Photosynth

But oh it's too late, you outed their secret! Unless it was intentionally misleading!

Tape is even less expensive, yet the mainstream moved away from it. A disk is just tape that's been wound up into a smaller space.

Right after the acquisition, they decided to lay off the team responsible for the 'non-smart' phones so that all development funds can be channeled into the 'non-dumb' phones.

However, due to a glitch at accounting, they forgot to hand out slips or cancel payroll. The team members were already prohibited from mingling with the rest of the crew, lest some smartish feature creeps into the product ideation. So they lived their corporate lives unknowingly and developed the goodies and then it was too late.

This, mod parent up. It's weird to have a solid concept wandered around in the summary when it has a name. Neoteny is in play not only with humans (we're neotenic monkeys), but also with dogs, which is why they don't just eat us up as wolfs would do.

Whoosh ;-)

My father has space on a farm and built a rotating roof structure on the ground, with about 20 panels that are highly sensitive to light directiion. There are two light detectors: one is an ambient photoreceptor, in order to detect that the sun is shining. If it is above a threshold, it activates the rotary motor (salvaged from a washing machine) that turns the contraption until another light sensor measures bright light. This second sensor sits deeply in a slit, therefore it only detects bright light if the vertical slit directly aligns with the Sun. If the Sun moves (well, the Earth, or both, but anyway) then the slitted sensor will taper down suddenly, but the ambient sensor will still signal, so it'll apply rotation until the slit is lit again. Once it bumps into a terminal button, or a timer is activated, it winds back, otherwise it would be the end for the cords. It wasn't all fine and dandy: a year long legal battle was needed to convince the power utility to settle the net balance rather than the gross balance (inclusive of network charges etc.). Then lightning stroke and it all went out (with essentially all other electronics on the farm). Luckily my father had insurance, but it took about a year to collect and repair.

When I was a student, I came across some blueprint and made a monitor cable that allowed the use of less expensive, commodity IBM PC compatible monitors on Apple computers, and created a little company to commercialize it. As I lacked funds, or a PC, a monitor or an Apple computer, I borrowed a large CRT monitor from a distributor and brought it to an Apple retailer for the demo via public transportation. So much about budgeting for proper testing and QA. I was lucky with the soldering and it worked straight away. Due to reported availabilty from some asian 'competitor', no order was placed but I got paid for the prototype. I carried back the borrowed monitor and recovered the safety deposit.

Normally the game is played with repetitive button pushes, which is dumb. I linked the game, running in an emulator, to a PC based controller, and jury-rigged the wiring to an appropriately disemboweled step counter of a step machine. In general, I'm fascinated by the idea of linking the trappings of compulsion-inducing behavior (a.k.a. computer gaming) to things that are useful IRL. Or in modern lingo, I gamified a useful but otherwise incredibly boring exercise, or sportified an interesting game.

> fling a few $$ at googles mechanical turk

Huh? Learn to spell correctly: Google's Mechanical Turk ;-) ;-)

It was about the IoT in general, rather than the networked fridges as they exist today on the market. The first cars sucked, and maybe the first IoT fridges don't offer much plus either. Cars were an ultimately accepted invention, because they provided what a lot of people want: reliable individual mobility without horseshit and having to keep large animals. Even more so, networked objects are destined to be part of people's life, because the marginal cost of sensors, pattern recognition and being networked approaches zero, but there's bound to be applications, possibly including monitoring and improving the domestic segment of the foodchain, that bring benefit.

> Anyway, the EU seems perfectly happy to subsidise basket case economies like greece , italy and spain not to mention the waste of space eastern european countries that contribute fuck all apart from their citizens who just move to the west and undercut the local wage rates, so whats the problem?

Don't mix up the economic issues of South Europe with that of Eastern Europe. Most countries in Eastern Europe have industrious, striving populations that, after shedding the Socialism, have been working on improving their economy. It's pretty hard to catch up after many decades of oppression, which was preceded by hundreds of years of other hardship. For example, this part of Europe helped decelerate and ultimately stop and reverse the advancement of the Ottoman Empire. History here was a bit less fortunate. By the way, these countries combined make up a pretty large market, in the region of 100m or more people. Products made all over Europe, incl. Germany and France are prevalent here, and many firms of Western origin win large infrastructure projects, or have privatised, at low cost and some baksish to the former communist officials, most of the industry, banks and utilities.

It's impossible to quickly create income, let alone wealth, and political stability and a large, common market is in the interest of all, therefore Eastern Europe benefits from crucial, yet fairly modest cohesion funds. For example, Hungary gets a little over €2bn a year, spent mostly towards large infrastructure projects.

It is for this reason I find it appalling to compare such funds to those that have been moved and sacrificed for the economies of the Periphery, first and foremost, Greece, but also the rest of the PIGS states. Greece, Portugal and Ireland are similar to Hungary in size and population, and, rather than the above mentioned couple of Bn per year, suddenly hundreds and thousands of billions of Euro were thrown on the fire.

Hungary is almost a worst-case country where the irresponsible Socialist government indebted the country in the 2000s just to retain their power (assisted in doing so by Western financial institutions...), and Hungary still stood up, there was no special bailout during the global mortgage lending crisis or the Greek crisis. But countries where such indebtment didn't happen, e.g. Poland, Slovakia, Romania, have continued to grow even during the period the rest of Europe stagnated. Hungary also rejoined the growth club last year.

So it's a bit of an insult to liken the much needed and useful trickle of funds towards EE countries with the high caliber financial support for the already relatively wealthy and comfortable, massively indebted Southern periphery. Let's not forget that East Germany's revival costed West Germany about €2000Bn, and similar sized Hungary received about €40Bn in cohesion funds.

> > Start with kicking out Greece. It's a money pit.

> Why do you believe this? What have you been told about Greece, and its current economy?

I wasn't the GP but it's a bit more complex than this. There's no way Greece can finance the interest on its debt, let alone refinance it, not to mention reduce the debt level. So despite your otherwise legit list, those points are irrelevant, in particular, because they aren't mobilised to solve the crisis (selling islands etc.).

So the only option left for Greece to not default is if Europe pours more money into it. Given the debt level, and given that Greece has already reneged on past commitments, and indeed, any past commitments can be undone by a next government any time, the sentiment is that, even if Greek politicians were the most constructive, Europe would throw good money after bad money like it's been doing.

Now, the Greek politicians aren't even that constructive.

I ascribe this to the fact that reneging on the loans was what got them in power, rather than that they truly want a solution where Greece would eventually repay, with the slight technical difficulty that they'd only do so if it were sustainable, which unfortunately it isn't. Japan and maybe the USA can live with public debt equaling 200% of the GDP but Greece can't.

So, given the past annullments of agreements; the stance of the current gov't; the amount of debt; the political situation in Greece; I think it's fair to characterise Greece as a money pit as the GP did, because it needs the money; can't repay; and the incremental money won't solve the problem.

If the EU denies throwing money in this pit, then almost automatically, either of two things happen: Greece collapses and can't sustain using the Euro; prints its own money, slides into disarray and maybe an extreme right wing government; capital and production facilities flee; the economy becomes defunct; the other, more remote possibility is that Russia buys Greece. Either way, Greece in effect, stops being part of the European integration, won't even be able to control its borders.

So, if the EU denies further funds towards the money pit, then Greece is de facto out, even if it's not an active way of kicking it out, just a consequence that's however known in advance.

I believe it's the interest of Greece and the EU alike to let go of the pretense and hypocrisy. Iceland defaulted on the mortgage loans of its population, and they're fine. Poland defaulted around 1990 and Hungary was commended for _not_ doing so. In the short term, Hungary benefited from the stability; in the long term, they still have much lower debt levels, and have surpassed Hungary. The interest is mutual: I don't want my fellow taxpayers to throw good money after bad; I don't want my Greek friends to have to be indebted for half a millennium.

> We should just default and let the ECB and the other EU Nations absorb the debt we have incurred over the years

This must have been pretty much Greece's attitude if not intention from the get go, cheating and then falling on cushions of money that aren't yours. In the meantime, so many Greek people are incredibly rich, and lots of others have enjoyed a welfare state with modest work.

Basically, Greece owes around €400Bn (and there's an ELA fund of €70Bn) and by now, all of it came from European institutions and the IMF. Greece will default on this as you like. In the meantime, cohesion funds for similar-sized, newer EU members are around €2Bn per year, spent on infrastructure, new roads etc. in some part from companies of donor EU members, i.e. not all money stays and it's not spent on state welfare or debt service.

An EU that poured so much into a single country, while not really assisting new members will face the consequences. A former Socialist gov't in Hungary indebted the country somewhat, and the GDP sank in 2009 - no wonder that the next government was Centre Right, and no wonder that now the Socialists are in shambles due to the economic fallout and the EU's lack of handling it (in fact, Brussels tried to detract the new government where it could), and the second largest political force by now is an extreme right party, riding on the wave of dissent, like the nazis in Greece, I guess. It's like an infection; if Europe leaves issues on its periphery untreated, then it'll cause trouble for the entire body.

Europe stupidly focused on saving a disingenous, opportunistic Greece with the attitude you give example of, giving the country so much money it can't repay even if it wanted to. Whereas there are other problem zone, much larger than Greece, that weren't attended to, and governments will become pro Russia or fascists.

It's an island, separated by what, a channel that was already crossed by human powered flight; Channel swimming is a sport; and there's even ground transportation slightly underneath. More importantly, the Channel is about three minutes of airtime with a modern fighter jet, and much less with a ballistic missile. Paris and some other European capitals are closer to London than many of UK's other cities, not to mention Northern Ireland, which is separated by much more sea, and the former colonies, the US etc.

Also, it feels like there is distance. But if you look at it from Russia's vantage point, Europe is like a weird, colorful peninsula, an appendix on the body of the Eurasian behemoth. Admittedly you cross over a lot of countries (as yet) when you fly from Moscow to Paris. But it's a shorter, and possibly more frequent flight, than to Siberia.

That the UK feels independent because of some psychological factor is fair enough, but 'realpolitik' should utilise some common sense and analysis, and from that viewpoint, the feeling that the UK is special, or not on the continent, etc. are ridiculous notions. Nah, we're just a bunch of quarrelling tiny nations that watch as the World go by and we become a tourist destination and service centre, mostly, for Russian oligarchs, oil sheiks and tourists from Japan and China. I.e. a reservatum and open-air museum.