Apple is really trying hard to get ios7 adoption. I got an ad for free iTunes content (Xmas related), that turned out to require ios7 to load the app to get it. This became really obvious because I was using an old iPad1 that can't load it.

I wonder why they are pushing so hard for the upgrade. I have older iPhones that I haven't upgraded because of performance concerns -- I suspect many do. Are they planning something that requires good adoption, or is there some problem with the old versions? Seems like a bit much just to get rid of some old devices.

Eve was cool, but only while I had RL friends playing. It was too hard to build trust with new peeps. Honesty, reliability, and known competence are really needed if you want to do more than socialize. I was in a corp with folks I knew, at least 2nd hand, that was part of the FREEGE alliance and things were great. But the world changed, and we found ourselves broke (relatively) and without a common cause. We went different ways, the RL friends dropped out, the 2nd handers went to combat heavy corps, and I tried to meet folks with common interests until I gave up.

Then EQ went f2p! My decade old bard was still there with nice perks, and I didn't feel cheated if I didnt play every day with no monthly fee. The changes made it as easy as WOW, I found a friendly guild, and made great progress to 75 where the a5 merc ran out of steam, and progress depended on finding exp groups. I have now trained a couple minions, and am 3 boxing on a 27 in iMac. Works great, and keeps me as busy as playing a bard had in the days before "melody" made twisting easy.

It wasn't the electronic design that was an innovation, but the product was nothing like its competitors. Use of 3rd party components (unusual for IBM then) allowed IBM to trade on its name and reputation to keep a solid profit margin. The flurry of competitors looked like inferior goods, and most were.

In the early 1980's IBM, a dinosaur sued for monopoly, released the PC and changed the world. Sure, Apple,IMSI, and others had blazed a trail, but IBM quickly defined the market.

Even a dinosaur can give birth to a flock of new birds. Don't give up on our big boys.

I'm sure you were fine when this started, but all this action sounds expensive. Can we expect you to be monetizing this great story, or can you afford to be picky about how it is treated?

Compound eyes are different in a deep perceptual sense than mammal eyes, and pictures capture the content of mammal perception. A compound eye's perception would be great for a robot to use for navigation, as it provides info for a 3d model of the environment with rapid identification of any moving features. Mammal eyes are better at resolving details of features. The trade offs can be reconciled with mammal eye movement and processing.

One problem humans have, is easy understanding of what a compound eye "sees" and how to process it. We have good intuition about how to capture the images and process sequences of them. Not so with a compound eye that isn't intended to capture an image. It will take a while to develop that understanding.

Most really usefull software needs maintenance, or at least reviews to verify none is needed, on a routine basis. This is usually dull, thankless work. In business, it is often done by old codgers (like me before i retired) that are well paid for very little actual work. It is a vital function, that was supposed to have been covered in open source by users paying for the service.

In many cases this seems to have worked out well with large organizations footing the bill. iBM, HP, AT&T etc, have staff people who kept the components they need working. Their priorities aren't yours.

Do we need a system for keeping codgers comfortable and personal use software working?

Indeed there are lots of variables needed to define what "how many bits were sent in this time period" means. And even more to define "offered bandwidth".

This is classic work for standards committees. I'd bet there is a standard for calculating "net weight" on cans of olives. I haven't heard of relevant standards for data. Maybe T1 could be convinced to address the need.

There are lots of ways to find people who are likely to be interested in the positions you have open: advertise in the right places, look at people who have made visible contributions, get your existing staff to recommend friends etc.. It takes time and effort and the work is commonly contracted out to headhunters by larger companies.

News coverage is the best form of advertising and lots of media are happy to cover hiring news involving large numbers from decent companies. Some readers are going to be very interested. Getting that coverage is its own art form.

High pay by itself isn't going find anyone, but it might make somebody interested in moving from someplace that doesn't pay as well. It also increases the chance of your offer being accepted.

I am in a neighborhood with choices in broadband, and have considered buying redundancy. Current promo options make it very feasible.

Comcast here has reliability issues due both to overhead wires that go out for days(annually), and an irritating tendency to show lag (or momentary outages) in the 10-90 second range(daily or worse). I assume the latter is due to doing service on the live system, but is impossible for me to diagnose as it is gone before I can characterize the problem to even complain.

I wouldn't mind adding a cheap DSL if I can bond the two in a way to improve my service, but I am not clear how to do that. True bonded service might work, but I don't know how to set that up on two IP addresses. My current router won't do it, and I haven't looked into equipment choices.

Any suggestions?

Ham radio and many non-radio amateurs took on IP communications use due to the Ka9q platform. One of the early success stories for open source.

The article hints that this tech is published but not patented. Way to go!

If true we can expect many implementations in record time, lots of manufacturers trying out variations and producing affordable products.

On the other hand, if they set huge license fees on the patent it is highly likely that the only licensees will fail to produce a successfull product, and at best it becomes a niche feature for systems where it has exceptional value. For spacecraft that cannot be repaired the value is huge, for your cellphone it is a nice but marginally valuable feature.

TOR is the next step of escalation. The cyberwar arms race has been going on for a long time, and it's it's not just governments.

Horse (& cow) traders in the Midwest caused a surge of demand for cell phone encryption in the early 90's when news of how easily one could tap FM cell calls got out. The FCC's stand was that they were secure because listening in was illegal, even if the needed equipment was sold at Radio Shack.

With the swing to digital, the quality of analog electronics (like amplifiers, detectors, and rf modulators) seems to have declined. Analog devices used to contain adjustable coils, capacitors, and pots to match resonant frequencies in those assemblies, and the alignment procedures set them to precision far beyond the purchasable steps. Depending on the situation and the skill of the tech this might just require a plastic screwdriver, or also scopes, signal generators and/or frequency counters.

Because components drift with time, loss of output or sensitivity was common with age and curable with redoing the alignment. The symptoms he describes fit.