My God! How can something like this possibly get by QA as a company the size of McAfee? Have they outsourced all of their QA to a team with no clue?

-Todd

That is 10-15 years when used as a night-time backup for solar collection.

This might be useful.

-Todd

Thank you, 007, for clearing up this little misunderstanding.

I wonder how long this battery will last and what the cost of a refurbishment is. Also, how does the lifetime change with more dischare/charge cycles? I think these numbers are as important as the initial cost, but usually do not get mentioned.

A $25M batter which lasts 50 years sounds like a pretty nice piece of technology if it can be discharged/charged daily. If it lasts 5 years and has a 100% refurbishment cost, it does not sound so great.

Todd

Custom dental crowns cost $150 to $250 depending on the material used. You can find adds for these in magazines targeting dentists.

Your dentist then sells the crown to you for 4x the cost, earning about $500/hour for your crown-placement visit.

-Todd

"the authorities said.' I guess you can break any system like CAPTCHA if you want it badly enough."

All this proves is the "authorities" do not know computability theory.

I.e., it should be impossible to make a CAPTCHA which will work for every person and will not be breakable by a machine.

-Todd

Why are people marking this as a troll?

As far as I know, it is true.

I suppose my comment, "But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics?" is a bit of a troll, but based on reality. For example:

I was offered a job. The HR department at the company pressed me to make a decision about taking the job. As a result, I lost the opportunity to play-out the interview process for a much better position.

When I described this tough problem to a well-known Silicon Valley CEO, he said I should have taken the job (as I did), kept up the interview process with the other company (I told them I was taking another job), and then quit the job I took if the better one panned out. He specifically said he had done the same thing, which involved working at a company for 1.5 weeks and then quitting for a better offer.

Maybe it is just me, but this seems wrong. But, in Silicon Valley, it appears to be business-as-usual.

-Todd

People like the higher-ups at Microsoft (or most companies, I believe) do not care or want to hear about these issues.

If it does not involve a bonus (for the executive) or making them look good (the executive), engineers have to shut up and smile.

-Todd

p.s. Of course, this is my opinion--not what I would do, and it goes against good ethics. But, who in Silicon Valley cares about ethics? :-|

Now we can ship 100,000 Mexican workers to Haiti to rebuild everything. They will earn US government-subsidized wages while the Haitians--who need the money/work--relax and watch!

Oh... Sorry... That was Katrina/New Orleans.

-Todd

I cannot imagine--if this did happen as reported--it did not violate laws. If it did NOT violate any federal laws concerning privacy rights, then we need to make sure this IS a violation in the future.

Another note: If they retrieved one photo of someone underage engaged in a sex act (this includes the "m" word, I assume), they are guilty of manufacturing and distribution of c. p, which means 10+ years in federal prison.

What were these people thinking when they set this up?

Here is some information from the CIA's web site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

I picked the four countries with the highest birth rate and the four with the lowest. Countries not on the list of major infectious diseases are assumed to be at low risk.

Country, Children Born Per Woman, Life Expectancy, Risk of Major Infectious Diseases

For the countries with the highest birth rates:
Niger, 7.75, 52.6, very high risk
Uganda, 6.77, 52.72, very high risk
Mali, 6.62, 51.78, very high risk
Somalia, 6.52, 49.63, high risk

For the countries with the lowest birth rates:
Macau, 0.91, 84.36, low risk (not on the list)
Hong Kong, 1.02, 81.86, low risk (not on the list)
Singapore, 1.09, 81.98, low risk (not on the list)
Taiwan, 1.14, 77.96, low risk (not on the list)

I think the data speaks for itself. There is a very high correlation between a low birth rate and longevity/low risk of infectious diseases.

Perhaps spending money on birth control to keep the population small so the land can provide the people with clean water and resources to handle sewage is a good way to limit disease.
Of course, the fewer people who are born, the lower the cost of vaccinating them.

-Todd

Just checking...

Side note: The article should have mentioned gmail.

Companies change. Look at Sun Microsystems. Suppose Google ends up needing money. What is going to stop them from allowing me / your mother in law / the king of Sweden from paying to dig through all of the data they have related to you? This might not be done directly through Google, but through a "nice, responsible company" which has paid for access to Google's data. If Google makes the data available to other companies, who knows what those entities might do with it?

We need legislation and a way to verify compliance!

Of course, it would be good if the legislation also protected our data from the Department of Homeland Security, but I do not expect lawmakers to be able to do the right thing there anytime soon.

-Todd