All this shows it that Microsoft paid more for their politicians than Google did.
Actually, all this shows is that Microsoft should have paid for their politicians a couple years ago, then there would have been no anti-trust case at all.
If the government really believed that Microsoft was a monopoly and doing evil, then why, when dealing with the government, do all documents have to be in Microsoft Office format? The US Government is large enough that if it switched to any other software, Microsoft's domination of the market would be severely cut.
Instead of fixing the "problem" without a lawsuit or legislation, politicians punished Microsoft for committing the greatest sin in politics - not paying off congress to the level that congress thought was required.
If people are stupid enough to type their bank password into some third party site because of an email they got, then they need to be educated about why that is such a bad idea.
Last week I received an email from the electric company (Duke Energy) that asked me to click a link in the email, update password, account number, answers to security questions, and finally, to verify if my banking info on file (for direct billing) was correct.
I forwarded the email to Duke thinking the email was a hoax (I didn't check). A customer service agent called me on the phone and let me know the email was real.
When legitimate companies don't follow basic security protocols, people will continue to be "stupid" and provide information to anyone that asks.
Such lauches should be such a common occurance that they aren't great and/or amazing news. That is what is sad in all this.
The launches may not be a very common occurrence, but they are common enough that while watching it with my daughter on HDnet, she was bored because according to her, it was "the same old thing."
When the launches would bore me, we'll have made real progress in space flight.
The deal breaker for me is that I just want a phone that sounds like POTS. Everybody wants a device to be all things, but I'd rather carry a high quality MP3 player, camera, phone, etc., than cram a bunch of crappy functions into one package.
That being said, in my experience, Apple makes quality products and the iphone will probably be a huge money maker without my purchase.
If there's not many women in IT because the type of work and the rewards that IT jobs typically offer are not what many women want, though, then what's the big deal?
The big deal is that we are constantly told that there are no differences among the sexes (or races for that matter) and that if there is a difference it is because somebody is holding someone else back. If it turns out that there is a difference between men and women (remember I am on slashdot and haven't actually seen a naked woman), then maybe the masses will figure out that not everything the elites tell us is true. Careers will be ruined, college curriculae will have to be changed and who knows what other chaos will reign.
My test for the worth of a teacher is to ask them how the subject they teach will help a student get a job or why in the workforce, they will need to take whatever class the teacher teaches.
Sadly, out of about 75 teachers that I have asked, 2 have given me a good answer. Most of the time I get a "well rounded" education answer - even for math and science teachers.
Teaching certification should require that teachers intern every 3 - 5 years at a company in the field they teach.
As someone that is married to a Naturalized US Citizen, I am for legal immigration (otherwise I'd be having sex alone). However, illegal immigrants are not the same as legal immigrants as far as skill and productivity are concerned.
For me, it still exists: Monopolistic Competition. It's like Monopoly, except actually based on economics. I'll spare you the details, but I'm sure if I sat at the kitchen table for a weekend, I'd have all the minutiae figured out and a game fully designed. I think we've all had ideas like this when we were this kid's age, and that he simply got lucky (parental intervention, a grant of $500, the support of some gullible VCs, media coverage). The idea is interesting, but it seems like something I'd see sitting gathering dust on the shelf of the Discovery Store, not catching on and sparking any revolution.
This is easy, I came up with 2 games in about a minute. The first is Oligopoly, it is like Monopoly except you don't try to own everything, just dominate the market with a few other competitors. The second is Inflationary, it's like Pictionary, except you draw pictures of inflation causing objects.
If I had a weekend, I could probably come up with a few more.
If cities and towns don't want sprawl, why do they enact open space laws? Why do many towns and cities in California restrict the height of apartment buildings forcing people to live further and further away from work? The only answer that makes sense to me is that it is a conspiracy to make the roads so congested that people want to move to the city.
Programming was fun when I was kid. It became un-fun when I started doing it for money. How about they fix that?
Probably the smartest comment I will ever read on slashdot. I've been programming off and on for the last 25 years (I am 40) and it is still a blast only because I do not program for a living. My projects are what I want, when I want, and only completed if I want.
Too bad I learned this before I became an EE. Electronics might still be fun
Not sure how they got the results of the survey either, but I am 40, and make more money than I did when I was a mid-20's professional with a good income and just out of college. Hopefully, when I am 50, I will be making more than I do now, so my guess is that the average person makes more money as they get older.
Therefore, my guess is that older people are less likely to be wireless, yet make more money than they did when they were 20.
Shouldn't your tag line be "There are 10 types of people in the world, those that know binaries and those that don't" or is the joke that 11 binary is 3 decimal and you only listed two types of people, thus implying that you do not understand binary, when in fact you do, and at the same time secretly making fun of people that laugh because they think they understand binary, but actually do not.
Sorry, I am an engineer and have the typical engineer sense of humor.
I moved to a rural Midwestern town for a $90K year engineering job. Cost of living is half what it was for me in Virginia Beach, VA. If everyone else figures this out, my new rural home will be part of the suburban sprawl that I escaped from.
You are absolutely correct, military and some civilian aircraft already have this feature. However, a terrorist activating a jammer could never happen because it is against FAA rules to turn on a transmitter during flight.
Thanks for settling this for us. Fools used to turn to God in times of uncertainty, but now know to turn to a high school student for the answers to life, religion, and politics.
Sorry, just joking(with a little truth thrown in for good measure).
My mistake on the batteries. My point about painting the panels was that they monitor your system with a phone line, they'll see that the system is not working and will have to send a tech out because some idiot painted the panels, cut the phone cord to the Citizenre system, etc.
Every service call will eat into any potential profit very fast. The number of service calls over the contract the customer chooses will kill this idea.
Hopefully I am completely wrong, I am a fan of solar. I just can't afford it.
I have been to the website, heard Ed Begley Jr. talk about it on NPR and still don't see how this will work.
Here are my questions:
1. They have never built a solar panel or the factory to manufacture the solar panels. I work for an engineering firm, we build electrical stuff, and I can tell you the many problems of facilities, materials, the learning curve to build a new item, and problems with installation/maintenance in the field. Their schedule does not seem realistic. What do they know that the rest of the world does not know?
2. With an unproven manufacturing concept and installation track record, how do they plan to manufacture and install a system so much cheaper than the other OEMs and resellers?
3. With the known problems and cost of batteries and general maintenance on system itself, how on earth can they make a profit? For example, I flip my light switch, nothing happens, I call for tech support, they come to my house (for free) and find out that my bulb was burned out and the system wasn't charging because I didn't like the color of the panels, so I painted them to match my house. If you don't think that will happen, do ask the IT tech support about the stupid time wasting and expensive calls they get on a daily basis.
4. With my current electric bill, solar would pay itself of in 17 - 20 years if I never had a failed component, battery that wouldn't hold it's charge, and never needed to replace my roof (cost of removing then reinstalling the panels). Just one malfunction in the 17 - 20 years pushes the payback a year or two if I DIY the repair. Send a service tech/electrician to my house at the current $50 - $100 per hour rates plust parts, and I have no savings. How can Citizenre make money by supporting the system for free?
5. Why does the company seem more interested in signing up distributors than it does signing up customers?
Thanks you,
Mike
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, all this shows is that Microsoft should have paid for their politicians a couple years ago, then there would have been no anti-trust case at all.
If the government really believed that Microsoft was a monopoly and doing evil, then why, when dealing with the government, do all documents have to be in Microsoft Office format? The US Government is large enough that if it switched to any other software, Microsoft's domination of the market would be severely cut.
Instead of fixing the "problem" without a lawsuit or legislation, politicians punished Microsoft for committing the greatest sin in politics - not paying off congress to the level that congress thought was required.
Last week I received an email from the electric company (Duke Energy) that asked me to click a link in the email, update password, account number, answers to security questions, and finally, to verify if my banking info on file (for direct billing) was correct.
I forwarded the email to Duke thinking the email was a hoax (I didn't check). A customer service agent called me on the phone and let me know the email was real.
When legitimate companies don't follow basic security protocols, people will continue to be "stupid" and provide information to anyone that asks.
I design hardware and everyone expects my hardware to work, if it doesn't, then I run the risk of losing my job.
When the software doesn't work on my (or any) hardware, then management and the customer ask when V2.0 will be released.
Yes, Microsoft has problems, but in the software world, sub-par performance is the norm.
When the launches would bore me, we'll have made real progress in space flight.
That being said, in my experience, Apple makes quality products and the iphone will probably be a huge money maker without my purchase.
Thanks, my mistake, I've read most of his books through the years and my mind has blurred and blended some of the books.
For example, the idea of a commercial plane crashing into a building (the whitehouse) was in Tom Clancey's "Red Storm Rising" published in 1991.
Sadly when asked about 9/11, our government officials said that it never occured to anyone that a commercial plane would be used as a weapon.
I don't know who it is, but I recognized the face. Unfortunately placing a name with the face is a different skill that is not part of my programming.
My day won't be complete until I find the "In Soviet Russia..." post
The big deal is that we are constantly told that there are no differences among the sexes (or races for that matter) and that if there is a difference it is because somebody is holding someone else back. If it turns out that there is a difference between men and women (remember I am on slashdot and haven't actually seen a naked woman), then maybe the masses will figure out that not everything the elites tell us is true. Careers will be ruined, college curriculae will have to be changed and who knows what other chaos will reign.
My test for the worth of a teacher is to ask them how the subject they teach will help a student get a job or why in the workforce, they will need to take whatever class the teacher teaches.
Sadly, out of about 75 teachers that I have asked, 2 have given me a good answer. Most of the time I get a "well rounded" education answer - even for math and science teachers.
Teaching certification should require that teachers intern every 3 - 5 years at a company in the field they teach.
Check out http://www.heritage.org/research/immigration/uploa d/SR_14.pdf for one side of the story.
Secondly, the Stasiland example is what happens when government is given (or illegally takes) too much power.
If I had a weekend, I could probably come up with a few more.
If cities and towns don't want sprawl, why do they enact open space laws? Why do many towns and cities in California restrict the height of apartment buildings forcing people to live further and further away from work? The only answer that makes sense to me is that it is a conspiracy to make the roads so congested that people want to move to the city.
Probably the smartest comment I will ever read on slashdot. I've been programming off and on for the last 25 years (I am 40) and it is still a blast only because I do not program for a living. My projects are what I want, when I want, and only completed if I want.
Too bad I learned this before I became an EE. Electronics might still be fun
Therefore, my guess is that older people are less likely to be wireless, yet make more money than they did when they were 20.
Please tell me you don't have "engineer" in your job title! Leave me some faith in humanity.
I am hoping he doesn't have a high school diploma.
It looks like it turned into this http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002723.html
Sorry, I am an engineer and have the typical engineer sense of humor.
I moved to a rural Midwestern town for a $90K year engineering job. Cost of living is half what it was for me in Virginia Beach, VA. If everyone else figures this out, my new rural home will be part of the suburban sprawl that I escaped from.
You are absolutely correct, military and some civilian aircraft already have this feature. However, a terrorist activating a jammer could never happen because it is against FAA rules to turn on a transmitter during flight.
Sorry, just joking(with a little truth thrown in for good measure).
Every service call will eat into any potential profit very fast. The number of service calls over the contract the customer chooses will kill this idea.
Hopefully I am completely wrong, I am a fan of solar. I just can't afford it.
I have been to the website, heard Ed Begley Jr. talk about it on NPR and still don't see how this will work. Here are my questions: 1. They have never built a solar panel or the factory to manufacture the solar panels. I work for an engineering firm, we build electrical stuff, and I can tell you the many problems of facilities, materials, the learning curve to build a new item, and problems with installation/maintenance in the field. Their schedule does not seem realistic. What do they know that the rest of the world does not know? 2. With an unproven manufacturing concept and installation track record, how do they plan to manufacture and install a system so much cheaper than the other OEMs and resellers? 3. With the known problems and cost of batteries and general maintenance on system itself, how on earth can they make a profit? For example, I flip my light switch, nothing happens, I call for tech support, they come to my house (for free) and find out that my bulb was burned out and the system wasn't charging because I didn't like the color of the panels, so I painted them to match my house. If you don't think that will happen, do ask the IT tech support about the stupid time wasting and expensive calls they get on a daily basis. 4. With my current electric bill, solar would pay itself of in 17 - 20 years if I never had a failed component, battery that wouldn't hold it's charge, and never needed to replace my roof (cost of removing then reinstalling the panels). Just one malfunction in the 17 - 20 years pushes the payback a year or two if I DIY the repair. Send a service tech/electrician to my house at the current $50 - $100 per hour rates plust parts, and I have no savings. How can Citizenre make money by supporting the system for free? 5. Why does the company seem more interested in signing up distributors than it does signing up customers? Thanks you, Mike