Slashdot Mirror

... a huge lie perpetrated by people who would like to see the huge pot of SSA money be put into the stock market. I wonder how that would have worked out?

You are in luck. This gentleman (a former deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration) did just such an analysis. Hint: it turns out much better than you might have expected. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/022-stock-market-taxes-on-my-mind.html

Uh, yeah. About that. "The federal cigarette tax rose on April 1 from 39 cents a pack to $1.01." http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/08/ap6272107.html Anyway taxing smokers is smart, because smokers have health problems that taxpayers end up subsidizing through medicare/medicaid. Raising taxes on smokers results in fewer smokers, which results in a lower tax burden for nonsmokers. This is one where the "lower my taxes" crowd should be creaming their jeans, and instead they're whining about it.

Does it seem premature to declare this the savior of our energy troubles before you have even put up a single test/prototype site? What are the technical hurdles?

A company called SWAY has all of the details worked out, they just need funding for a prototype.

Forbes predicts 10,000 layoffs from the merger, most on the Sun side, in "IBM and Sun: There Will Be Blood".

Sun had a good run: 27 years. But they lost in workstations, they lost in servers, and Java isn't a big moneymaker.

This has serious implications for Java. To Sun, Java was their one remaining strong product. For IBM, it's just another software product line. IBM will do a decent job of maintaining it, as they do with all their corporate products. But they may not push it forward.

IBM also gets MySQL, which might be a problem, since IBM has other competing database offerings.

Sun's Silicon Valley operations have been shrinking for years. They overbuilt hugely during the dot-com boom, and have far too much office space. There's even an abandoned Sun industrial park in Fremont, where they built the parking lots and the building foundations before stopping construction around 2001.

"Once again it seems like 'porn is blazing a path to a new media format"

Again the myth that porn has decided the formatwars is called upon again.

"Many theories regarding why Sony's Betamax failed have arisen over the years. One of the more amusing (and false) is that Sony refused to allow pornographic material on their system. A quick perusal of the Betamax library reveals that adult entertainment was readily available. For example, Playboy Industries released their videos in a dual format, both Betamax and VHS, for most of the 1970s and 80s (and can be confirmed with a quick search through Ebay's adult section, or other used video markets). Second, the adult industry is too small to have any lasting impact on standards selection. According to Forbes.com, adult video income is approximately $1 billion. "The industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion). When one really examines the numbers, the porn industry--while a subject of fascination--is every bit as marginal as it seems at first glance." (Link - http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html )"

There, it should be over now.

They already spent $8 billion more than they have:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/03/02/ap6115002.html

What more would you like them to do?

I think it just hit a bit too close to reality to be honest. They've done very similar things with animals, as a sibling post said(cockroaches). And in humans, similar things have been done for remote control: Remote-controlled humans.

  And Spock's Brain - don't forget that!

That's why it's not actually that obvious that you were joking.

I think it just hit a bit too close to reality to be honest. They've done very similar things with animals, as a sibling post said(cockroaches). And in humans, similar things have been done for remote control: Remote-controlled humans.

That's why it's not actually that obvious that you were joking.

Something HUGE has to happen to change that. Most people thought it would be a new president, but now we know that's not the case.

I watched Jim Cramer's Mad Money on the web last night and I cannot believe how much responsibility all these supposed capitalists are suddenly placing on the government. You know what Cramer's big explanation for the financial meltdown is? It's that Obama is scaring everybody by pushing for universal health care and carbon cap and trade. Give me a break! Let's go ahead and assume these programs are worse than even the Republicans ever dreamed... even so, is it rational to think they could push down the entire stock market by 40% or 50%? It's a curious desperation certain people have to place all blame on the government. "It must be because the government forced banks to extend loans to poor people." Or Steve Forbes (and the rest of the WSJ crowd) who blame "government blunders [that] temporarily paralyzed the global credit system." Sure Steve. It couldn't be that all your billionaire cronies were actually obscenely overpaid dart-throwing monkeys all along.

It's totally true... their gadgets are indeed bleeding edge, but American consumers wouldn't put up with the buggy nature of their gadgetry. We eventually get much of the same stuff, after the Japanese public has been kind enough to beta test it for us :)

By the way, even by slashdot standards... this is REALLY old news. Forbes was claiming the iPhone was doomed in Japan over a year ago. If it succeeded despite all of that, well THAT would be some news.

She was in Forbes magazine months ago (unless I get Forbes and Wired confused). Nope, google confirms it was Forbes and it was Aug. of 2008.

Yea I find this both scary and REALLY cool. To read more about these technologies, read this blog post of links to similar stories.

I like how she responded to this issue with the word 'democratization'. She doesn't seem to be so worried about some crazy terrorist getting access to this technology, as governments monopolizing it for biowarfare development. And I'm inclined to agree that we should be just as worried about the latter as the former. A few links about this scientist/entrepeneur:
Her Bio
Forbes article - DIY Life
MIT TechTV Video - DIY Biology

The money goes into a savings account and the banks keep a small percentage for reserves and lend out the rest. So while a small fraction of the savings does get held by the banks, the majority goes back into the economy.

Psst, buddy. I think you need to stop parroting the economics lectures you've been hearing on talk radio, and start paying attention to what's going on in the world economy right now.

---------------------
TARP: Banks Promise Loans But Hoard Cash
Liz Moyer, 02.03.09, 05:05 PM EST
Data shows funds piling up in accounts at the Federal Reserve.

Bankers have done the equivalent of stuffing the mattress in the last few months, despite being prodded by the government to lend the hundreds of billions in cash being pumped into the banking system by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.

They've been hoarding cash at the Federal Reserve, some $793 billion of excess reserves as of the end of January, which is more than double the amount of money doled out or pledged to financial companies through the Treasury Department's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The data support the anecdotal evidence that lawmakers on Capitol Hill have railed against: Banks are hoarding the bailout money, even as they promise to make more loans.

It highlights one of the biggest problems facing the financial system right now: balancing the political need to loan out taxpayer funds and ignite the stalled economy with demands to shore up their balance sheets and insure survival during the riskiest lending environment in a generation. "They are nervous," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com.
---------------------

So many of them are progressives who seem to think even a healthy distrust of concentrated power (government) is some sort of insanity.

A progressive is one who thinks that a healthy distrust of concentrated power - in the form of concentrated control of economic resources - is only rational.

A (small l) libertarian is one who thinks that a healthy distrust of concentrated power - in the form of government - is only rational.

Note that these are by no means exclusive positions. Libertarian socialists - a.k.a. anarchists - understand that the owning classes get and keep their power through government action. End the government powers and policies that concentrate power into the hands of the wealthy, and there'll be less need for the pittance that gets spent on social welfare programs.

So, we get trillion dollar bailouts no one has actually read, and (here in California) tax increases in the middle of a near depression without a *single* layoff off a government employee.

If taxes are too low - and Americans are undertaxed compared to almost all other industrialized nations - then raising them is not necessarily bad. The idea that we can tax-cut our way out of any difficulty is what got us in this mess in the first place.

And if the gets weaker as unemployment rises, refraining from making government employees unemployed is not necessarily a bad thing.

Who told you that OSS is less safe than closed sourceWho told you that OSS is less safe than closed source?

A representative of a company who wants to sell!

MS is known to have used a business tactics known as Fear, Uncertainty and Disorientation

Facts are:

MS source code can be obtained by Hackers/Crackers through illegitimate channels - the availability of source code is not an argument.

Thousands of experts monitor OSS source code and vulnerabilities are discussed in the open. Hackers recognizing vulnerabilities in MS source code are not to publish it, but to write exploits!

Number of successful attacks on MS and other closed source products in comparison to OSS products speaks for itself.

Average workload consumed per machine for remedy of exploitation coed ( malware removal ) was per Windows machines 20 manhours, for Linux machines 0.01 hours at a company running 5000 PCs

You can offer security tests and penetration tests to your costumer !

The largest institutions and companies where security is an issue use Linux

• DoDs http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3846976086.html http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/20/cz_eb_0620linux.html
• NSAs even created SE linux http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/
• IBM - you know IBM?
• DHS http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?position=limited&host=dhs.gov
• FBI http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+contains&host=fbi.gov&lookup=wait..&position=limited
• Navy http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+contains&host=navy.mil&lookup=wait..&position=limited
• Air Force http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+contains&host=airforce.com&lookup=wait..&position=limited
• Amazon http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-275155.html
• Google just google Google about use of Linux

• Contraindications - or failures of MS installations in the media:

• French http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Computer_virus_grounds_French_fighter_planes/articleshow/4094774.cms
• British http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/15/royal_navy_email_virus_outage/
• US http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/38384

Actually, Warren Buffet is the richest man in the US. Bill Gates is the third richest man in the world.

as dr. liposuction diesel:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/21/fat-fuel-biodiesel-tech-sciences-cz_pcb_1222fatfuel.html

747-400 still has slightly longer range than 777. The longest flights are still on 747s - Newark NJ -> Singapore (nonstop).

Actually I believe all the 777 models currently in production (777-200ER, 777-200LR, 777-300ER) have longer range than the 747-400 (although the older models, the 777-200 and the 777-300, did not). Also, the last passenger 747-400s produced have a similar interior to the 777.

I believe Newark-Singapore nonstop is only flown by the A340-500.

777-200: 5235 nm
777-300: 6015 nm
747-400: 7259 nm
747-400ER: 7670 nm
777-200ER: 7700 nm
777-300ER: 7930 nm
777-200LR: 9450 nm (!!)

http://www.itpro.co.uk/182871/staff-forced-to-bypass-security-controls

The fact is that the people themselves will likely be forced to override it just to have some sense of normal workplace functionality. Or they'll do it because they don't want to be bothered.

It's a lot like when the U.S. missile launch codes were all set to 00000000 to keep it simple:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/17/usa.oliverburkeman1

Evidently people also had the same problem - they hated the security so much that they disabled it.

And then there's this gem from last year:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/28/long-hacker-csc-tech-security-cx_ag_0229hacker.html

Evidently old school attack vectors are far more likely to succeed at getting data. I'd get your managers to concentrate on physical security and internal checks instead of worrying about computer data. That doesn't mean you don't need some security, but the simple fact is that more than 90% of data theft are inside jobs and simple employee stupidity.

But you should know this already. I'd be more worried about the competency of an employee posting on slashdot about how they need help from the Peanut Gallery here than whether my files are encrypted or not.

Should they all believe that overpopulation is a problem, just like global warming?

I dunno man. The hardcore environmentalist movement is kind of running out of new material. The overpopulation scare turned out to be stupid scaremongering. The Global Cooling crisis also turned out to be more stupid scaremongering. I think they tried something about a "silent spring" a little before that, but all that did was cause first-world nations to stop selling effective pesticides to the third-world nations who still needed them, which has caused the death of tens of millions of people. So maybe that was kind of a "half-win" for real hardcore environmentalists, who view humankind as a sort of plague anyways.

Despite the environmentalists cornucopia of dire warnings about the terrible consequences of our awful behavior over the last half-century, we didn't overpopulate the world, we didn't freeze it to death, and we didn't poison it to death (well, at least we didn't poison the birds and bees and mosquitoes. The tens of millions of humans who died of preventable malaria infections might be pissed about that). If the environmentalist movement's track record for predicting catastrophe is any indication, we're probably pretty safe from frying the world to death. So I guess my question is, if global warming turns out to be yet another one of their lame-ass chicken-little scenarios, what's left for the environmentalist scaremongers?

Maybe they could take on the epidemic of Global Hypocrisy. Oh wait, never mind. That would require the accusers to actually change their *own* behavior first, before lobbying to require that everyone do as they say (not as they do). Bono would *not* approve of that.

Yea I agree.

Microsoft's actions and strategy is based on their philosophy which is fairly Machiavellian. The problem is they have to compete, and work like crazy to try and convince/control people, that will believe what they want anyway.

It's the difference between blue ocean strategy or red ocean strategy. Nintendo recently took on the blue ocean strategy (red ocean because it runs red with blood from competition). And you can see that it's not really working for them.

I hate to keep this little flame going, Rutefoot... especially with someone with your conviction... :>

I doubt it would be possible to "not use fortified foods or supplements". I like nutritional yeast, I take a B12 once in a while. I don't take "handfuls of pills daily". I don't have to worry about "protein, omega 3 fatty acids, iron, calcium, Iodine, Zinc and who knows what else" any more than you do. Also, I don't have to worry about my cholesterol (it's 123), taking lipitor (the "best-selling drug in the world"), or any other nonsense to prevent heart disease, a major problem for die-hard carnivores. I have to worry because I don't put meat and dairy in my body, you have to worry because you do. I think I come out ahead.

If all I cared about was my health, I might not be strictly vegan... but probably close.

Anyway, you appear to have a chip on your shoulder, I'm not here to hold it against you, or act like I have all the answers. I realize my vegan commitment comes from a concern for animals beyond the "norm", and most people will never see completely eye-to-eye with me. Just sharing what works for me.

special effects ? CGI ? scenery ? on-site shots ?

no. majority of film budgets are given to stars, who live lavishly off those pay. just read below article, and that's just one google search :

http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/22/actors-hollywood-movies-biz-media-cx_lr_0722actors.html

see, in total, only the 'leading' people have walked away with $487 mn in pay last year. thats half a billion. half a billion is paid to actors.

its not the acting, its not the effort. noone is getting a plastic surgery or a skin recoloring or transplant or anything to act. its just a race of prestige in between actors and actresses. i want more pay. why ? because a certain someone i know and compete with got such a pay and i want more ...

no sir. noone can justify what shit we are being put through while paying $20 a dvd, while an actor gets $80 mn for a few movies.

The Russians have let their game slide and now they are in a desperate economic state.

Disregarding the world's current overall economy, what is your justification for this statement? They have no national debt, and that's more than many states on the globe can say.

Which economic sector heavily relies on Russian trade nowadays? I can't name any. Maybe some resources like gas to Europe but you can hardly call that a solid foundation. From what I can tell the overall state of Russia has been deteriorating for decades. Some rich cream on top that skims off profits from the international markets and the rest goes down the spiral of neglect and misconduct. I mean, in a country where human rights activists and lawyers get assassinated on an almost regular basis, where the (former) president leads a double life of communist megalomaniac and self-glorification media whore on the other, where foreign capital holds more power than anyone else ... how could they NOT be in dire straits? The fact that Medwedew is a puppet, alone says enough about the Russian system.

I infer all this from some observations I made and you probably will show me figures that disprove my point. Thing is, what numbers can you trust coming out of that country? In my country, Germany, the statistics for unemployment are heavily doctored and we're talking about a huge economy here that shouldn't have to hide this. Yet, they're not truthful about their politics. Same in Russia, there also not truthful or democratic in their elections. Why would you accept their numbers to be true? You say they have no national debt. Really? Who says that? And how can they claim that when their population is obviously in a worse state than several years ago. I measure economic state by matter of influence and I can't recall one russian project or product in the last two decades that was in any way important to key markets world-wide. Given that 30 years ago they used to dominate some industries and where considered ahead at times the number of public interest in Russia has dwindled significantly after the Cold War. If that's not an indicator for desperate economic state I don't know what is.

The whole point of patents is to reward and encourage innovation.

What you say might once been true, but today the whole point of patents is to stifle competition.

"Protect the little man" is nothing more than propaganda. Companies accumulate patents in the same way that the US and the Soviet Union accumulated nuclear weapons: to make sure any patent attack can be retaliated. What chance does an individual inventor have ?

http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

A few months ago I asked the aging Bob Johnson -- former CTO of Burroughs Corporation when it was a leading mainframe company in Minneapolis where he developed the magnetic ink you see on the bottom of your checks -- what he thought caused the loss of the Midwestern high tech leadership to the coasts, and he said it was the financial dominance of the coasts.

That squares with what I observed while at Control Data Corporation/Cray Research, Inc -- midwestern companies that invented the supercomputer.

The reason Bill Norris and Seymour Cray were able to start CDC thence Cray Research was because they violated SEC regs and went around selling stock at PTA meetings, making a lot of middle class people retire very comfortably. My late father bought some Cray stock early on which helped greatly with his retirement.

When I was at CDC in Arden Hills, MN attempting to deploy the mass market version of the PLATO network with Internet-like capabilities (the system that Ray Ozzie (Bill Gates' replacement at Microsoft) cut his teeth on) in 1980 the primary resistance was from a middle management that, due to the financial press' hostility toward Norris's vision of a society disintermediated by computer networking, small high-tech farms and locally produced and consumed essentialsâ"had itself grown hostile to Norris.

My proposed solution is simple to state but will perhaps require a war to institute:

Replace all taxes on economic activity with a tax on net-assets, assessed at their in-place liquidation value, at the risk free interest rate (which according to modern portfolio theory is the short-term US Treasury rate) so as to extract all economic rents from the private sector, and then, to prevent public sector rent-seeking in pork-barrel politics, disperse those funds evenly in a dividend to all citizens, as the beneficiaries of the land-trust called the United States.

That will not only stop the vicious centralization of power in the private and public sectors, but it will clarify the role of immigrationâ"it is a dilution of the benefits intended for the Posterity of the Founders of the land trust called The United States of America.

You're grasping at straws. If not value, what would you suggest measuring by, office space square footage? According to Forbes composite company size scores, GE is the second largest company, further disproving your assertion that GE isn't a market leader. You should really have at least a little bit of knowledge about something before you begin pontificating about it.

You're grasping at straws. If not value, what would you suggest measuring by, office space square footage? According to Forbes composite company size scores, GE is the second largest company, further disproving your assertion that GE isn't a market leader. You should really have at least a little bit of knowledge about something before you begin pontificating about it.

So has any website sprung up to replace fuckedcompany? TechCrunch has their Layoff Tracker as does Forbes. But nothing quite like the original.

It's getting depressing out there.

What consensus?

I'm going to go ahead and point to the topic of this thread: "Windows 7's Media Hype Having the Opposite Effect As Vista's." Now let's go to the quote machine for a backgrounder:

The fact that Windows 7 has been fast-tracked just proves that Vista is one of those mistakes that Redmond would rather forget, just like the woeful Windows ME.

Think about it -- there's clearly a (high) level of consumer demand for Windows 7, the likes of which never materialized for Vista.

[falling revenue] That's due, in part, to slowing growth for PCs powered by Microsoft Windows software and the mighty kerthunk left by the debut of Windows Vista.

If your goal is Vista advocacy, "What consensus?" isn't one of the questions you should ask on slashdot.

You tell 'em! Vista failed, because of ppl on Slashdot ranting about "Get A Mac"! That's right!

Not just slashdot. It pros with Vista experience everywhere. The difference I suppose is that the advocates say "works for me on my new computer" and the detractors get specific about bugs, platforms and features. If your perception is that this thing was enthusiastically adopted, I guess I have nothing to offer you - you're not going to believe me anyway.

Here's an article describing exactly what you're talking about. From TFA:

A computer sends an image to the field, where it is distributed among 1,750 interconnected square trays, 7.5 feet on a side, that host their own light processing circuitry. Thousands of blades of polyethylene grass, blended with optical fibers, reflect light upward from the trays. It's like a computer monitor that you can walk on. A football field would have 128 million pixels, which works out to 1,280 per square foot. In pixels per square foot it can't hold a candle to your television set; in total pixels it's well ahead.

...

Nicholls says the lit-up fields are still two years away from commercialization

The date of the article is 11/27/2006.

"Things have changed DRAMATICALLY" [citation needed]

Facts not BS: http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/18/college-majors-lucrative-lead-cx_kb_0618majors.html

Again, directing people toward banking, civil engineering, or accounting is likely to reduce their starting salaries.

You are wrong, wrong, and wrong. Computer Science/Engineering has changed over the years because it is moving to higher-level stuff. Changing is not dying, but it may mean career death for those who are unwilling to change *awkward silence*.

Whoa! I was just kidding dude! Chill out!

LOL, I kind of figured that.

Its just that I have seen too many people defending (making excuses 200Kbps is broadband, yea right, for) ISPs, telcos on issues such as bandwidth CAPs (Comcast, Frontier, 5 GB cap, Time Warner), Traffic shaping (Comcast, Time Warner), censoring TCP/IP traffic(Sprint did years ago); not increasing their bandwidth by building out their networks (every current US telco and ISP) as they have promised; charge per message, per anything rather than just providing us the bandwidth we are paying for.

While I agree they should NOT have offered unlimited bandwidth, they did (not anymore - so they can be taught) AND

If they say that I have access to 10MB down and 4 MB up, than why am I only getting 2 - 4MB down and 700Kpbs up ...supposedly I am paying for more.

It's not the size of the cap, its the fact of a CAP!

Basically the telcos, ISPs, our politicians (both parties) have been playing us for fools for way too long AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT. (We need to hold them accountable with our money and our votes)

I just feel a need to educate enough people, hoping that they will get as fed up with the status quo and hopefully insist on what we all deserve...better service, more bandwidth and honest representation.

I hope that if enough us wake up to the truth of the situation (which requires cutting through the lies people use to defend these entities), one company will act. If one company acts (my hopes are that a new player will take advantage of Googles new trans ocean cables and offer here in the US what they have in Japan. (Japan-envy when it comes to Internet connectivity and respect of other people.)

The first company to offer 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps at what I am paying now for 4 Mpbs / 700Kbps will find me to be a loyal customer for life. And with less than 40% of the high speed interent marketplace, they would be able to generate multiple billions in profits.

That same company would be in a position to offer 1 Gbps / 1 Gbps as they are now in Japan also.

Eventually someone will; that company will put every existing telco and ISP to shame. (These customer no service entities should be ashamed.) My hope is at that time every other telco will be hurt so bad that either they finally invest in their infrastructures, or if they continue to refuse to do the right thing, that they be put out of business via normal market practices.

Though some companies are starting to wake up to the reality they have created (customer no service) and starting to do things...here is one attempt by Comcast, (7 employees in Philadelphia), its a start, but will they implement this company wide...that combined with whole hearted efforts to build out fiber and actually start providing TRUE customer service and they might stand a chance. Note: If a company is not seriously interested in changing their ways, they should NOT only TRY. This is NOT an area to try, this is an AREA THEY MUST DO! Anything less than 100% commitment will only hurt them!

Personally once I switch to a new provider with that amount of bandwidth, I will NEVER look back. If enough other people do likewise, the existing oligopolies will falter and suffer.

Might be worth putting into my will that any family member that uses any of the other ISPs or telcos will be dis-inherited just to drive the point home.

what are the security ramifications? that a 3rd party might be able to intercept the wireless transmission just like they already can? whether you use this technique or not, you're still going to be broadcasting the signal wirelessly. that's why GSM signals are supposed to be encrypted.

the GSM encryption was broken earlier this year. the security ramifications of that are far more serious. why would you be worried about someone intercepting this weak wireless signal when attackers can already eavesdrop on your conversation from miles away?

heck, if they're close enough to intercept this signal, then they're already within earshot of you. they wouldn't need to intercept the wireless signal to the antenna. anyone silly enough to do so would look rather conspicuous standing there with a laptop and a directional antenna pointed at your phone.

I think the general rule for the "come to X country and learn its language" is for people intending to live there, not vacation there.

If I was moving to Thailand, I'd sure as Hell learn Thai as soon as I could - preferably before I got there. You're just so disadvantaged not knowing the local tongue.

That aside, we're becoming a more globalized world every day. I've done odd jobs and had guys ask me in Spanish if they needed extra people. I don't speak the language, but I can understand it to a degree and get out a few sentences.

If you're going into business, Chinese or Arabic should be a goal for you. Quoting:

Albert Saiz, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Elena Zoido, an economist at the consulting group LECG , published a study comparing wage premiums for American college graduates who spoke Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian and Chinese as a second language.

In their findings, the law of supply and demand prevailed. With its 1.7% wage premium, Spanish was the least valuable, followed by French (2.7%). Knowledge of German, Italian, Russian and Chinese was slightly more valuable, translating into an average 4% income boost.

Those gains are paltry compared with simply staying in school a bit longer. In the same study, Saiz and Zoido found that an extra year of schooling yielded an 8% to 14% wage premium.

Of course, learning to speak a foreign language is not just about increasing one's income. It's silly to try to put a dollar value on the ability to read Sartre in the original French or chat about the latest telenovela in a café in BogotÃ.

But if income maximization is the key, savvy college students would do well to learn high-demand languages instead. According to the MLA, enrollments in Chinese and Arabic between 2002 and 2006 spiked by 51% and 127%, respectively. Enrollments in Spanish courses during the same time increased by only 10.3%.

In addition to Chinese and Arabic, the top 10 most popular languages for American college students include Japanese, Latin, and Russian. American Sign Language is actually the fourth most popular language course, but when excluded from the list of foreign languages, ancient Greek slips into the top 10 with roughly 22,850 enrollments.

Ambitious students with an interest in geopolitics can try taking up Swahili, Urdu, Farsi and Bahasa Indonesian. These are among the FBI's most sought after foreign language skills.

If you learn Farsi, Arabic, etc. you're practically guaranteed a cushy desk job on a government payroll. FBI, NSA, CIA, military, embassies... there's a huge shortage. This is a community that recognizes how valuable certain skills are in this modern age like knowing the latest and most useful computer languages are. Nowadays, it's not just computer languages you ought to be studying.

Actually dealers are part of the problem of American automobile companies...

Dealer Surplus

Carmakers can't just shut down marginal dealers. Under state franchise laws car companies must show good cause to terminate a dealer's franchise agreement. A federal law gives a terminated dealer the right to sue for "bad faith" by the car company. Try telling a jury that putting two dozen workers on the unemployment line was done in good faith.

These laws aren't going to change. Dealers have traditionally been prominent businessmen with political clout in state legislative chambers. (Ever wonder why you can't buy a car online?)

Nor can carmakers streamline their networks by moving an outlet wherever they see fit. In Texas and Florida, among other states, dealers have the right to block any new or relocated store within 20 miles. When there's a conflict, it's referred to a state motor vehicles board, a place where relocation deals often go to die.

Slashdot is owned by SourceForge, Inc (formerly VA Linux), an Internet media company that owns several sites like Linux.com, Freshmeat, and Thinkgeek. It's a publicly traded company with a CEO, SEC filings, and NASDAQ ticker symbol. SourceForge doesn't seem like a heartless corporation to me, they've done a lot of great things for the open source community and have generally stuck to their values, but as a public company they need to satisfy their investors (as seen in a recent management change).

Nice thought, but the Windows Driver Foundation(WDF) that is built to support the protected path has to be able to check the entire path BEFORE you run ANY DRM videos, otherwise you could just pull an Alcohol 120% and install the "screw u" driver BEFORE playing the DRM and it's bye bye DRM. But don't believe me, read about it at Forbes in an article written by the great Bruce Schneier.

If I wanted to troll Vista I would have put down something like "worst OS ever!" or some crap like that. Put working in the PC sales and repair biz I can say that anything less than a dual core with 2Gb of RAM, which is higher specs that a good 50% or so that is sold at Walmart and Best Buy, and Vista generally equals=giant HDD thrashmonster. That is simply what I have seen with my own eyes. But to quote the above article "And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't.". That extra CPU time is being sucked up by the DRM and that is CPU time you simply can't get back with Vista.

But don't blame me, I was so jazzed about a new MSFT OS I was a Beta tester for the first time ever. I tried RC1, RC2, RTM, and SP1. And I just never could get it running fast enough to make it worth switching from XP. Aero just isn't a compelling enough feature for me, especially when I can add the same "oooh pretty" in about 3 minutes and a reboot to XP. I just hope they keep the crazy DRM crap out of Win7. Because trying to find Windows XP licenses for my customers next year will probably prove difficult, not to mention drivers for all those Dells and eMachines.

it's not quite the same situation, and that's also not what happened:

The Cogent-Sprint feud traces its roots back to 2002, when Cogent asked Sprint to exchange Internet traffic at no charge to either party, a common arrangement between similarly sized networks. At the time, Web traffic traveling between Cogent and Sprint was being sent through a third network, which Cogent found silly. A direct connection would be far more efficient.

Sprint said it would agree to a direct link--but only if Cogent paid for the privilege. No chance, retorted Cogent. A swap would benefit them both equally, Cogent argued, why should one side pay?

Finally, in 2006, the two companies broke the deadlock--or so it seemed. Sprint agreed to connect its network to Cogent's for a 90-day paid trial. If Internet traffic flowed back and forth between Sprint customers and Cogent customers in large volumes and in roughly equal proportions, then Sprint would agree to a permanent no-cost traffic swap. The companies signed a contract on Sept. 19, 2006, laying out the terms of the deal.

By June 2007, Cogent and Sprint had established high-capacity links in six cities in the U.S. and in four more around the globe. With the connections open, traffic that had been forced to use a third network to travel between Cogent and Sprint now flowed directly. It is just these sorts of connections that let the global Internet grow ever faster and more reliable.

A few days after the trial period ended in late September 2007, Sprint told Cogent it had failed the test. David Schaeffer, Cogent's pugnacious chief executive, says he was stunned. The two networks had transferred equal amounts of traffic back and forth, a standard precondition for no-cost traffic swapping. This time, however, Sprint's objection was that the direct links between the two giant networks hadn't carried enough traffic under the terms of the contract.

Schaeffer, who is no stranger to fights with other backbone companies, says he felt scammed. To get the deal done, Cogent had paid Sprint $478,000 for the connection during the 90-day trial. Now Sprint said that since test was a failure, Cogent would have to keep paying. Schaeffer refused, arguing that Sprint's objection about too-low volumes was bogus. (Was it? That gets technical.) Schaeffer quickly concluded Sprint never intended to establish a no-cost link to Cogent. (Sprint denies that charge.)

The two companies entered a cold war. Rather than disconnect its direct link to Cogent, Sprint instead began sending it bills: typically around $100,000 per month. Every month, Cogent refused to pay, saying it had earned a free connection under the contract. By the end of July 2008, a total of $1.2 million in unpaid bills had piled up. That's when Sprint decided to sue.

Sprint's lawyers alleged that Cogent had failed the trial and thus should be paying for the connection under the contract's terms. Cogent's counter-suit claimed that it had actually passed the trial and besides, if Sprint no longer felt it was getting value out of connecting to Cogent directly, it was free to do what any utility would do to a non-paying customer: disconnect them.

it's not quite the same situation, and that's also not what happened:

The Cogent-Sprint feud traces its roots back to 2002, when Cogent asked Sprint to exchange Internet traffic at no charge to either party, a common arrangement between similarly sized networks. At the time, Web traffic traveling between Cogent and Sprint was being sent through a third network, which Cogent found silly. A direct connection would be far more efficient.

Sprint said it would agree to a direct link--but only if Cogent paid for the privilege. No chance, retorted Cogent. A swap would benefit them both equally, Cogent argued, why should one side pay?

Finally, in 2006, the two companies broke the deadlock--or so it seemed. Sprint agreed to connect its network to Cogent's for a 90-day paid trial. If Internet traffic flowed back and forth between Sprint customers and Cogent customers in large volumes and in roughly equal proportions, then Sprint would agree to a permanent no-cost traffic swap. The companies signed a contract on Sept. 19, 2006, laying out the terms of the deal.

By June 2007, Cogent and Sprint had established high-capacity links in six cities in the U.S. and in four more around the globe. With the connections open, traffic that had been forced to use a third network to travel between Cogent and Sprint now flowed directly. It is just these sorts of connections that let the global Internet grow ever faster and more reliable.

A few days after the trial period ended in late September 2007, Sprint told Cogent it had failed the test. David Schaeffer, Cogent's pugnacious chief executive, says he was stunned. The two networks had transferred equal amounts of traffic back and forth, a standard precondition for no-cost traffic swapping. This time, however, Sprint's objection was that the direct links between the two giant networks hadn't carried enough traffic under the terms of the contract.

Schaeffer, who is no stranger to fights with other backbone companies, says he felt scammed. To get the deal done, Cogent had paid Sprint $478,000 for the connection during the 90-day trial. Now Sprint said that since test was a failure, Cogent would have to keep paying. Schaeffer refused, arguing that Sprint's objection about too-low volumes was bogus. (Was it? That gets technical.) Schaeffer quickly concluded Sprint never intended to establish a no-cost link to Cogent. (Sprint denies that charge.)

The two companies entered a cold war. Rather than disconnect its direct link to Cogent, Sprint instead began sending it bills: typically around $100,000 per month. Every month, Cogent refused to pay, saying it had earned a free connection under the contract. By the end of July 2008, a total of $1.2 million in unpaid bills had piled up. That's when Sprint decided to sue.

Sprint's lawyers alleged that Cogent had failed the trial and thus should be paying for the connection under the contract's terms. Cogent's counter-suit claimed that it had actually passed the trial and besides, if Sprint no longer felt it was getting value out of connecting to Cogent directly, it was free to do what any utility would do to a non-paying customer: disconnect them.

With regards to Kool-Aid flavors. Red is a flavor. Allow me to explain:

Ahem....

For the most part all Kool-Aid tastes the same. Hence, they get grouped by color and it is common to refer to Kool-Aid by color group rather than flavor. As in this Forbes article Pinot Grigios For Every Taste by Eric Arnold. And I quote.

What gives the wine a more intense flavor is extended maceration with the grape skins, which, in turn, makes the juice a darker color, sort of like purple Kool-Aid.

Had he used any other beverage, I would hazard a guess that he would have used the word "grape" instead of "purple".

( all in fun )

Your link doesn't even address the statement you quoted, so I don't really see how you can expect me to revise anything.

At least I'm providing links, achem. You said earlier "What you and the other numbnut are referring to is the infinitesimal percentage of people who actually know how to make large amounts of money, and use it wisely." I was quoting statistics about how big that percentage is. These people don't make large amounts of money, they have large amounts of money. The numbers suggest that these people save a disproportionate amount of wealth; their overall flow, that is, how much money they are making over a given period of time versus how much they're spending is wildly disproportionate compared to the average person.

Here's a listing of the richest people in the world and a quip about how they did it. Let's test the assertion you made that "a large percentage of those who were rich last year are poor today"... Source

#1 Warren Buffett
Age: 77
Net worth: $66 bil
--
"Son of Nebraska politician delivered newspapers as a boy. Filed first tax return at age 13, claiming $35 deduction for bicycle. Studied under value investing guru Benjamin Graham at Columbia. Took over textile firm Berkshire Hathaway 1965. Today holding company invested in insurance (Geico, General Re), jewelry (Borsheim's), utilities (MidAmerican Energy), food (Dairy Queen, See's Candies)."

Well, this guy seems to have made his fortune by saving and investing over the course of his entire life.

#2 Carlos Slim Helu & family
Age: 68
Net worth: $60 bil
"thanks to strong Mexican equities market and the performance of his wireless telephone company, America Movil. The son of a Lebanese immigrant, Slim made his first fortune in 1990 when he bought fixed line operator Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) in a privatization. In December, America Movil struck a deal with Yahoo to provide mobile Web services to 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean."

This guy seems to have made his fortune by being at the right time and place, and has been busy expanding in his market ever since.

#3 William Gates III
Age: 52
Net Worth: $58.0 bil

Do I even need to say it? He got lucky and has sat on his ever-growing gold horde ever since.

#4 Lakshmi Mittal
Age: 57
Net Worth: $45.0 bil
"Heads world's largest steelmaker, $105 billion (sales) ArcelorMittal, which accounts for 10% of all crude steel production."

This guy was born into it.

#5 Mukesh Ambani
Age: 50
Net Worth: $43.0 bil
"Asia's richest resident heads petrochemicals giant Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company by market cap. His fortune is up $22.9 billion since last year, making him the world's second biggest gainer in terms of dollars. The biggest gainer was his estranged brother Anil, who ranks 6th in the world just behind his older brother. The sons inherited their fortune from their late father, renowned industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani."

Another guy born into it.

#6 Anil Ambani
Age: 48
Net Worth: $42.0 bil
"The sons inherited their fortune from their late father, renowned industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani. But they couldn't get along and in 2005 their mother brokered a peace settlement breaking up the family's assets."

Another guy born into it.

#7 Ingvar Kamprad & family
Age: 81
Net Worth: $31.0 bil
Peddled matches, fish, pens, Christmas cards and other items by bicycle as a teenager. Started selling furniture in 1947. Now his company Ikea, which sells hip designs for the cost conscious, is one of the most beloved retailers in the world, with an almost cultlike following.

This guy clawed his way to the top and now sits on his horde.

#8 KP Singh
Age: 76
Net Worth: $30.

Although english isn't my first language, I suspect that fraud is a legal term and that "con" is just another word for an elaborate trick.

YES. Feel free to believe that 'lie', 'fraud', 'cheat', 'trick' and 'confidence game' are all synonyms. If you want to pretend the girl in the station was running a "confidence game" on you, I guess I can try and talk you out of it, but it looks like it'll be tough to convince you. My point was simply that 'con' != 'lie'. Confidence games are a proper subset of lies, but not all lies are confidence games.

But this is getting pointless. I might as well try and suggest hacker != cracker next.

You don't know what you are talking about. Do you honestly believe that the IRS would mind if your customers pays you too much?

Well, yes, I kinda do know what I'm talking about.

Do you think the IRS would drag you to jail if I sent $1000 to your bank account for no reason?

Uh, yes. Well, no one said anything about jail, but if I give you $1000 dollars for "no reason" then it's considered a "gift" and if you call it "revenue" then you are a liar. If you book $500 COGS on that $1000, then either you made $500 dollars profit, and I received something in return, or you are a liar.

What you are describing is called "money laundering." We're not talking about accidental "overpayments," I said "knowingly" misstating journal records, i.e. inventing or deliberately misstating transactions in your books. Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Running a business doesn't mean you are running it correctly, or that you understand accounting and book keeping, or can read very carefully.

I said if you "knowingly sell a $10 thing for $100 and then 'fix it later'" you are lying. I didn't say if you sold something that cost you $10 for $100 you were lying. For fuck's sake, that's just called profit. No, there's the "fix it later" part you forgot to read.

Some advice for you. If in your business, someone "overpays" with a check for, say, $10,000 on a $1000 sale... and wants you to simply send them a check for the difference... and they are in a rush... it has to happen right away... why don't you tell your customer to stop payment on the check, send a new one, and (if you've already deposited it) make a few adjusting transactions in your books? Or I suppose you could go ahead with the bullshit transaction and just say later that the con artist took advantage of your "honesty." Whatever works I guess.

Ever heard of a company that books revenue fraudulently? There was a whole bunch of that during the tech boom a few years ago and Enron was pulling that. Yeah, it's kinda wrong.

Enron's Endgame

My whole point is that people usually say (incorrectly) that "confidence games" take advantage of people's greed AND honesty. Even wiki says so

confidence trick

But I'm suggesting that there is a BIG difference between merely lying to someone and "gaining their confidence." I'm suggesting that wiki (and several people here on slashdot) are missing the whole point of confidence games if you call mere deception a "con."

I'm also suggesting that people are not taking a true inventory of their own "greed." Wiki gives something similar to the craiglist check scam as an example of how to cheat an "honest man." Well, I think wiki and the poster above an you too are wrong and you are forgetting that the desire to make the sale is what's driving this con... impatience, greed. A business keeping solid books would simply undo the transaction properly (even if it means you might lose the sale) and redo it... not "forward the difference before the check clears." I could NEVER run this scam on my corporate vendors. They would just laugh and say, "Uh, we don't d

In the corporate world, Microsoft is god. Windows 2000/2003 servers run businesses. Nix machines and the like are novelties for un-evolved engineers.

WOW!!! I'm guessing you've never really worked on many corporate back end systems... there are literally hundreds of examples that can be given showing that JUST THE OPPOSITE is true.

the corporate world

I think you're misreading a chart somewhere. Circuit City shares dropped to 11 cents this morning, and was halted almost immediately by the New York Stock exchange. If there's no trading going on, there's no way the value can fall below 11 cents.

Of course, 11 cents a share with trading halted is just another way of saying that the stock is worthless. It's not even worth the paper it's printed on.

The problem is, those 5% are those who invest in businesses. Those 5% are responsible for creating a disproportionate share of the jobs.

Wishful wingnut propaganda. Entrepreneurs and customers create jobs - not the rich. This is why most new jobs come from small businesses, not conglomerates with billionaire CEO's. And what exactly does Larry Ellison do for his company for $193 million that he wouldn't do for say, $2 million?

Hey, under Obama's plan I'd pay less taxes right now as well. I'm still against it, and for two very good reasons. First, I aspire to one day make enough to be punished by Obama's income redistribution plan.

And I'll cry you a river when you see a 3% marginal tax increase at $250,000, I really will. And it's important not to leave out the subtext here: it's not just "take money from those who make it and give it the lazy" it really is "take money from white people and give it to lazy minorities." There's a reason why the conservative movement is intellectually and morally bankrupt, and completely incapable of offering real solutions: it's based on a backlash to the civil rights movement, and elitists opposed to the New Deal.

When you buy a mobile chip designer what else are you going to do with it?

The same you do when you buy a 3D graphics chips designer - not much? The only thing we see coming out of it is a person: Bob Mansfield - Senior Vice President, Mac Hardware Engineering

When you buy a mobile chip designer what else are you going to do with it?

Perhaps you would prefer to go back to the time when you had to save 50% of the value of a home in order to get a mortgage on it?

And, how's relaxation by Freddie and Fannie and banks on rules for granting mortgages working out?

Seriously, a down payment of 50% might be about right -- as it's likely that the value of housing will drop almost 40% from the peak and anyone who bought at the peak with less than about 40% down is likely to let the bank foreclose (esp in a non-recourse state) - which can easily decline into a downward spiral of excess housing inventory and tight credit even in the absence of the CDO mess.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2008/1013/064.html