The insight is that this is a subscription model without subscription value. It's an MBA thing, and comes from studying the model without the context in which it is successful.

Companies see the subscription model as a cash revenue source, and there are several successful examples currently working: NetFlix, iTunes, internet service, phone service, and so on. Get your customers to sign up and sit back and watch the money roll in.

The problem is when the subscription model doesn't give ongoing service. Fitness monitors comes to mind - you purchase the unit to measure your daily activity level, but you *have* to use their online service to see your results. You can't [easily] download the data to your local computer, and the interface is obscured or encrypted to prevent the user from intercepting it.

There's no reason for the online subscription, except that it makes money for the company. People eventually realize this and stop using the service and the devices fade into obscurity. See CueCat for an example: This *might* have been useful and *might* have defined a paradigm for website tie-ins in print media, except that the User has to register with zip code, gender, and E-mail address, and the vendor has to purchase a code. Little or no functionality and registration required.

Companies are drooling over this IOT stuff because they see it as a subscription model and they can sell the user info for even more money, but they don't realize that there is no real value being given in exchange for the subscription. There's really little value in being able to turn your furnace up/down remotely, or unlock your door remotely, or start your dishwasher remotely... and absolutely no reason to do this under a subscription model.

Joel Spolsky's term for this is "feeble business idea". The attractiveness of the model outweighs the impracticality of the solution.

When I first heard about wikipedia and the theory driving it I thought it was a terribly bad idea at the time... but ya know, I find it really useful. It's got lots of problems but on balance it's s lot more useful than problematic.

We've identified many deep problems with scientific research on this very forum, and to my knowledge little progress has been made over the last decade.

Can't we at least *try* different solutions?

Where is it written(*) that the old ways are the best?

(*) The script to Skyfall of course. I got that from Wikiquotes.

Bruce Schneier posted an analysis on his blog that points out a few things.

The timestamps on the data suggest that it was downloaded at USB2.0 speeds, and happened on the day that Charles Sipkins, Sony Pictures' head of corporate communications, publicly resigned.

The USB2.0 speeds implies an inside job, and the timing of Sipkins' resignation is suspicious.

What was the evidence for NK again?

Another cool thing is that it embraces many different viewpoints in a single discipline.

If you have doubts about the economic "school of thought" you happen to be studying, you can easily find another to believe.

Keynesian, French liberal, Lausanne, Neoclassical, Distributism - economics has something for everyone!

Sort of like Starbucks.

You're forgetting the context in which the study was made.

By assigning most cancer to random chance, they are laying the groundwork for the defense against future lawsuits for negligence and compensation against corporations. Companies will pour money into shouting these results as widely and loudly as possible, it will become a public meme, and the populist mantra will be "I got cancer, but it was just bad luck" for decades.

This is similar to the recent history of the tobacco industry, it took over 50 years to sort that out and the damage hasn't yet settled.

Expect this report to be wildly popular for the next few years.

I'm all for dividing good from evil, but I'm also a rationalist: I work from evidence, not hearsay. Please answer for me:

1. Which party decreased corporate money in politics?
2. Which party decreased the length of copyright?
3. Which party put fraudulent bankers in jail?
4. Which party increased the penalty for crimes committed by corporations?
5. Which party reduced our illegal surveillance both here and abroad?
6. Which party curtailed the NSA?

Democrats bemoan those nasty republicans for blocking all attempts at making a better world, but they have not blocked any of the bad stuff that makes this a worse world.

Rhetoric is useless, ignore what they say. Consider what they do

The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated with North Korea [...]

Um... I hate to be the non-technical person that points this out, but...

The evidence that implicates NK on the previous attacks - is it the same evidence used to assign blame in the current attack?

Is this citing the conclusions based on the same evidence/situation from previous attacks to give legitimacy to the evidence in the current attack?

What a scam! Claim something on flimsy evidence, then cite those claims to give legitimacy to the flimsy evidence!

I wonder... can I do this sort of thing in the scientific literature? Hmmmm...

One reason for the death of voice mail is the change from convenience to annoyance imposed by the carriers.

First you hear “Hi, it’s John Smith. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you”. (5 seconds)

And THEN you hear a 15-second canned carrier message "[Phone number] is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5.”

That extra 15 seconds is annoying as hell to wait out, and it's only put there so that the carrier can use up metered minutes on an artificially scarce resource.

Then when you go to *play* the message, you have to wait through the "First message, from, phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx, received at ".

The old-style was much more convenient. Leave a message *beep* "Hi, this is your sister, please give me a call". Oftentimes 10 seconds *total* gets the point across.

The new-style - not so much.

Take the time wasted on each worthless recording (15 secs), multiply by the number of messages each year, and you get a *lot* of wasted man-years.

Thanks, carriers! Your relentless pursuit of money has ruined a perfectly useful feature.

I like what J.J Abrams and Zack Snyder (who directed "Man of Steel") have done to the franchises. They start with the established plotlines and take the stories in new directions. It's an artistic license that gives us fresh, new interpretations of the characters such as superman killing someone (General Zod) or Spock having an emotional outburst (over Kirk's death).

I anxiously await the Michael Bay version of "Hamlet" or the Justin Lin version of "Macbeth". This site has a good overview of directors taking artistic license, including an unannounced (but upcoming) superman movie.

For reference, here's Kevin Smith talking about how movies get made.

Just last week I encountered a cop with a lighted baton who was directing traffic from the side of the road. He would stop traffic, walk to the middle of the road while motioning people across the road with his baton, then walk off the road while waving the baton *behind his back* to signal "go ahead".

Does the self-driving car recognize this sort of thing?

Will it drive when there's snow on the ground?

I think I'd keep the steering wheel and manual control - just in case..

And once the batteries reach end-of-life for automotive uses, they can be automatically repurposed for off-grid storage.

Once battery capacity falls below a certain level (60% perhaps?) it becomes unsuitable for automotive use, but could be used for other purposes such as offline-grid storage. A factory floor filled with older batteries still has quite a bit of capacity - so long as you aren't overly concerned about space or weight efficiencies.

Battery arrays could be installed at wind and solar installations to act as online storage to help even out baseline demand, and as more batteries come available we simply(!) swap out the oldest/least capacity units.

...for some definitions of "simply". In principle it doesn't sound too bad - a computer system monitors all batteries, using robots to install and harvest the batteries. Similar to the ones used for automated greenhouses or the ones that service the amazon fulfillment centers.

...and when they're completely dead ship them off for recycling. Refining lithium from batteries might be cheaper than mining raw ore.

Offline storage is the missing component that would make wind and solar power practical. Maybe used EV batteries is that component.

The typical reason for doing this is "if we don't do it first, subsequent legislation will require us to implement an even more onerous system".

Let's see how that works in practice:

The government simply waits to see what the telcos implement. If it's *more* than they wanted, they stop and say "well done!". If it's *less* than they wanted, then they proceed with legislation, which they were planning to do anyway.

In game theory terms, what does this type of policy maximize?

Did he actually say that?

Or did he say turn off *automatic* patching?

It seems reasonable to always be 1 week behind in patching your systems - let someone else be the lightning rod for goofs and mistakes. I know some sysadmins patch "test" systems and try things out to see if the patches break their currently-running code. They don't seem to mind a certain time lag in patching.

Go to Toastmasters and get a CC ("Competent Communicator") or any of theit further awards. It'll teach you how to present and interact with others in a professional scenario.

Pick a karate school you like and get a black belt. It'll teach you discipline and focus, and help you keep your health as you get older.

Join the SCA and work yourself up to becoming a knight. If you take it seriously it'll teach you honor and integrity.

Take first aid, CPR, and EMT training. Take some survival courses.

Take MIT courses from edX or Coursera for the certificate and grade.

If Bennett is so completely unwanted on this blog, why don't we do something about it?

In the manner of the fine people at 4chan, suppose we referred to Bennett in the past tense - as if he had passed away. Make all of our responses polite and sincere, but with the assumption that he is no longer with us.

Here's the kicker: the internet works by consensus. If there's an abundance of commentary referring to him in the past tense, it'll get picked up and echoed everywhere, possibly by Wikipedia. I don't know what the full ramifications would be, but hopefully it will play hob with his attempts to get traction on the net. Anyone who googles for him by name or things he has said will get the impression that he's unavailable for comment, interviews, and possibly employment.

Of course, we need to give Bennett fair warning, so I propose the following:

Starting with the next Bennett Haselton article on Slashdot that's more than 2 short paragraphs, we start referring to Bennett in the past tense - as if he had passed away. We're going to start a new internet meme.

Pleading, complaining, and asking has had no effect and we've certainly done due diligence.

It's time to take action.