Lots of business are just in the business of selling stuff. So there is very little IP to be had.

Similarly there is very little IP to be protected in the vast majority of services businesses. That's everything from dog walkers to hotel chains, law firms and banks.

The building industry has very little IP as well apart on certain widgets used.

That pretty much leaves high tech manufacturing, software, and something that is probably best describes as "media".

The reason Facebook has any advertising income, and therefore value as a company, is that it has the ability to provide very directed advertising.

If you want to target people who read cnn.com and nytimes.com, why not just advertise there like you always could.

The static application of this, automatic charging while parked over a mat in a garage is not that interesting really. But what if sections of a similar technology was installed in interstates that could charge a car on the move? Cars with a receiving system, and a way to verify and bill the driver for the electricity while moving. We would then have electric cars with potentially infinite range.

That application we could take a bit of inefficiency for the convenience added.

I'll be honest, you seem to have a large IT department. You have 4 programmers, and that seems out of whack. Now you are a manufacturer are these programmers actually working on internal business systems (so truly IT), or are they actually involved in developing end user software firmware etc (product development).

If it product development they need to be moved into the development department with the engineers, though the IT manager would then come underneath the product development manager which maybe politically problematic but needs to be done.

If it is just for internal systems development and support, frankly your doing too much customization of your internal system. I think you'll find that the payback with a company the size your described , for automating and streamlining every process, by heavy modifications to the ERP are actually not there. Get the IT manager to fight against further scope creep of the ERP, sack a programmer or 2 and get in more true IT support staff.

Their is no advantage over a paper ticket with oyster for a weekly pass monthly etc. You still have to buy one at a window, shop etc. The real advantage is in the casual commuter. People making the odd tube or bus trip out of their normal zone or tourists. It massively speeds up boarding of buses with a lot less fumbling around for change.

You can easily share your oyster card with another person. The pay as you go is simply handing it over to them (I have several oysters for the visitors). For weekly passes, it doesn't matter if it is paper or card. In the UK they are tied to a railcard number with a photo. You strictly need both, but they they only check the ticket or oyster usually.

Also you can buy and use a pay as you go oyster anonymously.

The reason that everybody is trying to move to this type of things is the success of the London oyster card system. Not perfect, but good enough, and is widely adopted.

The key with the London system was the transit fare system was very well integrated to start with. If you bought a zone 1-4 weekly pass, you could take buses tube and trains everywhere within zone 1-4.

The trick to getting adoption was the cash "penalty" fare. For instance a cash bus fare is nearly twice the price of an oyster card fare. And if you buy a season ticket it gets loaded onto an oyster card. So anybody in London needs an oyster card, and so has one.

The other effective thing that was done was to only have oyster top up and ticket sales at stations and offered exclusively to local independent corner stores. The advantage to the store holder is 2 fold, it gave a small financial return to the store owner, but more importantly for the store owner it got people in the store. Topping up oyster cards and at the same time getting a drink or chocolate bar etc. So very quickly every store had one, and in London there are a lot of them so it was widely accessible with very little staffing costs.

The "experience" looked for in a company looking to win a government contract like this is, well a track record in winning government contracts.

They know the tricks and hoops to go through to get to the end and win the contract. They probably also have good contacts that help them win it in the first place.

Ability to actually manage the contract and deliver the result. Pretty much irrelevant.

Basically good bullsh*tters, bad managers.

From a PR puff piece a year or so ago. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/4/prweb9444835.htm

So the President of the company is "Lee Gersten".

The pr guy on the puff piece is Rob Key pr@kleargear.com .

A properly manufactured weapon will fire thousands of rounds, with basic cleaning and maintenance. These printed guns can't make 10. They are not weapons, they are a political statement arguing that controlling the sale of guns is impossible because anybody can make one. It's not true, and the argument is literally blowing up in their face.

Of course their intent was not to incriminate themselves. But their intent was clearly to share this incriminating content publicly with other like minded kiddie-diddlers. Thus they made it public.

Your argument is like saying an illegal drug dealer that sells drugs to an undercover cop can't have the sold drugs used as evidence against him, because his intent wasn't to incriminate himself, but instead to sell the drugs to proper drug users.

My comment about customer feedback and especially surveys (so asking for customer feedback) is if you just ask them "what do you want" out of a product.You'll get back great useful answers back like: "It should be "better", cost a dollar, have all possible features we could ever possibly use, but we only really use 5% of them, but it has to be so easy to use nobody needs training, and a pony".

Generic and conflicting requirements that are frankly useless.

Snowden worked for a company that the NSA had subcontracted IT support to. Having seen this blow up in their face, they are dumping all those contracts and bringing it in house. Now this will mean that it is under very heavy security clearance and surveillance, but they need to do it quickly hence the need for direct advertising.

The british system works nicely to stop a dictator. At any point, the parliament can elect a new prime-minister, or in effect force a new election. And there is the nuclear option, where the queen can in theory sack a government.

This is never used, as it would create a constitution crisis the monarchy probably wouldn't survive. But if the government was seriously dysfunctional, and was unpopular, the queen could just about politically get away with it. The closest case is sacking of the australian Witlam government in the 70's by the governor general (queen's representative in australia) for the government being in deadlock over a budget and having to shut down functions. So basically the equivalent of the government shutdown the US has just had.

The original term "Nuclear Magnetic resonance" was used as it made a distinction between the technique that analysed the atomic nucleus and the similar form that analysed the state of the electron orbitals (Electron paramagnetic resonance, or electron spin resonance).

When NMR chemical analysis technology move to Magnetic resonance imaging, the distinction was to separate the technique from true medical radiation imaging techniques. Up to that point much of medical imaging involved xrays, which IS ionizing radiation and does do real harm with sufficient exposure.

Putting "nuclear" into the name just would have undermined the key advantage of MRI scanning in the public eye. And as sales people say, if you are explaining such a technical nuance you are losing the battle.

The naming of MRI is a good piece of positive scientific marketing. Making sure the technique is not confused in the public perception with ionizing radiation imaging techniques.

That's iceland. It's very easy to remember. Iceland is volcanic and least icy of the 2. Greenland is mostly icy white.