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Comment: Re:Moral of the story... (Score 1) 304

Did you actually read TFA? He went to Saipan for the express purpose of making a deal...it wasn't like he went on a vacation, landed on US soil and was immediately arrested, they caught him on US soil engaging in the crime. Moral of this comment: RTFA.(Though I guess the summary is partially incorrect in that regard, it wasn't "entirely from China" if he traveled to Saipan to sell stuff)

The real moral: You can't fix stupid

Comment: Re:Nuber not that impressive (Score 5, Insightful) 304

500 copyrighted works to more than 300 buyers in the U.S. and overseas

The retail value of the products was more than $100 million, the government said.

In other words... on average ~$200,000 per product, and ~$333 thousand per buyer

This makes sense, when you are talking about companies like Agilent that sell overpriced products, that retail for probably approximately $500,000

That's why the "pirated $100 million in software" is neither impressive, nor indicating a particularly outrageous pirate.

The outrage, should be the pricing of Enterprise software, not the" inflated retail price " as some sort of metric of the pirate's activity.

Obviously, the buyers weren't willing to pay the price the maker wanted to sell the software at. Therefore, those sales by definition were not worth the retail price.

In simple economic terms... the high price places their product out of demand.

By definition, they're worth what the buyer was willing to pay the pirate for the procureent.

If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong.

Not really. While i you are correct about pricing a d demand your conclusions aren't. The software vendors chose to forgo more sales in favor of higher prices; probably figuring the margins were better since there would be fewer users to support and the higher price justified the required level of support. That's their choice and does not mean someone else has the right to pirate and sell at a lower price point. The buyers were simply not target customers despite their desire to have the software.

Comment: Re:Ports can handle the ships fine (Score 1) 323

There are already ships far larger than Panamax in operation and docking at ports, they just have to take a different route if they want to get from the Pacific to the Atlantic (or vice-versa.)

What's the largest today? 180,000 tons? IIRC, they do Europe - Asia runs; where ports can accommodate them. Not sure how many do say Europe - New Orleans They're talking almost 50% bigger ships - which would have an impact on port operations. I'm not saying they won't, but such ships will need a rethink of how operations are done in order to handle them and unload them fast enough to make the size worthwhile. I wonder if a transit through Nic. would be quicker than via the Suez. Be interesting to see, at least.

Comment: Re:If this were really about theft... (Score 1) 321

There is a simple solution to theft - initialize each device with a unique key, and give a copy of that key to the owner. By all means pre-load it with trust for the vendor key as well so that it can auto-update by default, but the master key goes to the user. The key might be a $2 USB drive in a little envelope that says "keep safe and don't open unless you want to modify the OS software - Vendor may not be able to repair devices without this key."

"Hello, Apple tech Support" "I lost my USB key - and my phone won't unlock." The problem is people will lose the key; how do you handle that without it becoming a logistical nightmare? Apple really doesn't want to get into the business of determining if a phone was stolen or it is a legitimate lost key request .

Comment: Re:we are not using distance at all (Score 1) 266

One word...NIMBYs. Frankly NIMBYs is why america will be fucked in the future, you can't get shit done here without the NIMBYs having a royal fucking shitfit so we either keep the pre-NIMBY shit running or do without, that really is the only choices we have.

My favorite bumper sticker when it comes to energy was one I saw when Switzerland was voting on nuclear power: "Who needs power plants? I get my electricity from a wall outlet." That pretty much summed up the challenge.

Comment: Re:Contact your former client. (Score 1) 476

...and inform them of the unethical behavior of the new developer, the situation it put you in and how shocked you were to find that they had deprived you of the opportunity to take credit for your work. Somebody at that company hired you and knows what truly happened. Hopefully that person is in a position to put the situation right and give you the credit you are due.

That said, relying on your code being still accessible after you have left it for a while is not a situation you want to be in. Your former clients can take that code down and replace it any time they want, with anything they want. You should have checked to see the status of that code yourself shortly before you tried to present it as an example of your work.

While I agree on contacting them; I'd start by calling whoever you worked for and explaining what happened. You're not looking for a fight; just to be able to take credit for work you did for them. I'd approach it as a "you won't believe what happened to me..." and don't start with adversarial lawyer letters as some have suggested; they may not even realize their new developer put his copyright on the code. I'd also check your contrat to see if you actually still own the code.

Comment: Make the phone the key (Score 1) 405

Have the phone interact with the car so that it is used to activate the starting mechanism. While the car is running the phone is blocked from use except for handsfree calling. You get in, open an app, start the car, and drive off. Sure, you can have 2 phones or use a passengers but realistically most folks won't.

Comment: Re:The circle of lifen (Score 2) 400

by Registered Coward v2 (#43927905) Attached to: Pondering the Future of a Re-Org'd Microsoft

Once the PC market became a commodity they moved on.

So no, they didn't "move on" when the PC market became a commodity; it took them a very long time to wake up and smell the coffee, and even then it took them a while before they finally sold off that business unit.

I didn't mean to imply they did so immediately; as you pointed out they tried to differentiate themselves, with little success beyond the thinkPads, to be abel to command a premium. Eventually they simply exited the market when it became they could not get premium pricing. But that is my main point - IBM shifted its focus to areas where they can extract a premium; existing the PC market is just one example of how and when they do that.

Comment: Re:The circle of lifen (Score 2) 400

by Registered Coward v2 (#43926815) Attached to: Pondering the Future of a Re-Org'd Microsoft

I don't think IBM should take your insults lying down. IBM knew when to shift. They may not be high-profile in the PC world anymore, but they've certainly spun off their product lines to companies that could handle them. Meanwhile, IBM themselves haven't exactly disappeared.

That is because IBM has always been about being in businesses that are higher margin and where they can use their breadth and depth of talent, IP, etc. to their advantage. Once the PC market became a commodity they moved on. Big iron is much harder to commoditize and they can sell services around it that use the computing power as business tools. Even as they spin off some businesses they buy others, such as Monday (PwC Consulting) that fit within their services model.

MS has always been, first and foremost, a software company. Services always seemed as an afterthought and focused on their software rather than providing business solutions.

Comment: Re:Well... (Score 2) 304

It's being done by the tester, not the students, possibly to keep some people (in specific regions) out of the school they want.

It would be interesting to see if the anomalies correspond to cutoff scores for various educational tiers; i.e. if Tier 1 schools require a minimum of say 70 do you see a spike at and after that with a corresponding empty value and or dip just below that. If the anomalies correspond to the cutoff scores for admissions then that would seem to indicate scores were adjusted to help students get in. If you see a spike just before the cutoff and a blank then it may be students were down graded as well.

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