The lawyer's fees should be limited to a percentage of the actual damages collected by their clients. Using pseudo calculations like, "5 million customers would be given as much as 30$ worth of coupons and so the lawyers will collect 50 million dollars (33% of the total) in hard cash right now" is a farce. Just making sure that the lawyer's take would not exceed 33% of the what the class of victims collect as a total would be a step in the right direction. In the present system, once the award is declared and the lawyers have been paid, there is no incentive for anyone to seach and find all the members of the class and compensate them.
The well known malware Internet Explorer has been attacking another well known malware WinXP for quite sometime. So why get worked about these obscure ones?
Can't google propose an extension of the robots.txt file format to allow the original publishers to set a time limit on when the search engines should expire the cache?
Well, the Wii can handle four wiimotes simultaneously. You need something like ten motion sensors to do sign language. But sign language to text wiimote will be covered by medical insurance as a "medically neccessary prosthetic device". True, gamers are willing to pay insane price for the "in" thing. But the profit margins in medical devices is an order of magniture higher than game consoles. For example the bluetooth ear pieces are being thrown in as freebies or being sold at scrap yard prices. But the hearing aids covered by medical insurance sells for 1000$ a set!!!. More expensive than the entire damn PC.
I see a great opportunity for Nintindo to get into physiotherapy using Wiimote. Special medical consoles that can handle between 16 and 64 motion sensors will have superb market in professional
sports and in physiotherapy. The profit margins in both the markets are just insane. Will Nintindo
walk in and take over the market? Or will it let the lead evaporate within a year or two when both Xbox and PS3.x will have motion sensing controllers?
Ted Kazinsky used the post office to mail his bombs. The USPS "benefitted" by selling its services to Unabomber. Many criminals used the Post office to send mail. Two Pakistani taxi driver brothers share a passport. (First one goes to Pak, mails his passport back, brother follows three weeks later. One bro comes back, mails the passport back to Pak, the other brother, not neccessarily the same one who returned, comes in again. They claim they have been doing it for ages. True or just a fancy cricket ground tall tale bragging cant be verified) Post office benefits by their business too. So what is so special about google?
These web sites provide these weather predictions for free, and it is worth every penny you paid for them. Compared to some other people in prediction business, tarot cards come to my mind, these sites are not doing that badly.
Dont know if Apple is deliberately creating FUD by claiming that Vista breaks all these applications or if some deep skunkworks inside Microsoft nostalgic for the good old days of "DOS is not done, till DR-DOS wont run".
Mr Gates is also very much removed from reality and he merely parrots what he is told. Look at his comments about "OpenOffice taking for ever to open documents", or his engineers "breaking Mac/Apple security every day", etc. You will realize his role is something akin to a PR man burnishing the nameplate of Microsoft. He does not manage the company. Not its sales force, does not provide any technical or visionary leadership. He is just the brand-ambassador-in-chief.
He meets politicians and tells them whatever his acolytes ask him to tell them. He would go to India and tell exactly the opposite story. Go look at Indian websites oooohing aaahhing his compliments and how much he is going to invest in India and how important R&D done in India is to Microsoft.
First get all the data of the users into its servers, relatively easily, cheaply and painlessly. Like Word5' importing WordPerfect or Excel importing Lotus123 without any hitch. Once all the data is safely collected MS increased the switching costs and made it nearly impossible to get back to the competitors. Till date it keeps changing file formats, macro language, APIS, look and feel and tries enshrine even the bugs in Word5 as the new "standard" "open" document format!!!
In the case of Google, it will find increasing the switching costs to get out of gmail not very easy. Reason are:
1. It uses a simple browser as its interface and it does not have the same level of control over http protocols and XML protocols MS enjoyed over Windows platform.
2. Users have become more aware of these issues. The resurgence of OpenOffice and fandom of Firefox shows that.
3. Google says its motto is "dont do evil" and atleast part of its fan base is taking it at face value.
Overall, IMHO, if google wrests significant portion of the data from the clutches of MS and shows how advantageous it could be for companies and users to keep their data in a format with eye on the switching costs it would benefit the consumers.
Nothing will come out of Senate to increase privacy. Remember CAN-SPAM act and how it stamped out all the spam emails? This bill will protect privacy exactly the same way. If you think this bill will improve privacy, contact me. I have 22 million dollars stuck in a bank in Nigeria. Help me get it out I will give you 33% of it. Please dont be greedy and steal all that 22 million dollars from me. OK?
The DNA molecule and the basepairs are essentially a one dimensional pattern, i.e. series of letters or codes or symbols. The pattern they see depends on how many pixels you choose per line. Now if you rearrange the same data in 3D like a cloud of dots in a box or in 4D an animation of a cloud of dots in a box you can see even more interesting stuff. But all of it happens in the brain, you could probably get the same effect by encoding the telephone directory's list of names or the letters served up by google on a particular search term.
If they kept the 1D data in 1D and enoded it as music or sound we could use all the technology developed in Digital Signal processing and come up with even more bizzarre stuff. For example the DNA mole could actually sound "Om bhur bhuvasuvaha, Om tats vidhuvareNyum, Bhargo dhiivasya dheemahi, Diyoyona prasaadayaad". Just have to select proper notes and pitches.
I cant imagine a real company allowing its data to be housed outside its control. But if google sells a server in a box that houses all the apps needed to meet most of the documents needed, it could make sense. IT takes care of maintaining this big server. And all the other people use stripped down pc with no USB dongle, no print screen, no copy-paste that runs a simple browser to create the documents and with a full audit trail for all printed copies, it makes sense. Really. Companies are paranoid about security. Currently any document in the intranet server can be saved to usb thumb drive, cut/paste into emails, or forwarded via emails... If Google or any company can promise a full information lock-down to the management, they will get a sympathetic ear.
What you say is true. Currently only people who buy "router" with or without wi-fi and know things like Cat5 cable are people who own computers and maintain a home LAN.
But this video-via-internet appliance can be a pure stand alone player. Telephone companies would gladly sell a DSL service and tell the customer, plug this gizmo (DSL modem/router) to the phone jack and plug this set top box here and plug your TV to the set top box and use the remote to schedule what you want to watch. All these gizmos with blinking lights are free with a two year contract at 40$ a month (25$ for DSL and 15$ for the video service). Customers wont even know they are running a residential LAN. This can penetrate the market as fast as cell phones did or faster.
From the article: There is a "feeling versus reality," Schneier said. "You can feel secure but not be secure. You can be secure but not feel secure. The primitive portion of the brain, called the amygdala, feels fear and incites a fear-or-flight response, he pointed out. "
That is why the real amygdala hides in the background pretending to be a mere attendant like the pitutary gland and communicates with a prominantly placed fake-amygdala using elaborate signals and esp communication. All these scientists have been fooled into studying the fake-amygdala. So they underestimate the real security of the brain. Let someone assassinate the fake-amygdala in a spaceport in Coruscant and suddenly you will see the real amygdala emerge from the shadows and assume the role as the rightfully elected Queen of Naboo.
80GB external hard disks retails for 70$. For less than 100$ you could build a set top box that cat5 ethernet cable from your home router and output NTSC signal. A GUI built on remote and that TV monitor. Easily done. They can encrypt the format and lock down the machine, pack the advertisement and disable ad-skipping, sure. But you feed the NTSC output through a simple PVR and you get back the ability to skip ads.
Well, if you decide on the spur of the moment decide what to watch you have to wait for an hour. But your viewing habits are predictable, atleast by you. And you are still tied to thinking, "I got to watch it when they show it". No, just start the download, if you have not already programmed the download queue weeks or months earlier. Do some other chores around the house, and you watch it when it is convenient to you. I like to watch Jeopardy at 8:30. I dont mind watching the previous day's Daily Show at 8PM next day. There is nothing in NOVA that will go stale in three hours or three weeks. Welcome to the brave new world pal. You are in charge of what you watch, when you watch. Once you taste this freedom, there is no going back to "500 channels and there is nothing worth watching" era. Even whats worth watching gets constantly interrupted by people who are singing about a sausage on a stick with a pancake wrapped around it or talk about the new and exciting products made by "Depends".
The current model is: The TV networks produce/buy content. They pad it with advertisements. They get money from the advertisers paying for the whole project. They broadcast these content 24/7/365. Most people get between a few dozen to a few hundred of these channels. They pay nothing other than their eye-ball time. [The cable/sat fees are paid to the delivery infrastructure, not to the content producers or TV networks.]
This model is dead. The networks have to add ads that the customers dont want and make sure it is not too onerous. With the advent of PVR, ad skipping is here to stay. If ad-skipping is prevented by technology or law people would stop watching the shows. They wont accept ads anymore. Once the revenue stream is gone or severely reduced, the TV networks can not produce interesting and exciting content.
So the new model is going to be to use the internet to pump the shows people want to watch in their hard disks at home connected to TV. They will pay for content. They have to. They cant sneak ad in again like they did in cable tv because, no advertiser is going to pay for ads that people are going to skip anyway. I like this new model.
Due to economy of scale and cutting out the fat in TV networks and ad management etc, I expect a service that will give me "Jeopardy, Tonight Show, Daily Show, This Week with George Stephenopolis, Shoot out, Dog fights, Myth busters, NOVA, BBC news, and a few History channel, Discovery Channel and national geographic shows" for about 10 or 20 $ a month. Great! Even my 740Kbps service has enough bandwidth to download all these with plenty left over for my vpn connection to work. I hope it succeeds. I think it will succeed.
A slew of postings are expected where/.tters would avow that they will never store their personal data files in google's server and predict that corporations cant afford to send their data to such third party services and so this is unlikely to unseat Microsoft.
Again many would point out that once Google irons out the kinks using these millions of users as beta testers using spotty and intermittent internet connections to do document creation, they can sell out a Office-in-a-box appliance to corporations. Completely managed by IT, with better intranet speeds these machines can chew big chunks of market out of MS.
Meanwhile, unmindful of all the implications of security, invasion of privacy and other such trivial concerns, millions of users will use whatever works for them and leave the future to evolve at its own speed and pace.
True. I agree with your point. But submitting the source for independant thirdparty analysis and certification should be mandatory, like it is in child car seats and light fixtures. That is my point. May be I did not say it right.
Say, I make these light fixtures. You can screw in a bulb but you cant see the insides, its design, how close the leads come togather, the quality of the materials used, the quality of workmanship etc. No independant certifying agency like Underwriter's Laborataries has seen it. No consumer advocacy group has tested it. But I state solemnly that "to the best of my knowledge and belief, it is safe". All my employees in the Quality Assurance Department, (whose job depends on my ability to sell this gizmo) state sincerely that this product is safe. This should be enough right?
Why is it that people are debating closed versus open software?
All these debris collide with one another and create fine dust covering the earth. It will reflect just enough sunlight to reduce the amount of absorbed radiation to counter the global warming. What a great relief! Last
momement reprieve, brought to you by Frank Merrywell.
Slashdot Mirror
The lawyer's fees should be limited to a percentage of the actual damages collected by their clients. Using pseudo calculations like, "5 million customers would be given as much as 30$ worth of coupons and so the lawyers will collect 50 million dollars (33% of the total) in hard cash right now" is a farce. Just making sure that the lawyer's take would not exceed 33% of the what the class of victims collect as a total would be a step in the right direction. In the present system, once the award is declared and the lawyers have been paid, there is no incentive for anyone to seach and find all the members of the class and compensate them.
The well known malware Internet Explorer has been attacking another well known malware WinXP for quite sometime. So why get worked about these obscure ones?
Can't google propose an extension of the robots.txt file format to allow the original publishers to set a time limit on when the search engines should expire the cache?
I see a great opportunity for Nintindo to get into physiotherapy using Wiimote. Special medical consoles that can handle between 16 and 64 motion sensors will have superb market in professional sports and in physiotherapy. The profit margins in both the markets are just insane. Will Nintindo walk in and take over the market? Or will it let the lead evaporate within a year or two when both Xbox and PS3.x will have motion sensing controllers?
Another big chance for Nintindo. Can they hack the Wiimote to translate sign language to text?
Was that particle called the moron by any chance?
He IS from India. I mean, come on, two masters? What red blooded native born American is going to be that naive?
Ted Kazinsky used the post office to mail his bombs. The USPS "benefitted" by selling its services to Unabomber. Many criminals used the Post office to send mail. Two Pakistani taxi driver brothers share a passport. (First one goes to Pak, mails his passport back, brother follows three weeks later. One bro comes back, mails the passport back to Pak, the other brother, not neccessarily the same one who returned, comes in again. They claim they have been doing it for ages. True or just a fancy cricket ground tall tale bragging cant be verified) Post office benefits by their business too. So what is so special about google?
These web sites provide these weather predictions for free, and it is worth every penny you paid for them. Compared to some other people in prediction business, tarot cards come to my mind, these sites are not doing that badly.
Dont know if Apple is deliberately creating FUD by claiming that Vista breaks all these applications or if some deep skunkworks inside Microsoft nostalgic for the good old days of "DOS is not done, till DR-DOS wont run".
He meets politicians and tells them whatever his acolytes ask him to tell them. He would go to India and tell exactly the opposite story. Go look at Indian websites oooohing aaahhing his compliments and how much he is going to invest in India and how important R&D done in India is to Microsoft.
In the case of Google, it will find increasing the switching costs to get out of gmail not very easy. Reason are:
1. It uses a simple browser as its interface and it does not have the same level of control over http protocols and XML protocols MS enjoyed over Windows platform.
2. Users have become more aware of these issues. The resurgence of OpenOffice and fandom of Firefox shows that.
3. Google says its motto is "dont do evil" and atleast part of its fan base is taking it at face value.
Overall, IMHO, if google wrests significant portion of the data from the clutches of MS and shows how advantageous it could be for companies and users to keep their data in a format with eye on the switching costs it would benefit the consumers.
Nothing will come out of Senate to increase privacy. Remember CAN-SPAM act and how it stamped out all the spam emails? This bill will protect privacy exactly the same way. If you think this bill will improve privacy, contact me. I have 22 million dollars stuck in a bank in Nigeria. Help me get it out I will give you 33% of it. Please dont be greedy and steal all that 22 million dollars from me. OK?
If they kept the 1D data in 1D and enoded it as music or sound we could use all the technology developed in Digital Signal processing and come up with even more bizzarre stuff. For example the DNA mole could actually sound "Om bhur bhuvasuvaha, Om tats vidhuvareNyum, Bhargo dhiivasya dheemahi, Diyoyona prasaadayaad". Just have to select proper notes and pitches.
I cant imagine a real company allowing its data to be housed outside its control. But if google sells a server in a box that houses all the apps needed to meet most of the documents needed, it could make sense. IT takes care of maintaining this big server. And all the other people use stripped down pc with no USB dongle, no print screen, no copy-paste that runs a simple browser to create the documents and with a full audit trail for all printed copies, it makes sense. Really. Companies are paranoid about security. Currently any document in the intranet server can be saved to usb thumb drive, cut/paste into emails, or forwarded via emails ... If Google or any company can promise a full information lock-down to the management, they will get a sympathetic ear.
But this video-via-internet appliance can be a pure stand alone player. Telephone companies would gladly sell a DSL service and tell the customer, plug this gizmo (DSL modem/router) to the phone jack and plug this set top box here and plug your TV to the set top box and use the remote to schedule what you want to watch. All these gizmos with blinking lights are free with a two year contract at 40$ a month (25$ for DSL and 15$ for the video service). Customers wont even know they are running a residential LAN. This can penetrate the market as fast as cell phones did or faster.
That is why the real amygdala hides in the background pretending to be a mere attendant like the pitutary gland and communicates with a prominantly placed fake-amygdala using elaborate signals and esp communication. All these scientists have been fooled into studying the fake-amygdala. So they underestimate the real security of the brain. Let someone assassinate the fake-amygdala in a spaceport in Coruscant and suddenly you will see the real amygdala emerge from the shadows and assume the role as the rightfully elected Queen of Naboo.
80GB external hard disks retails for 70$. For less than 100$ you could build a set top box that cat5 ethernet cable from your home router and output NTSC signal. A GUI built on remote and that TV monitor. Easily done. They can encrypt the format and lock down the machine, pack the advertisement and disable ad-skipping, sure. But you feed the NTSC output through a simple PVR and you get back the ability to skip ads.
Well, if you decide on the spur of the moment decide what to watch you have to wait for an hour. But your viewing habits are predictable, atleast by you. And you are still tied to thinking, "I got to watch it when they show it". No, just start the download, if you have not already programmed the download queue weeks or months earlier. Do some other chores around the house, and you watch it when it is convenient to you. I like to watch Jeopardy at 8:30. I dont mind watching the previous day's Daily Show at 8PM next day. There is nothing in NOVA that will go stale in three hours or three weeks. Welcome to the brave new world pal. You are in charge of what you watch, when you watch. Once you taste this freedom, there is no going back to "500 channels and there is nothing worth watching" era. Even whats worth watching gets constantly interrupted by people who are singing about a sausage on a stick with a pancake wrapped around it or talk about the new and exciting products made by "Depends".
Me? You talkin' 'bout me' pal?
This model is dead. The networks have to add ads that the customers dont want and make sure it is not too onerous. With the advent of PVR, ad skipping is here to stay. If ad-skipping is prevented by technology or law people would stop watching the shows. They wont accept ads anymore. Once the revenue stream is gone or severely reduced, the TV networks can not produce interesting and exciting content.
So the new model is going to be to use the internet to pump the shows people want to watch in their hard disks at home connected to TV. They will pay for content. They have to. They cant sneak ad in again like they did in cable tv because, no advertiser is going to pay for ads that people are going to skip anyway. I like this new model. Due to economy of scale and cutting out the fat in TV networks and ad management etc, I expect a service that will give me "Jeopardy, Tonight Show, Daily Show, This Week with George Stephenopolis, Shoot out, Dog fights, Myth busters, NOVA, BBC news, and a few History channel, Discovery Channel and national geographic shows" for about 10 or 20 $ a month. Great! Even my 740Kbps service has enough bandwidth to download all these with plenty left over for my vpn connection to work. I hope it succeeds. I think it will succeed.
Again many would point out that once Google irons out the kinks using these millions of users as beta testers using spotty and intermittent internet connections to do document creation, they can sell out a Office-in-a-box appliance to corporations. Completely managed by IT, with better intranet speeds these machines can chew big chunks of market out of MS.
Meanwhile, unmindful of all the implications of security, invasion of privacy and other such trivial concerns, millions of users will use whatever works for them and leave the future to evolve at its own speed and pace.
True. I agree with your point. But submitting the source for independant thirdparty analysis and certification should be mandatory, like it is in child car seats and light fixtures. That is my point. May be I did not say it right.
Why is it that people are debating closed versus open software?
All these debris collide with one another and create fine dust covering the earth. It will reflect just enough sunlight to reduce the amount of absorbed radiation to counter the global warming. What a great relief! Last momement reprieve, brought to you by Frank Merrywell.