I look forward to the day that people are forced to stop downloading/pirating music and videos. It would be awesome to see the look on legislators faces when they are told: look, no increase in profits. Told you so, there was no loss in profits to begin with. Now, undo all that crap that you did to protect a dying industry that doesn't even know it's own customer base well enough to stay in business. If you don't undo it, I'm going to get all my pirate friends to spend their efforts on getting you unelected rather than on worrying about downloading things. See, on the one hand you get a nice summer vacation from the entertainment industry and on the other hand, you lose your job. You pick.

Yes, and Monsanto employees and representatives should attempt to avoid walking on the target range of farmers accused of innocent infringement, though I think it would improve the world if they couldn't help themselves but to sit on target ranges more often. Our very own former Vice President set a precedent for the accidental shooting of people in hunting parties and on target ranges. In case the FBI is listening, I'm not advocating that people shoot at Monsanto employees and lawyers. Indeed, I think those people should shoot themselves and save us the misery they cause. I just think it would be more convenient if more farmers had their own shooting ranges.

And of course, the other end of the story, interns that end up with large medical bills, difficulty seeing out of both eyes, and other maladies the befall those who snitch for a living. I'm sure they've figured out how to make such snitching legal, but they are headed down the path of the 'war on drugs' that most of the USA has engaged in. To my knowledge, it has done nothing to stem the drug problem or the flow of drugs. It has on the other hand improved the technology that drug dealers use, in an ever spiraling war of attrition. Apparently this wasteful 'war on drugs' (life, money, resources) has not even been good as an example of what NOT to do. It's frustrating to see. Yeah, I know it's not quite the same thing, but close enough. The courts didn't help, so naturally the next step is to hire spies and snitches. What could possibly go wrong?

Tactile feedback does not sell new technology. What's more, waving your hands about in front of the screen is absolutely certain to be less confusing to your average computer user than a keyboard and mouse, which are more or less clearly labeled. We already have trouble with locating the 'any' key. There is no telling what kind of issues this technology might bring.

Tech support: ok, ma'am, slow down, just tell me what happened and we'll get this problem sorted out.
Customer: Well, I was reading email when my sister phoned. We were talking away when the next thing I know, the screen on my computer was all jumbled up with funny letters, and now I can't find any of my emails. They're all GONE.
Tech support: Ms Bonneti, do you and your sister talk with your hands?
Customer: What does that have to do with anything?

click.....

It was just supposed to "look good" to go with the story, but I guess having a bug was just as good :-)

Yes, changing the law is one solution. 55 mph speed limits worked well. IMO it's much more realistic to force efficiency on users by using the law to make manufacturers make it easier to be efficient. Technology in the vehicles will do that, and is doing that already. The better our technology, the better our efficiency. I would like to see electric vehicle racing as a way to drive that technology further and faster.

Why should technology not be in the sport of motor racing? It's technology that will push our passenger vehicles from 30-ish mpg to much more than that. Sure other vehicles can do more now, but lets take that ever popular SUV of USA. How do we get it making 75 mpg? Technology. The things that motor sports racing have done in the past have trickled down to passenger vehicles. If you want a damned flying car, it's going to need some technology! I say up with car geek competitions! Up in the air damnit!

You are describing the resources vs number and type of bugs. With enough resources, both problems would be addressed: if $file.size > 32Gb then err_msg and return. In this case, global replace is probably more work to fix. Still, it comes down to resources and the squeaky wheel syndrome.

Lets not ignore or forget that in many commercial situations, the propensity for Marketing and Sales groups to describe the problems opposite of how I did. That is to say they will promise the hard fix before the easy one to get the sale. This in turn negatively affects the resources vs. problems algebra.

3(-2x + 1) = -6x - 7 looks good on paper so far... Sure, global replace is easy says the salesman, the dev teams are working on it already.

Exactly. Most coders have to use the code they write. Leaving bugs is not something you do if you know they are there. Sure some people do that, but not the ones that want to get it right - at least for their own use. This is why some open source software is not infinitely usable - it did what the original author needed, and was not intended particularly to solve everyone's silly problems. The example of the 'A' key is probably something that was going to work soon, but the need for it never materialized and someone forgot to disable the code that checks for the letter 'A' - and since it was not implemented, nobody checked it.

The first time I had code in production, running 24/7 I was kind of upset that I didn't need to look at it everyday, then amazed that it was working so well. Then, months later when I did have to go look at why it seemed to be not working right, I learned how important documentation and comments are. At this point I stopped being amazed that it worked well, but that it worked at all. Bugs are not left on purpose, only when there is not time or resources to fix them.

Perhaps we can hope this idea spreads out of Israel in the same manner some other ideas did, but quicker.

In a word, No. There are many types of 'virtualization' and more than one approach to de-duplication. In a system as engineered as one with de-duplication, you should have replication as part of the data integrity processes. If the file is corrupted in all the main copies (everywhere it exists, including backups) then the scenario you describe would be correct. This is true for any individual file that exists on computer systems today. De-duplication strives to reduce the number of copies needed across some defined data 'space' whether that is user space, or server space, or storage space etc.

This is a problem in many aspects of computing. Imagine you have a business with 50 users. Each must use a web application which has many graphics. The browser caches of each user has copies of each of those graphics images. When the cache is backed up, the backup is much larger than it needs to be. You can do several things to reduce backup times, storage space, and user quality of service

1 - disable caching for that site in the browser and cache them on a single server locally located
2 - disable backing up the browser caches, or back up only one
3 - enable deduplication in the backup and storage processes
4 - implement all or several of the above

The problems are not single ended and the answers or solutions will also not be single ended or faceted. That is no one solution is the answer to all possible problems. This one has some aspects to it that are appealing to certain groups of people. You average home user might not be able to take advantage of this yet. Small businesses though might need to start looking at this type of solution. Think how many people got the same group email message with a 12MB attachment. How many times do all those copies get archived? In just that example you see the waste that duplicated data represents. Solutions such as this offer an affordable way to positively affect bottom lines in fighting those types of problems problems.

Will you please post the video of this process on Youtube?

Actually, I have left stuff sitting on the checkout counter because I didn't see the sticker before then. For those that shop at Walmart, you may have luck finding alternate suppliers of similar goods at Target, JCPenny, and others. If you're willing to shop around for price then shopping around for country of origin shouldn't be too big a deal for you. Try Home Depot and others for goods they typically sell. Locally I'm able to find goods from South America, Afghanistan and others etc. There are some stores like World Market etc. that sell goods from other countries. I believe that there are even a couple of web sites that tell you where you can look for goods that are not from China. Please never forget that every dollar you spend with a local supplier of goods is a dollar generated to the economy that will do you the most good... your own.

The US government checks roughly 1% of goods from China for dangers etc. If we reject even 10% of goods it makes a big difference by removing the margins that make selling here profitable. If we can get the Chinese government to ensure workers there are protected as well as workers here they would have no margin per se'. There are many ways to help convince the Chinese people that they need to do something about the totalitarian like regime that they have in charge. A semi-polite exchange with Google is a bit better than a militaristic exchange, and since technology theft is a major danger from China, Google is a good place to start with the political wrangling, IMO.

Plenty of quotes, and sucks to be him right now. Maybe, just maybe he can work to get us better food supplies and get rid of Monsanto et al, and improve the world a little bit with all this attention?

It's not about business as much as it is about censorship. What you are forgetting is that the current group of Chinese students don't even know what tank man is, never mind what was happening in their own country when he stood in front of the tanks. Everyone seems to agree that Saddam Husein needed to be taken out because he was a bad man. The Chinese government is a bad government and everyone is politically dancing around this fact while trying to make money in China. Google is saying "hey, we have a motto and doing business with such a government is not in keeping with it". No matter who wins or loses, this stands to be a surrealistic highlight of the fact that there are bad people in the world, and the world is too small to allow them to corrupt such a large part of the world with censorship, secret police, and many other unsavory things. The mere existence of the Chinese government and who they will be supportive of creates a safe environment for more of the same to blossom in different places. It's not like the red scare or anything, but if they don't want to do business with anyone who will not also partake in ill treatment of their citizens, the world really needs to step up as a group and say NO, you're wrong and we won't play. That means that we should stop buying things made in China. period. If Google can say no, the rest of us should be saying no. If you want cheap goods, try another country of origin, just don't buy 'made in China' goods. Besides, your pets and children may live longer if you don't.