The relationship of the death penalty in the US having a "deterrent effect" compared with other countries must be compared the same way that gun violence compares in other countries with equal or greater guns per capita.
This doesn't necessarily say that the death penalty offers much in the way of deterrence, but inferring that it has a negative effect because there are fewer death-penalty level crimes in other countries without the death penalty is not a reasonable correlation.
The US has been on slow boil since the 1960's. It is beginning to reach the point where it will boil over. No other country on earth has some of the racial, social class and immigration problems the US does today. Partly because of this, the only way for a poor black man in his 20's to cope is to shoot people. Fact of life for those in the ghetto. And we're only catching at most 20% of the folks committing murders today. The blacks know the Mexicans and Cambodians are more economically successful, so given the opportunity they burn down black-owned businesses. It doesn't have to make sense - it is just a pot getting ready to boil over. And people are acting out of desperation.
With an open-arms immigration policy and shipping all manufacturing to low-cost labor markets people are going to start seeing the message that they better grab whatever they can while they can. Chicago will look a lot more like Baghdad when this starts.
Maybe a sure-and-swift death penalty policy could keep the lid on for a few more years. Certainly worth a try. When the crisis hits it will be every man for himself.
Too many people. Too much research. Too much of everything.
Moving to a "sustainable" use of resources would solve this problem. It would require a moderate reduction in population to something like 200 or 250 million people - about the population in 1800 to 1850. That would be a level of resource consumption and waste generation that would be sustainable. Natural processes would then reprocess waste products into resources ready to be used.
This would only require killing off about 1 million people a day for 20 years or so to reach this level. I'm sure these activists would be all for this to reach a level of sustainable resource use.
Patents aren't about any specific implementation (or embodiment) at all. They are about a general concept that can be embodied in a specific implementation.
If I have a patent on a braking system for cars and someone goes out and makes something nearly identical for use on trucks this is clearly patent infringement. At least I should because any smart patent lawyer will make sure "cars" never appears in the claims for the patent and it remains general. As general as possible while still preserving the concept.
Yes, my name is listed as "inventor" on a bunch of pretty silly patents.
I have seen people with time-limited software that they know they have to set the date back 5 years in order to use. They do this without any qualms whatsoever.
If you have some kind of unlock code, there is a registry somewhere on the Internet for that code. Again, if it is available, why wouldn't everyone just use that instead of paying?
Paying is decreasing a limited resource. Stealing (and yes, it is stealing) does not consume any resources and just increases value.
The problem is that you make a really, really obnoxious assumption: that everyone can, should or want to write programs for a computer.
We've spent the last 50-odd years proving that some people do and most do not. They just want to "use" a computer as an appliance. They do not want to be creative. They do not want to learn new things. They want to accomplish a task and be done with it.
there aren't any competent workers that can be hired. All we can hire are unmotivated drones that are putting in their nine-to-five shift. Any technology that can be utilized to either replace, motivate or assist these drones will make things better.
Real pity that we can't seem to hire anyone who is actually competent.
Let's see here... we have various free services that are available to everyone on the Internet. These free services aren't free to operate - they cost significant amounts of money to do so. Where does the money come from?
The first place is of course advertising. Having people pay to push their message at the unsuspecting people that are using the service. Eventually the ads become all-pervasive and lose some of their value. Where we are today is that banner ads are almost worthless and Google has made selling text-only ad space the only means of support for many free sites.
The one that a lot of people do not understand is that just the use of the service also has value - and informational value. This information can be collated, organized and distilled and sold. There are people that would like to know how many times the word "Viagra" was searched for on Google. This information is available, for a price. Similarly, Ford would like to know how many people in Indiana search for Toyota, Dodge or Chevy. Again, this is a source of revenue for so-called free services.
What some people posting here do not see to get is that their use of these free services is being tracked and data mined. Some of this is just to keep the service running. It is important to know that when a new album is released by Madonna that everyone will be searching for a way to download it. This can change the resources required to operate a search service. There are similar resource requirement changes in all such systems and the data required to maintain them is certainly being tracked, monitored and used. Some of it is also sold because it has value.
Could there be a search engine or an IM service that didn't data mine or sell ads? Sure, but why would anyone pay $50 a month for a search service if there was one that was free? Some particularly paranoid types might to keep their porn searches private, but the majority would not. The amount of data that can be mined from free services (forums, blogs, search engines, IM systems, etc.) is incredible and as more and better data mining is implemented, the greater value this will have.
The problem that you are complaining about is going to get worse. Virtually everything today has a processor chip in it and some folks - mostly the very intense geeky sort - want to have the ability to reprogram their refrigerator, their car, their cell phone and anything else that has a processor chip in it.
Unfortunately that just isn't going to happen. For two reasons the general public isn't going to get to modify their devices. The first reason is licensing and other legal agreements. If you have a DirecTivo (the box that combines both a satellite receiver and Tivo) and were able to reprogram it at will, there would be nothing to keep you from bypassing the access card. This might be pretty popular, but it wouldn't go over very well with either DirectTV or anyone else involved.
That is exactly the problem with all of these computer-based appliances. We are looking at a crossroads between one-time programmed parts, masked ROMS and other such non-upgradable techniques vs. flash upgradable devices. Sure, the manufacturer would like to be able to fix problems and add new support to things as time goes on. But this has to be tempered with licensing restrictions and other sorts of issues. For example, if by reprogramming your remote you could control your neighbor's TV across the street (lousy battery life, but really really long range) would this be something that is in anyone's interest? Are there any laws, regulations or anything else that would prevent someone from doing this or punish them if they did? Think about the same kind of thing across all sorts of appliances and devices.
The other reason this isn't going to happen has to do with devices being resold. Assume you reprogram your toaster to catch fire and sell it in a yard sale to someone. Who gets blamed for the fire? The manufacturer, of course. How about reprogramming a cell phone to produce 20x the output power - when the person gets their brain fried because of this who is liable? This sort of question should have an obvious answer, but it does not in today's legal environment.
Problem is that in the US if one airline had a problem it would be sued out of existance. Doesn't matter what the problem was - either letting a terrorist onto an airplane or falsely detaining someone that isn't a terrorist. Either would create a legal climate that would drive the airlines out of business.
So, we put it all under a government program that can't be sued for either harrassment or negligence.
In Israel, if you complain about the security too much you find out (a) the Israeli army backs up the security and Mossad behind them and (b) the airline is state-owned. Nobody for lawsuit-happy folks to sue.
Why aren't we targeting specific people that might cause trouble? Like make every passenger eat some bacon before boarding. Don't like bacon? OK, then we search your bags. Something simple like that. Obviously, any kind of visable "profiling" isn't going to work but you would think we could single out the folks that want to cause trouble.
for any given dataset there is a pseudo-random number generator that, with the proper parameters, produce that dataset of bytes in sequence.
The problem is that it is non-trivial to find the proper algorithm and parameters. However, if trial-and-error computation is not a problem, a large library of potential generators can be tried with all possible parameters.
There was not too long ago someone in the Detroit area that assembled a great number of the innards of smoke detectors. He was trying to build something, I forget what. The net effect was that his adventure with smoke detectors required a NEST team to come in and clean up. It was not a trivial matter.
He also managed to get his hands on some other radiation sources as well, so it wasn't just some smoke detectors. However, smoke detectors are nothing to fool around with disassembling.
If you have never worked for someone that believed in this, you are excused. It is truely a revelation. This isn't what the original question is asking, but it is close enough to be scary.
In a management by concensus environment, you sit everyone down for decisions and everyone gets to have their say. Until everyone agrees on a direction, nothing is decided. If a concensus cannot be reached, it must mean that the whole direction is wrong, so you move up a level and look at earlier higher-level decisions.
A sure sign that you are operating in a management by concensus environment is where the basic strategy of the company is brought up to all employees as "are we on the right track here?" This has the effect of generally alienating everyone because they wonder what the heck they have been doing for the last six months if there isn't a commitment to a direction. It also means that the rug gets yanked out from under everyone periodically.
It doesn't work. It was a nice idea, but it cannot be made to work. Committees never decide anything as a whole - a leader always emerges or is established from the beginning.
The only way to deal with it is to address the root causes: e.g. get out of their countries and stop killing their families and co-religionists. Pretty easy.
I would put this pretty much at the same level as if you see a gang beating a grandmother that the way to avoid antagonizing the gang is to walk quickly on by.
Yes, Israelis might be offended in being compared to a grandmother.
It is far, far too late to say "get out of their countries" Every government in the Middle East is there because of US or European influences. None of them are free and democratic. All of the governments live in fear of the people in the country and other Muslims nearby.
This is a situation you think the world can live with?
I will admit that the overall handling of the situation in Iraq was incompetent. There was a lot of bad intelligence, but the West has never been able to get much real intelligence out of that part of the world. But leaving Iraq now is just an invitation to Iran annexing it. Does that sound like a good idea?
Would be unaffected by this. Why? Because they somehow believe they are "above" the normal consumer and they are not affected by advertising, promotions, marketing gimmicks and other stuff that is the "science" of retail marketing.
So they have nothing to fear.
The rest of the world should expect a far better shopping experience from Amazon because they are going to know when to pitch the gay-pride book vs. the religious tome. This undoubtably will result is significantly better profits for Amazon and would likely be emulated as much as possible.
We might have a 20 year pause before the patent expires. But I would expect this sort of data to be marketed to all retailers once it is collected. Amazon might be able to sell it. Imagine walking into Target and picking up a shopping cart that reads your fingerprints from how you hold the handle. This then beams customized ads to the display on the cart advising you where the specials are that you are interested in.
The people that are dangerous are all Muslims of one sort or another. There are no Jews, Christians, Zoastrians, or Shinto-ists out to blow up airliners.
We can eliminate the threat completely by eliminating the Muslim's ability to interact in Western society until they decide to be civilized according to our quaint definitions. Their objective in Western society is not to learn and profit but to convert and kill. So, move them out. All of them.
You are more interested in the pretty case than the movie?
OK, the rest of the world wants the movie and doesn't want to pay $20 for it. They want to pay $0 and will build up a huge collection they can loan out to their friend, neighbors and anyone else on the Internet just so they can show everyone their HUGE collection.
While there might be some people perfectly willing to pay $20 for a nice case, the folks that want the movie for $0 are far in the majority. Piracy is here to stay and unless the media companies take draconian action to protect their products, they will sell ONE copy to the first guy who can rip it. The rest of the world - except for you - gets it for free after that.
It would be nice to dream that independent farmers would be growing these crops and that a Grange-like grassroots organization would be behind them. All the little farmers joined into the happy collective.
Sadly, "cartel" isn't far from the truth. It would be large mega-corporations that would be licensed by the government for producing specific drugs. Prices go down? Very funny. The prices might even increase because of the liability insurance. Don't you think your parents would sue the mega-corporation if you died from an overdose? Think about cigarettes and the liability lawsuits there. Once the government revokes the "you can't sue them", the lawsuits started and the lawyers just lined up to get their cut.
No, the Columbians would probably get cut out of the market. But their replacemsnts would be at least as bad, if not worse. Maybe it would be a new improved business model for the RIAA?
It is a lot simpler than that. And perhaps a little more sinister.
The person on the grill is responsible for x number of burgers during their shift. Period. If this can be accomplished with a couple of hour-long breaks, so what? If this can be accomplished by the person suckering other employees covering for them (and doing their jobs as well) again, so what?
The key is responsibility. Period. You are the grill person this shift and you are responsible for getting the burgers made. You succeed, you get a raise or promotion. You fail, it's your ass.
No sensors, no cameras, nothing but responsibility. And swift and sure enforcement.
The number of people that pay when they can pirate is about 5%. This has been proven over and over again. If you believe 90% will pay, you are living in a fantasy world. The most solid proof of this is shareware - so we are not talking about hundreds of dollars but more like $20.
Most companies do not tolerate pirated software, so if your product is strictly for corporate use there is usually not too big a problem. But if you are targeting consumers, expect 5% to pay. Be pleasantly suprised with 8%.
Even this is a difficult proposition - how can they handle the johnny-come-lately's who want to jump on board and use software others have paid to develop?
Exactly. The hardware is a off-the-shelf commodity. Well, a pretty big shelf, but I will bet that Robotic Parking just specifies someone else's hardware and a contracted construction company builds the garage.
Therefore, the only thing that Robotic Parking brings to the table is the software.
You are assuming the software has no value beyond that garage. Wrong - it probably took years to develop and is the thing that differentiates Robotic Parking from their competitors. There are plenty of them - Japan is full of robotic garages. And they would just love to find out what the people at Robotic did to make theirs work better - assuming it does.
The rest of the garage is off-the-shelf components and all it takes is a guy with a hard hat and a big wrench to put it together. Assuming they follow the instructions in the box.
The thing that makes it possible for Robotic Parking to operate is the software. Not the hardware or the construction of the garage. All of that comes from someone else, I'm sure.
Not a gonna happen. The ownership of the code is the ownership of the robotic company. The rest is just some mechanical parts that are probably custom-arranged for each garage. So the only asset the company has is their unique, faster, more efficient way to slot the cars and access them.
Again, lots of companies build robotic garages. Or at least more than two or three. Japan is full of them. The entire business of Robotic Parking, Inc is their software - not the hardware. So if they turn the code over to the city or public domain, they get to send everyone home and it is just a construction job from then on. Or, their competitors get to pick up the R&D for nothing and improve their product.
This is the essance of what a lot of businesses are today. What makes it a viable business is the fact there is something unique that they have to sell, not just installing commodity robotic garage components. Without that, no business at all.
No programmers. No designers. No engineers. Just some guys that can read the instructions that come with the off-the-shelf robotic garage components.
Indeed this is where we are headed in many ways. Nobody gets paid for creativity or ingenuity. It is just putting the pieces together on an assembly line of one sort or another. Why are we headed this way? Because if you read the dunderheaded posts here you should understand a substantial part of the technical community just doesn't get it.
As far as the licensing was concerned, well, the city decided to stop paying. They had the hardware and somehow they thought they had an option whether or not the software was required. Or they thought they could turn the system over to some other software provider and hope for the best. I'd say this is like trying to install a Xbox game into a PS3. No, the city folks didn't understand - they didn't understand what they were buying from the very beginning. If they had, they might have gotten a better deal. As it stands now the city is likely screwed because they have a large imposing structure that doesn't work without the software that was part of the deal - that they decided paying for was optional after the fact.
It is the same story as everything else. People say they will buy if something is developed that meets their definition of quality and is cheap enough. Lower the price and piracy will disappear. Right. Sure.
The problem is that a company needs to invest a significant amount of money to develop a game. Such a large amount today that they cannot afford too many missteps. And, if a game loses significant sales because of a perception that people are playing for free there will be serious repercussions. From the investors.
So the obvious choice is to make the game for a platform where piracy is far more limited that on the PC. Today, virtually every game is available for free. As is the case with just about every other software product as well. You download it, you use it or play it. Period. Why would anyone pay in this environment? Unless they have no idea where to download stuff from. I guess education and being plugged into the right social circles still has value.
Playing a game for free on a console is quite different because you are going to need to modify the console. This isn't something you can just download for free - you have to make an investment. Most people just aren't dedicated enough. This makes console games a much safer investment for the development company and their investors.
Yes, that will lead to the end of PC gaming. Why bother when a safer, less risky investment is available? It is a whole different world than when two or three people could spend 4-5 months and put together a game.
The console game device is the "entertainment appliance" that will eventually replace the home PC for most people. It never gets a virus or spyware and with an Internet connection will be able to play games, send email and watch video. What more does the average consumer really want?
Let's see, would you hire a KKK photographer to cover a white power rally?
Would you want pictures from a German photographer covering Auschwitz in 1944?
How about pictures of 9/11 from a Bush family friend?
So what is suprising about "a little bias" from a Lebanese photographer?
There might be some value to this person's access, but that seems to be a red flag that means everything would have to be checked and rechecked. And probably every photo noted that it might be staged or otherwise manipulated. Just like I would assume you could get really good information from a mob informer, but check and recheck everything there is because of the person's affiliation.
Slashdot Mirror
The relationship of the death penalty in the US having a "deterrent effect" compared with other countries must be compared the same way that gun violence compares in other countries with equal or greater guns per capita.
This doesn't necessarily say that the death penalty offers much in the way of deterrence, but inferring that it has a negative effect because there are fewer death-penalty level crimes in other countries without the death penalty is not a reasonable correlation.
The US has been on slow boil since the 1960's. It is beginning to reach the point where it will boil over. No other country on earth has some of the racial, social class and immigration problems the US does today. Partly because of this, the only way for a poor black man in his 20's to cope is to shoot people. Fact of life for those in the ghetto. And we're only catching at most 20% of the folks committing murders today. The blacks know the Mexicans and Cambodians are more economically successful, so given the opportunity they burn down black-owned businesses. It doesn't have to make sense - it is just a pot getting ready to boil over. And people are acting out of desperation.
With an open-arms immigration policy and shipping all manufacturing to low-cost labor markets people are going to start seeing the message that they better grab whatever they can while they can. Chicago will look a lot more like Baghdad when this starts.
Maybe a sure-and-swift death penalty policy could keep the lid on for a few more years. Certainly worth a try. When the crisis hits it will be every man for himself.
Too many people. Too much research. Too much of everything.
Moving to a "sustainable" use of resources would solve this problem. It would require a moderate reduction in population to something like 200 or 250 million people - about the population in 1800 to 1850. That would be a level of resource consumption and waste generation that would be sustainable. Natural processes would then reprocess waste products into resources ready to be used.
This would only require killing off about 1 million people a day for 20 years or so to reach this level. I'm sure these activists would be all for this to reach a level of sustainable resource use.
Patents aren't about any specific implementation (or embodiment) at all. They are about a general concept that can be embodied in a specific implementation.
If I have a patent on a braking system for cars and someone goes out and makes something nearly identical for use on trucks this is clearly patent infringement. At least I should because any smart patent lawyer will make sure "cars" never appears in the claims for the patent and it remains general. As general as possible while still preserving the concept.
Yes, my name is listed as "inventor" on a bunch of pretty silly patents.
Once you give it away, why would anyone buy it?
I have seen people with time-limited software that they know they have to set the date back 5 years in order to use. They do this without any qualms whatsoever.
If you have some kind of unlock code, there is a registry somewhere on the Internet for that code. Again, if it is available, why wouldn't everyone just use that instead of paying?
Paying is decreasing a limited resource. Stealing (and yes, it is stealing) does not consume any resources and just increases value.
The problem is that you make a really, really obnoxious assumption: that everyone can, should or want to write programs for a computer.
We've spent the last 50-odd years proving that some people do and most do not. They just want to "use" a computer as an appliance. They do not want to be creative. They do not want to learn new things. They want to accomplish a task and be done with it.
there aren't any competent workers that can be hired. All we can hire are unmotivated drones that are putting in their nine-to-five shift. Any technology that can be utilized to either replace, motivate or assist these drones will make things better.
Real pity that we can't seem to hire anyone who is actually competent.
Let's see here... we have various free services that are available to everyone on the Internet. These free services aren't free to operate - they cost significant amounts of money to do so. Where does the money come from?
The first place is of course advertising. Having people pay to push their message at the unsuspecting people that are using the service. Eventually the ads become all-pervasive and lose some of their value. Where we are today is that banner ads are almost worthless and Google has made selling text-only ad space the only means of support for many free sites.
The one that a lot of people do not understand is that just the use of the service also has value - and informational value. This information can be collated, organized and distilled and sold. There are people that would like to know how many times the word "Viagra" was searched for on Google. This information is available, for a price. Similarly, Ford would like to know how many people in Indiana search for Toyota, Dodge or Chevy. Again, this is a source of revenue for so-called free services.
What some people posting here do not see to get is that their use of these free services is being tracked and data mined. Some of this is just to keep the service running. It is important to know that when a new album is released by Madonna that everyone will be searching for a way to download it. This can change the resources required to operate a search service. There are similar resource requirement changes in all such systems and the data required to maintain them is certainly being tracked, monitored and used. Some of it is also sold because it has value.
Could there be a search engine or an IM service that didn't data mine or sell ads? Sure, but why would anyone pay $50 a month for a search service if there was one that was free? Some particularly paranoid types might to keep their porn searches private, but the majority would not. The amount of data that can be mined from free services (forums, blogs, search engines, IM systems, etc.) is incredible and as more and better data mining is implemented, the greater value this will have.
Isn't free wonderful?
The problem that you are complaining about is going to get worse. Virtually everything today has a processor chip in it and some folks - mostly the very intense geeky sort - want to have the ability to reprogram their refrigerator, their car, their cell phone and anything else that has a processor chip in it.
Unfortunately that just isn't going to happen. For two reasons the general public isn't going to get to modify their devices. The first reason is licensing and other legal agreements. If you have a DirecTivo (the box that combines both a satellite receiver and Tivo) and were able to reprogram it at will, there would be nothing to keep you from bypassing the access card. This might be pretty popular, but it wouldn't go over very well with either DirectTV or anyone else involved.
That is exactly the problem with all of these computer-based appliances. We are looking at a crossroads between one-time programmed parts, masked ROMS and other such non-upgradable techniques vs. flash upgradable devices. Sure, the manufacturer would like to be able to fix problems and add new support to things as time goes on. But this has to be tempered with licensing restrictions and other sorts of issues. For example, if by reprogramming your remote you could control your neighbor's TV across the street (lousy battery life, but really really long range) would this be something that is in anyone's interest? Are there any laws, regulations or anything else that would prevent someone from doing this or punish them if they did? Think about the same kind of thing across all sorts of appliances and devices.
The other reason this isn't going to happen has to do with devices being resold. Assume you reprogram your toaster to catch fire and sell it in a yard sale to someone. Who gets blamed for the fire? The manufacturer, of course. How about reprogramming a cell phone to produce 20x the output power - when the person gets their brain fried because of this who is liable? This sort of question should have an obvious answer, but it does not in today's legal environment.
Problem is that in the US if one airline had a problem it would be sued out of existance. Doesn't matter what the problem was - either letting a terrorist onto an airplane or falsely detaining someone that isn't a terrorist. Either would create a legal climate that would drive the airlines out of business.
So, we put it all under a government program that can't be sued for either harrassment or negligence.
In Israel, if you complain about the security too much you find out (a) the Israeli army backs up the security and Mossad behind them and (b) the airline is state-owned. Nobody for lawsuit-happy folks to sue.
Why aren't we targeting specific people that might cause trouble? Like make every passenger eat some bacon before boarding. Don't like bacon? OK, then we search your bags. Something simple like that. Obviously, any kind of visable "profiling" isn't going to work but you would think we could single out the folks that want to cause trouble.
for any given dataset there is a pseudo-random number generator that, with the proper parameters, produce that dataset of bytes in sequence.
The problem is that it is non-trivial to find the proper algorithm and parameters. However, if trial-and-error computation is not a problem, a large library of potential generators can be tried with all possible parameters.
There was not too long ago someone in the Detroit area that assembled a great number of the innards of smoke detectors. He was trying to build something, I forget what. The net effect was that his adventure with smoke detectors required a NEST team to come in and clean up. It was not a trivial matter.
He also managed to get his hands on some other radiation sources as well, so it wasn't just some smoke detectors. However, smoke detectors are nothing to fool around with disassembling.
If you have never worked for someone that believed in this, you are excused. It is truely a revelation. This isn't what the original question is asking, but it is close enough to be scary.
In a management by concensus environment, you sit everyone down for decisions and everyone gets to have their say. Until everyone agrees on a direction, nothing is decided. If a concensus cannot be reached, it must mean that the whole direction is wrong, so you move up a level and look at earlier higher-level decisions.
A sure sign that you are operating in a management by concensus environment is where the basic strategy of the company is brought up to all employees as "are we on the right track here?" This has the effect of generally alienating everyone because they wonder what the heck they have been doing for the last six months if there isn't a commitment to a direction. It also means that the rug gets yanked out from under everyone periodically.
It doesn't work. It was a nice idea, but it cannot be made to work. Committees never decide anything as a whole - a leader always emerges or is established from the beginning.
I would put this pretty much at the same level as if you see a gang beating a grandmother that the way to avoid antagonizing the gang is to walk quickly on by.
Yes, Israelis might be offended in being compared to a grandmother.
It is far, far too late to say "get out of their countries" Every government in the Middle East is there because of US or European influences. None of them are free and democratic. All of the governments live in fear of the people in the country and other Muslims nearby.
This is a situation you think the world can live with?
I will admit that the overall handling of the situation in Iraq was incompetent. There was a lot of bad intelligence, but the West has never been able to get much real intelligence out of that part of the world. But leaving Iraq now is just an invitation to Iran annexing it. Does that sound like a good idea?
Would be unaffected by this. Why? Because they somehow believe they are "above" the normal consumer and they are not affected by advertising, promotions, marketing gimmicks and other stuff that is the "science" of retail marketing.
So they have nothing to fear.
The rest of the world should expect a far better shopping experience from Amazon because they are going to know when to pitch the gay-pride book vs. the religious tome. This undoubtably will result is significantly better profits for Amazon and would likely be emulated as much as possible.
We might have a 20 year pause before the patent expires. But I would expect this sort of data to be marketed to all retailers once it is collected. Amazon might be able to sell it. Imagine walking into Target and picking up a shopping cart that reads your fingerprints from how you hold the handle. This then beams customized ads to the display on the cart advising you where the specials are that you are interested in.
The people that are dangerous are all Muslims of one sort or another. There are no Jews, Christians, Zoastrians, or Shinto-ists out to blow up airliners.
We can eliminate the threat completely by eliminating the Muslim's ability to interact in Western society until they decide to be civilized according to our quaint definitions. Their objective in Western society is not to learn and profit but to convert and kill. So, move them out. All of them.
You are more interested in the pretty case than the movie?
OK, the rest of the world wants the movie and doesn't want to pay $20 for it. They want to pay $0 and will build up a huge collection they can loan out to their friend, neighbors and anyone else on the Internet just so they can show everyone their HUGE collection.
While there might be some people perfectly willing to pay $20 for a nice case, the folks that want the movie for $0 are far in the majority. Piracy is here to stay and unless the media companies take draconian action to protect their products, they will sell ONE copy to the first guy who can rip it. The rest of the world - except for you - gets it for free after that.
It would be nice to dream that independent farmers would be growing these crops and that a Grange-like grassroots organization would be behind them. All the little farmers joined into the happy collective.
Sadly, "cartel" isn't far from the truth. It would be large mega-corporations that would be licensed by the government for producing specific drugs. Prices go down? Very funny. The prices might even increase because of the liability insurance. Don't you think your parents would sue the mega-corporation if you died from an overdose? Think about cigarettes and the liability lawsuits there. Once the government revokes the "you can't sue them", the lawsuits started and the lawyers just lined up to get their cut.
No, the Columbians would probably get cut out of the market. But their replacemsnts would be at least as bad, if not worse. Maybe it would be a new improved business model for the RIAA?
Death. Destruction. Terror.
Are you familiar with the phrase "the fear of God"?
The demands are starting to come out. Convert, it is your last chance. Either that or die horribly.
It is a lot simpler than that. And perhaps a little more sinister.
The person on the grill is responsible for x number of burgers during their shift. Period. If this can be accomplished with a couple of hour-long breaks, so what? If this can be accomplished by the person suckering other employees covering for them (and doing their jobs as well) again, so what?
The key is responsibility. Period. You are the grill person this shift and you are responsible for getting the burgers made. You succeed, you get a raise or promotion. You fail, it's your ass.
No sensors, no cameras, nothing but responsibility. And swift and sure enforcement.
The number of people that pay when they can pirate is about 5%. This has been proven over and over again. If you believe 90% will pay, you are living in a fantasy world. The most solid proof of this is shareware - so we are not talking about hundreds of dollars but more like $20.
Most companies do not tolerate pirated software, so if your product is strictly for corporate use there is usually not too big a problem. But if you are targeting consumers, expect 5% to pay. Be pleasantly suprised with 8%.
Money defeats morals about 95% of the time.
Exactly. The hardware is a off-the-shelf commodity. Well, a pretty big shelf, but I will bet that Robotic Parking just specifies someone else's hardware and a contracted construction company builds the garage.
Therefore, the only thing that Robotic Parking brings to the table is the software.
You are assuming the software has no value beyond that garage. Wrong - it probably took years to develop and is the thing that differentiates Robotic Parking from their competitors. There are plenty of them - Japan is full of robotic garages. And they would just love to find out what the people at Robotic did to make theirs work better - assuming it does.
The rest of the garage is off-the-shelf components and all it takes is a guy with a hard hat and a big wrench to put it together. Assuming they follow the instructions in the box.
The thing that makes it possible for Robotic Parking to operate is the software. Not the hardware or the construction of the garage. All of that comes from someone else, I'm sure.
Not a gonna happen. The ownership of the code is the ownership of the robotic company. The rest is just some mechanical parts that are probably custom-arranged for each garage. So the only asset the company has is their unique, faster, more efficient way to slot the cars and access them.
Again, lots of companies build robotic garages. Or at least more than two or three. Japan is full of them. The entire business of Robotic Parking, Inc is their software - not the hardware. So if they turn the code over to the city or public domain, they get to send everyone home and it is just a construction job from then on. Or, their competitors get to pick up the R&D for nothing and improve their product.
This is the essance of what a lot of businesses are today. What makes it a viable business is the fact there is something unique that they have to sell, not just installing commodity robotic garage components. Without that, no business at all.
No programmers. No designers. No engineers. Just some guys that can read the instructions that come with the off-the-shelf robotic garage components.
Indeed this is where we are headed in many ways. Nobody gets paid for creativity or ingenuity. It is just putting the pieces together on an assembly line of one sort or another. Why are we headed this way? Because if you read the dunderheaded posts here you should understand a substantial part of the technical community just doesn't get it.
As far as the licensing was concerned, well, the city decided to stop paying. They had the hardware and somehow they thought they had an option whether or not the software was required. Or they thought they could turn the system over to some other software provider and hope for the best. I'd say this is like trying to install a Xbox game into a PS3. No, the city folks didn't understand - they didn't understand what they were buying from the very beginning. If they had, they might have gotten a better deal. As it stands now the city is likely screwed because they have a large imposing structure that doesn't work without the software that was part of the deal - that they decided paying for was optional after the fact.
It is the same story as everything else. People say they will buy if something is developed that meets their definition of quality and is cheap enough. Lower the price and piracy will disappear. Right. Sure.
The problem is that a company needs to invest a significant amount of money to develop a game. Such a large amount today that they cannot afford too many missteps. And, if a game loses significant sales because of a perception that people are playing for free there will be serious repercussions. From the investors.
So the obvious choice is to make the game for a platform where piracy is far more limited that on the PC. Today, virtually every game is available for free. As is the case with just about every other software product as well. You download it, you use it or play it. Period. Why would anyone pay in this environment? Unless they have no idea where to download stuff from. I guess education and being plugged into the right social circles still has value.
Playing a game for free on a console is quite different because you are going to need to modify the console. This isn't something you can just download for free - you have to make an investment. Most people just aren't dedicated enough. This makes console games a much safer investment for the development company and their investors.
Yes, that will lead to the end of PC gaming. Why bother when a safer, less risky investment is available? It is a whole different world than when two or three people could spend 4-5 months and put together a game.
The console game device is the "entertainment appliance" that will eventually replace the home PC for most people. It never gets a virus or spyware and with an Internet connection will be able to play games, send email and watch video. What more does the average consumer really want?
Let's see, would you hire a KKK photographer to cover a white power rally?
Would you want pictures from a German photographer covering Auschwitz in 1944?
How about pictures of 9/11 from a Bush family friend?
So what is suprising about "a little bias" from a Lebanese photographer?
There might be some value to this person's access, but that seems to be a red flag that means everything would have to be checked and rechecked. And probably every photo noted that it might be staged or otherwise manipulated. Just like I would assume you could get really good information from a mob informer, but check and recheck everything there is because of the person's affiliation.