Because the tax laws are set up against anyone whose income is in salary rather than in investments.
So, "with hard work" you'll wind up paying half of your income in taxes while working like a dog to make somebody else rich. And yes, there is something (called the SEC) stopping you from investing your money the way the rich can; you need either $1mil net assets or $200,000 for several years running before you're an 'accredited investor' legally entitled to take real risks (with chances for real gains, rather than just paying off someone who started on the inside for their stake).
When I say "tax the rich" I really mean, tax investments the same as any other earned income. (Though that would probably shut down business investment in this country -- not that people invest in American companies any more anyways.)