I put up my original provacative statement, because of the obvious issues involved in climate change, which are unresolved because of a lack of longer term data. In addition, it looks like some of the extra solar radiation in the last 50 years comes from higher sunspot activity compared to the previous 500 years.
1. You point out above higher CO2 levels in prehistory times when hominids existed 440,000 years ago, and that poses a problem for people and some scientists and certainly politicians obsessively focused on CO2 (what about other gases like dihydrogen oxide & methane).
2. Dust-soot may present a far larger "problem" as it obviously affects sunlight reaching the earth...yet no one seems to be talking about that much, as it is... well...a dirty little secret, that Asia is the current leader in creation of this, as I have read reports.
3. Volcanoes are the largest Dust-soot-gas belchers of all in the earth, and about one eruption every 10 years, but many dozens of active volcanoes spewing things but not classified as errupting (Indonesia has 100 active volcanoes EVERY YEAR). How does this affect the Earth and how does that COMPARE to Humans? This is not trivial.
When you look at the total land required to "grow sugar", and the topsoil loss that you get, and the inevitable conflict between food production and sugar production, you realized that it is a far more complex issue for THE LONG RUN. Civilizations have collapsed in many places when topsoil was depleted by one of many ways it happens.
Ultimately geothermal, solar, wind, water current (fresh and salt) and various forms of nuclear will be the most desirable for sustainable energy. There is NO petro type liquid carbonaceous fuel that is not going to release some polutants in an internal combustion engine. The move to all electric started in 1983 with the first solid state high power "transistor" by Motorola & the following 20 years transformed electric products. The next 20 years are going to see even more dramatic change.
Autos on liquid fuels are inherently very inefficient. Not only are their big losses between drilling refining, all transport of the crude & fuel, but THEN, the final automobile is LESS than 20% efficient in converting fuel calories to wheel energy.
All electric vehicles will eventually win out, as batteries get better, lighter and less expensive, because eventually, each drive wheel is an electric motor. That works out ecologically, as the car becomes made of fewer & lighter pieces, and is more reusable, recyclable.
If there were actual facts Apple could have cited which gave them reason to make a valid legal claim, like public libelous statements, or statements made to affect Apple's share price or something similar, the litigation costs would be many millions minimum.
The way it is set up these days, even a small court case can wind up generating $25k-50k per month in billings to your firm, before you ever get anywhere near court, and then the fees go dramatically up during trial.
Whisson AU Patent Appl = LAPSED
on
Water From Wind
·
· Score: 1
If you go to the Australian Patent Office you can track down basic info on Whisson's work.
What you quickly see from the info summary below is that the supposed "Wind water trap" Provisional Patent Application has lasped which might or might not mean ABANDONED, depending on Australian rules.
Provisional Application Details Patent Application Type - Provisional Australian Application Number - 2004900912 Applicant(s) - Max Whisson Inventor(s) - Whisson, Maxwell Edmund Title - Wind water trap Status - Lapsed Filing Date - 25 February 2004 Date of Patent - 25 February 2004 Agent / - Address for Legal Service - Max Whisson - 5/70 Subiaco Road Subiaco WA 6008 Australia
Re:Interested....
on
Water From Wind
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Whisson; Maxwell Edmund has at least 15 U.S. patents issued over 20 years.
Easy to check for yourself. Unfortunately that does not give info on air-water systems, and there is no info in searching the Patent Applications yet.
If you want to get water out of air, you need to cool a surface to condense out water or reduce the air pressure to cause RH to go to 100% to condense out @ ambient temperature, or you can use hygroscopic materials to absorb water directly out of the air, but then you have to extract the water from that material.
I think it was the Chilean military that figured out how to set up a "spiderweb" at night in the Atacama desert & water would condense out on the fibers and drain into a can, to support military in the field.
We will have to wait on Max's details it sounds like.
Even regular scam investment-retirement "opportunity" cons for large sums are not prosecuted.
A friend's inlaws lost $750,000 in retirement funds, and the County DA wouldn't prosecut the case. It was too small and would take too many attorney hours over a long time compared to the workload in the particular county (So.Cal.).
Bo
Re:Maybe he WANTED to go missing??
on
Jim Gray Is Missing
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Sterling Hayden departed for a day voyage with a dozen or more friends on Wanderer out of San Francisco, and the next time anyone saw the yacht was when it entered Tahitian waters.
None of the guests had any idea they were being "Shanghaid". He didn't give them any choice.
See his book titled after his boat's name.
Hidden Dangers for Small Boats
on
Jim Gray Is Missing
·
· Score: 3, Informative
In addition to water temperature and ships posing lethality, there is one rarely talked about for any typical yacht. In my earlier years I designed sailboats, before I figured out it was all fun and no money.
I have a friend in high places at the Port of Los Angeles, and though the shipping companies do NOT like to talk about it, the ship grounding on the U.K. coast just a week ago illustrated the problem. Some dozens or a hundred containers or so came off the ship when it listed, and then some FLOATED ashore.
The numbers I have heard is about 10,000 containers a year 'go missing' overboard as a result of all sorts of problems in bad weather usually. I don't remember whether that was the Pacific only or worldwide.
Lots of these containers floating right near the water surface with any waves at all, are virtually impossible to see from any distance.
If you hit one in a fiberglass or a thin-skinned metal boat boat, you can take on water and sink in a minute or two if it is bad.
Lots of small boats go missing every year with no explanation.
But Bill Gates does NOT have a demonstrable track record of innovation beyond the initial Operating System and Office Suite.
Bill & Ballmer do not have a demonstrated grasp of what is coming and shown it by becoming a majority market leader with new & innovative software &/or hardware.
So why should anyone listen to their prognostications?
Nothing about hate here. Nothing about dislike. This is all about observable fact.
Billy Gates did look a bit blue last time I saw him on the tube.
With luck he will suffer a BSOD episode, and Microsoft will be free of this nut case, who wouldn't know an innovative pair of vise grips if they bit him on the hand.
I never said he is an idiot. I also think BG & SB have kept MS on top by the sweat of a lot of programmers & not BG & SB's hard work (unless you call bullying work).
Bill Gates does NOT have a track record of coming up with innovative, cutting edge, next gen products. In fact, he doesn't have a good track record coming up with better products others already have done, & shall we go through them?
1. Zune...rhymes with doom, and it is not a game 2. IE...still going downhill after giving us malware-virus heaven 3. CE...mobile world does not know it exists 4. Cairo-Longhorn...time moves on, with less features 5. Media Center PCs...oohh a geek's delight 6. MS's Search...Uhhh Bill is too busy to use Google, and his secretary finds what he needs on his hard drive
Bill Gates and "The Chair" Ballmer are strictly into techniques designed to lock their OS & Office monopoly down tighter.
I seriously doubt Bill gates is even interested in TV personally...and that is probably an indication of how little Microsoft will do in that arena.
The only thing that will stand a chance of allowing shareholder value growth is breaking Microsoft up into pieces and letting all the brainpower in each division go wild in search of new products, because Bill & Steve are not going to do it.
Gates lucked into an OS deal where he wheedled and dealed and even tried to shut out a partner.
Then he tucked together pieces he plucked to form Office, where creative MS programmers put it all together.
But then listen to all the BS that came out of BG since and between Cairo, ME & CE, etc & the constant use of similar adjectives used to describe the next MS product or version, and what floats high on the surface of the water?
"S--t", thats what.
Why does ANYONE take this guy seriously? At this point all he is, is a rich philanthropist!
I detailed the obvious faults of earlier phones. Some were so slick they would slip out of your hand. Lots of those problems don't exist anymore with newer phones. That was just the background. For someone who has used cell phones since 1984, I can say I am PO'd at the lack of reliability and consistency in the phones (beyond the first Motorola flip phones which were nearly indestructable). New ones are virtually disposables, where the cell provider wants you to get a new one every year or two.
I realize the newer competitive smart & advanced feature phones are filled with better features, much like the iPhone will have, though they have their own higher price in $s and time to learn it all, only to change with the next piece of hardware (& I had buttons not work consistently on my last Nokia phone: No help from Cingular on getting a replacement).
I have been totally unimpressed by my & my friends and wife's prior phone's consistency within one brand from one model to the next.
I am convinced Apple will be consistent and provide easy functionality for easy use and syncing with my Mac. I am sure Apple is going to release 3rd party applications or Widgets, but indeed, I expect to have Apple "Certify" the apps I would be able to load, so I don't get crumo software that has problems. I could easily see someone like HP making a 41CX or 12c application for calculations which would be logical for lots of users.
Apple is not going to make cell phones in 10 styles to try to act like Detroit. They are going to do a simple straightforward consistent simple style which is mostly intuitive, and allow us users to eventually connect via 3 or more different wireless regimes and via USB, so we can just get on with life without the crap of what is really mostly a disposable cheapo cell-phone mindset that carriers have put in front of users.
Take a look in the average cell-phone retail outlet. If there are less than 50 different size and shapes with maybe 20 different key pads, I would be surprised. Ask a salesperson, "Which is best for the Mac for syncing?" The answer I always get is "Well, I don't have a Mac, so..." I got a TMobile and then I ask where are the connection instructions for the Moto and get "its in the manual" & then when I say "no it is not", I get "they are online". That was a joke, as the online instructions were wrong. Lots of calls, and eventually I get someone who understands. Crazy.
This sort of experience is why so many people do not trust cell phone companies & service providers. They know the sales & service people mostly don't know and don't care. The sales people are probably commissioned and don't care what you buy as long as they can get you to buy one of the high end phones and ear phones. It is just like a clothes store. Buy what you like.
Apple is not going to play this game. Consistency, Clarity, Comprehensive, Concise user features which don't change every 6 months. Remember with "Swindler" at Apple in the 90s when they had a CPU lineup that looked like Ford Motor Company? It was rediculous. Nokia and LG look like that today. Apple is going to break out of the old way. Lots of competitors had better wake up quick, or Apple is going to get far more than 10% of the market.
Big organizations always seem to have a "wait and see & let someone else fix it attitude", after all, the VPs are always traveling around incessently attending conferences, mostly on the other side of the country or on an island outside the U.S.
Big $s means there will be a lot of "retirement" suggestions being quietly made over coffee prior to the ICANN meetings designed to keep the status quo.
I have no doubt the integration between Macs & iPhone is going to be ABSOLUTELY UNBEATABLE. I know Apple will keep the interface simple, even though I know they will upgrade it over time, I know from experience, I can rely on Apple to DELIVER easy to use functionality. I don't have countless hours to study new equipment and software for dozens of hours a month.
I have had so many phones that had crap that didn't work, every new phone had a different keypad buttons and menus & icons, and menu structure, and non were consistent or easy to sync (if possible at all) and the bluetooth earphone reliability was iffy.
Physically most wound up with so much lint in them, I'ld have to figure out how to disassemble them to blow the lint out. Antennas would break, battery cover doors would not latch right, and tape was the norm, and god help me if I had to read a screen in open sun.
I expect to buy 2 iPhones, one for my wife who can barely figure out how to do basic uses on her "LG" phone, so for once she can have her entire phone book on the iPhone along with calendar and notes, etc. This may be the godsend that finally means I can get her to stop using the inch thick phone & calendar book with the pages that get torn out.
For me to be able to move on and off the the phone, & web means I can simplify keeping in touch as just a starting point.
I thank God the scientists keep looking for patterns and physics to try to explain what we see in the geologic and solar record & current observations of the sun, as that is the ONLY WAY we will ever have a chance of really knowing what long term cycles are caused by. There may be 50 models and theories, but it will likely be a stew of dozens of researchers that finally get a theory that is solid enough to be verified and called a Proof, or tentative Proof.
Fact is, no one can yet show a proof of why, but we do know that Ice ages occurred dozens of times and when, but we can not yet prove what the underlieing factor is that causes the repetition (excluding the major "accidental" supermassive volcano or mega-asteroid).
That is what true science is for, which is to keep digging, sometimes literally, until you uncover the data and principals that can be independently verified and eventually acknowledged as fact.
But that is not convenient for politicians who want power, and bureaucrats who can manage whole new divisions of government if they get funding to try to act on something with the citizens money, when there is only speculation as to what is going on and to what degree, let alone whether we can actually do anything about it.
So tell me what an OS is worth with very good OSs going for:
1. Linux = $0.00 per copy 2. MacOSX = $190 per family pack for 5 computers 3. Windows VISTA = $400 or so for 1-2 computers
When something is virtually a pure commodity, and not where you do your work (the application is what is important), how much is it really worth?
In the stock market or the pharmacy or hardware store, you pick your screwdriver and you pay the price or you bid on it on eBay. When are Windows VISTA copies going to just be sold by Microsoft on eBay to the highest bidder, maybe 10 at a time?
Why does VISTA have any value? What great and wonderful end-user benefits accrue to acquiring such a behemoth?
What happens if VISTA is launched into Retail, and 85% of the users wants SP Pro instead. If 2 years out VISTA hasn't even reached 50% of the PC market, will VISTA be called the most expensive software blunder in history?
You can get the PATENT APPLICATION TO ISSUE & then make a viable product out of your claims.
In this case it is a patent application that may never issue.
The hardest part of all for Nokia is to get a succeessful form of plasma coating to work well enough for production parts, with a long enough life time, and a low enough cost (usually the killer in plasma coatings).
Slashdot Mirror
I put up my original provacative statement, because of the obvious issues involved in climate change, which are unresolved because of a lack of longer term data. In addition, it looks like some of the extra solar radiation in the last 50 years comes from higher sunspot activity compared to the previous 500 years.
... well...a dirty little secret, that Asia is the current leader in creation of this, as I have read reports.
1. You point out above higher CO2 levels in prehistory times when hominids existed 440,000 years ago, and that poses a problem for people and some scientists and certainly politicians obsessively focused on CO2 (what about other gases like dihydrogen oxide & methane).
2. Dust-soot may present a far larger "problem" as it obviously affects sunlight reaching the earth...yet no one seems to be talking about that much, as it is
3. Volcanoes are the largest Dust-soot-gas belchers of all in the earth, and about one eruption every 10 years, but many dozens of active volcanoes spewing things but not classified as errupting (Indonesia has 100 active volcanoes EVERY YEAR). How does this affect the Earth and how does that COMPARE to Humans? This is not trivial.
Scientists on Earth have noted the following:
1. Earth's polar cap ice is getting thinner, thus leading credence to "global warming", and is probably TRUE.
2. Mar's polar ice cap is getting thinner over the last half century, thus leading credence to...um...global warming.
3. Since there are humans on Earth, but no plants or people on Mars, there is a strong suspicion that increased Solar activity is the culprit.
Amazing things are found by scientists, as long as they get their noses out of their offices.
When you look at the total land required to "grow sugar", and the topsoil loss that you get, and the inevitable conflict between food production and sugar production, you realized that it is a far more complex issue for THE LONG RUN. Civilizations have collapsed in many places when topsoil was depleted by one of many ways it happens.
Ultimately geothermal, solar, wind, water current (fresh and salt) and various forms of nuclear will be the most desirable for sustainable energy. There is NO petro type liquid carbonaceous fuel that is not going to release some polutants in an internal combustion engine. The move to all electric started in 1983 with the first solid state high power "transistor" by Motorola & the following 20 years transformed electric products. The next 20 years are going to see even more dramatic change.
Autos on liquid fuels are inherently very inefficient. Not only are their big losses between drilling refining, all transport of the crude & fuel, but THEN, the final automobile is LESS than 20% efficient in converting fuel calories to wheel energy.
All electric vehicles will eventually win out, as batteries get better, lighter and less expensive, because eventually, each drive wheel is an electric motor. That works out ecologically, as the car becomes made of fewer & lighter pieces, and is more reusable, recyclable.
If there were actual facts Apple could have cited which gave them reason to make a valid legal claim, like public libelous statements, or statements made to affect Apple's share price or something similar, the litigation costs would be many millions minimum.
The way it is set up these days, even a small court case can wind up generating $25k-50k per month in billings to your firm, before you ever get anywhere near court, and then the fees go dramatically up during trial.
If you go to the Australian Patent Office you can track down basic info on Whisson's work.
What you quickly see from the info summary below is that the supposed "Wind water trap" Provisional Patent Application has lasped which might or might not mean ABANDONED, depending on Australian rules.
Provisional Application Details
Patent Application Type - Provisional
Australian Application Number - 2004900912
Applicant(s) - Max Whisson
Inventor(s) - Whisson, Maxwell Edmund
Title - Wind water trap
Status - Lapsed
Filing Date - 25 February 2004
Date of Patent - 25 February 2004
Agent / - Address for Legal Service - Max Whisson - 5/70 Subiaco Road Subiaco WA 6008 Australia
Whisson; Maxwell Edmund has at least 15 U.S. patents issued over 20 years.
Easy to check for yourself. Unfortunately that does not give info on air-water systems, and there is no info in searching the Patent Applications yet.
If you want to get water out of air, you need to cool a surface to condense out water or reduce the air pressure to cause RH to go to 100% to condense out @ ambient temperature, or you can use hygroscopic materials to absorb water directly out of the air, but then you have to extract the water from that material.
I think it was the Chilean military that figured out how to set up a "spiderweb" at night in the Atacama desert & water would condense out on the fibers and drain into a can, to support military in the field.
We will have to wait on Max's details it sounds like.
Even regular scam investment-retirement "opportunity" cons for large sums are not prosecuted.
A friend's inlaws lost $750,000 in retirement funds, and the County DA wouldn't prosecut the case. It was too small and would take too many attorney hours over a long time compared to the workload in the particular county (So.Cal.).
Bo
Sterling Hayden departed for a day voyage with a dozen or more friends on Wanderer out of San Francisco, and the next time anyone saw the yacht was when it entered Tahitian waters.
None of the guests had any idea they were being "Shanghaid". He didn't give them any choice.
See his book titled after his boat's name.
In addition to water temperature and ships posing lethality, there is one rarely talked about for any typical yacht. In my earlier years I designed sailboats, before I figured out it was all fun and no money.
I have a friend in high places at the Port of Los Angeles, and though the shipping companies do NOT like to talk about it, the ship grounding on the U.K. coast just a week ago illustrated the problem. Some dozens or a hundred containers or so came off the ship when it listed, and then some FLOATED ashore.
The numbers I have heard is about 10,000 containers a year 'go missing' overboard as a result of all sorts of problems in bad weather usually. I don't remember whether that was the Pacific only or worldwide.
Lots of these containers floating right near the water surface with any waves at all, are virtually impossible to see from any distance.
If you hit one in a fiberglass or a thin-skinned metal boat boat, you can take on water and sink in a minute or two if it is bad.
Lots of small boats go missing every year with no explanation.
Bill & Crew succeeded with Windows & MS Office where they got majority market share and kept it.
Now, just where else did they do that?
Portal, search, games, mobile, tablets?
Hmmm. I think I am right. No ability to move beyond the successful Windows & MSOffice.
I don't hate or dislike Bill Gates.
But Bill Gates does NOT have a demonstrable track record of innovation beyond the initial Operating System and Office Suite.
Bill & Ballmer do not have a demonstrated grasp of what is coming and shown it by becoming a majority market leader with new & innovative software &/or hardware.
So why should anyone listen to their prognostications?
Nothing about hate here. Nothing about dislike. This is all about observable fact.
You are quite observant.
Billy Gates did look a bit blue last time I saw him on the tube.
With luck he will suffer a BSOD episode, and Microsoft will be free of this nut case, who wouldn't know an innovative pair of vise grips if they bit him on the hand.
I never said he is an idiot. I also think BG & SB have kept MS on top by the sweat of a lot of programmers & not BG & SB's hard work (unless you call bullying work).
Bill Gates does NOT have a track record of coming up with innovative, cutting edge, next gen products. In fact, he doesn't have a good track record coming up with better products others already have done, & shall we go through them?
1. Zune...rhymes with doom, and it is not a game
2. IE...still going downhill after giving us malware-virus heaven
3. CE...mobile world does not know it exists
4. Cairo-Longhorn...time moves on, with less features
5. Media Center PCs...oohh a geek's delight
6. MS's Search...Uhhh Bill is too busy to use Google, and his secretary finds what he needs on his hard drive
Bill Gates and "The Chair" Ballmer are strictly into techniques designed to lock their OS & Office monopoly down tighter.
I seriously doubt Bill gates is even interested in TV personally...and that is probably an indication of how little Microsoft will do in that arena.
The only thing that will stand a chance of allowing shareholder value growth is breaking Microsoft up into pieces and letting all the brainpower in each division go wild in search of new products, because Bill & Steve are not going to do it.
Gates lucked into an OS deal where he wheedled and dealed and even tried to shut out a partner.
Then he tucked together pieces he plucked to form Office, where creative MS programmers put it all together.
But then listen to all the BS that came out of BG since and between Cairo, ME & CE, etc & the constant use of similar adjectives used to describe the next MS product or version, and what floats high on the surface of the water?
"S--t", thats what.
Why does ANYONE take this guy seriously? At this point all he is, is a rich philanthropist!
Sheesh.
I detailed the obvious faults of earlier phones. Some were so slick they would slip out of your hand. Lots of those problems don't exist anymore with newer phones. That was just the background. For someone who has used cell phones since 1984, I can say I am PO'd at the lack of reliability and consistency in the phones (beyond the first Motorola flip phones which were nearly indestructable). New ones are virtually disposables, where the cell provider wants you to get a new one every year or two.
I realize the newer competitive smart & advanced feature phones are filled with better features, much like the iPhone will have, though they have their own higher price in $s and time to learn it all, only to change with the next piece of hardware (& I had buttons not work consistently on my last Nokia phone: No help from Cingular on getting a replacement).
I have been totally unimpressed by my & my friends and wife's prior phone's consistency within one brand from one model to the next.
I am convinced Apple will be consistent and provide easy functionality for easy use and syncing with my Mac. I am sure Apple is going to release 3rd party applications or Widgets, but indeed, I expect to have Apple "Certify" the apps I would be able to load, so I don't get crumo software that has problems. I could easily see someone like HP making a 41CX or 12c application for calculations which would be logical for lots of users.
Apple is not going to make cell phones in 10 styles to try to act like Detroit. They are going to do a simple straightforward consistent simple style which is mostly intuitive, and allow us users to eventually connect via 3 or more different wireless regimes and via USB, so we can just get on with life without the crap of what is really mostly a disposable cheapo cell-phone mindset that carriers have put in front of users.
Take a look in the average cell-phone retail outlet. If there are less than 50 different size and shapes with maybe 20 different key pads, I would be surprised. Ask a salesperson, "Which is best for the Mac for syncing?" The answer I always get is "Well, I don't have a Mac, so..." I got a TMobile and then I ask where are the connection instructions for the Moto and get "its in the manual" & then when I say "no it is not", I get "they are online". That was a joke, as the online instructions were wrong. Lots of calls, and eventually I get someone who understands. Crazy.
This sort of experience is why so many people do not trust cell phone companies & service providers. They know the sales & service people mostly don't know and don't care. The sales people are probably commissioned and don't care what you buy as long as they can get you to buy one of the high end phones and ear phones. It is just like a clothes store. Buy what you like.
Apple is not going to play this game. Consistency, Clarity, Comprehensive, Concise user features which don't change every 6 months. Remember with "Swindler" at Apple in the 90s when they had a CPU lineup that looked like Ford Motor Company? It was rediculous. Nokia and LG look like that today. Apple is going to break out of the old way. Lots of competitors had better wake up quick, or Apple is going to get far more than 10% of the market.
Big organizations always seem to have a "wait and see & let someone else fix it attitude", after all, the VPs are always traveling around incessently attending conferences, mostly on the other side of the country or on an island outside the U.S.
Big $s means there will be a lot of "retirement" suggestions being quietly made over coffee prior to the ICANN meetings designed to keep the status quo.
I have no doubt the integration between Macs & iPhone is going to be ABSOLUTELY UNBEATABLE. I know Apple will keep the interface simple, even though I know they will upgrade it over time, I know from experience, I can rely on Apple to DELIVER easy to use functionality. I don't have countless hours to study new equipment and software for dozens of hours a month.
I have had so many phones that had crap that didn't work, every new phone had a different keypad buttons and menus & icons, and menu structure, and non were consistent or easy to sync (if possible at all) and the bluetooth earphone reliability was iffy.
Physically most wound up with so much lint in them, I'ld have to figure out how to disassemble them to blow the lint out. Antennas would break, battery cover doors would not latch right, and tape was the norm, and god help me if I had to read a screen in open sun.
I expect to buy 2 iPhones, one for my wife who can barely figure out how to do basic uses on her "LG" phone, so for once she can have her entire phone book on the iPhone along with calendar and notes, etc. This may be the godsend that finally means I can get her to stop using the inch thick phone & calendar book with the pages that get torn out.
For me to be able to move on and off the the phone, & web means I can simplify keeping in touch as just a starting point.
Should have had at least a brief discussion, as any laptop with business uses ought to have a way to do secure transmissions.
I thank God the scientists keep looking for patterns and physics to try to explain what we see in the geologic and solar record & current observations of the sun, as that is the ONLY WAY we will ever have a chance of really knowing what long term cycles are caused by. There may be 50 models and theories, but it will likely be a stew of dozens of researchers that finally get a theory that is solid enough to be verified and called a Proof, or tentative Proof.
Fact is, no one can yet show a proof of why, but we do know that Ice ages occurred dozens of times and when, but we can not yet prove what the underlieing factor is that causes the repetition (excluding the major "accidental" supermassive volcano or mega-asteroid).
That is what true science is for, which is to keep digging, sometimes literally, until you uncover the data and principals that can be independently verified and eventually acknowledged as fact.
But that is not convenient for politicians who want power, and bureaucrats who can manage whole new divisions of government if they get funding to try to act on something with the citizens money, when there is only speculation as to what is going on and to what degree, let alone whether we can actually do anything about it.
It is smart, very smart, if...
You get the drudge work standard maintenance & operations done by a trusted qualified vendor.
Medical Device firms have been specializing for the last 15-20 years and their is now an ISO standard for Strategic Partner relationships.
One company does manufacturing only for a range of "Medical Device Companies" but Strategic Partners often do all the manufacturing.
Only the trade secret, bleeding edge, developmental and core competancy items are retained in house.
And know better than to jump from the warming plate into the oven.
President's positions also have a short half-life, if they other reasons don't mean much.
I don't understand the internals, but it sounds like IBM like outsourcing.
WalMart is seeking guarantees of 100% uptime, no doubt, and leaving it to the support contractor to deliver, by my guess.
Bo
So tell me what an OS is worth with very good OSs going for:
1. Linux = $0.00 per copy
2. MacOSX = $190 per family pack for 5 computers
3. Windows VISTA = $400 or so for 1-2 computers
When something is virtually a pure commodity, and not where you do your work (the application is what is important), how much is it really worth?
In the stock market or the pharmacy or hardware store, you pick your screwdriver and you pay the price or you bid on it on eBay. When are Windows VISTA copies going to just be sold by Microsoft on eBay to the highest bidder, maybe 10 at a time?
Why does VISTA have any value? What great and wonderful end-user benefits accrue to acquiring such a behemoth?
What happens if VISTA is launched into Retail, and 85% of the users wants SP Pro instead. If 2 years out VISTA hasn't even reached 50% of the PC market, will VISTA be called the most expensive software blunder in history?
You can get the PATENT APPLICATION TO ISSUE & then make a viable product out of your claims.
In this case it is a patent application that may never issue.
The hardest part of all for Nokia is to get a succeessful form of plasma coating to work well enough for production parts, with a long enough life time, and a low enough cost (usually the killer in plasma coatings).
for a long time, unless you just like to pay to be a beta tester.
It is way too expensive to be a business user and wind up "testing" a new OS with no easy way to regress.
Win XP Pro is going to be an option to install on most PCs for a long long time.