Tickets for parking too long in one spot should be accompanied by proof that you did exceed the time, including photos showing the wheels in the same position at the start time and stop time.
It sounds like a good trick around the system, but in reality the laws have been designed to prevent this type of gaming.
In my area, let's say you park in a metered block that's signed as "1 hour maximum, 8 AM to 5 PM".
The law is written such that you can't park in that ENTIRE BLOCK for more than 1 hour between 8 AM and 5 PM. Your 1 hour timer starts from the very first moment your car is parked in that block within the restricted hours.
So if you drive into a space at 10 AM, park for 10 minutes, drive off, and come back at noon and park in the same block for another 10 minutes, you've broken the law. Because your parking time in that block was from 10 AM until 11 AM. Re-feeding the meter doesn't help - it isn't about the money, it's about sharing the space with others. This is called "overtime", and it's different than no time left on the meter.
And of course, the meter readers carry digital ticket-generating radio devices with digital cameras and tag (plate) readers in them, so there is a good possibility that you get caught. Yes, I've gotten several tickets for overtime, and although I was unhappy with the tickets, it wasn't as if I didn't breaking the law. The real bummer is getting a ticket for both Overtime and Expired Meter on the same ticket... that's TWO distinct fines. (They used to use chalk to mark tire position, but that doesn't work well if it rains, or if the parker knows enough to rub the chalk away.)
The laws are very well defined to minimize gaming the system. They generally impact people like me who try to park for 8 hours at two hour meters.
Plus, it's pretty hard to argue in court: here's a guy with a half-dozen parking tickets filed against him, versus a meter maid who gets the most verbal abuse in the world and who doesn't have a care in the world if you pay the fine or not. The judge is most likely believe the person who is just doing their job and who doesn't have the incredibly bad parking record. As it should be.
Obviously, you have some capabilities that they can't do without. You should be able to capitalize on that.
Tell them that you can be put on a retainer, so, for a nominal fee (maybe triple your new hourly salary), you will help them out for up to 8 hours a week - either by helping them with particular projects, training new people, bringing management up to speed, or whatever. Also, require them to give you a stellar written review on company letterhead.
They are being assholes - I've never heard of such a thing. Generally, in my experience, the employer entices the employee to stay by offering a higher salary, bonus, upgraded position, or other perks. Badmouthing employees (or employers) is generally an awful strategy.
But don't get mad. Scratch their itch by giving them what they need and by getting a lot out of it yourself.
The US Postal Service is experiencing major server issues for its shipping API web services. After spending about an hour debugging my own eCommerce software for a client, I found the problem was with the USPS shipping servers being unavailable.
Others have said it, but I'll say it again because I like the beat this philosophy into everyone's head at work:
IMPLEMENT FAULT TOLERANCE.
If a service, internal or external, doesn't work right... make sure that your customers are still mostly satisfied.
It would be IMPOSSIBLE to experience "major server issues" if your damned eCommerce software was designed smartly.
Point the finger all you want. But at the end of the day, this failure is YOURS.
Web services go down, go bad, get attacked, or become unreachable. Plan for it.
Do we really need yet another analysis that talks about the same exact products on the same exact platforms?
Instead of a focus on complete information security, this kind of analysis, once again, ignores BlackBerry and Macintosh and Linux - some very common platforms that are growing in both the enterprise and home markets. How a repeated focus on the most commonly discussed platform helps anyone is a mystery. It just continues to say "all these products are different, we rank them according to our exclusive analysis." Are you going to switch AV vendor given their unconvincing analysis? Not likely.
In the end, the analysis sounds hollow; "My AV software isn't on the top of their list". Given their strategy, who cares?
The self-declared "security experts" completely miss the point by completely ignoring platforms other than Windows. Sure, perhaps the BlackBerry is only found in 70% of corporate environments, and the Mac only has 7% market penetration, and Linux is perhaps only 20% of back-end servers - but I'd fathom that nearly 95% of the businesses out there use one of these platforms and need them to be SECURE - in order to keep their corporate (or personal) data and networks safe.
All these "security experts" are failing their potential customers by rehashing the same discussion, instead of analyzing products and methods that address the mostly unhandled attack vectors of other mission-critical platforms.
I also vote for Dell. Look here at my speculation/analysis:
1. Dell is in a dire financial position for the past several years. 2. Michael Dell has attacked Apple before, verbally. 3. Michael Dell came back from retirement to try to save Dell. 4. Apple and Dell are strong competitors 5. Having Apple change its OS model would help Dell 6. If there is no change to Apple's OS model, no harm to Dell 7. Apple is taking Dell customers away in droves.
So, in short, Dell has nothing to lose and everything to win. Screwing with Apple in a public way is, in the least, fun and inexpensive. And at best, will result in Dell being able to sell OS X. And in the middle, would make Apple look silly. As long as the real puppeteer stays hidden, everything is good.
So the Transport organization formed a new contract with the same parties that failed them before. HOWEVER, the new contract is much more robust, with many more protections for the transport authority, and many more penalties for the provider if and when they fail.
So what exactly wrong with this? That someone who screwed up got a new contract?
Let me say that there are very few organizations that have the ability to deliver ANY service in this area. Having a contractor with a track record and some history of failure doesn't mean that the contractor aren't the best choice for the job.
Is this corruption or stupidity? Likely not. This is simple business.
When I lived in Massachusetts, in the winter, it was dark when I got up and it was dark by the time I got home at night. Now that I live in Arizona I can't help but think; what the hell were those people thinking? I do not miss daylight savings time.
Um, in the winter it's Standard time, not DST.
DST kicks in the summer, pushing the clock such that sun rise is at 6 AM instead of 5 AM, and sets at 8 PM instead of 7 PM.
In the winter, during standard time, the clock is set such that the sun is pretty much over head at noon.
Then I had a clock that was wrong 4 times a year instead of two, because I forgot on the new date to change timezones and then it auto changed two weeks later.
You must have the same shitty clock I have. It is so poorly implemented that it ignores the DST status bit from the radio.... instead it switches DST based it on a statically-coded calendar rule. What kind of acid were these people on? WWVB has been around for a long time - with the DST bit - and the DST rules have changed many times before.
I hate that clock. Piece of junk. I think they implemented it like that just so it would become obsolete after an arbitrary amount of time.
Many years ago, right before the dot-com boom, I was out of college and looking for any job. The economy was lousy in 1988, and I had a computer science degree, and a big firm offered me a killer job with an awesome salary. Sadly, the job was all about COBOL.
Happily I had another job lined up at a famous research center. But it was heavily government funded, and their funding disappeared. So I took the Cobol job, as it was a job, and it paid well.
Well, it was the most awesome job I had ever. I learned a lot. COBOL was the worst part about it, but there were plenty of other design challenges, and I worked with a bunch of smart people who were also saddled with COBOL. Of course, you can do just about anything with enough COBOL and enough creative thinking. And, of course, as a computer science guy, sometimes it is fun to exercise a mainframe even if you can only exercise it with an antiquated language.
The nice thing about COBOL, of course, is that its pretty hard to get yourself in trouble. The bad thing is that it can't easily do all the great things that a modern (post 1962) language can do. Or at least in can't do those things in an elegant way. Yes, even in COBOL-72 you can dynamically allocate memory for a complex data structure - if you're creative enough.
The other nice thing about living in a Cobol/Mainframe shop for a while is that you realize that everything in modern computing was delivered like 40 years ago by IBM. Sure, some things have changed, but just about all the big important things have been in that mainframe environment forever.
Of course, the web and dot-com boom started to emerge and I left the mainframe world after a couple years. A lot of my mainframe buddies did successfully make the transition, and the others mostly retired.
I still have fond memories of the people and systems. Yes, they are both all crusty and old, even back then, but all those things ain't as bad as people say.
Except for JCL. I always hated JCL. Now that was a total senseless hack.
Watch out Apple, here comes Nintendo. Nintendo plans to launch a new version of its popular DS portable gaming device with a camera and music player function
Apple? How about RIM! RIM isn't even beginning to compete in this space. Instead, they have their "Curve". It's ONLY claim to fame is that it is a BlackBerry marketed to the general public - something that I would not call much of an innovation - and it's missing the hottest technology of the decade, Multi-Touch.
Sure, RIM is counting on the "business professional", with decent Exchange integration (which, BTW, the iPhone has now - I know, I've used it).
But let's be real - many advances in computing technologies - from graphics card to GUI interfaces to the Internet to Open Source software and Shareware were considered unprofessional toys in their day. Even Microsoft discounted the Internet for 5 years, and thousands of companies ignored Open Source and Shareware and Linux until they ended up looking like fools and/or getting fired.
RIM wants to convince the world that "real business users are BlackBerry users". In the mean time, RIM is loosing their technology expertise, as their tech people leave them for where the excitement and money is.
Yes, RIM will "soon" have a "killer" device - two years late to market, and with dubious capabilities. RIM may just be making the Aviion of the decade - the last nice product of a quickly-evaporating corporation.
This is spot-on. Yes, many years ago there was an attempt to invest heavily in barcode readers - the Cuecat, in particular, was a well-funded attempt to bring barcodes to the masses. But due to a major error in their business model - a grave error - the 'cat lived an extremely short life.
Jump ahead to 2008. People are buying fancy telephones, and there are barcodes everywhere. Google is in a unique position to read and process these barcodes on the fly - using a well-connected application living on a mobile phone. Next thing you know, you'll be able to go to the store, pick up a six pack of Bud, and scan in that barcode. THEN you can find a cheaper vendor - maybe down the street. YOU WIN due to CHEAPER BEER.
And we know that the world, with its flailing economy, will certainly needs cheaper beer. The cuecat was just ahead of its time.
Everyone is comparing this new offering to the iPhone. But the interesting thing is that virtually no one compares it to the Blackberry - the new "has-been" of the so-called "Smart phone" industry.
It isn't like the Blackberry hasn't had any warning - the iPhone was announced more than 18 months ago, and there have been rumors about the Google-driven offering for nearly as long. How the shareholders of RIM can merely watch their company rest on its laurels is beyond me. RIM's death will be when Microsoft tries to acquire it.
In the 1980's, WANG was in nearly every office in America. They rested during the PC revolution, and within a couple years they were as good as dead. RIM has entered that territory. Yes, Blackberrys are still selling to corporate clients, who are traditionally slow to embrace new technologies. But other than the slow-movers out there, everyone can clearly see two very high-profile competitors - Apple and Google.
Strangely it seems net neutrality is no longer as important as it was a few months ago
Here is a quote Obama's first bullet point in his updated and clarified technology position statement, the same paper that the/. summary claims that "net neutrality" is no longer important:
Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet
It seems like Slashdot sees the campaign as merely a vehicle for ad revenue. A correction in the Slashdot summary is warranted.
They should put into place a system whereby the speed of your access is inversely proportional to the amount of data you transfer. Thus, when people first sign on to this service, they'll be impressed by its speed. But as time goes on, it'll slow down increasingly, until Google's homepage takes a year to load.
Comcast has that option already. It's called "Comcast High-Speed Internet".
But then again, those of us in the large aircraft engine business know that typical airliners aren't nearly as efficient as they can be, or as they once were before the dawn of the jet age.
Want substantially higher efficiency in a modern airliner using a jet engine? With all the reliability?
Easy. Turboprop.
Your P&W, GE and RR makes big ones every day, primarily for military transports. But the Airline Industry doesn't want 'em - despite the substantial fuel savings. After all, the military choses them for good reason - low fuel cost, high power, and very high reliability.
Airline customers like how jet engines look magical. A prop brings them back to reality.
Commercial transports use available aircraft designs. Only turbofan designs are available due to the substantial demand for them by the passenger-ferrying airlines.
Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod over three decades ago in the 1970's.
Interpretation: Apple has not admitted that a British man invented the iPod.
Unfortunately, he let the patent run out.
Interpretation: Like all patents, this patent expired.
When another company tried to grab a portion of its iPod profits, though, Apple went running to him to defend them in court
Interpretation: Apple used "prior art" to invalidate someone else's claim that they recently invented a "solid state audio recorder/player".
In return, it looks like he's in for a share of the cash generated from the sale of 163 million iPods.
Interpretation: His patent pre-dated the technology to make a decent flash audio recorder/player, and therefore he was unable to collect royalties on his patent. Apple and the world may give him a pat on the back for inventing the solid-state audio recorder/player, but it would be financially irresponsible for them to give him royalties on a long-expired patent.
This means you can copy the ID of another driver onto your own device and, as a result, travel for free while others foot the bill.
Interpretation:
This means that one can steal services electronically, committing a felony punishable by jail time, while at the same time greatly annoying fellow citizens whose id has been stolen.
Tell the affected organization (Boston subway system authority) that there is a problem and you are willing to work with them to fix it.
It sounds like you a plan for extortion:
1. YOU have a problem. 2. Fix it MY way, on MY timeline, or I'll make your problem even bigger. 3. I'll be rich and/or famous and have earned some hacker creds either way.
If you sell three billion ads a month and can't break even, what do you do? Drop prices by 40% and switch business models, apparently
This is a sign that ad brokers and resellers MUST provide added value in order to make money.
Anyone can become a broker. The trick is to add value, so that customers will pay your premium prices. Advertisers will not pay a huge premium for unproven "advanced ad campaign technologies" that many of these brokers purport to provide. And if your competition charges less for a better service, don't expect to stay in business very long. At that point, your only choice is to substantially lower prices or change your business model.
The whole point of copyright is to encourage the creative arts. Retroactively extending copyright creates nothing. We get no new works for it.
The whole point of copyright was to encourage the creative arts. Now it is all about Asia. Asia is a huge emerging market for the EU and the US. Extending intellectual property is a reaction to the new wealth found in that region.
The US and the EU cannot compete with the now-strong manufacturing base of Asia. The only thing we can sell to that region is Mickey Mouse (copyright), Coca Cola (trademark), and Boeing (patents).
Asia does not need the US or the EU to create any of those products. So if they do, we want them to "license the rights" from us.
Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension.
There is an easy fix for that. As a publisher, simply market your entire catalog. You don't even need to print the music. Just price it ridiculously high and make sure that you publish a list of all your individual items in your catalog somewhere. Copyright extended.
The only people screwed are individuals and tiny publishers that don't know enough to "market" their materials, or who don't know what they have. As a citizen, it becomes impossible to determine what is protected by copyright.
This is a multi-million euro gift to the large publishers, and near zero to everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Tickets for parking too long in one spot should be accompanied by proof that you did exceed the time, including photos showing the wheels in the same position at the start time and stop time.
It sounds like a good trick around the system, but in reality the laws have been designed to prevent this type of gaming.
In my area, let's say you park in a metered block that's signed as "1 hour maximum, 8 AM to 5 PM".
The law is written such that you can't park in that ENTIRE BLOCK for more than 1 hour between 8 AM and 5 PM. Your 1 hour timer starts from the very first moment your car is parked in that block within the restricted hours.
So if you drive into a space at 10 AM, park for 10 minutes, drive off, and come back at noon and park in the same block for another 10 minutes, you've broken the law. Because your parking time in that block was from 10 AM until 11 AM. Re-feeding the meter doesn't help - it isn't about the money, it's about sharing the space with others. This is called "overtime", and it's different than no time left on the meter.
And of course, the meter readers carry digital ticket-generating radio devices with digital cameras and tag (plate) readers in them, so there is a good possibility that you get caught. Yes, I've gotten several tickets for overtime, and although I was unhappy with the tickets, it wasn't as if I didn't breaking the law. The real bummer is getting a ticket for both Overtime and Expired Meter on the same ticket... that's TWO distinct fines. (They used to use chalk to mark tire position, but that doesn't work well if it rains, or if the parker knows enough to rub the chalk away.)
The laws are very well defined to minimize gaming the system. They generally impact people like me who try to park for 8 hours at two hour meters.
Plus, it's pretty hard to argue in court: here's a guy with a half-dozen parking tickets filed against him, versus a meter maid who gets the most verbal abuse in the world and who doesn't have a care in the world if you pay the fine or not. The judge is most likely believe the person who is just doing their job and who doesn't have the incredibly bad parking record. As it should be.
Obviously, you have some capabilities that they can't do without. You should be able to capitalize on that.
Tell them that you can be put on a retainer, so, for a nominal fee (maybe triple your new hourly salary), you will help them out for up to 8 hours a week - either by helping them with particular projects, training new people, bringing management up to speed, or whatever. Also, require them to give you a stellar written review on company letterhead.
They are being assholes - I've never heard of such a thing. Generally, in my experience, the employer entices the employee to stay by offering a higher salary, bonus, upgraded position, or other perks. Badmouthing employees (or employers) is generally an awful strategy.
But don't get mad. Scratch their itch by giving them what they need and by getting a lot out of it yourself.
Is there any other company with it's perception of viability so closely linked to a single living individual?
YES! Many think that Rick Wagoner is closely linked with the the perception of GM's viability. Or lack there-of.
The US Postal Service is experiencing major server issues for its shipping API web services. After spending about an hour debugging my own eCommerce software for a client, I found the problem was with the USPS shipping servers being unavailable.
Others have said it, but I'll say it again because I like the beat this philosophy into everyone's head at work:
IMPLEMENT FAULT TOLERANCE.
If a service, internal or external, doesn't work right... make sure that your customers are still mostly satisfied.
It would be IMPOSSIBLE to experience "major server issues" if your damned eCommerce software was designed smartly.
Point the finger all you want. But at the end of the day, this failure is YOURS.
Web services go down, go bad, get attacked, or become unreachable. Plan for it.
Do we really need yet another analysis that talks about the same exact products on the same exact platforms?
Instead of a focus on complete information security, this kind of analysis, once again, ignores BlackBerry and Macintosh and Linux - some very common platforms that are growing in both the enterprise and home markets. How a repeated focus on the most commonly discussed platform helps anyone is a mystery. It just continues to say "all these products are different, we rank them according to our exclusive analysis." Are you going to switch AV vendor given their unconvincing analysis? Not likely.
In the end, the analysis sounds hollow; "My AV software isn't on the top of their list". Given their strategy, who cares?
The self-declared "security experts" completely miss the point by completely ignoring platforms other than Windows. Sure, perhaps the BlackBerry is only found in 70% of corporate environments, and the Mac only has 7% market penetration, and Linux is perhaps only 20% of back-end servers - but I'd fathom that nearly 95% of the businesses out there use one of these platforms and need them to be SECURE - in order to keep their corporate (or personal) data and networks safe.
All these "security experts" are failing their potential customers by rehashing the same discussion, instead of analyzing products and methods that address the mostly unhandled attack vectors of other mission-critical platforms.
I also vote for Dell. Look here at my speculation/analysis:
1. Dell is in a dire financial position for the past several years.
2. Michael Dell has attacked Apple before, verbally.
3. Michael Dell came back from retirement to try to save Dell.
4. Apple and Dell are strong competitors
5. Having Apple change its OS model would help Dell
6. If there is no change to Apple's OS model, no harm to Dell
7. Apple is taking Dell customers away in droves.
So, in short, Dell has nothing to lose and everything to win. Screwing with Apple in a public way is, in the least, fun and inexpensive. And at best, will result in Dell being able to sell OS X. And in the middle, would make Apple look silly. As long as the real puppeteer stays hidden, everything is good.
An old lady down the road from me passed away a few months ago. Her 1920's vintage house was vacant.
Someone broke in and stole ALL the copper water pipes. You think I would have noticed - it would take a truck and quite a bit of noise to remove them.
Somewhere within a one hundred mile radius is a metal recycler that is happy to look the other way.
So the Transport organization formed a new contract with the same parties that failed them before. HOWEVER, the new contract is much more robust, with many more protections for the transport authority, and many more penalties for the provider if and when they fail.
So what exactly wrong with this? That someone who screwed up got a new contract?
Let me say that there are very few organizations that have the ability to deliver ANY service in this area. Having a contractor with a track record and some history of failure doesn't mean that the contractor aren't the best choice for the job.
Is this corruption or stupidity? Likely not. This is simple business.
When I lived in Massachusetts, in the winter, it was dark when I got up and it was dark by the time I got home at night. Now that I live in Arizona I can't help but think; what the hell were those people thinking? I do not miss daylight savings time.
Um, in the winter it's Standard time, not DST.
DST kicks in the summer, pushing the clock such that sun rise is at 6 AM instead of 5 AM, and sets at 8 PM instead of 7 PM.
In the winter, during standard time, the clock is set such that the sun is pretty much over head at noon.
Then I had a clock that was wrong 4 times a year instead of two, because I forgot on the new date to change timezones and then it auto changed two weeks later.
You must have the same shitty clock I have. It is so poorly implemented that it ignores the DST status bit from the radio.... instead it switches DST based it on a statically-coded calendar rule. What kind of acid were these people on? WWVB has been around for a long time - with the DST bit - and the DST rules have changed many times before.
I hate that clock. Piece of junk. I think they implemented it like that just so it would become obsolete after an arbitrary amount of time.
Many years ago, right before the dot-com boom, I was out of college and looking for any job. The economy was lousy in 1988, and I had a computer science degree, and a big firm offered me a killer job with an awesome salary. Sadly, the job was all about COBOL.
Happily I had another job lined up at a famous research center. But it was heavily government funded, and their funding disappeared. So I took the Cobol job, as it was a job, and it paid well.
Well, it was the most awesome job I had ever. I learned a lot. COBOL was the worst part about it, but there were plenty of other design challenges, and I worked with a bunch of smart people who were also saddled with COBOL. Of course, you can do just about anything with enough COBOL and enough creative thinking. And, of course, as a computer science guy, sometimes it is fun to exercise a mainframe even if you can only exercise it with an antiquated language.
The nice thing about COBOL, of course, is that its pretty hard to get yourself in trouble. The bad thing is that it can't easily do all the great things that a modern (post 1962) language can do. Or at least in can't do those things in an elegant way. Yes, even in COBOL-72 you can dynamically allocate memory for a complex data structure - if you're creative enough.
The other nice thing about living in a Cobol/Mainframe shop for a while is that you realize that everything in modern computing was delivered like 40 years ago by IBM. Sure, some things have changed, but just about all the big important things have been in that mainframe environment forever.
Of course, the web and dot-com boom started to emerge and I left the mainframe world after a couple years. A lot of my mainframe buddies did successfully make the transition, and the others mostly retired.
I still have fond memories of the people and systems. Yes, they are both all crusty and old, even back then, but all those things ain't as bad as people say.
Except for JCL. I always hated JCL. Now that was a total senseless hack.
Watch out Apple, here comes Nintendo. Nintendo plans to launch a new version of its popular DS portable gaming device with a camera and music player function
Apple? How about RIM! RIM isn't even beginning to compete in this space. Instead, they have their "Curve". It's ONLY claim to fame is that it is a BlackBerry marketed to the general public - something that I would not call much of an innovation - and it's missing the hottest technology of the decade, Multi-Touch.
Sure, RIM is counting on the "business professional", with decent Exchange integration (which, BTW, the iPhone has now - I know, I've used it).
But let's be real - many advances in computing technologies - from graphics card to GUI interfaces to the Internet to Open Source software and Shareware were considered unprofessional toys in their day. Even Microsoft discounted the Internet for 5 years, and thousands of companies ignored Open Source and Shareware and Linux until they ended up looking like fools and/or getting fired.
RIM wants to convince the world that "real business users are BlackBerry users". In the mean time, RIM is loosing their technology expertise, as their tech people leave them for where the excitement and money is.
Yes, RIM will "soon" have a "killer" device - two years late to market, and with dubious capabilities. RIM may just be making the Aviion of the decade - the last nice product of a quickly-evaporating corporation.
This is spot-on. Yes, many years ago there was an attempt to invest heavily in barcode readers - the Cuecat, in particular, was a well-funded attempt to bring barcodes to the masses. But due to a major error in their business model - a grave error - the 'cat lived an extremely short life.
Jump ahead to 2008. People are buying fancy telephones, and there are barcodes everywhere. Google is in a unique position to read and process these barcodes on the fly - using a well-connected application living on a mobile phone. Next thing you know, you'll be able to go to the store, pick up a six pack of Bud, and scan in that barcode. THEN you can find a cheaper vendor - maybe down the street. YOU WIN due to CHEAPER BEER.
And we know that the world, with its flailing economy, will certainly needs cheaper beer. The cuecat was just ahead of its time.
Everyone is comparing this new offering to the iPhone. But the interesting thing is that virtually no one compares it to the Blackberry - the new "has-been" of the so-called "Smart phone" industry.
It isn't like the Blackberry hasn't had any warning - the iPhone was announced more than 18 months ago, and there have been rumors about the Google-driven offering for nearly as long. How the shareholders of RIM can merely watch their company rest on its laurels is beyond me. RIM's death will be when Microsoft tries to acquire it.
In the 1980's, WANG was in nearly every office in America. They rested during the PC revolution, and within a couple years they were as good as dead. RIM has entered that territory. Yes, Blackberrys are still selling to corporate clients, who are traditionally slow to embrace new technologies. But other than the slow-movers out there, everyone can clearly see two very high-profile competitors - Apple and Google.
Looks bad for RIM.
Strangely it seems net neutrality is no longer as important as it was a few months ago
Here is a quote Obama's first bullet point in his updated and clarified technology position statement, the same paper that the /. summary claims that "net neutrality" is no longer important:
Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet
It seems like Slashdot sees the campaign as merely a vehicle for ad revenue. A correction in the Slashdot summary is warranted.
They should put into place a system whereby the speed of your access is inversely proportional to the amount of data you transfer. Thus, when people first sign on to this service, they'll be impressed by its speed. But as time goes on, it'll slow down increasingly, until Google's homepage takes a year to load.
Comcast has that option already. It's called "Comcast High-Speed Internet".
telling P2P users on Comcast how to do what they do without the risk of corporate interference.
I've already watched a Netflix movie and downloaded a couple iTunes this month.
So I haven't read the referenced articles, as I'm afraid that doing so might exceed some Comcast quota.
I have a doctor who couldn't pass organic chemistry. We call them "nurse practitioners". Sure, they aren't formal doctors, but they'll see me.
Here are some great follow-up examples:
Why on earth should engineering majors study optics, when so few will work with optics?
Why should a computer science major study operating systems, when scant few of them will actually work on an operating system?
Why should English majors study poetry, when so few will become poets?
Why should Business majors study economics, when so few will actually become economists?
Why should a home owner buy fire detectors, when so few will have their house burn down?
Why should people buy the Journal, when it publishes such stupid crap?
But then again, those of us in the large aircraft engine business know that typical airliners aren't nearly as efficient as they can be, or as they once were before the dawn of the jet age.
Want substantially higher efficiency in a modern airliner using a jet engine? With all the reliability?
Easy. Turboprop.
Your P&W, GE and RR makes big ones every day, primarily for military transports. But the Airline Industry doesn't want 'em - despite the substantial fuel savings. After all, the military choses them for good reason - low fuel cost, high power, and very high reliability.
Airline customers like how jet engines look magical. A prop brings them back to reality.
Commercial transports use available aircraft designs. Only turbofan designs are available due to the substantial demand for them by the passenger-ferrying airlines.
Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod over three decades ago in the 1970's.
Interpretation: Apple has not admitted that a British man invented the iPod.
Unfortunately, he let the patent run out.
Interpretation: Like all patents, this patent expired.
When another company tried to grab a portion of its iPod profits, though, Apple went running to him to defend them in court
Interpretation: Apple used "prior art" to invalidate someone else's claim that they recently invented a "solid state audio recorder/player".
In return, it looks like he's in for a share of the cash generated from the sale of 163 million iPods.
Interpretation: His patent pre-dated the technology to make a decent flash audio recorder/player, and therefore he was unable to collect royalties on his patent. Apple and the world may give him a pat on the back for inventing the solid-state audio recorder/player, but it would be financially irresponsible for them to give him royalties on a long-expired patent.
This means you can copy the ID of another driver onto your own device and, as a result, travel for free while others foot the bill.
Interpretation:
This means that one can steal services electronically, committing a felony punishable by jail time, while at the same time greatly annoying fellow citizens whose id has been stolen.
Tell the affected organization (Boston subway system authority) that there is a problem and you are willing to work with them to fix it.
It sounds like you a plan for extortion:
1. YOU have a problem.
2. Fix it MY way, on MY timeline, or I'll make your problem even bigger.
3. I'll be rich and/or famous and have earned some hacker creds either way.
Kids: This is not such a good idea.
If you sell three billion ads a month and can't break even, what do you do? Drop prices by 40% and switch business models, apparently
This is a sign that ad brokers and resellers MUST provide added value in order to make money.
Anyone can become a broker. The trick is to add value, so that customers will pay your premium prices. Advertisers will not pay a huge premium for unproven "advanced ad campaign technologies" that many of these brokers purport to provide. And if your competition charges less for a better service, don't expect to stay in business very long. At that point, your only choice is to substantially lower prices or change your business model.
Sound familiar?
The whole point of copyright is to encourage the creative arts. Retroactively extending copyright creates nothing. We get no new works for it.
The whole point of copyright was to encourage the creative arts. Now it is all about Asia. Asia is a huge emerging market for the EU and the US. Extending intellectual property is a reaction to the new wealth found in that region.
The US and the EU cannot compete with the now-strong manufacturing base of Asia. The only thing we can sell to that region is Mickey Mouse (copyright), Coca Cola (trademark), and Boeing (patents).
Asia does not need the US or the EU to create any of those products. So if they do, we want them to "license the rights" from us.
Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension.
There is an easy fix for that. As a publisher, simply market your entire catalog. You don't even need to print the music. Just price it ridiculously high and make sure that you publish a list of all your individual items in your catalog somewhere. Copyright extended.
The only people screwed are individuals and tiny publishers that don't know enough to "market" their materials, or who don't know what they have. As a citizen, it becomes impossible to determine what is protected by copyright.
This is a multi-million euro gift to the large publishers, and near zero to everyone else.