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Re:Oh? by interkin3tic · 2013-09-19 14:31 · Score: 1 · on California Becomes First State In Nation To Regulate Ride-Sharing

Seems to be illegal in most states. So it's the only way you can do it legally.

Re:Individual Song Downloads by Wolfrider · 2012-11-23 07:22 · Score: 1 · on Highway To Sell: AC/DC iTunes Snub Finally Over

--It's all good, man. At least one of the Callahan's books has Jake Stonebender, the main protagonist, talking exactly the same way about the way he feels when playing in front of a crowd. You might want to look into the series (or at least one book.)

--I think the book that I remember having the part was " Callahan's Key " by Spider Robinson, but not 100% sure. Here's a free sample; the whole series is really pretty good:

http://callahans.50megs.com/spider/posttoast.html

/ FWIW, I envy you the feeling ;-)

Re:Wow, what a unforseeable shocker by Trepidity · 2011-09-21 02:24 · Score: 2 · on Justification For Canadian Copyright Reform Revealed

WIPO Copyright Treaty. You remember that one, don't you?

I've probably been around here too long, but I think the #1 reason I know about the WIPO treaty (and the organization itself) is because of the famous Slashdot troll of that name.

Re:I'm immune! by bmo · 2009-12-01 08:53 · Score: 2, Informative · on Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times

You're not taking into account that cell towers are omnidirectional.

You need 3 towers. If there are two, you could be in either of the two places of equal distance. You need the third tower to take the ambiguity away.

http://www.hacking--thealliance.50megs.com/images/cell_triangulation.gif

--
BMO

Someone who's played balls of Steel has to say it by Odeen · 2009-05-06 21:41 · Score: 0 · on Duke Nukem For Never

Now I have time to play with myself! .

Apparently... by brian0918 · 2009-04-22 08:30 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Kindle 2 Tear-Down Reveals Price of Components

Apparently, the folks at iSuppli subscribe to the socialist notion that the men of ideas are of no importance. Obviously, if you just take all the parts and throw them in a box, they'll magically form a Kindle.

This reminds me of a story from a WSJ article from 1974, about the nationalization of plants in Chile, quote in Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It:

Among them was Dow Chemical Company, which owned a plastics plant in Chile. Bob G. Caldwell, Dow's director of operations for South America, came with a technical team to inspect the remains of their plant. "'What we found was unbelievable to us,' he recalls, 'The plant was still operable, but in another six months we wouldn't have had a plant at all. They never checked anything.' ....Worse yet, the highly inflammable chemicals handled at the plant were in imminent danger of blowing up. 'Safety went to pot,' Mr. Caldwell says. 'The fire-sprinkler system was disconnected and the valves taken away for some other use outside. Then they were smoking in the most dangerous areas. They told us, "You didn't have any fires while you were here before, so it must not be as dangerous as you said."'"

WTF? Call the fraud squad! by Rockin'Robert · 2009-01-02 01:07 · Score: 1 · on Virgin Galactic Signs Historic Lease Agreement

So, let me see if I've got this straight: A:
* fraudulent gov'nor of a
* fraudulent (unconstitutional) 'state' called NM
* fraudulently leasing out Republic of Texas' soil to Virgin (nasty! nasty!) Galactic tours?
FIND: http://republicoftexas.50megs.com/
AND OFFICIAL MAPS: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/republic-texas-map.htm
http://www.earlytexashistory.com/Tx1836/maprepub.html
RR

Re:Watch Sunshine! by LanMan04 · 2008-07-18 06:57 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Earth and Moon From an Alien's Perspective

That was the stupidest movie since Red Planet [imdb.com].

http://www.sci-fi-online.50megs.com/2006_Interviews/07-08-27_brian-cox.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)

"I've discovered this whole new set of people - science fan boys - that I didn't know existed, really. They're interesting. Their almost fundamentalists, in a way. They are much more pedantic than professional scientists. I just interact with professional scientists most of the time and I must say, I've said this a couple of times now, but I've found the scientists that I like to work with particularly - there's a particular type of person I enjoy working with in science - all those went to see Sunshine and loved it. They thought that the portrayal of the physicist was wonderful and the emotional impact that science can have on you - the real reason you want to be a scientist - they found that really vivid in the film and enjoyed it a lot.

But then I see scientists that I think are dull - w*nkers you could call them [laughs] - who have seen it and didn't like it. I can almost use it as a way of working out who I want to work with. I'd say: "Watch this, and tell me what you think of it". If they don't like it, then I don't want to work with them [laughs].

It's very interesting. These guys that get really pedantic are really, I think, missing the point about what science is all about. It's about precision, when you're doing it. So when you're doing research it's all about precision and attention to detail and that's the difficult bit, and that's what you learn how to do. But deciding what research field you want to do, and having really good ideas about what to go and measure, and what to try and find out, that's a creative process. I think a lot of the pedants kinda miss that.
Like you say, Sunshine is not a documentary. It's trying to just, in an hour and forty minutes, get across a feeling of what it's like - not only to be a scientist, because obviously there's much more in it than that. So, I found it interesting to watch the kind of people that get upset because the gravity is wrong."

Re:The Deep Blue Win by Rockin'Robert · 2007-11-24 15:41 · Score: 0 · on Russian Police Seize Kasparov

FUNNY YOU SHOULD SAY THAT.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/04/15/dt1507.xml
http://republicoftexas.50megs.com/
RR

Re:inflation by gatesvp · 2007-09-26 10:42 · Score: 1 · on Annual IT Salary Survey Finds Dissatisfaction

Wow man, your problems are a total mess.

First of all you have 30 years of experience so you should (in theory) be making way more. But there are a lot of problems with logic:

Scarcity of work has gone down. You may have been a specialist at one time, but right now, most IT staff are just commodities.
Failure to acknowledge technical expertise. Right now, people are subscribing to the Fallacy of Management, the concept that managers are somehow more important than the teams that they manage. Top companies recognize "technical expertise" with pay equal to those with "managerial expertise", but you have to be working for one of these companies. Most companies are still paying for "body" over productivity, so you have to find the right company (or boss) that's going to pay for productivity over face time and "presence".
Erosion of expertise: you can't buy 30 years experience, but in our field productivity is closely tied with "up-to-date" technical expertise. Unless you're the current C#/Java/RoR master for the office, you won't be making 2x what the others are making b/c your specialized COBOL knowledge just isn't relevant. It's easy to train programmers, it's hard to train business analysts. If you're not filling a key role (like analyst), then maybe the company just can't make anything of your extra productivity.
Responsibility level: at some point you have to take on extra responsibility to earn extra pay. Management is one way, but even things like "team lead" or "mentor" can command higher prices. If you've been coding for 30 years and you don't want to help train the n00bz, then all you're getting is an "experience/productivity bonus", b/c that's all you're earning the company.
Personal marketing ability: let's face it, you have to be able to market yourself correctly as a technical expert to justify a higher than normal salary. If you're 2x as productive and only making 25% more, then you should be talking to your boss about the differential amd making them own up to paying you more. Companies want to pay "as little" as possible, that's the way the game is played. Top performers will earn their salary by finding ways to command top prices otherwise your boss is just reaping extra benefits from your extra capabilities. It's your job to change that, not theirs.
Inflation: here's a chart for you, but as you'll recall, inflation in the 70s and early 80s was pretty crazy. It's quite likely that you didn't keep up then either, so comparing your start salary in the middle of inflationary period to your current salary now may just be bad math. This is like those IT workers who complained in 2004-2005 that they were stuck at the same salary as they were making in 2000 (like there should be any surprise). I mean, even the current adjustments could actually just be an upward reversion to the mean. So you could be up 15% over inflation in the next two years, if the correction continues. We could just be taking a snapshot at the wrong times.

Either way, big quagmire, but if you're provably more productive and you're not earning some form of "productivity premium" then your problem is that you're being taken to the cleaners and this has nothing to do with the charts or graphs or inflation, it has to do with points #1 to #5.

Re:Absolutely. by cromar · 2007-08-28 05:21 · Score: 1 · on Videogames Make Better Horror Than Movies?

Sweet Home is a Famicom game that is, as far as I can tell, credited as being the first survival-horror game released. And, let me tell you, it is quite a bit scary! Scarier than any move I've ever seen :)

It's worth a play if you have a retro-gaming fetish.

Half-uncial t by tepples · 2007-05-11 16:41 · Score: 1 · on Scientists Create Artificial Blood

Really? I thought it was the lower-case letter T? Fear of crosses is why some vampires write lowercase t as a rounded L-shape with a line over it.

WIPO by TClevenger · 2007-01-18 09:17 · Score: 1 · on WIPO Creating New IP Rights Over Web Content

Whenever I see "WIPO", I immediately think of Taco Snotting. Thanks, WIPO Troll!

That's so Web 1.0 by Animats · 2006-12-12 05:12 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Wikipedia Founder to Give Away Web Hosting

Remember all those free hosting services? Where are they now?

Besides, web hosting is so cheap today. For under $10/month, you can have a full web site on a good commercial hosting service. You can use CGI, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL, and AJAX. You get a gigabyte of disk space and no limit on traffic.

Further down the food chain, there's 50megs.com, at $2.00/month. Free if you're willing to accept ads. Less space and fewer features.

If you don't want the bother of running a web site, there's Myspace and its clones. Geocities is still around, although now owned by Yahoo.

If you want to store public domain material of lasting value that others might someday need, you can get a free Internet Archive account and upload it there. They have petabytes of disk space. If you have software source, there's SourceForge.

So who needs another free hosting service?

Re:you are wrong by LordVader717 · 2006-05-25 06:15 · Score: 1 · on Biggest Obstacle of Nuclear Fusion Overcome?

http://phrontistery.50megs.com/longpig/dead.html

Check out Google's mischief and malfeasance by Anonymous Coward · 2006-01-01 14:21 · Score: 0 · on Google Default Search For Opera Mobile

Domain: 50megs.com

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