Exclusivity deals are such a joke. I remember in the boom days sites like Excite would work all kinds of exclusive deals, always bending the rules a little bit.
Excite Dealmakers:
"E-Trade: You are our exclusive provider of finanical information, we'll brand the finance section with E-Trade logos, you'll provide content, blah blah"
"Ameritrade: You are our exclusive provider of 'personal' financial information (sorry E-Trade but 'personal finance' is different that 'finance'). we'll brand the section with Ameritrade logos, you'll provide content, blah blah"
Excite must have been using their Bill Clinton dictionary, "It depends on what your definition of exclusive is"
I have some insight into a NYTRG paper and have seen this issue from both sides of the fence.
One of the major issues is management (aren't they always getting in the way). Many papers are still run by people who have no idea how to utilize the internet. When a paper such as the WSJ makes an announcement about subscription revenue, the managers say, "Works for them, so it should work for us, let's fire up the registration servers!"
Unfortunately things that play at a major paper such as the WSJ or the NYT don't awlays translate to success at a small paper.
When I owned a large web development firm I was approached by a number of schools/institutes about guest lecturing (which was their way getting in the door to pitch hiring their students).
I agreed to talk at one course just to check out the quality of the students. SCARY!
What I wanted to say to them: You have absolutely no skill, and have no hope of getting a job. This 'school' is just scamming you for cash. Ever wonder how you could pass the intro class with such shit work? Well if you didn't pass then you would be back to pay for another course.
While all the focus has been on the super powers: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, a little known search engine called Serbia fired the first shot today.
During the press release announcing Yahoogoslavia's new search technology, their CTO, Franics Ferdinand, what hit in the face, and killed, with a pi algorithm.
The pi was launched by a Serbian coder, claiming victory for the common man. This blantant attack has upset the delicate balance of power and the combatants are quickly aligning themselves for a long drawn out trench war.
Switzerland is of course claiming neutrality, and the French are waiting to be occupied.
Dealing with states on taxes, specifically non-income tax related items is somewhat of a joke.
A friend who has a large retail operation on Florida once received a visit from the state. State said, you owe $91K in uncollected sales taxes according to our records. The state was really a single rep who most likely would receive incentives based upon the amount he collected.
Needless to say my friend hired an outside accountant to review everything and look at the claims. With some interesting results.
State agent returns to collect the money. My friend presents him with documentation and says, "we reviewed everything, and looks like we don't owe you $91K, in fact we overpaid $15K, so we need a refund."
Agent looked everything over, and said, he'd drop the claim and they'd call it even.
Let's see....we'll lay a bunch of fiber, way beyond the current demand, because as soon as we turn it on people will come out of the woodwork to lease it!
I can think of a few companies that we can plug in here, Qwest comes to mind first though.
I am no chemist, but with all the hydrogen peroxide on the surface, we just need to send an initial landing party of astronauts with lots of cuts and scabs.
As soon as the H2O2 hits the infected areas, instant oxygen and water!
A few hundred battle-scarred individuals and we'll have an inhabitable atmoshpere.
What's a good discussion without our friends at Verisign?
With RFID built into currency as an anit-counterfeit tool, now they will be able to cross-reference my cash-on-hand with products in the store. As I reach for the overpriced Ben-N-Jerry's a voice will say "you can't afford it bud!"
That's where DRM comes in. Soon the media lords will require that every device capable of creating content, i.e. pens, pencils. have DRM built in.
That way if you attempt to transcribe any document that you don't have rights to you'll immediately be apprehended. Or the pencil will explode in your hands.
The ChampionChip system is based upon a passive chip, which has some pros/cons over an active chip.
The system is composed of a few elements. The Readers which have large mats attached to them. The mats have a series of loops in them. One loop 'charges' the chip the other 'recieves' the chip.
The mats constantly send out a 'charge' signal to the chips which then send back their ID for the reader. This is happening at a very high frequently, for champion chip the time is rated to the.01 of a second.
The other major component is the Ear. The purpose of the Ear is to syncronize all the mats. This makes sure that all the 'charge' and 'recieve' cycles and in sync. Otherwise you would have chip reads happening out of sync.
As for the 'photo-finish' aspect of a race you still need to rely upon a photo for high speed events since it is possible that both athletes could register the same time to the.01 of a second.
For high density races we place a system (System Photo) right at the finish line. This system is usually 8M wide by 4M deep. Then a back-up a few meters beyond. The systems can be linked to form larger read areas. If you have ever been to a marathon you will know what I am talking about.
If the system is working correctly we can dedect a chip as high has 60CM off the ground. If we have strong EMI then the reads are a bit lower.
To avoid multiple reads we set a time to ignore for the system. Usually 10 seconds. So once we read a chip we won't read it again for 10 seconds. This can be an issue with a mass start since people may be walking over the mats and end up on the same mat for a few seconds.
Most systems will ignore RFID tags from outside a certain range. I work with a race timing company and we use a RFID timing system (ChampionChip). We constantly get bogus reads from other chip sources. The software that transfers the chip IDs to the timing software ignores any chips that aren't valid Champion Chips.
Like many of the stories here I used to quickly disregard the instructions for any set and compile all my kits to build bigger and better things.
Space Shuttles with working bay doors, landing year, robotic arm.
Guns of all makes, and a working crossbow. I used the lances from the castle kits as the bolts, very cool and would cause some bodily harm if you shot it at your 4 year-old neighbor.
My biggest creations were always massive submarines. They would have between 4 and 6 torpedo tubes (I would use the shock absorbers from the technic cars to launch the torpedoes) and missile tubes. I would also build primitive propellors and drive them with model rubber bands. The big problem was always flotation. All that air trapped inside the sealed blocks caused a problem. The solution for me turned out to be a coin slot on both ends. I would weight the thing down with various coins just to make it go below the surface (had to have a 'bank' on both ends to keep it level). I build these things up until I was about 14 with the longest one being 5 feet.
Now I have a 2 year old and I play with his Duplos. Can't wait to get him the regular kits. I still buy the Technic kits of Formula 1 cars (Ferrari, Jordan, McLaren, Williams) even though most of them are the same kit at a different scale and with different colors.
Slashdot Mirror
I always use:
username@domainname.com
or my ex-girlfriends e-mail address
Exclusivity deals are such a joke. I remember in the boom days sites like Excite would work all kinds of exclusive deals, always bending the rules a little bit.
Excite Dealmakers:
"E-Trade: You are our exclusive provider of finanical information, we'll brand the finance section with E-Trade logos, you'll provide content, blah blah"
"Ameritrade: You are our exclusive provider of 'personal' financial information (sorry E-Trade but 'personal finance' is different that 'finance'). we'll brand the section with Ameritrade logos, you'll provide content, blah blah"
Excite must have been using their Bill Clinton dictionary, "It depends on what your definition of exclusive is"
So when can we expect them to build the KC-135 tanker and re-fuel in the air?
Do you have any information (links) about the rental service?
In addition to protecting you from attacking bears, it will also protect you from getting laid.
If I took my shower curtain and stuck it in the microwave for about 3 minutes a few times a week?
Or would the bacteria mutate into a super-resistant strain that would eventually kill mankind?
Yeah it's kind of like:
Your wife has slept with 80 other men, or was it 200?
Either way, it's not good for you.
So how long will it take Google to add their S-1 filing to the index?
Or perhaps, is a Google-bomb in the works?
I have some insight into a NYTRG paper and have seen this issue from both sides of the fence.
One of the major issues is management (aren't they always getting in the way). Many papers are still run by people who have no idea how to utilize the internet. When a paper such as the WSJ makes an announcement about subscription revenue, the managers say, "Works for them, so it should work for us, let's fire up the registration servers!"
Unfortunately things that play at a major paper such as the WSJ or the NYT don't awlays translate to success at a small paper.
Actually they are getting ready to start filming 'Ocean's Twelve' the sequel. Perhaps an issue with pre-production work :-)
Maybe they should call CSI?
- Speaks fluent international "caveman".
It's nice to see more interest in 'caveman', unlike dying languages such as Latin or 'Furby'.
Although 'caveman' is not a selection at Babel Fish yet.
Blatantly policital:
Good thing he didn't name it HomoSapien, or the Terminator/Gov. of California (difficult to tell which part is more of a stretch) would say:
What a Homo Robot? That is illegal!
When I owned a large web development firm I was approached by a number of schools/institutes about guest lecturing (which was their way getting in the door to pitch hiring their students).
I agreed to talk at one course just to check out the quality of the students. SCARY!
What I wanted to say to them:
You have absolutely no skill, and have no hope of getting a job. This 'school' is just scamming you for cash. Ever wonder how you could pass the intro class with such shit work? Well if you didn't pass then you would be back to pay for another course.
While all the focus has been on the super powers: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, a little known search engine called Serbia fired the first shot today.
During the press release announcing Yahoogoslavia's new search technology, their CTO, Franics Ferdinand, what hit in the face, and killed, with a pi algorithm.
The pi was launched by a Serbian coder, claiming victory for the common man. This blantant attack has upset the delicate balance of power and the combatants are quickly aligning themselves for a long drawn out trench war.
Switzerland is of course claiming neutrality, and the French are waiting to be occupied.
Dealing with states on taxes, specifically non-income tax related items is somewhat of a joke.
A friend who has a large retail operation on Florida once received a visit from the state. State said, you owe $91K in uncollected sales taxes according to our records. The state was really a single rep who most likely would receive incentives based upon the amount he collected.
Needless to say my friend hired an outside accountant to review everything and look at the claims. With some interesting results.
State agent returns to collect the money. My friend presents him with documentation and says, "we reviewed everything, and looks like we don't owe you $91K, in fact we overpaid $15K, so we need a refund."
Agent looked everything over, and said, he'd drop the claim and they'd call it even.
{$Company Name} Business Plan:
Let's see....we'll lay a bunch of fiber, way beyond the current demand, because as soon as we turn it on people will come out of the woodwork to lease it!
I can think of a few companies that we can plug in here, Qwest comes to mind first though.
I am no chemist, but with all the hydrogen peroxide on the surface, we just need to send an initial landing party of astronauts with lots of cuts and scabs.
As soon as the H2O2 hits the infected areas, instant oxygen and water!
A few hundred battle-scarred individuals and we'll have an inhabitable atmoshpere.
Ignorant Client: So you say you've secured all my paper records
Scam Artist: Yep, that's correct
IC: All you did was run them thru my copier, I don't see anything different
SA: That's because we used 'double-secret Invisible Mode'
IC: How do I know their secure?
SA: Just take this device and point it at your documents. If it doesn't make a sound your all set.
IC: Well this morning's paper doesn't register anything?
SA: That's becuase they're also a client.
With RFID built into currency as an anit-counterfeit tool, now they will be able to cross-reference my cash-on-hand with products in the store. As I reach for the overpriced Ben-N-Jerry's a voice will say "you can't afford it bud!"
That's where DRM comes in. Soon the media lords will require that every device capable of creating content, i.e. pens, pencils. have DRM built in.
That way if you attempt to transcribe any document that you don't have rights to you'll immediately be apprehended. Or the pencil will explode in your hands.
That way all the 'cool' kids who get barcode tat's on their bodies can be serially controlled.
The system is composed of a few elements. The Readers which have large mats attached to them. The mats have a series of loops in them. One loop 'charges' the chip the other 'recieves' the chip.
The mats constantly send out a 'charge' signal to the chips which then send back their ID for the reader. This is happening at a very high frequently, for champion chip the time is rated to the .01 of a second.
The other major component is the Ear. The purpose of the Ear is to syncronize all the mats. This makes sure that all the 'charge' and 'recieve' cycles and in sync. Otherwise you would have chip reads happening out of sync.
As for the 'photo-finish' aspect of a race you still need to rely upon a photo for high speed events since it is possible that both athletes could register the same time to the .01 of a second.
For high density races we place a system (System Photo) right at the finish line. This system is usually 8M wide by 4M deep. Then a back-up a few meters beyond. The systems can be linked to form larger read areas. If you have ever been to a marathon you will know what I am talking about.
If the system is working correctly we can dedect a chip as high has 60CM off the ground. If we have strong EMI then the reads are a bit lower.
To avoid multiple reads we set a time to ignore for the system. Usually 10 seconds. So once we read a chip we won't read it again for 10 seconds. This can be an issue with a mass start since people may be walking over the mats and end up on the same mat for a few seconds.
Most systems will ignore RFID tags from outside a certain range. I work with a race timing company and we use a RFID timing system (ChampionChip). We constantly get bogus reads from other chip sources. The software that transfers the chip IDs to the timing software ignores any chips that aren't valid Champion Chips.
I guess his home page content is not microscopic. 68.3K?
Like many of the stories here I used to quickly disregard the instructions for any set and compile all my kits to build bigger and better things.
Space Shuttles with working bay doors, landing year, robotic arm.
Guns of all makes, and a working crossbow. I used the lances from the castle kits as the bolts, very cool and would cause some bodily harm if you shot it at your 4 year-old neighbor.
My biggest creations were always massive submarines. They would have between 4 and 6 torpedo tubes (I would use the shock absorbers from the technic cars to launch the torpedoes) and missile tubes. I would also build primitive propellors and drive them with model rubber bands. The big problem was always flotation. All that air trapped inside the sealed blocks caused a problem. The solution for me turned out to be a coin slot on both ends. I would weight the thing down with various coins just to make it go below the surface (had to have a 'bank' on both ends to keep it level). I build these things up until I was about 14 with the longest one being 5 feet.
Now I have a 2 year old and I play with his Duplos. Can't wait to get him the regular kits. I still buy the Technic kits of Formula 1 cars (Ferrari, Jordan, McLaren, Williams) even though most of them are the same kit at a different scale and with different colors.