OK, I concede they are not programmable. They certainly (in my opinion) should be considered computing machines. However, I left off of my "request list" both programmable analog computers and plug programmable punch card equipment. Today's engineers may laugh, but I was able to do some pretty amazing things with both of those types of hardware. You work with the tools you have.
I don't know if these fit his proposed curve or not. I would just like to see the result of thinking about that question.
Not witty at all. Evolution is continuous. For example, one can compare energy costs backwards from nuclear, coal, back to cutting wood. People use energy... not that hard to make an estimate for slide-rule energy costs. There used to be people who were paid to work 8-hours a day doing calculations by hand (including military ballistic tables). Why would *you* assume that tube-based computers are comparable to an IPad? The fact there there are general "rules" that appear to apply across an extremely wide range of technologies is what makes observations like Moore's Law interesting in the first place. I am an educator. You should not assume that unusual questions are inappropriate. In fact, there was a fascinating TED talk on the cost of light back through the 18th century. Why would observations on the cost of computing not be as valid an area of study as the cost of artificial light?
I would like to see not only the Babbage engine on your curve, but also the abacus and slide rule. Maybe the physical Rod, too, which used to be used in surveying. (Hey, you try calculating property area using pencil, paper, and a deed.)
Anybody who can hack into the communications link (already published -- easy to crack) can tell if you are home or not. Ideal for someone wanting to break in. Also, a working husband can easily track a stay-at-home (maybe) wife's activity.
First, you say that patent filing and innovation are unrelated. I think most people would disagree. Perhaps you and I differ on the definition of innovation. You say, “you don’t need to patent.” Protection of intellectual property has been recognized nearly globally for hundreds of years. It costs a great deal more to develop then replicate. Compare, for example, the cost to create a new video game to the cost to duplicate same. If there is no compensation for creators, then innovation would slow to a tiny trickle. Some people are OK with that, but that is not the current system.
The “micro-entity” applies to the first four patents per inventor. Most inventors are prolific, so that isn’t worth much either way. It’s a nice token, however. I doubt there are any effective “single patent” patent trolls. It’s just not economical.
By the way, there is already a new “expedite” option, where for $4000 an applicant is promised a fast track. Since there are no more people in the USPTO (they have had a hiring freeze ordered by congress for a year) this means the “regular” filers will be processed even slower. Big companies don’t care about the $4000 and just pay it. Independent inventors are screwed in a bunch of ways, and this is one of them. Most innovation comes from independents and tiny companies. Cisco, for example, has bought over 150 other companies--that is how they buy other people's innovations and patent portfolios.
I don’t agree with your analysis of a reduction in taxes. If 50% of the country were unemployed, you would say that was a tax reduction. Tax rates are per payer, not per total revenue received.
The fake logbook thing doesn’t happen, in practice. During interference, which will end under the new bill, the Office requires third party proof. Also, the current system is not really “first to invent,” because in order to get that benefit, the “first inventor” is required to “continuously” have worked on the invention. That is generally true for a large company doing product development, but rarely true for independent inventors. In most cases (68%) of interference the “first to reduce to practice” (i.e. build a working product) wins the interference.
Competent polls of patent professionals (I am a patent agent) show a wide split on beliefs as to the “value” of the new bill. Most people agree it will make a negligible difference. It certainly won’t create jobs and won’t reduce litigation. There is some chance it might make the patent office a touch more efficient (or maybe the opposite). It will hopefully reduce the number of bad patents – and everyone agrees that there were too many of those in the past.
The patent office makes a profit -- over $1 billion dollars profit, in fact. Money that goes into the US Treasury for congress to spend how it likes. The patent bill just passed raises patent "fees" by 15% immediately. These are only partially fees, because of the excess. Now there is more excess. This is simply a tax on innovation. There is simply no other way to look at it. Where are all those Republicans who said, "no new taxes?" Where are the democrats who said they support innovation in this country.
When Canada passed the exact same change 10 years ago (changing from first-to-invent to first-to-file) independent inventor applications dropped by 50% and have never recovered. This bill was pushed entirely by large corporations who don't want to pay the real innovators for their inventions.
You don't close it all the way. Leave it open about an inch. Macbooks, being well designed, don't fall closed. Pretty hard to watch porn through that one-inch crack (no pun intended). Don't they test you on that in the Cert test ??
1) Go into an apple store and download porn using their free wi-fi. You don’t need to keep you laptop open, or anything. You can use the hour or so it takes for your genius bar appointment.
2) Use the free wi-fi at a Starbucks; might be a bit slow.
3) Use the free wi-fi from any hotel parking lot. You might have to ask the clerk for the password, or maybe a housekeeper.
4) Use the unprotected wi-fi in your neighborhood. There are usually several. I recommend checking out senior housing. Sometimes a resident has died but the network stays up for years.
5) Download a cracking tool and crack WEP in 20 seconds. Most residential networks are protected on WEP.
6) If anyone can think of a solution to plug copyright leaks, no matter how crazy, let me know.
I had the privilege of hearing a detailed talk by an ex, high-level spook. He explained the current bottlenecks of gov't intelligence services to doing useful work. Storing lots of data was not on the list. His talk supported the comments in "Not the government" post.
No, the market price by itself would support opening or reopening of rare earth mines.
NOT, actually. Nobody will invest in a mine at ANY market price because history shows that China is likely to AGAIN drop prices in the future, driving other mines out of business. THUS, some kind of guarantee for investors is needed.
The rest of the world (read: US) does not have rare earth mineral (which aren't rare at all, actually) mines because China has a long history of simply lowering prices until all competing mines have gone out of business. China considers that having a monopolistic source for rare earths gives them substantial manufacturing advantages for thousands of products, including florescent lights, medical supplies, and disk drives.
IMHO all of these products, including motors for hybrid vehicles, are too important to allow China to trivial blackmail the rest of the world at their pleasure. All that is needed is the US government to guarantee purchase at some set price and dozens of new mines would open overnight in the US.
I would like to make it clear that NO ORGANIZATION need respond to a subpoena without a fight. There are a thousand ways that a public or private entity can get a subpoena issued for your private information. Basically, a party simply asks the court to issue one, and the court does. The receiver or other "affected parties" have every right to object to the subpoena and demand a hearing. For example, an ISP could insist on a suitable delay in order to inform the user of the subpoena and give the user the time and information necessary to fight the subpoena. If, after a hearing, the court finds the subpoena valid, it will issue a "court order," that had better be followed, or the recipient can be charged with contempt of court.
ISPs, banks, and other organization regularly roll over when issued subpoenas, coughing up all the customer's information without giving the customer the opportunity to respond and object. The underlying issue might be a nasty divorce, an evil contractor, a whiny neighbor, or a gov't employee fishing for glory. Most large organizations have some small print in their terms of use or account contract that says that the customer gives up the right to question subpoenas and that the organization will obey subpoenas no matter who they are from without first warning the customer.
I know personally of one organization that holds private customer data and simply ignores all subpoenas. They have received hundreds over the years, but not a single court order. So those lawyer types and account PR people who say they "have to" obey subpoenas are not telling the (whole) truth.
Note that attorneys and medical provides have "special rules" protecting client information. Funny how that works, huh?
For people who care about privacy, many of us would pay a bit extra for service from an organization that promises to put our interests first.
Disclaimers:
(1) IANAL, so by definition, "this is not legal advice." Consult your attorney.
(2) Some subpoenas require secrecy, and there are homeland defense subpoenas that are different, but these types are actually rare.
If you read the complete PDF from Sandia, the author points out that the boundary layer inefficiency "doesn't apply to laptops." Here is the quote from the paper:
The exception to this rule is lap top computers, where available electrical power is extremely limited. In this special case, CPU clock speeds and fan rotor speeds are reduced to conserve power, albeit at the expense of CPU performance. At these low fan speeds the residence time of air in the heat exchanger is greatly extended, resulting in much higher exhaust air temperatures.
I fly US Airways regularly. Last flight out was late taking off for no apparent reason. Our luggage did not make the connection in their own Hub. Neither did anybody else's. It took over an hour for the luggage clerk to process the long line. I counted over 500 keystrokes required per person. Staff didn't care at either airport. They would not put out luggage on the next plane in (another airlines, and they would have to pay a fee to that airline) so it was over a day to get out luggage. Two days, or three, unless we came back to the airport to pick it up. On the way home to SFO, it took over an hour for them to get out luggage onto the carousel. They had the nerve, over the PA system, to blame the passengers for having, "too much luggage," for the delay.
Consumer Reports rated US Airways at the bottom of customer satisfaction.
Planes fly. Southwest regularly makes last second changes, including flag stops (unscheduled) and re-using planes for "second runs."
There was LOTS that US Airways could have done. First, they could have flown the planes if they wanted too. They planes had already been scheduled, so there were no questions of maintenance or fuel, or flight plans. Second, they could reimburse passengers for the delays. Third, they could have rescheduled some passenger.
Then, of course, as said, there is simply no excuse for the IT to be down for that long, if at all. They had no (working) backup systems, either computers, paper, or people. That is the very definition of incompetent.
I work in IT. As a guy said in my last meeting, “Anybody who designs in RAID 5 should be shot.” Duh.
The fact is that the airlines management is incompetent. This is not an opinion. Simply too many facts. The board should completely clean house. When the questions comes up in the next board meeting of, “What to do?” the answer is, “Duh.”
All of patent law deals with interpretations, most of which are involve varying degrees of subtly.
The Federal Circuit Court has provided a great deal of well-written guidance. This particularly applies to what is and is not patentable.
The issue of what is and is not patentable is not black and white, such as, “mathematical formulas are not patentable,” or “software is patentable.”
A process that creates something useful and tangible is patentable, whether or not that process involves a calculation. What is not patentable is a “pure” formula that is not tied to something tangible. Data structures are tricky. The newer rules (yes, lots of mistakes were made in the past) are that generalized data structures, such as a table or a linked list, do not count as “tangible.” However, if those data structures are used (critically) to perform useful work, such as to refine steel or to serve up ads on websites, then the ENTIRE process is patentable. Subject, of course to all the other restrictions, such as non-obviousness.
These rules are not really new. They are the same rules that apply to mechanical inventions. For example, you cannot patent a “law of nature,” even it is something complex and nobody else knew about it. You can, however, patent a new device that takes advantage of this law of nature. For example, you cannot patent super-conductivity, but you can patent a useful device that uses super-conductivity.
Even mechanical inventions could be reduced to equations. CAD systems and hardware description languages are such examples. However, these “mathematical” representations have no bearing on the patentability.
Thus, the “deaf ears” referred to are those practitioners in the field who are following well-established law.
You don’t have to like current patent law. Many people don’t. European rules, for example, are different that ours. Note that not liking is distinct from not understanding.
True, but my guess is that (1) this is far too much trouble for them; and (2) they were a "clump" with common interests long before they decided to attack postings they don't like. You are suggesting that people leave their own church before promoting the church's views?
I have two algorithms, and I suggest that they are more valuable if used together, and indeed, if all three including your algorithm are used together.
(1) Identify "clumps" of users by who their friends are and by their viewing habits. Facebook has an app that will create a "distance graph," using a published algorithm. It is established that groups of users tend to "clump" and the clumps can be identified algorithmically. For example, for a given user, are there more connections back to the clump than there are to outside the clump? Another way to determine such a clump is by counting the number of loops back to the user. (A friends B friends C friends A.) Traditional correlation can be used to match viewing habits. This is probably improved by including a time factor in the each correlation term. For example, if two users watch the same video within 24 hours of each other this correlation term has more weight than if they were watched a week apart.
Now that you have identified a clump -- which you do not make public -- determine what fraction of the abuse reports come from one or a small number of clumps. That is very suspicious. Also apply an "complaint" factor to the clump as a whole. Clumps with high complaint factors (complain frequently) have their complaints de-weighted appropriately. Rather than "on-off" determinations (e.g. "banned"), use variable weightings.
In this way groups of like-minded users who try to push a specific agenda through abuse complaints would find their activities less and less effective. The more aggressive the clump, the less effective. And, the more the clump acts like a clump, the less effective.
(2) Use Wikipedia style "locking." There are a sequence of locks, from mild to extreme. Mild locks require complaining users to be in good standing and be a user for while for the complaint to count. Medium locks require a more detailed look, say, by your set of random reviewers. Extreme locks means that the item in question has been formally reviewed and the issue is closed. In addition, complaints filed against a locked ("valid") item hurt the credibility score of the complainer.
I highly recommend that everyone use Russell and Lumpy as characters in their own videos, and upload them to YouTube. Could become a movement, y' know.
These drives are intended for embedded application like copy machines and medical equipment. That equipment now has major security holes once it is disposed of. NOT intended for PCs or data center use. HOWEVER, for secure laptops -- they are ideal. If the laptop gets stolen, now, it is trivial to circumvent OS-enforced security and get to the data. In an environment were data backup is handled by the corporate system, if the laptop fails or is lost or the user forgets his password, you ABSOLUTELY want the data in that machine gone forever. Legitimate users of the data will get it, through the proper channels, from corporate backup.
More like kicking an old, weak, sick, blind-in-one-eye, arthritic dog...
... Even if was the very same dog neighbor that terrorized you as a kid, killed your pet cat, barked all night, and pooped in your front yard every day.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I concede they are not programmable. They certainly (in my opinion) should be considered computing machines. However, I left off of my "request list" both programmable analog computers and plug programmable punch card equipment. Today's engineers may laugh, but I was able to do some pretty amazing things with both of those types of hardware. You work with the tools you have.
I don't know if these fit his proposed curve or not. I would just like to see the result of thinking about that question.
Not witty at all. Evolution is continuous. For example, one can compare energy costs backwards from nuclear, coal, back to cutting wood. People use energy ... not that hard to make an estimate for slide-rule energy costs. There used to be people who were paid to work 8-hours a day doing calculations by hand (including military ballistic tables). Why would *you* assume that tube-based computers are comparable to an IPad? The fact there there are general "rules" that appear to apply across an extremely wide range of technologies is what makes observations like Moore's Law interesting in the first place. I am an educator. You should not assume that unusual questions are inappropriate. In fact, there was a fascinating TED talk on the cost of light back through the 18th century. Why would observations on the cost of computing not be as valid an area of study as the cost of artificial light?
I would like to see not only the Babbage engine on your curve, but also the abacus and slide rule. Maybe the physical Rod, too, which used to be used in surveying. (Hey, you try calculating property area using pencil, paper, and a deed.)
Anybody who can hack into the communications link (already published -- easy to crack) can tell if you are home or not. Ideal for someone wanting to break in. Also, a working husband can easily track a stay-at-home (maybe) wife's activity.
Senator Maria Cantwell: "This is not a patent reform bill. This is a big corporation patent give away that tramples on the rights of small inventors."
Thanks for asking.
First, you say that patent filing and innovation are unrelated. I think most people would disagree. Perhaps you and I differ on the definition of innovation. You say, “you don’t need to patent.” Protection of intellectual property has been recognized nearly globally for hundreds of years. It costs a great deal more to develop then replicate. Compare, for example, the cost to create a new video game to the cost to duplicate same. If there is no compensation for creators, then innovation would slow to a tiny trickle. Some people are OK with that, but that is not the current system.
The “micro-entity” applies to the first four patents per inventor. Most inventors are prolific, so that isn’t worth much either way. It’s a nice token, however. I doubt there are any effective “single patent” patent trolls. It’s just not economical.
By the way, there is already a new “expedite” option, where for $4000 an applicant is promised a fast track. Since there are no more people in the USPTO (they have had a hiring freeze ordered by congress for a year) this means the “regular” filers will be processed even slower. Big companies don’t care about the $4000 and just pay it. Independent inventors are screwed in a bunch of ways, and this is one of them. Most innovation comes from independents and tiny companies. Cisco, for example, has bought over 150 other companies--that is how they buy other people's innovations and patent portfolios.
I don’t agree with your analysis of a reduction in taxes. If 50% of the country were unemployed, you would say that was a tax reduction. Tax rates are per payer, not per total revenue received.
The fake logbook thing doesn’t happen, in practice. During interference, which will end under the new bill, the Office requires third party proof. Also, the current system is not really “first to invent,” because in order to get that benefit, the “first inventor” is required to “continuously” have worked on the invention. That is generally true for a large company doing product development, but rarely true for independent inventors. In most cases (68%) of interference the “first to reduce to practice” (i.e. build a working product) wins the interference.
Competent polls of patent professionals (I am a patent agent) show a wide split on beliefs as to the “value” of the new bill. Most people agree it will make a negligible difference. It certainly won’t create jobs and won’t reduce litigation. There is some chance it might make the patent office a touch more efficient (or maybe the opposite). It will hopefully reduce the number of bad patents – and everyone agrees that there were too many of those in the past.
When Canada passed the exact same change 10 years ago (changing from first-to-invent to first-to-file) independent inventor applications dropped by 50% and have never recovered. This bill was pushed entirely by large corporations who don't want to pay the real innovators for their inventions.
You don't close it all the way. Leave it open about an inch. Macbooks, being well designed, don't fall closed. Pretty hard to watch porn through that one-inch crack (no pun intended). Don't they test you on that in the Cert test ??
1) Go into an apple store and download porn using their free wi-fi. You don’t need to keep you laptop open, or anything. You can use the hour or so it takes for your genius bar appointment.
2) Use the free wi-fi at a Starbucks; might be a bit slow.
3) Use the free wi-fi from any hotel parking lot. You might have to ask the clerk for the password, or maybe a housekeeper.
4) Use the unprotected wi-fi in your neighborhood. There are usually several. I recommend checking out senior housing. Sometimes a resident has died but the network stays up for years.
5) Download a cracking tool and crack WEP in 20 seconds. Most residential networks are protected on WEP.
6) If anyone can think of a solution to plug copyright leaks, no matter how crazy, let me know.
I had the privilege of hearing a detailed talk by an ex, high-level spook. He explained the current bottlenecks of gov't intelligence services to doing useful work. Storing lots of data was not on the list. His talk supported the comments in "Not the government" post.
No, the market price by itself would support opening or reopening of rare earth mines.
NOT, actually. Nobody will invest in a mine at ANY market price because history shows that China is likely to AGAIN drop prices in the future, driving other mines out of business. THUS, some kind of guarantee for investors is needed.
The rest of the world (read: US) does not have rare earth mineral (which aren't rare at all, actually) mines because China has a long history of simply lowering prices until all competing mines have gone out of business. China considers that having a monopolistic source for rare earths gives them substantial manufacturing advantages for thousands of products, including florescent lights, medical supplies, and disk drives.
IMHO all of these products, including motors for hybrid vehicles, are too important to allow China to trivial blackmail the rest of the world at their pleasure. All that is needed is the US government to guarantee purchase at some set price and dozens of new mines would open overnight in the US.
I would like to make it clear that NO ORGANIZATION need respond to a subpoena without a fight. There are a thousand ways that a public or private entity can get a subpoena issued for your private information. Basically, a party simply asks the court to issue one, and the court does. The receiver or other "affected parties" have every right to object to the subpoena and demand a hearing. For example, an ISP could insist on a suitable delay in order to inform the user of the subpoena and give the user the time and information necessary to fight the subpoena. If, after a hearing, the court finds the subpoena valid, it will issue a "court order," that had better be followed, or the recipient can be charged with contempt of court.
ISPs, banks, and other organization regularly roll over when issued subpoenas, coughing up all the customer's information without giving the customer the opportunity to respond and object. The underlying issue might be a nasty divorce, an evil contractor, a whiny neighbor, or a gov't employee fishing for glory. Most large organizations have some small print in their terms of use or account contract that says that the customer gives up the right to question subpoenas and that the organization will obey subpoenas no matter who they are from without first warning the customer.
I know personally of one organization that holds private customer data and simply ignores all subpoenas. They have received hundreds over the years, but not a single court order. So those lawyer types and account PR people who say they "have to" obey subpoenas are not telling the (whole) truth.
Note that attorneys and medical provides have "special rules" protecting client information. Funny how that works, huh?
For people who care about privacy, many of us would pay a bit extra for service from an organization that promises to put our interests first.
Disclaimers: (1) IANAL, so by definition, "this is not legal advice." Consult your attorney. (2) Some subpoenas require secrecy, and there are homeland defense subpoenas that are different, but these types are actually rare.
The exception to this rule is lap top computers, where available electrical power is extremely limited. In this special case, CPU clock speeds and fan rotor speeds are reduced to conserve power, albeit at the expense of CPU performance. At these low fan speeds the residence time of air in the heat exchanger is greatly extended, resulting in much higher exhaust air temperatures.
Could low-cost computers that read your physical behavior launch an entire new industry of “real world” personal apps?
Could it tell if you are brushing your teeth properly?
Could it remind you to hang up your clothes, instead of leaving them on the floor?
Could it determine that your love-making skills are not up to par, and offer specific suggestions for better technique or timing?
Oh! The mind boggles at how much people would pay for those apps.
I fly US Airways regularly. Last flight out was late taking off for no apparent reason. Our luggage did not make the connection in their own Hub. Neither did anybody else's. It took over an hour for the luggage clerk to process the long line. I counted over 500 keystrokes required per person. Staff didn't care at either airport. They would not put out luggage on the next plane in (another airlines, and they would have to pay a fee to that airline) so it was over a day to get out luggage. Two days, or three, unless we came back to the airport to pick it up. On the way home to SFO, it took over an hour for them to get out luggage onto the carousel. They had the nerve, over the PA system, to blame the passengers for having, "too much luggage," for the delay.
Consumer Reports rated US Airways at the bottom of customer satisfaction.
Planes fly. Southwest regularly makes last second changes, including flag stops (unscheduled) and re-using planes for "second runs."
There was LOTS that US Airways could have done. First, they could have flown the planes if they wanted too. They planes had already been scheduled, so there were no questions of maintenance or fuel, or flight plans. Second, they could reimburse passengers for the delays. Third, they could have rescheduled some passenger.
Then, of course, as said, there is simply no excuse for the IT to be down for that long, if at all. They had no (working) backup systems, either computers, paper, or people. That is the very definition of incompetent.
I work in IT. As a guy said in my last meeting, “Anybody who designs in RAID 5 should be shot.” Duh.
The fact is that the airlines management is incompetent. This is not an opinion. Simply too many facts. The board should completely clean house. When the questions comes up in the next board meeting of, “What to do?” the answer is, “Duh.”
I am 95% sure these meters have all been hacked. I saw a demo in first person. (It might have been faked, I suppose.)
So, the bad guys drive around to find out who is on vacation?
All of patent law deals with interpretations, most of which are involve varying degrees of subtly.
The Federal Circuit Court has provided a great deal of well-written guidance. This particularly applies to what is and is not patentable.
The issue of what is and is not patentable is not black and white, such as, “mathematical formulas are not patentable,” or “software is patentable.”
A process that creates something useful and tangible is patentable, whether or not that process involves a calculation. What is not patentable is a “pure” formula that is not tied to something tangible. Data structures are tricky. The newer rules (yes, lots of mistakes were made in the past) are that generalized data structures, such as a table or a linked list, do not count as “tangible.” However, if those data structures are used (critically) to perform useful work, such as to refine steel or to serve up ads on websites, then the ENTIRE process is patentable. Subject, of course to all the other restrictions, such as non-obviousness.
These rules are not really new. They are the same rules that apply to mechanical inventions. For example, you cannot patent a “law of nature,” even it is something complex and nobody else knew about it. You can, however, patent a new device that takes advantage of this law of nature. For example, you cannot patent super-conductivity, but you can patent a useful device that uses super-conductivity.
Even mechanical inventions could be reduced to equations. CAD systems and hardware description languages are such examples. However, these “mathematical” representations have no bearing on the patentability.
Thus, the “deaf ears” referred to are those practitioners in the field who are following well-established law.
You don’t have to like current patent law. Many people don’t. European rules, for example, are different that ours. Note that not liking is distinct from not understanding.
- Registered Patent Agent
With all that left over lye, you can open a few clogged drains!
True, but my guess is that (1) this is far too much trouble for them; and (2) they were a "clump" with common interests long before they decided to attack postings they don't like. You are suggesting that people leave their own church before promoting the church's views?
I have two algorithms, and I suggest that they are more valuable if used together, and indeed, if all three including your algorithm are used together.
(1) Identify "clumps" of users by who their friends are and by their viewing habits. Facebook has an app that will create a "distance graph," using a published algorithm. It is established that groups of users tend to "clump" and the clumps can be identified algorithmically. For example, for a given user, are there more connections back to the clump than there are to outside the clump? Another way to determine such a clump is by counting the number of loops back to the user. (A friends B friends C friends A.) Traditional correlation can be used to match viewing habits. This is probably improved by including a time factor in the each correlation term. For example, if two users watch the same video within 24 hours of each other this correlation term has more weight than if they were watched a week apart.
Now that you have identified a clump -- which you do not make public -- determine what fraction of the abuse reports come from one or a small number of clumps. That is very suspicious. Also apply an "complaint" factor to the clump as a whole. Clumps with high complaint factors (complain frequently) have their complaints de-weighted appropriately. Rather than "on-off" determinations (e.g. "banned"), use variable weightings.
In this way groups of like-minded users who try to push a specific agenda through abuse complaints would find their activities less and less effective. The more aggressive the clump, the less effective. And, the more the clump acts like a clump, the less effective.
(2) Use Wikipedia style "locking." There are a sequence of locks, from mild to extreme. Mild locks require complaining users to be in good standing and be a user for while for the complaint to count. Medium locks require a more detailed look, say, by your set of random reviewers. Extreme locks means that the item in question has been formally reviewed and the issue is closed. In addition, complaints filed against a locked ("valid") item hurt the credibility score of the complainer.
I hope this helps.
I highly recommend that everyone use Russell and Lumpy as characters in their own videos, and upload them to YouTube. Could become a movement, y' know.
I mean no offense, but as a student of history, aren't FUD and Microsoft synonymous?
These drives are intended for embedded application like copy machines and medical equipment. That equipment now has major security holes once it is disposed of. NOT intended for PCs or data center use. HOWEVER, for secure laptops -- they are ideal. If the laptop gets stolen, now, it is trivial to circumvent OS-enforced security and get to the data. In an environment were data backup is handled by the corporate system, if the laptop fails or is lost or the user forgets his password, you ABSOLUTELY want the data in that machine gone forever. Legitimate users of the data will get it, through the proper channels, from corporate backup.
More like kicking an old, weak, sick, blind-in-one-eye, arthritic dog...