ducwad - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Looks cool, but... (Score 1) 371

by ducwad on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @02:06PM (#33127114) Attached to: The Bus That Rides Above Traffic

And don't forget the prey vs predator factor. You're driving along and suddenly a huge shadow overtakes you? I think people would tend to flinch/duck/run? - possibly a dangerous thing while driving - when one of these monstrosities blocked all the light coming through their sunroof.

Bill Gates Founds New "Think Tank" Company 134

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 24, 2008 @02:13PM from the short-drive-from-the-house-on-the-lake dept.

Homncruse sends in news of Bill Gates's new adventure, adding "I was working just one or two floors under this new office when it was all coming together. I even unknowingly shared an elevator with him at one time on his way up to the office." The article notes that the name "bgC3" derives from Bill Gates, catalyst, and the "third thing," neither Microsoft or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Just months after his Microsoft farewell, Bill Gates is quietly creating a new company — complete with high-tech office space, a cryptic name and even its own trademark. Public documents describe the new Gates entity — bgC3 LLC — as a 'think tank.' It's housed within a Kirkland office that the Microsoft co-founder established on his own after leaving his day-to-day executive role at the company this summer ... However, bgC3 will also oversee Gates' personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology. [An] insider said the goal isn't necessarily to create new companies, although ideas could be passed along to Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — or others — as it makes sense ..."

Comment Missing the point? (Score 1) 502

by ducwad on Monday June 30, 2008 @04:53PM (#24007045) Attached to: Brightnets are Owner Free File Systems

Unless I'm mistaken I think there's something else going on here that may be getting lost in this copyright noise. What if instead of looking at this as a method for illegally trafficking in copyrighted material one looks at more like a backup system?

If I take my legally owned MP3's and place them into OFF as a safeguard against my machine crashing and losing that data am I violating a copyright? Assume that I don't share the magic URLs. Haven't I then just simply made one copy of the file that is now stored in the cloud?
Now my laptop falls off the back of my motorcycle on the way home from the office. It goes bouncing down the freeway finally getting hammered by a bus. Total loss. Can't I now retrieve all my MP3s by simply accessing the URLs that I created (and hopefully stored somewhere else!).

Have I reduced my personal backup storage requirements by keeping URLs instead of the original data? Have I increased my chances of getting my data back because it is no longer stored in a finite number of places ( 10 ) that are arguably less geographically dispersed than the OFF system?

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