I expect to get flamed for this, but I installed FF after reading so many favourable
comments here. Using FF, I cannot access Yahoo mail, or any of my secure banking sites.
I've tried to match the internet security options with those of Internet Exploder, but
I still get errors. I like FF for the sites it does work on, but it's not a panacea for
me, at least.
Absolutely not. I worked for two weeks in a boiler room where we called people to tell them they had "won" a free trip to the Bahamas, and all they needed to do was let us charge $400 for "promotion costs" to their credit card. I thought it was fishy, but one night the sales manager from the downtown location came up to give us a pep talk.
This guy was practically frothing at the mouth as he told us how piss-poor a job we were doing, and how the downtown team was closing 3 times as many people as we were. Then, in response to someone's question, he said, in a very evil voice, "Your job is to pull cards. Got that? Pull cards!!". I realized at that moment that credit card fraud was probably very big on his agenda. I quit that night.
And this happened in Toronto, Ontario. Since we were calling Americans, it was difficult for them to prosecute us, as the RCMP is hopelessly understaffed (they recently admitted that they can only go after about 10% of the organized crime they know about because they don't have the manpower to go after the rest), so they couldn't get much co-operation.
And cricket. Now only the DAily Show they would explain that game.
Allow me to assist you:
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
You could go back in time 40 years, substitute "Japan" for "China" in your post, and nothing would be different.
Except of course, Japan eventually did reach US levels of income, and did start to import some goods from the US, despite protectionist Japanese trade barriers. And the US standard of living has roughly doubled in that time. So, in essence, your post is complete drivel.
What you need to do is to compete. By working harder, inventing new business systems and technologies or anything else.
Unfortunately, many of the products the US makes right now that the rest of the world wants are software and content (music, movies, etc.), which most of Asia rips off without paying for it. If the money for pirate versions of Windows, Hollywood movies, etc. was flowing back to the US, their balance of trade would be considerably better than it is.
the only delusion i see here is people believing that finding out what 'customers' want is somehow difficult.
Clearly, you've never worked in technology marketing. It is very difficult to find out what customers want - even when you ask them, they don't give you correct answers. And if your Shiny New Thing is really revolutionary - well, then it gets even more difficult as consumers can't figure out how to integrate it into their lives. I worked with one of the first companies to sell voice mail, and one common response was "But why would I want a machine to answer my phone?".
I had a business plan for a product that would intercept calls to your home, ask the caller to ID himself, and then announce the call. It would hang up on telemarketers. I thought it was a fairly simple concept, but when I tried to explain it to non-technical people, they would ask "What does it do?" (after the explanation), and "Why would I want one?" (after they had just agreed that they found telemarketing calls very annoying).
No they didn't. IBM did. M$ didn't develop DOS because they thought it was a good idea; they
did it because IBM paid them to. And from there, they successfully piggybacked on IBM's massive
market power until they developed massive market power of their own.
The real reason for M$'s quasi-monopoly was the braindeadness of corporate IT managers, who chanted
in a curious, troll-like way: "Must buy IBM.. Must buy IBM".
Umm.. 1999? Has everyone forgotten the Y2K scare? I know of many organizations that piled on tons of people to do ensure their systems were Y2K compliant. Those were the days.. $60/hour as a consultant!
Absolutely. What amazes me is we can construct equipment that can fly millions of miles through close to absolute zero temparature, land on a planet with minimal human supervision, ride all over the place for *three* years with a design life of six months, and continues to beam back pictures. If you had suggested this to someone in 1965, they'd have thought you were a loony.
On the other hand, you look at this accomplishment, and then you wonder why the world's most popular operating system is successfully attacked by 13 year olds.
This is nitpicking, but TFA says "Paradoxically, Star Trek got it completely wrong - when Captain Kirk says "Beam me up, Scotty", "Scotty, beam me up" would be much better because it can route it straight through to Scotty"
But of course, Kirk never said that. It was always "Mr. Scott, X to beam up".
Yes, and we still don't care. I would say "fuck all of them".. but you know what? I don't even think of them on a daily, let alone monthly basis. They are non-entities.
Gee, given that about 95% of the world's population lives outside the US, I'd say that's a remarkably stupid statement. I'm a Canadian, and I like Americans (my grandfather was American, and I lived in and worked in the USA for a few years). I know most Americans are decent people.
But America no longer has a claim to superior process and innovation, which, unless you're sitting on enormous pools of oil, is the only basis by which a country can prosper long term. Europe and Japan caught up to you years ago, and the Asian tigers are making that trip faster than David Banh's degree. Get used to a world where there are more smart and empowered people outside America than in it.
Here's a cultural indicator. This year, the US didn't win the World Baseball Classic. Japan, which only learned the game after WWII, won by beating economic powerhouse Cuba. Baseball was invented in the US. This year, the US didn't win the World Basketball Championship. Spain and Greece battled for the crown, with the Spaniards winning. Basketball was invented in the US. And New Zealand - the land of 4 million people, 12 million sheep, and 2 million strangely satisfied men - defeated the US in the last America's Cup, which uses some pretty esoteric technology. I'm far too polite to mention the Ryder Cup. So, if you can't beat us on the playgrounds, how are you going to beat us in the war?
As a Canadian, I would like to offer some friendly advice. As a nation we have always been a junior partner, first in the Commonwealth, and now in NAFTA. We've learned to negotiate, and have made some very astute agreements, such as the Auto Pact. The days when the US had 40% of world GDP are over; your relative share is falling, and is going to keep falling for years. So learning how to get good agreements is going to be increasingly valuable for you.
And, ya, you could blow us off the face of the earth, not that I think is at all likely. But, really, where's the long term fun in that?
So many people alive today in the US don't remember when there was only the one phone company. Sure it had some good side effects, like the almost limitless amounts of money they spent on Bell Labs and the stuff that came out of there. But one has to wonder how different the telecom field would be today if they hadn't been broken up... or if they'd been broken up far sooner.
I have a different take on this; when a new technology emerges, it's not so horrible to have one monolithic model while the technology is being adopted. It provides for a more stable environment while people figure out exactly how the technology will be used. Look at Apple and Microsoft. Apple chose to control both hardware and software (monolithic), while MS just tried to specify minimum hardware requirements. How many of the crashes that users blame on MS were actually the fault of 3rd party hardware developers? And, once Steve Jobs left, and Apple opened up to 3rd party hardware, they began to experience incompatibility issues as well.
Thanks to the hard-nosed approach taken by Bell, the global telecom network grew with very few compatibility issues. In 1960, you could pick up a phone, and dial virtually any phone in the world (some political embargos existed, but that's not a technology problem). By the time the Carterphone decision in 1968 opened up the interconnect market, and the subsequent MCI decisions opened up the long distance market, the technical specifications to interconnect with the network were set in stone.
To use another example, think of the electric power network. How well would devices work if one city opted for 110 VAC, while another chose 220 VAC, and a third 200 VDC? It's all well and good to say "Fine, just buy devices set up for your city", but what if you move? Replace every lamp, clock, TV, stereo, computer, and electric lawnmower you own? Feh.
Then, there comes a time when the monolith technology is so well entrenched and standardised that you can allow competitors to enter the market without fear of compatibility problems. Look at VOIP - it's completely alien to the existing circuit-switched network, but the standards for interconnect are so well defined that you can interface these two widely different technologies with no problems.
On the other hand, if you're arguing that entrenched monopolies want to extend their "monolith" period far beyond what is technically required - well, you'll get no argument from me.
You are aware - aren't you? - that Apple Computer in its early days was pushed around by Apple Corp, the Beatles' music publishing firm over the use of the name "Apple". After a series of battles, the two firms agreed to live and let live, but the controversy flared up again when Apple Computer went into the music business with iTunes. I'm not sure where it stands now, but Apple Computer has been on the receiving end of tradename battles, so they know what it's like.
It's when they get this entitled sense of "I have a right to be making gobs of money regardless of what I do" that we get into this patent mess.
But it's not a case of "regardless of what I do" - it's a case of "I did something unique, and I want to be rewarded for it". That's why the US Constitution specifically provides for patents of limited duration. If they truly developed something new, they are entitled to a reward (as opposed to the ridiculous "business model" patents that caused RIM and the Blackberry so much trouble). If IBM is truly leading the way to junk the business model patent, they are doing all of us a service.
$9 at $0.10/kwH = 90 kwH. 90 kwH = 90k VAH (volt-amps). High voltage mains (such as power your stove at home) in the US and Canada are 220 V. So, current would be 90,000/220 = 409 amps, and it would take one hour to charge the battery.
5 minutes = 1/12 of an hour. So required current to transfer that much energy in five minutes would be 4909 amps.
Of course, the recharging stations might be very high voltage. High voltage transmission lines are routinely 110 kV and up. At 500 kV, transferring the current might only take 11 minutes. Don't know that I'd want to play around with voltages like that!
Yes, and what was the energy to force ratio quoted in TFA? 700 watts (just a little less than 1 hp) to get 83 millinewtons of force? That force accelerates 83 grams at 1 metre per second squared. That's about 3 ounces. So we'd need 5 hp per pound to get 1 m/s2 acceleration. Take a 1000 lb car, add 350 lbs for two passengers, and we need over 6,500 hp to get minimal acceleration. (1 m/s2 gets you from 0 to 60 mph in about 30 seconds.. most cars do much better than that.)
They're going to need enormous improvements in efficiency before this concept could be practical, assuming that the device actually works.
and the respect for phone companies is misplaced -- your phone is reliable because they're mandated by legislation to achieve a very low downtime rate).
Well, I worked in the telecom industry for 20 years, and I can tell you that Nortel, for one, engineers its PBX's for exactly the same reliability as its CO switches, and there's no legislation forcing them to do that. (BTW, exactly what piece of legislation subjects Bell Canada to limits on downtime? I've never heard of it.) It's a matter of pride among telecom gear makers that their stuff works all the time.
Of course, there's an economic incentive to make it so. If the network goes down, there's no toll revenue to be had. And service requires expensive people and gear to provide. So you build stuff that works most of the time, degrades gracefully in the event of failure, and then you put lots of redundancy in the network. It makes good business sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I expect to get flamed for this, but I installed FF after reading so many favourable comments here. Using FF, I cannot access Yahoo mail, or any of my secure banking sites. I've tried to match the internet security options with those of Internet Exploder, but I still get errors. I like FF for the sites it does work on, but it's not a panacea for me, at least.
But potentially useful if you run out of matches, no?
This guy was practically frothing at the mouth as he told us how piss-poor a job we were doing, and how the downtown team was closing 3 times as many people as we were. Then, in response to someone's question, he said, in a very evil voice, "Your job is to pull cards. Got that? Pull cards!!". I realized at that moment that credit card fraud was probably very big on his agenda. I quit that night.
And this happened in Toronto, Ontario. Since we were calling Americans, it was difficult for them to prosecute us, as the RCMP is hopelessly understaffed (they recently admitted that they can only go after about 10% of the organized crime they know about because they don't have the manpower to go after the rest), so they couldn't get much co-operation.
Allow me to assist you:
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
Paging Senator Stephens..
Except of course, Japan eventually did reach US levels of income, and did start to import some goods from the US, despite protectionist Japanese trade barriers. And the US standard of living has roughly doubled in that time. So, in essence, your post is complete drivel.
Unfortunately, many of the products the US makes right now that the rest of the world wants are software and content (music, movies, etc.), which most of Asia rips off without paying for it. If the money for pirate versions of Windows, Hollywood movies, etc. was flowing back to the US, their balance of trade would be considerably better than it is.
Clearly, you've never worked in technology marketing. It is very difficult to find out what customers want - even when you ask them, they don't give you correct answers. And if your Shiny New Thing is really revolutionary - well, then it gets even more difficult as consumers can't figure out how to integrate it into their lives. I worked with one of the first companies to sell voice mail, and one common response was "But why would I want a machine to answer my phone?".
I had a business plan for a product that would intercept calls to your home, ask the caller to ID himself, and then announce the call. It would hang up on telemarketers. I thought it was a fairly simple concept, but when I tried to explain it to non-technical people, they would ask "What does it do?" (after the explanation), and "Why would I want one?" (after they had just agreed that they found telemarketing calls very annoying).
No they didn't. IBM did. M$ didn't develop DOS because they thought it was a good idea; they did it because IBM paid them to. And from there, they successfully piggybacked on IBM's massive market power until they developed massive market power of their own.
The real reason for M$'s quasi-monopoly was the braindeadness of corporate IT managers, who chanted in a curious, troll-like way: "Must buy IBM.. Must buy IBM".
Why do you bother to use an acronym when you're going to spell the whole thing out anyway?
You may not be a complete moron, but you argue like one.
Umm.. 1999? Has everyone forgotten the Y2K scare? I know of many organizations that piled on tons of people to do ensure their systems were Y2K compliant. Those were the days.. $60/hour as a consultant!
On the other hand, you look at this accomplishment, and then you wonder why the world's most popular operating system is successfully attacked by 13 year olds.
Iron Man lives!
But of course, Kirk never said that. It was always "Mr. Scott, X to beam up".
I was talking about economic war. Pardon my elision.
Gee, given that about 95% of the world's population lives outside the US, I'd say that's a remarkably stupid statement. I'm a Canadian, and I like Americans (my grandfather was American, and I lived in and worked in the USA for a few years). I know most Americans are decent people.
But America no longer has a claim to superior process and innovation, which, unless you're sitting on enormous pools of oil, is the only basis by which a country can prosper long term. Europe and Japan caught up to you years ago, and the Asian tigers are making that trip faster than David Banh's degree. Get used to a world where there are more smart and empowered people outside America than in it.
Here's a cultural indicator. This year, the US didn't win the World Baseball Classic. Japan, which only learned the game after WWII, won by beating economic powerhouse Cuba. Baseball was invented in the US. This year, the US didn't win the World Basketball Championship. Spain and Greece battled for the crown, with the Spaniards winning. Basketball was invented in the US. And New Zealand - the land of 4 million people, 12 million sheep, and 2 million strangely satisfied men - defeated the US in the last America's Cup, which uses some pretty esoteric technology. I'm far too polite to mention the Ryder Cup. So, if you can't beat us on the playgrounds, how are you going to beat us in the war?
As a Canadian, I would like to offer some friendly advice. As a nation we have always been a junior partner, first in the Commonwealth, and now in NAFTA. We've learned to negotiate, and have made some very astute agreements, such as the Auto Pact. The days when the US had 40% of world GDP are over; your relative share is falling, and is going to keep falling for years. So learning how to get good agreements is going to be increasingly valuable for you.
And, ya, you could blow us off the face of the earth, not that I think is at all likely. But, really, where's the long term fun in that?
Is that where you bend over, and kiss your ass goodbye?
I have a different take on this; when a new technology emerges, it's not so horrible to have one monolithic model while the technology is being adopted. It provides for a more stable environment while people figure out exactly how the technology will be used. Look at Apple and Microsoft. Apple chose to control both hardware and software (monolithic), while MS just tried to specify minimum hardware requirements. How many of the crashes that users blame on MS were actually the fault of 3rd party hardware developers? And, once Steve Jobs left, and Apple opened up to 3rd party hardware, they began to experience incompatibility issues as well.
Thanks to the hard-nosed approach taken by Bell, the global telecom network grew with very few compatibility issues. In 1960, you could pick up a phone, and dial virtually any phone in the world (some political embargos existed, but that's not a technology problem). By the time the Carterphone decision in 1968 opened up the interconnect market, and the subsequent MCI decisions opened up the long distance market, the technical specifications to interconnect with the network were set in stone.
To use another example, think of the electric power network. How well would devices work if one city opted for 110 VAC, while another chose 220 VAC, and a third 200 VDC? It's all well and good to say "Fine, just buy devices set up for your city", but what if you move? Replace every lamp, clock, TV, stereo, computer, and electric lawnmower you own? Feh.
Then, there comes a time when the monolith technology is so well entrenched and standardised that you can allow competitors to enter the market without fear of compatibility problems. Look at VOIP - it's completely alien to the existing circuit-switched network, but the standards for interconnect are so well defined that you can interface these two widely different technologies with no problems.
On the other hand, if you're arguing that entrenched monopolies want to extend their "monolith" period far beyond what is technically required - well, you'll get no argument from me.
You are aware - aren't you? - that Apple Computer in its early days was pushed around by Apple Corp, the Beatles' music publishing firm over the use of the name "Apple". After a series of battles, the two firms agreed to live and let live, but the controversy flared up again when Apple Computer went into the music business with iTunes. I'm not sure where it stands now, but Apple Computer has been on the receiving end of tradename battles, so they know what it's like.
But it's not a case of "regardless of what I do" - it's a case of "I did something unique, and I want to be rewarded for it". That's why the US Constitution specifically provides for patents of limited duration. If they truly developed something new, they are entitled to a reward (as opposed to the ridiculous "business model" patents that caused RIM and the Blackberry so much trouble). If IBM is truly leading the way to junk the business model patent, they are doing all of us a service.
5 minutes = 1/12 of an hour. So required current to transfer that much energy in five minutes would be 4909 amps.
Of course, the recharging stations might be very high voltage. High voltage transmission lines are routinely 110 kV and up. At 500 kV, transferring the current might only take 11 minutes. Don't know that I'd want to play around with voltages like that!
Yes, and what was the energy to force ratio quoted in TFA? 700 watts (just a little less than 1 hp) to get 83 millinewtons of force? That force accelerates 83 grams at 1 metre per second squared. That's about 3 ounces. So we'd need 5 hp per pound to get 1 m/s2 acceleration. Take a 1000 lb car, add 350 lbs for two passengers, and we need over 6,500 hp to get minimal acceleration. (1 m/s2 gets you from 0 to 60 mph in about 30 seconds.. most cars do much better than that.)
They're going to need enormous improvements in efficiency before this concept could be practical, assuming that the device actually works.
Well, I worked in the telecom industry for 20 years, and I can tell you that Nortel, for one, engineers its PBX's for exactly the same reliability as its CO switches, and there's no legislation forcing them to do that. (BTW, exactly what piece of legislation subjects Bell Canada to limits on downtime? I've never heard of it.) It's a matter of pride among telecom gear makers that their stuff works all the time.
Of course, there's an economic incentive to make it so. If the network goes down, there's no toll revenue to be had. And service requires expensive people and gear to provide. So you build stuff that works most of the time, degrades gracefully in the event of failure, and then you put lots of redundancy in the network. It makes good business sense.
Hey, I was an engineering student and a business student. Does that mean I cheated twice?