I completely fail to see the benefits of this system -- except as a pointless waste of money.

My daughters are primary school students and have no problem with their library cards.

Our local library has a simple self check out bar-code system that ensures that the library just needs a minimum number of retirement age volunteers.

  barcode cards are dirt cheap to produce -- so this whole system doesn't cost the library much money either.

And yes, I do go with them when they visit the library, its a library not a playground.

I don't think any (print) newspaper can survive off internet advertising income alone.

The world will simply become more extreme.

• You will have free newspapers, with basic stories, handed out to commuters paid for by advertising
• You will have paid for newspapers, like the financial times, that contain news worth paying a premium for, which they won't publish online.
• You will have local newspapers, capable of raising money from local advertisers to support their existence covering local news stories.

And of course...

You could have national newspapers, but with local advertising. But since this is expensive to do (so many different print versions to distribute) they need to automate this.

Note that only 1 business model can survive mostly without advertisers -- the newspapers offering quality information for a high price to a specific subset of readers.

So they might just as well cut themselves off the net and take their chances with their readers. Swim or sink.

Agreed -- this is simply fraud.

Even with millions to spend on computers the traders had an unfair advantage , but front running makes this basic fraud on a large scale.

Just spotted the first communist of the season in the train this morning (and no this is not the US) -- red star & lenin button and all.

This guy might be on to something.

So here we are at Economy 1.1 , on the way to Economy 2.0. But not quite there yet.

All assets worth having are traded between computers at ever increasing speeds until one of the has a nervous breakdown (eg. a situation not foreseen in its models) and it loses its shirt and billions.

For the unforeseen situations (eg. random situation generators) we still need humans.

The solution is of course simple -- take out the randomness.

>> I have one simple requirement: all laws must be written in a Wiki with full history.

Sounds a like a do-able community project. How many laws within a particular scope change every day? Don't think all laws at first, start smaller.

Most laws go by for years without change.

If your government is not willing to do this, and it is still not happening then its just the laziness of everyone at large ; so stop complaining if you would like to see this happen.

Just put into a light sealed box -- bit like a hard disk today.

Oh, that was too simple a solution? I am sure we can think of something more complicated.

I expect high street music prices in Dublin to rise with several Euro over the next few months as the music companies try out how much extra income they can generate from the Irish public to be able to figure out if their campaign to charge every penny out of the Europeans will ultimately pay off. For the music companies Irerland will become an experimental area to see how much of a surcharge they can get away with.

I also fully expect the Irish to take advantage of cheap & fast eSATA portable hard drives to just share all popular music ever published by sneaker net. Instead of sharing simple songs, or albums Irish teenagers will be sharing collections of hundreds of albums. Thus completely removing the need to download any music on demand & the potential revenue of advertising forever.

There is a very good reason economy is absolutely bloody awful.

If economy was even half decent nobody would pay the huge markup for first class tickets.

I went to a presentation the other day where the screen of the presenter turned less bright (removing blue hues) at a certain point.

He explained that he had a tool that did this based on the time of day, allowing your eyes to relax later at night. His computer was stuck on Tokyo time hence this happening during the demo.

So far I have been unable to find this utility. It sounds great for those late night scribblings where you don't want to wake your whole brain up.

As usual science fiction is faster than reality -- although by just 2 weeks this time.

Heart surgery was performed in Stargate Universe "Divided" (S0112) on Dr Rush to remove an alien tracking device. The earth surgeon arrived by out-of-body experience while their ship was being bombarded by an alien fleet. ("Welcome to destinty. We are under attack by aliens, shields are holding, for now")

And yes, the connection was lost just before the device was removed leaving the clueless body double to do the actual removal.

• Entertainment value - A good game of sim earth is worth a thousand empty moons; especially if you have been cruising this arm of the milky way for a couple of million years and can stand any more re-runs of "I love Lucy". Options are "God Mode" , get the dumb natives to worship you and your shiny technologies. "Cloak and Dagger", play this with another out-of-world entity, try to move your favorite civilization into a position of supremacy, and if you fail try to wipe out the planet.

I just showed this to some people -- mad trick to play.

In China nobody will take this threat serious, at any level, in the street or in the government.

Not until they actually pull out ; and even then most people will assume that Google will come back after a few weeks / months with the begging bowl in their hands desperate to get back in.

This kind of statement is considered "usual" trying to obtain small, for China insignificant favors. From the Chinese point of view -- Western companies & politicians are idiots without morals who will quickly sell down their own family in exchange for a little bit of access to the wonderful world that is China.

It is up to Google to prove them otherwise -- but as said, nobody is holding their breath.

> you have to accept the fact that local competitors can and will eat you alive,

Typically your former (or often even current) business partner will raise a little cash among friends and open another factory in the next town, producing the exactly same product (With a little coloring change, a few misspellings on purpose). Just not paying the "excessive" (their words) license fee.

A lot of US/European companies will also move their production to China to save on costs -- with the intend on exporting back to their home markets. However the Chinese partners will quickly realize that the above produced cheaper versions will sell very well in Asia/China and concentrate their efforts there instead and start building their empire.

This is considered quite normal and socially perfectly acceptable.

Solution (and I am going to patent this as a business method) : the holding pattern interface

If an iGeneration member wants to communicate with an oldGeneration member ; they will receive an instant automated reply, followed by automated "i am working on it" reponses until the oldGeneration member finds time to get around to it.

"Hi [sibling] great to hear from you, busy doing a million things, will talk to you soon" ...
".. just let you know that I haven't forgotten about [thing] will talk to you later"

Customizable, 9000 canned responses (including "I am about to land in Hawaii.. waiting for signal") in 99 different languages.

Available sometime in the future at iHoldingPattern.com

Just like real life.

(Any parent knows that children want everything NOW, whereas us "grownups" try to juggle these demands in between the really important things. Like catching some TV)