The only issue for Monsanto (should) come if the farmer is using Roundup or a generic Roundup. If that is the case, then they are reaping the benefits of the GM crop without paying the price.
Likewise, if the farmer isn't using Roundup, they should have grounds to sue Monsanto for contaminating their fields with GM products.
Protecting the first copy is the job of copyright. You can bypass copyright issues with a clean-room implementation of the same concept.
Likewise, you don't have to use a patent to protect a secret algorithm, a la RSA. you just keep it secret and sell the implementation. If someone else can reverse engineer it,well...go for it. Short-duration algorithm or software patents are reasonable-- 2-3 years max. The time-to-market for an abstract concepts reasonably short.
Where I am unsure is things like LTE or CDMA. These things are built on years of research, and take years to become adopted as standards, and further years to be implemented. Maybe not every step or contribution justifies a patent, but you want to share create standards for the purposes of interoperability.
My god, I am sick of this crap. Education lifts the masses, but the idea that you are above something because you have been educated is a real crock. I'd argue my grandfather (a butcher) had better control of the English language than I do, despite me attending 9 more years of school than he did.
By lifting the masses, you create a society that has values beyond simply survival. Presumably, beyond economic terms, this is useful. The injustice is in educating/lifting only an elite class.
Here, Here, Coder!! While I disagree that you would ship electronics components by boat, even the 36 hours to fly something can have a significant impact on production. The systems in the US and western Europe are in place to protect people, the environment, etc., but just because you do away with those checks and balances doesn't mean you are ignoring the underlying concern.
For everybody that wants to complain about Apple's role in any of this, try buying your furniture locally from parts sourced locally, designed locally, and built locally. That is a simple example where it is purely consumer choice that destroyed an industry-- wanting the least expensive product.
In Scottsdale, they have towers in cactuses, street lights, etc. Outdoors is easy to solve.
They have cell sites for whole buildings, individual floors, etc. Inside large buildings is easy to solve.
They have femtocells that work on a residential scale-- but they are flawed in that they can't hand off to other cells, or in that they limit usage to a pre-determined list of phones. But, this too is easy to solve.
The problem is that the telcos want to maximize profit, and avoid becoming irrelevant or a dumb pipe.
The issue is that the unlimited plan at the time had a theoretical maximum consumption of about 1GB per day, and in practical terms couldn't exceed about 500MB/day going all-out with file transfers...which couldn't be done on the phone with that plan! So, you were really limited to much less, closer to 20MB per day with very heavy usage.
Despite being a very heavy user of my iPhone (let's say in 2007 terms - no video streaming or Pandora over 3G, but do use a lot of mapping and real-estate applications), I've only used an average of 120MB per month for 18 months. Say you double that for someone that doesn't have wifi access as much-- you are still in that 250MB range. Those seem like a reasonable base plan for 80-90% of the users.
So, how much more should an order of magnitude increase in usage be-- 2x? And what beyond that...?
Their pricing is fairly reasonable as long as less than 5-10% of the customers are approaching 2GB per month. I say that despite the fact that I think they have unfair pricing power and collusion that really should be investigated.
If you want to break them, figure out how to do co-operative wifi systems, where a user can share his service with like-minded people without security issues.
Someone reades every note on every page. The clouds make it easy to see what changed in this issue. At the Jobsite trailer, they have every revision of every sheet collated into one set.
Hard copies of large drawings are an order of magnitude easier to work with than PDFs, even with a 27" monitor.
Compared to 10 years ago, the industry is much more digital, but the hard copies in the trailer are still well worn.
We print about 2,000 sheets tomorrow for a throwaway set though.
Tilt-up concrete is hard on a residential scale because you need a large flat area and a good size crane. Insulated concrete forms are a little more interesting for the low-tech approach-- you can even do a hip-roof with minimal effort.
Pure concrete pipes would be stupid, but you can do blow-up liners that go through the chase easily enough. You could also conceivably just do some kind of plastic extrusion within the chase that could easily conform to whatever shape required.
The down side is that the walls and floors would need to be quite thick, potentially reducing the savings. (Concrete slab cost is about 1/3 materials; walls are a little less.)
It makes for a much more interesting solution than tilt-up, and makes the advantages of tilt-up viable on a much smaller scale.
I've always worked strictly within the rules and limits....I mean, if there is a tax break or advantage that is legal, is it not foolish to take full advantage of it ? I mean, it is YOUR money after all.
From the IRS perspective, people cheat on their social security/self-employment tax by effectively claiming that their earned income is dramatically lower then their gross pay. Enforcement is harder across many small entities.
That being said....why not have everyone take more responsibility for their own job, pay, medical and needs.
...because at least 50% of the population is incapable of taking appropriate responsibility for their actions and future.
Up until a week or two ago, I would agree with you, primarily on the grounds of Remote Control Hell. For the primary television in the living room, maybe a smart TV wins, but I'm planning some small remote monitors with a BeagleBoard in back to serve up reasonably non-interactive content. While a smart TV should be able to meet my needs for such a function, history tells me that it will be locked down in one way or another.
TV manufacturers' objective is to shorten the upgrade cycle. That doesn't do much for me; I want my TV to last 10 years minimum. (My parents had their first color TV for 25 years!)
Gaming the system is stupid-- claiming contractor status when you only work for one company. But, if your position has ups and downs based on project cycles, becoming an independent contractor and working with different companies can be a good move... unless you are doing it through an agency and not as your own business.
For people with an entrepreneurial spirit... who like to work hard, starting your own business is a great thing to do. Complaining about answering an email after hours is silly except in extreme situations. One of those might be when I was telecommuting from halfway around the globe and had to be able to respond near real-time while sleeping. I chose the location though, so it is hard to complain.
The business needs to be operating on Fridays, and output from people after 10 scheduled hours tanks. It also limits capacity to do some overtime (we pay our engineers OT) when needed. We also do team-building activities on Fridays for the people that have reasonable commutes.
As an employer... I get more pissed off when people accrue their maximum vacation. But... the days of it being cool to take a month to six weeks off at a time are long gone. (Hopefully they will return before too long.) That really kills just about every small employer, and I don't think the big companies are much better these days. Sure, you staff for flexibility, but it is too easy to loose what flexibility you can afford with long vacations.
For me, I try and encourage long weekends and holiday stretching. We do a 4x9-4 schedule, so many of our employees could take off 3 Fridays a month and still not go in the hole, and hopefully improve quality of life. As I have traveled earlier in my career, I encourage it in my employees... even if I know that they are the type of people to visit 8 countries in two weeks...
Light fixtures designed around standard edison-base A-lamps aren't ideal for either fluorescent or LED lamps-- they want light to come from a single point and dispurse light equally in all directions. (Hence the need for lamp shades.)
LEDs and linear fluorescents dim very well down to 5% output (visual frame of reference is more like 15% output). It is just that if you want to use them you are really looking at new light fixtures.
PAR lamps have some good LED replacement options, with reasonably good dimming, as do MR-16s.
The business answer is that as you recoup your investment, you re-invest in diversifying. Using your Google Translate example, you search out alternatives and build code to be able to share or shift load off of Google's service. Similarly, if you are "freeloading" off of Google's service, you need to plan that eventually you may need to pay for that functionality and build it into your business model.
Yes, Montanna has low taxes. Working there doesn't improve your lifetime after-tax income perspective much though.
In my 20's, I got to work in the Bay Area and Hong Kong, as well as retire for a couple years. One place I was a model employee, and the other I had very limited motivation, great pay, but only stuck around a year because it was a hostile work environment.
If you want financial success, you have to work hard, and smart. Getting some of our youngest employees to work (paid) overtime is like pulling teeth. Paid overtime (within rational limits) is the easiest way to turn a good paying job into a great paying job. People forget that their pay isn't just their salary rate.
Some of it is less obvious than you might think. Everyone wants personal growth and development, as well as feeling appreciated. Some people are on two-year tracks, and are destine to change jobs every 18-24 months. Don't hire those types if you need people to stay 5+ years; they have internal performance issues and/or a misguided sense of self worth. Treat people right-- you don't have to pay *top* dollar for good top talent if you maintain a solid career path, show appreciation, and make sure people can control their own destiny to a degree.
Also, sadly, don't hire transplants to work in a place where only a small share of non-locals thrive. Make sure people have a reason to be where you are, especially if it isn't the center of where that business is. Help your team grow roots!
Also understand that kids right out of college have different needs than people in their 30-40's with children of their own.
Sorry, but... what has that really done for HP or RIM? What will make things different for Motorola (again), HTC, or Asus? Samsung might be a special case, but I would argue for all the wrong reasons-- purely imitating the iPad!
Options are great, and strong-armed dominance is dangerous... but it is pretty hard to justify the idea that ICS is going to be the catalyst to make Android tablets successful. I'm biased though as a happy owner of an iPad.
Beyond distributed generation, you have the goal of standardizing across a large number of sites. That makes operation and maintenance easier to pull off effectively. In software, it is the difference between rolling your own and buying from an established vendor.
The argument for smaller units is based on de-centralizing generation. This limits the proliferation of transmission lines, and brings the effects of generation closer to people's homes. The peak demand in the US is around 75GW. 75GW-scale nuclear reactors isn't going to spark innovation. Limiting them to around half that capacity (or 20%) gives you some opportunities to "mass produce" them.
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The only issue for Monsanto (should) come if the farmer is using Roundup or a generic Roundup. If that is the case, then they are reaping the benefits of the GM crop without paying the price.
Likewise, if the farmer isn't using Roundup, they should have grounds to sue Monsanto for contaminating their fields with GM products.
Protecting the first copy is the job of copyright. You can bypass copyright issues with a clean-room implementation of the same concept.
Likewise, you don't have to use a patent to protect a secret algorithm, a la RSA. you just keep it secret and sell the implementation. If someone else can reverse engineer it,well...go for it. Short-duration algorithm or software patents are reasonable-- 2-3 years max. The time-to-market for an abstract concepts reasonably short.
Where I am unsure is things like LTE or CDMA. These things are built on years of research, and take years to become adopted as standards, and further years to be implemented. Maybe not every step or contribution justifies a patent, but you want to share create standards for the purposes of interoperability.
My god, I am sick of this crap. Education lifts the masses, but the idea that you are above something because you have been educated is a real crock. I'd argue my grandfather (a butcher) had better control of the English language than I do, despite me attending 9 more years of school than he did.
By lifting the masses, you create a society that has values beyond simply survival. Presumably, beyond economic terms, this is useful. The injustice is in educating/lifting only an elite class.
Yes, it is more like the defense contractors requesting you change the extension of the zip file so it can pass through the firewall...
Here, Here, Coder!! While I disagree that you would ship electronics components by boat, even the 36 hours to fly something can have a significant impact on production. The systems in the US and western Europe are in place to protect people, the environment, etc., but just because you do away with those checks and balances doesn't mean you are ignoring the underlying concern.
For everybody that wants to complain about Apple's role in any of this, try buying your furniture locally from parts sourced locally, designed locally, and built locally. That is a simple example where it is purely consumer choice that destroyed an industry-- wanting the least expensive product.
In Scottsdale, they have towers in cactuses, street lights, etc. Outdoors is easy to solve.
They have cell sites for whole buildings, individual floors, etc. Inside large buildings is easy to solve.
They have femtocells that work on a residential scale-- but they are flawed in that they can't hand off to other cells, or in that they limit usage to a pre-determined list of phones. But, this too is easy to solve.
The problem is that the telcos want to maximize profit, and avoid becoming irrelevant or a dumb pipe.
The issue is that the unlimited plan at the time had a theoretical maximum consumption of about 1GB per day, and in practical terms couldn't exceed about 500MB/day going all-out with file transfers...which couldn't be done on the phone with that plan! So, you were really limited to much less, closer to 20MB per day with very heavy usage.
Despite being a very heavy user of my iPhone (let's say in 2007 terms - no video streaming or Pandora over 3G, but do use a lot of mapping and real-estate applications), I've only used an average of 120MB per month for 18 months. Say you double that for someone that doesn't have wifi access as much-- you are still in that 250MB range. Those seem like a reasonable base plan for 80-90% of the users.
So, how much more should an order of magnitude increase in usage be-- 2x? And what beyond that...?
Their pricing is fairly reasonable as long as less than 5-10% of the customers are approaching 2GB per month. I say that despite the fact that I think they have unfair pricing power and collusion that really should be investigated.
If you want to break them, figure out how to do co-operative wifi systems, where a user can share his service with like-minded people without security issues.
Someone reades every note on every page. The clouds make it easy to see what changed in this issue. At the Jobsite trailer, they have every revision of every sheet collated into one set.
Hard copies of large drawings are an order of magnitude easier to work with than PDFs, even with a 27" monitor.
Compared to 10 years ago, the industry is much more digital, but the hard copies in the trailer are still well worn.
We print about 2,000 sheets tomorrow for a throwaway set though.
So data deduplication is a crime?
Tilt-up concrete is hard on a residential scale because you need a large flat area and a good size crane. Insulated concrete forms are a little more interesting for the low-tech approach-- you can even do a hip-roof with minimal effort.
Pure concrete pipes would be stupid, but you can do blow-up liners that go through the chase easily enough. You could also conceivably just do some kind of plastic extrusion within the chase that could easily conform to whatever shape required.
The down side is that the walls and floors would need to be quite thick, potentially reducing the savings. (Concrete slab cost is about 1/3 materials; walls are a little less.)
It makes for a much more interesting solution than tilt-up, and makes the advantages of tilt-up viable on a much smaller scale.
Got a live person with my representative, bad voicemail from Boxer, and Feinstein had her phone off the hook.
From the IRS perspective, people cheat on their social security/self-employment tax by effectively claiming that their earned income is dramatically lower then their gross pay. Enforcement is harder across many small entities.
Up until a week or two ago, I would agree with you, primarily on the grounds of Remote Control Hell. For the primary television in the living room, maybe a smart TV wins, but I'm planning some small remote monitors with a BeagleBoard in back to serve up reasonably non-interactive content. While a smart TV should be able to meet my needs for such a function, history tells me that it will be locked down in one way or another.
TV manufacturers' objective is to shorten the upgrade cycle. That doesn't do much for me; I want my TV to last 10 years minimum. (My parents had their first color TV for 25 years!)
Gaming the system is stupid-- claiming contractor status when you only work for one company. But, if your position has ups and downs based on project cycles, becoming an independent contractor and working with different companies can be a good move... unless you are doing it through an agency and not as your own business.
For people with an entrepreneurial spirit... who like to work hard, starting your own business is a great thing to do. Complaining about answering an email after hours is silly except in extreme situations. One of those might be when I was telecommuting from halfway around the globe and had to be able to respond near real-time while sleeping. I chose the location though, so it is hard to complain.
The business needs to be operating on Fridays, and output from people after 10 scheduled hours tanks. It also limits capacity to do some overtime (we pay our engineers OT) when needed. We also do team-building activities on Fridays for the people that have reasonable commutes.
As an employer... I get more pissed off when people accrue their maximum vacation. But... the days of it being cool to take a month to six weeks off at a time are long gone. (Hopefully they will return before too long.) That really kills just about every small employer, and I don't think the big companies are much better these days. Sure, you staff for flexibility, but it is too easy to loose what flexibility you can afford with long vacations.
For me, I try and encourage long weekends and holiday stretching. We do a 4x9-4 schedule, so many of our employees could take off 3 Fridays a month and still not go in the hole, and hopefully improve quality of life. As I have traveled earlier in my career, I encourage it in my employees... even if I know that they are the type of people to visit 8 countries in two weeks...
Light fixtures designed around standard edison-base A-lamps aren't ideal for either fluorescent or LED lamps-- they want light to come from a single point and dispurse light equally in all directions. (Hence the need for lamp shades.)
LEDs and linear fluorescents dim very well down to 5% output (visual frame of reference is more like 15% output). It is just that if you want to use them you are really looking at new light fixtures.
PAR lamps have some good LED replacement options, with reasonably good dimming, as do MR-16s.
The business answer is that as you recoup your investment, you re-invest in diversifying. Using your Google Translate example, you search out alternatives and build code to be able to share or shift load off of Google's service. Similarly, if you are "freeloading" off of Google's service, you need to plan that eventually you may need to pay for that functionality and build it into your business model.
Yes, Montanna has low taxes. Working there doesn't improve your lifetime after-tax income perspective much though.
In my 20's, I got to work in the Bay Area and Hong Kong, as well as retire for a couple years. One place I was a model employee, and the other I had very limited motivation, great pay, but only stuck around a year because it was a hostile work environment.
If you want financial success, you have to work hard, and smart. Getting some of our youngest employees to work (paid) overtime is like pulling teeth. Paid overtime (within rational limits) is the easiest way to turn a good paying job into a great paying job. People forget that their pay isn't just their salary rate.
Some of it is less obvious than you might think. Everyone wants personal growth and development, as well as feeling appreciated. Some people are on two-year tracks, and are destine to change jobs every 18-24 months. Don't hire those types if you need people to stay 5+ years; they have internal performance issues and/or a misguided sense of self worth. Treat people right-- you don't have to pay *top* dollar for good top talent if you maintain a solid career path, show appreciation, and make sure people can control their own destiny to a degree.
Also, sadly, don't hire transplants to work in a place where only a small share of non-locals thrive. Make sure people have a reason to be where you are, especially if it isn't the center of where that business is. Help your team grow roots!
Also understand that kids right out of college have different needs than people in their 30-40's with children of their own.
Sorry, but... what has that really done for HP or RIM? What will make things different for Motorola (again), HTC, or Asus? Samsung might be a special case, but I would argue for all the wrong reasons-- purely imitating the iPad!
Options are great, and strong-armed dominance is dangerous... but it is pretty hard to justify the idea that ICS is going to be the catalyst to make Android tablets successful. I'm biased though as a happy owner of an iPad.
The problem is that it leaked, potentially into groundwater, where it will be diluted but still highly toxic.
Beyond distributed generation, you have the goal of standardizing across a large number of sites. That makes operation and maintenance easier to pull off effectively. In software, it is the difference between rolling your own and buying from an established vendor.
The argument for smaller units is based on de-centralizing generation. This limits the proliferation of transmission lines, and brings the effects of generation closer to people's homes. The peak demand in the US is around 75GW. 75GW-scale nuclear reactors isn't going to spark innovation. Limiting them to around half that capacity (or 20%) gives you some opportunities to "mass produce" them.