Guys, this is not how to play the standards game. Neither of you are Microsoft. Neither of you are OpenOffice.org. This game is best played between a well funded behemoth with deep pockets against a collection of rag tag individuals. Deep Pockets, Inc will create benami [*] entities that will pretend to be industry groups but will play the role of being shills and pimps for Deep Pockets, Inc.
The rag tag bunch of individuals on the opposite team are tenuously bonded by their common opposition to Deep Pockets, but will spend as much time fighting their own team as Deep Pockets, Inc. These people are against Deep Pockets, Inc on principle, and because their motivation is their "principle", they would be against anyone who do not share their principles, even if they are in their own team.
The game play is very interesting to watch and very tragic in outcome. Usually Deep Pockets, Inc will be able to do the equivalent of changing the supply voltage of the household electric connection, and make every electrical appliance in the house to become obsolete, once in two years. The benamis will be paid their 30 shekels, Deep Pockets will report robust growth in their electrical appliance sales, and the rag tag individuals will gripe about it in slashdot. And the game will repeat. So predictable, so enjoyable.
[*] Glossary:
Benami, (n) Someone who holds a title to a property for legal purposes while some one else is the real owner. A system created in India during British Raj when the British army officers were not allowed to own property in India. They would nominate a native as the owner on the title papers, but continue to be the de facto owners of the property, sometimes without even the knowledge of the benami. It has now evolved into a huge tax evasion infrastructure for Indian politicians, civil servants, traders and money launderers.
Now a days the video cameras are so tiny, so hidable and with WiFi built in too. It would be far easier to find a vantage point over the practice field of the opponent and smuggle in and hide a camera and tape the practice sessions. Most of the plays are acted out and explained by the coaches in the field. Also you could see the weakness of each player by the amount of practice time spent and repeated on a particular piece of work. Just by looking at the line up you may be able to guess the play.
If the length of the hose could be increased to say 30 feet, enough to put you over the rail of a cargo freighter, you can sell these devices to the Somali pirates!
Of course first US Navy and Marines will fund the R&D to develop it as AMBaIV (Advanced Marine Boarding and Inspection Vehicle) to serve in the blockade missions. The R&D Center will be in the home district of some powerful senator. So it will get funded. Then the specs will creep up, ability to hover with a machine gun... 200 rounds of ammunition... SatNav system... eventually a 105 mm naval gun will be added (and 200 rounds of ammunition). Eventually the cost of the system will be so much that actual deployment will never get funded. But using all the R&D knowledge accumulated in the Defense Contractor, they will create a civilian version. Which will start out as a recreational vehicle. Once the production tooling and factories have been paid off the prices will drop. So the early units coming out of service will have very low resale value. These will be bought by the Somali pirates.
Hope Google increase the weight of "Altimeter Group" and its "analysts" for search terms like "Microsoft Shill" "Microsoft Fuddies" "Microsoft Astro Turfers". That way we would be able to get a good idea of all these pimps used by Microsoft for its damage control PR.
Yes, there are even highways that run close to the prisons. Notices could be posted saying, "cellphones will be monitored near prisons, unless registered" and we could create laws specifically enabling the prisons to do it.
That leaves a trail. Eventually if the drug kingpin is ever caught with the registered SIM of a prison guard with him, the guard goes into the slammer. No they would not risk it. Right now they slip in a phone for a fee and there is no spoor leading back to the crooked guard. That is what tempts them. Create a trail, most guards would not risk providing a SIM registered to them to a drug kingpin.
I think the government should not try to stop these smuggled cell phones. Instead it should set up a cell tower and capture all communications. Phones registered to prison guards and verified may be exempted from this surveillance. Knowing how dumb criminals are, we are sure to gather tons of incriminating evidence even if they know they are being monitored.
And the cool thing is this: If some small company comes up with a killer app/idea/concept, if they are using cloud based service, I can just sue that tiny company on some pretext. Let loose my army of lawyers and get enough subpoena to get every last detail of their plans and ideas in the discovery process. Then I will laugh all the way to the bank, selling their ideas before they could meet the venture capitalists to raise enough money for version 1. Hoot! Who said cloud does not have value?
Let me ask you, if I sue your clients and come after you with a discovery subpoena, how hard will you protect your client's data? How easy it would be for me to download their entire damn development plan?
Users of Facebook are not its customers, they are its product. FB sells data about them to advertisers. So once a court order/subpoena has been received, it will act to limit damage to itself. That means full compliance and cooperation with the suing attorney. "Here are the keys, look as much as you want, Copy anything, don't bother us" would be its response.
But now a days there are so many companies providing host space, offline storage and backup, on line collaboration tools, even project planning tools on line. Many small businesses are using google cloud or microsoft office live cloud services. Now if some such small company is sued, and the lawyers ask for all documents saved in Microsoft Office Live servers with a proper subpoena would MS refuse? Would MS try to limit the discovery process to relevant documents? Would they do everything in the best interest of the defendant or in the best interest of the hosting company alone?
A mathematican, an astrophysicist and a statistician were walking along a road in Scotland. They saw a black cow. The astrophysicist said, "All the cows in Scotland are black". The statistician said, "No, there is at least one black cow in Scotland". The mathematician said, "All we now know is, this side of that cow is black."
Ha! You should read about Pope Alexander the Sixth, who nearly achieved the impossible! He squared the circle and made papacy both celibate and hereditary! His illegitimate son through an abbess was made the Cardinal of Rome or something and was a very strong candidate to succeed Pope Alexander VI.
Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, both professed atheists, can account for far more death, misery, wars, and famine than almost all religious leaders or even religiously inclined political leaders in the entire history of humanity combined.
Well, may be in absolute numbers, but the fraction of the population these guys killed is small potatoes compared to what religious tyrants did.
The vast majority of the generation I know nothing about insists on taxing me and taking my money to pay for their own retirement. Is it American to force people to pay for the welfare of strangers? Is it capitalism? Is it liberty?
The "tons" of money you paid is tiny compared to the promises made to you in return for that tax. And you elected the politicians who made that promise. Essentially you promised yourself great retirement benefits for a very tiny cut in pay. We did not make that promise, we did not elect those politicians. This is socialism of the first order.
India and China are supposed to be the socialistic countries. But even they dont tax everybody to pay pensions to their parents. You bring up your children, make good citizens of them, love them, cherish them and they will take care of you in your retirement. That is the "contract between generations" in India and China. The contract is between people related by flesh and blood. In this Soviet America you tax all the young people and divvie it up equally among all the retirees. Where is the incentive for any American to take care of their children? If your children would not pay for your retirement why should we strangers pay for it?
Buddy, You are conveniently forgetting YOU elected them politicians. Did I vote for the politicians who promised you heaven and earth for some trivial payroll tax? Did I ask you believe in that? I did not make the promise. You promised yourself by electing such politicians. So it is your problem. All of us will vote for the politician who promises to defund social security. You know damn well that it is a ponzi scheme. That is why you fight tooth and nail the simplest thing like exempting children not yet working from this social security mess. Or making it optional.
DMCA stands DIGITAL millennium copyright act. So if the cropping was done using digital tools (like scissors and fingers, knives held by fingers) then it would be a violation. But if you scan it in and crop it using Photoshop the law would not apply. Hope my understanding of the word digital would be confirmed by the courts.
The typical chemical battery used in hybrids have very poor efficiency. It stores only 50% of the energy given and releases only half of the stored energy. The compressed gas battery will definitely have more or at least equal efficiency. Failure mode is not a serious issue. The mythbusters fired rifle rounds into compressed gas cylinders to simulate the climax scene of Jaws and got pretty undramatic footage. (And as usual they ended up packing it with explosives to satisfy the viewers who want to see things go kabooom!). Mechanical things are very well understood and the technology is going to mature a lot faster than the electrochemical research. BTW one of the promising new battery technology is based on molten sodium. BytheBytheWay sodium has this nice property of being able to explode when exposed to water!
I always thought the flywheel battery (flywheels spinning in a vacuum chamber, suspended in magnetic bearings, arranged in quads to cancel angular momentum) would have very high efficiency. UT Austin demoed one of these things to power a building size UPS and one able to accelerate a train from rest to 30 mph.
What we need is really electricity priced the way cell phone minutes are sold. Peak hour, off peak and night rates. Then there will be an incentive for people to buy these things to store cheap electricity at night and use it in the day and reduce the grid load on hot summer days.
That the Mongols were cruel hordes that engaged in wanton slaughter of "innocents" is a Western myth. There is no evidence to suggest he was any more cruel than the Spanish Conquistadors couple of centuries later or the Crusaders. In fact Kublai Khan gave more freedom to practice religion and allowed a couple of Christian missionaries in peace.
Why would want to replace batteries in an iphone? It will develop some kind of adverse reaction and the iPhone will reject the batteries and get into some serious sickness. You may have to douse the phone with some kind of immuno suppressant all its life to make it keep the battery? By the way most people talk replacing the battery is some simple trivial task like a pancreas transplant.
Slashdot Mirror
The rag tag bunch of individuals on the opposite team are tenuously bonded by their common opposition to Deep Pockets, but will spend as much time fighting their own team as Deep Pockets, Inc. These people are against Deep Pockets, Inc on principle, and because their motivation is their "principle", they would be against anyone who do not share their principles, even if they are in their own team.
The game play is very interesting to watch and very tragic in outcome. Usually Deep Pockets, Inc will be able to do the equivalent of changing the supply voltage of the household electric connection, and make every electrical appliance in the house to become obsolete, once in two years. The benamis will be paid their 30 shekels, Deep Pockets will report robust growth in their electrical appliance sales, and the rag tag individuals will gripe about it in slashdot. And the game will repeat. So predictable, so enjoyable.
[*] Glossary:
Benami, (n) Someone who holds a title to a property for legal purposes while some one else is the real owner. A system created in India during British Raj when the British army officers were not allowed to own property in India. They would nominate a native as the owner on the title papers, but continue to be the de facto owners of the property, sometimes without even the knowledge of the benami. It has now evolved into a huge tax evasion infrastructure for Indian politicians, civil servants, traders and money launderers.
Will the app borrow the Amazon or Netflix technology and come up with, "People who confessed to this venal transgression also confessed to ...."
The ignorant wretched masses, who were 39% of the survey sample, cursed their computer. The rest, the tech savvy 61%, cursed Microsoft.
Now a days the video cameras are so tiny, so hidable and with WiFi built in too. It would be far easier to find a vantage point over the practice field of the opponent and smuggle in and hide a camera and tape the practice sessions. Most of the plays are acted out and explained by the coaches in the field. Also you could see the weakness of each player by the amount of practice time spent and repeated on a particular piece of work. Just by looking at the line up you may be able to guess the play.
Of course first US Navy and Marines will fund the R&D to develop it as AMBaIV (Advanced Marine Boarding and Inspection Vehicle) to serve in the blockade missions. The R&D Center will be in the home district of some powerful senator. So it will get funded. Then the specs will creep up, ability to hover with a machine gun ... 200 rounds of ammunition... SatNav system... eventually a 105 mm naval gun will be added (and 200 rounds of ammunition). Eventually the cost of the system will be so much that actual deployment will never get funded. But using all the R&D knowledge accumulated in the Defense Contractor, they will create a civilian version. Which will start out as a recreational vehicle. Once the production tooling and factories have been paid off the prices will drop. So the early units coming out of service will have very low resale value. These will be bought by the Somali pirates.
Hope Google increase the weight of "Altimeter Group" and its "analysts" for search terms like "Microsoft Shill" "Microsoft Fuddies" "Microsoft Astro Turfers". That way we would be able to get a good idea of all these pimps used by Microsoft for its damage control PR.
I, for one, would like to welcome our over lords, but I can't see them. So they must be wearing this invisibility crystals!
Yes, there are even highways that run close to the prisons. Notices could be posted saying, "cellphones will be monitored near prisons, unless registered" and we could create laws specifically enabling the prisons to do it.
That leaves a trail. Eventually if the drug kingpin is ever caught with the registered SIM of a prison guard with him, the guard goes into the slammer. No they would not risk it. Right now they slip in a phone for a fee and there is no spoor leading back to the crooked guard. That is what tempts them. Create a trail, most guards would not risk providing a SIM registered to them to a drug kingpin.
I think the government should not try to stop these smuggled cell phones. Instead it should set up a cell tower and capture all communications. Phones registered to prison guards and verified may be exempted from this surveillance. Knowing how dumb criminals are, we are sure to gather tons of incriminating evidence even if they know they are being monitored.
Let me ask you, if I sue your clients and come after you with a discovery subpoena, how hard will you protect your client's data? How easy it would be for me to download their entire damn development plan?
But now a days there are so many companies providing host space, offline storage and backup, on line collaboration tools, even project planning tools on line. Many small businesses are using google cloud or microsoft office live cloud services. Now if some such small company is sued, and the lawyers ask for all documents saved in Microsoft Office Live servers with a proper subpoena would MS refuse? Would MS try to limit the discovery process to relevant documents? Would they do everything in the best interest of the defendant or in the best interest of the hosting company alone?
No. Slashdot is about 11 years old. They had a big bash about it turning 10 last year.
What did that bloke mean? "It is good math but not science"?!?!??! Math is science.
A mathematican, an astrophysicist and a statistician were walking along a road in Scotland. They saw a black cow. The astrophysicist said, "All the cows in Scotland are black". The statistician said, "No, there is at least one black cow in Scotland". The mathematician said, "All we now know is, this side of that cow is black."
The statistician is right. Because if the deer has not moved between the first and the second shot, it is already dead. QED.
Ha! You should read about Pope Alexander the Sixth, who nearly achieved the impossible! He squared the circle and made papacy both celibate and hereditary! His illegitimate son through an abbess was made the Cardinal of Rome or something and was a very strong candidate to succeed Pope Alexander VI.
Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, both professed atheists, can account for far more death, misery, wars, and famine than almost all religious leaders or even religiously inclined political leaders in the entire history of humanity combined.
Well, may be in absolute numbers, but the fraction of the population these guys killed is small potatoes compared to what religious tyrants did.
The vast majority of the generation I know nothing about insists on taxing me and taking my money to pay for their own retirement. Is it American to force people to pay for the welfare of strangers? Is it capitalism? Is it liberty?
India and China are supposed to be the socialistic countries. But even they dont tax everybody to pay pensions to their parents. You bring up your children, make good citizens of them, love them, cherish them and they will take care of you in your retirement. That is the "contract between generations" in India and China. The contract is between people related by flesh and blood. In this Soviet America you tax all the young people and divvie it up equally among all the retirees. Where is the incentive for any American to take care of their children? If your children would not pay for your retirement why should we strangers pay for it?
Buddy, You are conveniently forgetting YOU elected them politicians. Did I vote for the politicians who promised you heaven and earth for some trivial payroll tax? Did I ask you believe in that? I did not make the promise. You promised yourself by electing such politicians. So it is your problem. All of us will vote for the politician who promises to defund social security. You know damn well that it is a ponzi scheme. That is why you fight tooth and nail the simplest thing like exempting children not yet working from this social security mess. Or making it optional.
DMCA stands DIGITAL millennium copyright act. So if the cropping was done using digital tools (like scissors and fingers, knives held by fingers) then it would be a violation. But if you scan it in and crop it using Photoshop the law would not apply. Hope my understanding of the word digital would be confirmed by the courts.
I always thought the flywheel battery (flywheels spinning in a vacuum chamber, suspended in magnetic bearings, arranged in quads to cancel angular momentum) would have very high efficiency. UT Austin demoed one of these things to power a building size UPS and one able to accelerate a train from rest to 30 mph.
What we need is really electricity priced the way cell phone minutes are sold. Peak hour, off peak and night rates. Then there will be an incentive for people to buy these things to store cheap electricity at night and use it in the day and reduce the grid load on hot summer days.
That the Mongols were cruel hordes that engaged in wanton slaughter of "innocents" is a Western myth. There is no evidence to suggest he was any more cruel than the Spanish Conquistadors couple of centuries later or the Crusaders. In fact Kublai Khan gave more freedom to practice religion and allowed a couple of Christian missionaries in peace.
Why would want to replace batteries in an iphone? It will develop some kind of adverse reaction and the iPhone will reject the batteries and get into some serious sickness. You may have to douse the phone with some kind of immuno suppressant all its life to make it keep the battery? By the way most people talk replacing the battery is some simple trivial task like a pancreas transplant.