Personally I would be happier with a time based order of cards
To quote the OP....keep business cards in chronological order
Chronological order is a time based ordering of them.
place all contacts in your gmail account, that way its 100% accessible even if your house burns down or you loose your folder in a taxi.
Every picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words takes fifteen minutes to type. (IE, Never confuse data entry with data archival.)
Simply scanning each binder page, rolling it into a multipage TIFF/PDF and tossing the whole shebang onto a CD accomplishes permanent, portable, electronically accessable archival. No contextual information is lost either, he is still free to remember it was the red card right right before the graphic artist.
Entering the data for thousands of contacts would take weeks. (envelope math: 60wpm, 30wpc, 10s isd, 5000 contacts = seven work days with no breaks?)
Scanning the thing on even an old flatbed unit would only take hours. (16 cpp, 1ppm, 5000 contacts = 5 hours?) Your average $2000 ADF unit would have it done in 30 minutes or less. Some of the nicer models these days will do 60ppm, full duplex, color, and likes cardstock. They'll do a job like this in about six minutes. Well, 15. Five to seperate and load the material, six to scan it, and a few 1 minute jams because they always jam on cardstock, and will really like to jam on cardstock in plastic.
Heck, taking the whole thing down to Kinko's and having them just Xerox it would mostly suffice.
Your average cleaning slave may be paid quite well, actually.
Why? Because of theft.
Any decent cleaning company operates on one of two theories. "Turnover and volume" or "Quality & Requests".
The T&V model (any huge faceless, outsourced cleaning company uses this) pays their employees marginally more than going rate for manual labor. (Ten years ago, $6.50/hr starting with bennies was common in Detroit) As a result, a certain percentage of employees steal, and a certain percentage of contracts are lost. When you have 300 contracts, losing 25-30 of them would be normal. You just underbid another 30 that month and hike rates at the 6 month mark before they've noticed your employees have been raiding the supply closet, stealing laptop computers to pawn, rummaging the desks for change.
The Q&R model (If you have to worry about not getting the cleaning crew the same cheesy gift two Christmasses in a row, you have one of these) pays their employees as well as your average college grad fresh out on the market. (Say $10-12/hr. Also as of ten years ago, in Detroit.) Their employees don't steal. They also operate on a much smaller contract base (say 5 or less). Losing a contract means laying off someone. The downside to a Q&R is they eventually trim corners due to familiarity. "Oh, the break room looks like crap. I'm going to spray it down with cleanser and mop it dry to get them through tomorrow 'till I have time to do it properly. The only one who will even notice is David and he needs to stop being so anal." is the worst you'll see out of them. The upside is they'll do any esoteric clean up job, scheduled or not, just by request.
Consider half the commercial space is T&V, the other half Q&R.
All the high-button count Logitech and Microsoft mice I have used are huge in comparison. I have rather small hands. I'm six foot one, male, but when I have to buy gloves, I usually have to buy 'ladies small' to get something that fits. I'm not about to buy some sub-compact laptop mouse either, the damn things are too small for any human over the age of five, including me.
What it's missing over my first mouse? Weight. I'd like a little more heft in it if I could have it. I find myself lifting it off the desk unintentionally far more often than I would with a heavier mouse. Anything else it's missing is probably just nostalgia speaking.
does not work with Windows yet (no words on Linux)
I'm disappointed. And it's expensive too.
It's probably a standard BT HID device. I'm 90% sure it works out of the box on both Linux and Windows. The scroll ball may be a problem in horizontal mode in Linux/X, but that's not something that'll stop me from buying one when my current MightyMouse dies to a fit of Guinness and rage when I spill a beer on it and get pissed it doesn't like the liquid.
They just haven't done all the testing to make sure it's supported on all BT capable flavours of Windows, and they never test for Linux compatibility anyway.
Mouse is really designed to be plugged in to the USB hub of the keyboard next to it. You know, the Apple Pro with the 6 foot cable?
the ball sometimes doesn't work (push really really hard and roll to fix it)
Better way to fix it; Alcohol on the roller ball, copious amounts. Roll the ball on a clean cloth. You'll be surprised how much crap it has gathered off your fingers.
Best way. Slice the retaining ring off the bottom shell of your mouse. Pop the darn thing apart. Two press fit ribbons and a small phillips, then you can clean the scrollball better. It just snaps apart, and the magnetic rollers only go in one way.
the side buttons only act as 1 button.
Its only a four button mouse. Right, left, both, side button(s). You might be better off buying a 5 button mouse, the buttons on the Apple mouse are nearly impossible to get an accurate single side click on. It's more like a four finger squeeze. (Ring and thumb, middle and fore aloft)
I use a Mighty Mouse. Bought it launch day. Went in to see what a PPC Mini was running after 'partner' discount, as I wanted to replace an antique RS PPC machine. Love the damn thing to death. Second best mouse I have owned, and the first best is heavily colored by the fact it was my *first* one 25 years ago.
If you're a hunter, it's not uncommon to own one gun for every animal you hunt. You don't pound in finishing nails with a 10lb sledge, why would you hunt deer with a.22?
Then you have law enforcement officers. You've got a sidearm, a "holdout piece", another gun for off-duty range practice, mabye a shotgun in the car.
There's a strong "toy" factor. Look at music players. A couple people I know are on their fourth MP3 player, and that doesn't count the cell phone that doubles as one, or their PDA, or the pile of CD players, Walkman, and portable radios the MP3 players replaced. The allure is just as strong for gun-nuts. Even though their current gun(s) will probably continue working for the next two or three lifetimes with care, the new model is better! More accurate! Lower recoil! Lighter! And it's only $249.99!
How THAT mechanism works... wow, that's not a simple problem. It has to be automatic and take no operator action to enable. Maybe something like an embedded RFID tag would work.. but those can be spoofed... this is not an easy fix.
The problem wouldn't be spoofing. The gain from being able to fire someone elses weapon without the key tag is so unlikely it would only be interesting to defense attorneys.
What you would need to worry about are tracking gun owners via the RFID tag, and disabling said tag.
Want to rob somewhere? Sniff the place for "gun tags". You now know how many guns there are, mabye what manufacturer made em. You can also disable RFID about a half a dozen ways, effectivly disarming your victim.
There are already a couple of different magneto-mechanical systems available. If you're worried about someone taking your gun from you, use one of those. No batteries, no computer chips to scramble, and they even a retrofit weapon is only slightly more bulky. (Truthfully, they're easy to defeat. But if someone just took your gun from you, he's interested in using it on you now, not after spending a minute or two disabling it.)
Not just that, but learn from a couple different types of player.. Right now, the AI in most games seems to settle on one and only strategy to win. While learning from players is a step, the logical next step is to learn from several types of players.
Say you're playing a FPS. Among players you have kamikazes, base campers, spawn campers, and the guys that run straight for a place to snipe the enemy, to name a few.
How much more interesting would it be to say "AI1, you're a kamikaze. Go draw their fire. AI2, you're a base camper. AI3, you're a sniper. I'm going to go grab some grenades and have fun Kentucky fishing by their flag" when forced to play with AI in your faction?
Hand modified "rev b" boards.. Every major manufacturer had em. So thick with a spiders web of enamelled wire patching flaws you were amazed they functioned.
Drive platters. I have a few the size of small car tires. People always get wowed when I explain they hold far less data than a floppy disc.
Memory boards. I have a Hewlett Packard board that holds 128 megabytes of memory. At 18x12x2 and a couple pounds, setting it next to a DRAM chip stripped from a modern DIMM usually elicits a 'WHOA'.
I seem to recall a lot of the early ham equipment for 13cm consisted of not much more than a key, a stubby waveguide, and a microwave oven. Well, they did have the decency to PLL the magnetron at least, but I can't imagine it would have impacted the ability to cook food too much..
On a slightly related note, the USPS pays EXTRA to get vehicles without air conditioning and radios. I guess this improves gas mileage.
Removing the AC sure does. 10% better mileage on the outside.
Removing the radio, well. That supposedly cuts down on accidents. Don't want a PS employee running over some schoolkid because he had Pantera at '11'. At least that's the excuse I've heard from every company I've worked for that ran delivery or job-site vehicles, and I'm inclined to believe it.
The $39.99/data, $39.99/voice is their business plan.
There is indeed a $19.99 consumer unlimited data plan. I think you need a $30/mo+ voice plan to get it, and it only applies to one phone, not the entire account.
Data rate is whatever your phone is capable of. I used to use it with a GPRS phone over USB, (think 56K modem) now I use it with a EDGE phone over BT (Think slow DSL).
I think there are seperate plans for 3G, only slightly more expensive, but as my W600I doesn't do 3G, I didn't pay attention while the girlfriend was blabbing about them. (She's a Cingular data support lackey)
They'd get protection from having to reveal their sources too.
Actually, I misspoke.
Reporters can be ordered to reveal their sources, so that the source can be prosecuted or gone after in a civil action in many cases. They can be held in contempt for failure to do so as well.
They cannot, however, be attacked in this manner for trade secret violation.
If a reporter at the NYTimes comes into posession of information that is some company's trade secret and publishes it, is that protected under the first amendment?
Yes.
What about the Paducah Post? Does it have to do with simply bineg published?
They'd get protection from having to reveal their sources too.
the amount circulation the periodical receives?
You can run off forty copies on a Xerox machine and hand them out on a street-corner or coffee-shop, and you enjoy the full protection of the law.
But somehow "bloggers" appear to be different from "news sites", such as CNet (I dare say them announcing the move to Intel chips was a fair bit more damaging of a "trade secret" than some cancelled bit of GarageBand hardware), and shouldn't enjoy the same priviledges, despite sharing the same medium, material, and purpose.
There used to be a metric. Karma was expressed in points, any amount over 20 was pointless.
But that lead to folks opening mutiple accounts just to moderate themselves up, and the reviled process known as "karma whoring".. Scan a thread of 0 and 1 rated posts, condense all the good points into your own without attribution, and post at +2.. Guaranteed few more karma.
That said, I had a few hundred karma. Each point representing one positive moderation. Another fellow, Signal 11, had three times mine.
I experience at most a 10%-15% performance hit running games with Cedega/Debian over Windows XP. The system is drastically overbuilt for the games I was then (and still am) playing, so I don't care much.
One of them was Everquest. With my standard settings (rather high),I was managing a nice 60-70fps in open conditions and 35 in "raid" conditions under Windows XP. Same settings, same machine, Nvidia binary drivers and Cedega, 55-65fps/30fps. Max framerate didn't change, was about 120fps with either.
Most games were approximatly the same as Everquest; They were more CPU/RAM bound than video.
WoW in OpenGL mode was probably indistinguishable as far as framerate goes.
Even with a fully locked network, what's to stop the employees from walking out the door with data?
If your competitor wants your data, he will have it.
Lock the network, prevent software installs? USB stick, done. DRM the files to a machine? Steal the machine. Blame the cleaning crew. DRM the files to the local network? Print em, stick it in a folder, walk out the door. Lock the network, DRM the machine, break USB, DRM to a license server, search your employees? Throw it away in the trash. Pick a break room, toss it in with the coffee grounds and dumpster dive for it later.
Your employees will leak information if they want to. Odds are, your competition isn't all that interested, and even if they were, could get the information in much more legal ways. Like calling your customers, or vendors, or hiring your employees away. Which, if you've gone all the way down on information and physical security without a need, are not likely to stay long.
Patents, unlike their Mickey Mouse extended brethren, are still limited in term.
Why would someone who believes in market economy and free competition support the government handing out monopolies?
No matter how big or skillful a company is, someone else will one up you.
Say I design the holy grail of automotive technology. I spend years researching optimal mix ratios, air flow diagrams, doing computer modelling to increase burn efficiency. End result, it doubles the mileage of your average gas guzzler.
Now, with a patent, I stand to recover my money invested at very least, if only by selling it to Conoco-Phillips for them to bury.
Without a patent? I'll get mabye two months making it on my own to recover costs before everyone knocks it off and I'm irrelevant. I probably won't make back anything near research cost before you can buy a Hong Kong knockoff version made by Chinese slave labor for less than my cost to have it machined.
Patents allow innovation in the marketplace by giving inventors incentive to innovate. (My god, that just sounded wrong.)
Now, patents on some stuff. Just silly.
Business models? Shouldn't get one. Every business model under the sun has been tried at one point or another; Just because it now involves a computer doesn't make it new. Reverse auctions? Nothing new there, lots of secondary market resellers do just that, with phones and faxes. One click checkout? You used to see it on Little House on the Prarie reruns, when Pa would tell the clerk to put the groceries on his tab and deliver em.
Gene patents? Meh. If you discover a gene that controls, say, heart disease, and then you develop a specific way of changing that gene, sure, you can have a patent. But "Our computer search of the sequence shows this bit may or may not have an effect on vascular plaque, so we're going to patent this sequence" is bull.
Thousands shot to death in gang turf wars. Chicago alone was supposedly home to 800 dead in a dozen years. Thousands dead or injured from bad, tainted, or poisonous concoctions. Smugglers, runners, and illegal manufacturers rich beyond belief. Houses in every block offering a cheap high.
That was Prohibition.
Since it ended, things have been much calmer, wouldn't you agree?
Slashdot Mirror
Zebra is cruel. But it doesn't stop the lion.
The lion is cruel. The zebra is merely slow.
Personally I would be happier with a time based order of cards
..keep business cards in chronological order
To quote the OP..
Chronological order is a time based ordering of them.
place all contacts in your gmail account, that way its 100% accessible even if your house burns
down or you loose your folder in a taxi.
Every picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words takes fifteen minutes to type.
(IE, Never confuse data entry with data archival.)
Simply scanning each binder page, rolling it into a multipage TIFF/PDF and tossing the whole shebang onto a CD accomplishes permanent, portable, electronically accessable archival. No contextual information is lost either, he is still free to remember it was the red card right right before the graphic artist.
Entering the data for thousands of contacts would take weeks. (envelope math: 60wpm, 30wpc, 10s isd, 5000 contacts = seven work days with no breaks?)
Scanning the thing on even an old flatbed unit would only take hours. (16 cpp, 1ppm, 5000 contacts = 5 hours?)
Your average $2000 ADF unit would have it done in 30 minutes or less. Some of the nicer models these days will do 60ppm, full duplex, color, and likes cardstock. They'll do a job like this in about six minutes. Well, 15. Five to seperate and load the material, six to scan it, and a few 1 minute jams because they always jam on cardstock, and will really like to jam on cardstock in plastic.
Heck, taking the whole thing down to Kinko's and having them just Xerox it would mostly suffice.
Your average cleaning slave may be paid quite well, actually.
Why? Because of theft.
Any decent cleaning company operates on one of two theories. "Turnover and volume" or "Quality & Requests".
The T&V model (any huge faceless, outsourced cleaning company uses this) pays their employees marginally more than going rate for manual labor. (Ten years ago, $6.50/hr starting with bennies was common in Detroit)
As a result, a certain percentage of employees steal, and a certain percentage of contracts are lost.
When you have 300 contracts, losing 25-30 of them would be normal. You just underbid another 30 that month and hike rates at the 6 month mark before they've noticed your employees have been raiding the supply closet, stealing laptop computers to pawn, rummaging the desks for change.
The Q&R model (If you have to worry about not getting the cleaning crew the same cheesy gift two Christmasses in a row, you have one of these) pays their employees as well as your average college grad fresh out on the market. (Say $10-12/hr. Also as of ten years ago, in Detroit.)
Their employees don't steal. They also operate on a much smaller contract base (say 5 or less). Losing a contract means laying off someone.
The downside to a Q&R is they eventually trim corners due to familiarity.
"Oh, the break room looks like crap. I'm going to spray it down with cleanser and mop it dry to get them through tomorrow 'till I have time to do it properly. The only one who will even notice is David and he needs to stop being so anal." is the worst you'll see out of them.
The upside is they'll do any esoteric clean up job, scheduled or not, just by request.
Consider half the commercial space is T&V, the other half Q&R.
All the high-button count Logitech and Microsoft mice I have used are huge in comparison. I have rather small hands. I'm six foot one, male, but when I have to buy gloves, I usually have to buy 'ladies small' to get something that fits. I'm not about to buy some sub-compact laptop mouse either, the damn things are too small for any human over the age of five, including me.
What it's missing over my first mouse? Weight. I'd like a little more heft in it if I could have it. I find myself lifting it off the desk unintentionally far more often than I would with a heavier mouse. Anything else it's missing is probably just nostalgia speaking.
does not work with Windows yet (no words on Linux)
I'm disappointed. And it's expensive too.
It's probably a standard BT HID device. I'm 90% sure it works out of the box on both Linux and Windows. The scroll ball may be a problem in horizontal mode in Linux/X, but that's not something that'll stop me from buying one when my current MightyMouse dies to a fit of Guinness and rage when I spill a beer on it and get pissed it doesn't like the liquid.
They just haven't done all the testing to make sure it's supported on all BT capable flavours of Windows, and they never test for Linux compatibility anyway.
Really short cord
Mouse is really designed to be plugged in to the USB hub of the keyboard next to it. You know, the Apple Pro with the 6 foot cable?
the ball sometimes doesn't work (push really really hard and roll to fix it)
Better way to fix it; Alcohol on the roller ball, copious amounts. Roll the ball on a clean cloth. You'll be surprised how much crap it has gathered off your fingers.
Best way. Slice the retaining ring off the bottom shell of your mouse. Pop the darn thing apart. Two press fit ribbons and a small phillips, then you can clean the scrollball better. It just snaps apart, and the magnetic rollers only go in one way.
the side buttons only act as 1 button.
Its only a four button mouse. Right, left, both, side button(s). You might be better off buying a 5 button mouse, the buttons on the Apple mouse are nearly impossible to get an accurate single side click on. It's more like a four finger squeeze. (Ring and thumb, middle and fore aloft)
I use a Mighty Mouse. Bought it launch day. Went in to see what a PPC Mini was running after 'partner' discount, as I wanted to replace an antique RS PPC machine. Love the damn thing to death. Second best mouse I have owned, and the first best is heavily colored by the fact it was my *first* one 25 years ago.
I am often the only paladin on raids. I feel your pain. But you just have to be a little more assertive.
"Can I have BoW not BoK"
"Only if you can convince the other four hunters."
"BoK please"
"Wait a couple minutes till I have to rebuff everyone."
"BoS please"
"No. Try waiting for assist call, you won't get eaten."
"BoW is going out"
"We're clearing trash still, and you're FM. Summon yourself some water and get over it."
"Where's my damn BoK!"
"Haven't cast it. Quit being pushy or heals will stop being cast too, Mister 'Likes-to-break-sheep'."
touch a oxygen tank under preassure and its cold
Nope.
Liquified gasses can exist at any temperature. The higher the pressure, the higher the boiling point of the liquid.
It works just like how water boils. In Denver, water boils at about 203 F. Increase the pressure, by moving to Boston, it now boils at 212 F.
Letting some of the gas out a tank will, however, make it cold.
If you're a hunter, it's not uncommon to own one gun for every animal you hunt. You don't pound in finishing nails with a 10lb sledge, why would you hunt deer with a .22?
Then you have law enforcement officers. You've got a sidearm, a "holdout piece", another gun for off-duty range practice, mabye a shotgun in the car.
There's a strong "toy" factor. Look at music players. A couple people I know are on their fourth MP3 player, and that doesn't count the cell phone that doubles as one, or their PDA, or the pile of CD players, Walkman, and portable radios the MP3 players replaced. The allure is just as strong for gun-nuts. Even though their current gun(s) will probably continue working for the next two or three lifetimes with care, the new model is better! More accurate! Lower recoil! Lighter! And it's only $249.99!
How THAT mechanism works... wow, that's not a simple problem. It has to be automatic and take no operator action to enable. Maybe something like an embedded RFID tag would work.. but those can be spoofed... this is not an easy fix.
The problem wouldn't be spoofing. The gain from being able to fire someone elses weapon without the key tag is so unlikely it would only be interesting to defense attorneys.
What you would need to worry about are tracking gun owners via the RFID tag, and disabling said tag.
Want to rob somewhere? Sniff the place for "gun tags". You now know how many guns there are, mabye what manufacturer made em. You can also disable RFID about a half a dozen ways, effectivly disarming your victim.
There are already a couple of different magneto-mechanical systems available. If you're worried about someone taking your gun from you, use one of those. No batteries, no computer chips to scramble, and they even a retrofit weapon is only slightly more bulky. (Truthfully, they're easy to defeat. But if someone just took your gun from you, he's interested in using it on you now, not after spending a minute or two disabling it.)
Not just that, but learn from a couple different types of player.. Right now, the AI in most games seems to settle on one and only strategy to win. While learning from players is a step, the logical next step is to learn from several types of players.
Say you're playing a FPS. Among players you have kamikazes, base campers, spawn campers, and the guys that run straight for a place to snipe the enemy, to name a few.
How much more interesting would it be to say "AI1, you're a kamikaze. Go draw their fire. AI2, you're a base camper. AI3, you're a sniper. I'm going to go grab some grenades and have fun Kentucky fishing by their flag" when forced to play with AI in your faction?
I have a fair amount of, shall we say, junk.
The stuff that amuses folks the most?
Hand modified "rev b" boards.. Every major manufacturer had em. So thick with a spiders web of enamelled wire patching flaws you were amazed they functioned.
Drive platters. I have a few the size of small car tires. People always get wowed when I explain they hold far less data than a floppy disc.
Memory boards. I have a Hewlett Packard board that holds 128 megabytes of memory. At 18x12x2 and a couple pounds, setting it next to a DRAM chip stripped from a modern DIMM usually elicits a 'WHOA'.
I seem to recall a lot of the early ham equipment for 13cm consisted of not much more than a key, a stubby waveguide, and a microwave oven. Well, they did have the decency to PLL the magnetron at least, but I can't imagine it would have impacted the ability to cook food too much..
On a slightly related note, the USPS pays EXTRA to get vehicles without air conditioning and radios. I guess this improves gas mileage.
Removing the AC sure does. 10% better mileage on the outside.
Removing the radio, well. That supposedly cuts down on accidents. Don't want a PS employee running over some schoolkid because he had Pantera at '11'. At least that's the excuse I've heard from every company I've worked for that ran delivery or job-site vehicles, and I'm inclined to believe it.
The $39.99/data, $39.99/voice is their business plan.
There is indeed a $19.99 consumer unlimited data plan. I think you need a $30/mo+ voice plan to get it, and it only applies to one phone, not the entire account.
Data rate is whatever your phone is capable of. I used to use it with a GPRS phone over USB, (think 56K modem) now I use it with a EDGE phone over BT (Think slow DSL).
I think there are seperate plans for 3G, only slightly more expensive, but as my W600I doesn't do 3G, I didn't pay attention while the girlfriend was blabbing about them. (She's a Cingular data support lackey)
They'd get protection from having to reveal their sources too.
Actually, I misspoke.
Reporters can be ordered to reveal their sources, so that the source can be prosecuted or gone after in a civil action in many cases. They can be held in contempt for failure to do so as well.
They cannot, however, be attacked in this manner for trade secret violation.
If a reporter at the NYTimes comes into posession of information that is some company's trade secret and publishes it, is that protected under the first amendment?
Yes.
What about the Paducah Post? Does it have to do with simply bineg published?
They'd get protection from having to reveal their sources too.
the amount circulation the periodical receives?
You can run off forty copies on a Xerox machine and hand them out on a street-corner or coffee-shop, and you enjoy the full protection of the law.
But somehow "bloggers" appear to be different from "news sites", such as CNet (I dare say them announcing the move to Intel chips was a fair bit more damaging of a "trade secret" than some cancelled bit of GarageBand hardware), and shouldn't enjoy the same priviledges, despite sharing the same medium, material, and purpose.
And here I was looking at it funny, thinking :
"Since when do car manufacturers do E3?"
But that couldn't be it. Slashdot wouldn't cover car news! Start up the lateral thinking thrusters!
"Well, they used to refer to IBM, Amdahl and Hitachi as the Big Three too I guess. But they won't exactly be at E3 either."
No go on that decisive thrust into thought. I fell back to 'Attack Plan Beta':
"IBM, HP, and Compaq? That must be it! Err. Compaq bought HP."
"No, wait. HP bought Compaq."
"Could it be IBM, HP and Dell? That must be it!"
Then I see the article, and was most unimpressed.
The Big Three are General Motors, Ford, and (Daimler-)Chrysler, boys. Have been since since the 60's.
There used to be a metric. Karma was expressed in points, any amount over 20 was pointless.
But that lead to folks opening mutiple accounts just to moderate themselves up, and the reviled process known as "karma whoring".. Scan a thread of 0 and 1 rated posts, condense all the good points into your own without attribution, and post at +2.. Guaranteed few more karma.
That said, I had a few hundred karma. Each point representing one positive moderation. Another fellow, Signal 11, had three times mine.
Hmm? Was there something untruthful in his statement?
Only problem is, it would be made out of plastic.
And more dead chavs is a problem how?
I experience at most a 10%-15% performance hit running games with Cedega/Debian over Windows XP. The system is drastically overbuilt for the games I was then (and still am) playing, so I don't care much.
One of them was Everquest. With my standard settings (rather high),I was managing a nice 60-70fps in open conditions and 35 in "raid" conditions under Windows XP. Same settings, same machine, Nvidia binary drivers and Cedega, 55-65fps/30fps. Max framerate didn't change, was about 120fps with either.
Most games were approximatly the same as Everquest; They were more CPU/RAM bound than video.
WoW in OpenGL mode was probably indistinguishable as far as framerate goes.
Even with a fully locked network, what's to stop the employees from walking out the door with data?
If your competitor wants your data, he will have it.
Lock the network, prevent software installs?
USB stick, done.
DRM the files to a machine?
Steal the machine. Blame the cleaning crew.
DRM the files to the local network?
Print em, stick it in a folder, walk out the door.
Lock the network, DRM the machine, break USB, DRM to a license server, search your employees?
Throw it away in the trash. Pick a break room, toss it in with the coffee grounds and dumpster dive for it later.
Your employees will leak information if they want to. Odds are, your competition isn't all that interested, and even if they were, could get the information in much more legal ways. Like calling your customers, or vendors, or hiring your employees away. Which, if you've gone all the way down on information and physical security without a need, are not likely to stay long.
Patents, unlike their Mickey Mouse extended brethren, are still limited in term.
Why would someone who believes in market economy and free competition support the government handing out monopolies?
No matter how big or skillful a company is, someone else will one up you.
Say I design the holy grail of automotive technology. I spend years researching optimal mix ratios, air flow diagrams, doing computer modelling to increase burn efficiency. End result, it doubles the mileage of your average gas guzzler.
Now, with a patent, I stand to recover my money invested at very least, if only by selling it to Conoco-Phillips for them to bury.
Without a patent? I'll get mabye two months making it on my own to recover costs before everyone knocks it off and I'm irrelevant. I probably won't make back anything near research cost before you can buy a Hong Kong knockoff version made by Chinese slave labor for less than my cost to have it machined.
Patents allow innovation in the marketplace by giving inventors incentive to innovate. (My god, that just sounded wrong.)
Now, patents on some stuff. Just silly.
Business models? Shouldn't get one. Every business model under the sun has been tried at one point or another; Just because it now involves a computer doesn't make it new. Reverse auctions? Nothing new there, lots of secondary market resellers do just that, with phones and faxes. One click checkout? You used to see it on Little House on the Prarie reruns, when Pa would tell the clerk to put the groceries on his tab and deliver em.
Gene patents? Meh. If you discover a gene that controls, say, heart disease, and then you develop a specific way of changing that gene, sure, you can have a patent. But "Our computer search of the sequence shows this bit may or may not have an effect on vascular plaque, so we're going to patent this sequence" is bull.
The last major drug "war" in the US gave us:
Thousands shot to death in gang turf wars. Chicago alone was supposedly home to 800 dead in a dozen years.
Thousands dead or injured from bad, tainted, or poisonous concoctions.
Smugglers, runners, and illegal manufacturers rich beyond belief.
Houses in every block offering a cheap high.
That was Prohibition.
Since it ended, things have been much calmer, wouldn't you agree?