They don't want efficiency. They want innovation.

They don't want to innovate. They want to control the commercialization of new technologies.

Everybody in charge focuses on control first. Since they don't thoroughly follow what you're doing, they monitor by watching you do it.

They don't want anybody else doing what they do.

Most sperm get a brief swim and that's it.

Your chance of becoming the Messiah are millions of times greater than one sperm's chance of fulfilling its purpose.

Still, most sperm are dedicated to a sense of purpose. That purpose is to be absorbed by a larger cell and trigger the well-programmed growth of a new organism.

Of course, as your yourself are the rare result of a successful sperm, you discount the role of randomness and believe that life has purpose.

Why not?

We are only one generation away from Google Contact Lenses.

Haptic underwear.

Intracranial modems.

Broadband cochlea replacements.

At that point most of will be sensible only to the internal signalling of the larger organism of which we will be but cells.

DNA, against all odds, will have made it past evolution all the way to Intelligent Design.

Of course, eventually -- or perhaps soon, or maybe even now -- we will be a mere organ in the anatomy of a superintelligent intergalactically networked individual.

And what will our role be? Perhaps we will be a remote scouting organ on the lookout for even larger creatures that want to consume us. Or it.

The term "Oxford comma" exists only because the term "Chicago omission" would not indicate something visible. There was no such thing as an Oxford comma until the Chicago omission was invented. Omitting the comma creates a jarring inconsistency, results in unnecessary doubletakes, and fails to convey the cadences and inflections of the spoken sentence.

Remotely.

Actually, this is a move by Big Telecom to claim ownership of the next-generation wireless router and fortify its control over television, Internet, and voice transmissions.

Now we're talking stakeholders.

Build your own Internet. This one's already been claimed by stakeholders. Isn't that what they called in the Gold Rush -- staking a claim?

Gather a big financial package and give stuff away to change the direction of traffic in your favor. Don't appear to be evil, but only long enough to command big fees for wasting attention and hijacking browsers.

It is odd that Secretary Pritzger struts with the Internet overseas at a time when stateside the Federal Communications Commission has so much contempt for humans that it is considering allowing service providers to demand payment from content providers.

The international Telecommunications Union, the audience for this grandstanding, is like the FCC, in that it governs the used of electromagnetic spectrum, but in its case for purposes that exceed the sovereignty of any individual nation.

We don't have a Department of Individual Rights in the United States, but by gum we have a Secretary of Commerce.

So from the looks of it, Secretary Pritzger is just greasing the rest of world so those stakeholders can do whatever they plan to do with their stakes.

The article implies a steep logarithmic gain on energy invested into the initial pulses. If Sandia are right, holding the experiment together for a single-digit multiple of the input energy should break even.

Also from the article:

Simulations suggest that the Z machine’s maximum current of 27 million amps should be enough to reach breakeven. But the researchers are already setting their sights much higher. A hoped-for upgrade to 60 million amps, they say, would boost the power output into a “high gain” realm of 1000 times input—a giant step toward commercial viability.

Scenario 1:

You keep a webcam focused on a dam to monitor whether it fails. You see cracks. You watch as the dam washes out, but you warn no one. You are a scientist. You have broken no laws.

Scenario 2:

You are paid to monitor the dam and to issue warnings when appropriate. You see cracks. You watch as the dam washes out, but you warn no one. You are an element of the public safety system and you willfully and criminally left people unprotected. It doesn't matter if you were a scientist under contract.

Strategic sales usually involve an internal champion who has the confidence of senior managers and is betting three to five years of career advancement on the adoption of your product and its strategic importance to your firm. Sales is the process of helping that person acquire endorsements up the chain of command.

The best way to locate an internal champion is to meet with managers who appreciate the need but lack the time to immerse themselves in the decision. They will hand you off.

Incidentally: since you are already publishing your buglist, you personally have very little more to do to gain the trust of an internal champion and your appearance at one or two critical meetings will help senior managers understand that a sale is an alliance. Go to learn, not to teach. You'll do well.

Thank you for showing us the problem.

Your firm is being undermined by a lazy and uncommitted sales force

with little appreciation for the kind of transparency that is involuntary

and with weak relationship-development skills

and with zero tact

and insufficient fear of the bullshit-detection abilities of a technical audience.

Your lead developer is a genius. Look what just happened.

This is not a decision for you and the sales force to negotiate, because there is a large diversity among potential customers and it is the single greatest responsibility of senior management to decide what market segment to invest in.

Publication of the bug list does not look like "disclosure" to the larger and more capable customers. It is a feature that expands the customer's planning, development, and decision ranges. To a smaller customer or one with a shallower requirement, it looks like an apology in advance for everything that could go wrong.

It could be that because ERP software adoption is hard to undo, your competitors are just trying to haul in market share and let the customers discover the truth when it is too late. In that case, your competitors should be forced to lose sales for their lack of transparency.

In the end, I think you can't stop publishing the list for two reasons:

First, because transparency signals the kind of bold and capable team you are, so ceasing the publication would signal that you are not that team any more.

Second, because competitors whose sales proposition is anchored on "the other guys have imperfections that we don't" will always find negatives. A bug list is a way to manage the negatives, because as the negatives evaporate, what's left is transparency.

You are absolutely correct.

Successful investment bankers usually have smooth manners and a gift for softspoken vagueness that makes their duplicity harder to spot.

The mean ornery dogchild is just a midlevel henchmen for the really dangerous types.

And I've paid with for the right to say so.

Advertising revenues from local news is the largest source of income for most local television network affiliates and local car dealerships are the foundation of their revenues. (TV stations get little or nothing for carrying national programming, just the right to borrow the audience for a couple of hours.)

Local television economics is a political protection racket with car dealers as the collection point for funds, precisely as kings and shahs and sultans handed out exclusive franchises for cloths and dyes and wines and every manner of goods.

Car dealers fund a local-news system that ensures that Congressional representatives and state governments are rarely reported on.

Threaten laws protecting car dealers, and get you a lot of enemies who don't want to show their faces.