For any company that rates intellectual property theft as a risk to their business they should, as a matter of course, have procedures in place where all employees (both inhouse and outsourced) and any contractors who have access to the information are required to sign non-disclosure/confidentiality agreements. Make sure that these agreements emphasise what information is of a proprietary and confidential nature and outline what actions you will take if they breach the agreements.

While this won't stop all instances of intellectual property theft it does give the business a solid legal foundation to pursue any damages if you have to take it to court.

Insurance is one option although intellectual property is a very difficult risk to insure as is virtually impossible to place a monetary value on the ideas/source code/manuscripts etc. It is probably worth exploring though, from my experience in the insurance industry, the cost is likely to make it uneconomical for all but the biggest companies. Though thats a business decision for you to make.

First of all I do think that his idea has merit but it doesn't take a genius to start seeing the flaws - in particular what motivation does the development team have to continue developing the project?

1. Generate interest
2. Collect investment
3. Profit
4. Interest wanes, Investments slow
5. Developer thinks of new idea
6. Goto 1


With this business model we'll never see any completed games.

What you need to do is set up a third party finance company who sign people up for a subscription. Subscribers then get access to all the games currently in development and then each month the subscriptions are divvied up between the various projects in a fair and quantifiable manner (i.e. number of players/hours played/etc). This way the investment is incremental so encouraging longer term development rather than letting developers grab a quick cash injection before moving onto the next project.

Surely its obvious what's happening here...

1. Boy wants new toy
2. Wife/Girlfriend says no
3. Boy invents spurious tech excuse to create the illusion that it would actually being useful/needed
4. Profit (for Apple anyway)

This episode of Sesame Street was bought to you by the word: Machiavellian.

Bit pedantic.. or you rush read my comment...either way:

Category H = Tracked vehicles.
Road use of a JCB requires a Cat H licence.

(Though I will accept that JCB's are not neccesarily tracked and can have wheels so may not *always* need a Cat H licence.)

I don't think the US Military is the big problem, it's the driving on public roads that will get you frowned upon.

Not a problem in the UK - Just apply for a driving licence for that category of vehicle (Cat: H if I remember right - it sthe same as the JCB licence). Have to be 21 to drive anything larger that 3500kg but if you can find a small tank you can get a licence at 17.

Farmer near me used to drive his Sherman M4 and Scorpion through the town all the time.. police didn't bat an eyelid.

I'm downloading it so that EA feel compelled to put the DRM back in for the expansion packs. I will then start a campaign to boycott DRM laden games which will be so popular that no one will buy any of the $ims 3 expansion packs thereby killing the franchise once and for all.

I was under the impression that the information to be contained within this database already exists in one form or another and this is the problem that they are trying to solve. Currently this information resides in a hundred different systems and only a small proportion of these systems actually talk and exchange information between them. Such a fragmented system surely can't be good for anyone and by collating it we ensure everyone involved has the entire picture rather than just their service/authorities history of the child.

Don't get me wrong I do think the current plan is flawed and needs review. The security/integrity of the system needs an overhaul before going live, the number of people with access reduced, tighter regulation introduced outlining when the information can be accessed and a clear declaration as to when a child's information is no longer required by the state and deleted.

It pretty much is the lowest specs you see on Netbooks these days (at least here in the UK anayway). The Acer Aspire One does have a 512mb RAM and 8GB SSD version but as its pretty much the same price I would think it reasonable to use the above specs as the "entry" level.

And yes there are cheaper netbooks out there (e.g. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=225532&source=1) but if you investigate you'll find that removing the installed OS is either impossible or requires a soldering iron)

Brilliant. And True. Not something you see often on Slashdot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mons_Meg has an interesting comment regarding Mons Meg, a French made, Scottish used cannon which was allegedly ship mounted at one point in its history.. (admittedly only if we ignore the smattering of "citation needed" throughout tho)...

It has been suggested[citation needed] that Meg was one of the armaments on James IV's carrack, the Great Michael, which would make it the ship with the largest calibre gun in history. From the 1540s Meg was retired from active service and was fired only on ceremonial occasions from Edinburgh Castle, from where shot could be found up to two miles distant.[citation needed]

If they really want to emulate systems of old are they going to add the loading screens to the tape loading computers?

The countless hours I lost of life watching the eplieptic fit inducing loading screen of my Spectrum 48k really made you appreciate the game once you did finally start playing (oh and then when you did get them loaded up a speck of dust would land on the power cable or you had the temerity to press a key a little too hard and the whole system would reset)