You like Free Software, but you do not value it, otherwise you would not be so willing to discard your freedom and use yet another "alternative" proprietary operating system.
In the real world, people can value many different things at once, and they have to make decisions based on the relative values of all these different things (which can change over time, sometimes very quickly.) You seem to be unwilling to admit that someone can value something without exalting it over all else.
Apple had gone down the same braindead route as Microsoft in this respect - having a case aware but case insensitive filesystem. NeXTstep used a "normal" case-sensitive Unix filesystem, so I can't understand why they switched bahaviour instead of adding the extra metadata and fork support to UFS.
Because doing that would have killed them during the transition from OS 9 to OS X, probably. The entire Mac user base was used to case-insensitivity; making Classic work with UFS was impossible. (No Classic app would have known what to do with a directory containing the files "Foo.txt" and "foo.txt".) Now that they're killing Classic for the Intel transition, they could probably do it, but there will be enough PowerPC machines running Classic apps out there for a while that I doubt Apple will be in any hurry to make the change.
"Why do the 'clueless' managers make so much money, when I'm obviously so much smarter? Why do I have less job security when I'm the one working 100 hour weeks, fueled by Mountain Dew and fear of downsizing?"
These are legitimate questions, and you sneer at the people asking them without providing any real answer.
But really, it's little different than if the CEO said: "I don't understand your C++ code; it just looks like a bunch of random characters you threw together. Therefore, it's stupid."
Whether the person looking at the code understands it or not, it produces a result that everyone understands: a working program. Business jargon produces... more business jargon.
Like it or not, there is such a thing as skill in business -- and oftentimes, it's rarer and less replaceable than technical skill.
Agreed. However, there is a notable lack of evidence that such skill has any positive association with the enormous compensation packages and golden parachutes that characterize the "C*O" level of major corporations.
What's newsworthy about this is not the competition between Microsoft and Google, but what Turner's comments reveal about Microsoft's attitude. The arrogance and lack of understanding of the competition that those few sentences encapsulate are breathtaking.
Companies, like countries, tend to talk the toughest when they're in trouble. Seeing their domains as God-given rights instead of something they had to work for, making threats they can't back up, getting into fights with much smaller competitors that it seems like they should be able to win easily but somehow can't... Yep.
If I were a Microsoft stockholder or employee, I'd be very worried right now.
A Congress with guts would interpret signing statements as declaration of intent to break the law, and therefore strong evidence for impeachment the instant the law goes into effect and is presumably broken. "You signed this bill, therefore it is law. Nothing you say about it has any legal force; only the bill itself, and your signature, represent the law. We're watching you, buddy."
Oh, I just re-read the first four words of my post. Never mind.
Supreme Court, playing along: "You don't have that constitutional authority."
Rubber-stamp Congress: "Under the President's constitutional authority..."
Supreme Court: "The law clarifies the President's constitutional authority..."
Bang! You and I and everyone else who gives a damn about freedom can howl all we want, but all it takes is one Supreme Court decision to enshrine this previously-nonexistent authority as precedent.
I feel like a conspiracy-theorist nutcase even making this post, but you know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Don't you understand? It's a different world! 9/11 changed everything! The US has never ever ever faced an enemy as dangerous to its very existence as AlQaedaSaddamHusseinHezbollahSomeGuyDownTheStreetW hoSaidBushSucks! 9/11! The Nixon administration? 9/11! That's a different world you're talking about! 9/11!
Oh, and in case you forgot, 9/11! 9/11! MP3 pirates! 9/11! Child porn! 9/11! 9/11!
You expect someone else to make the effort on a grand scale and you jump in defending you lifestyle when it has not been mentioned.
Huh? I'm honestly not sure how you got that out of my post. I don't expect a grand-scale effort on anyone's part; I expect a whole bunch of medium- and small-scale efforts, and I think that trying to get people to give up their lifestyles is a much grander effort than any alternative. And it's not my lifestyle specifically; it's the lifestyle of the civilized world.
You must be a kid?
Er... no, unless you're eligible for AARP membership.
Face it, govt will not make the effort, it's down to us each to do a small part.
Agreed, but --
Big tax breaks work for solar. Germany and Japan give the biggest breaks, and by a remarkable coincdence, they also have by far the biggest uptake of solar.
You're contradicting yourself here. Which do you want, government encouragement of solar, or not? There are good arguments either way, but you're not making any of them.
Perhaps you should learn to read before spouting drivel. We live in the same size houses, we all have a pool, have similar size family.
None of which you (I'm assuming you're the same AC who made the original post) mentioned before. In your original post, it sounded like you were criticizing your neighbors simply for having pools. Perhaps you should learn to write before accusing others of not reading.
Do we live an uncomfortable life? Certainly not. For a ~2500 square foot house, it costs about $3800 to install solar for domestic water, now credit 30% tax break and maybe $500 rebate from the state. It costs ~$3400 for an 11,000 gallon pool with no breaks.
Fair enough, and this is all interesting and relevant information. But you could have provided it before, instead of spouting off like some Deep Ecology nutcase who thinks we should all give up the benefits of modern civilization and go live out in the woods somewhere. Sorry if that seems extreme, but whenever I hear people using words like "decadent," I've learned to brace myself for some kind of fanaticism to follow.
You claim you do care, so what exactly do you and your family do about it? Turn lights and fans off when not in a room? Power computer(s) off when not in use, totally power off TV/video/DVD/STB/stereo at night instead of leaving them in standy by mode? If your not doing at least these, you clearly don't give a fsck. If you are, great! The hard part is persuading others to make these tiny efforts too.
All of the above, actually; I also walk or take the bus instead of driving whenever practical, subscribe to my power company's wind program (I pay a fractionally higher electricity rate in return for a guarantee that a certain percentage of the power on their grid is wind-generated) and contribute generously out of my not-very-substantial income to environmental groups, focusing on those which are doing something direct and useful rather being primarily political in nature. And while I'm always happy to discuss these options with people and try to persuade them to my point of view, I think just doing these things is much more useful than insulting people who don't make the same choices I do.
The problem is our attitude. Here in FL, most solar installs are not to heat domestic water, but to heat the pools. We need to be a little less decadent. When I talk to people about these issues, they really don't give a hoot about polution and energy consumption, despite the people being well edumucated and having a good income. Even our power bill being around half of theirs for the same size family and house doesn't make them think that maybe they could actually do something about their consumption.
Here's the thing: I do give a hoot. A lot of people do. I really want cleaner air and water, a stable climate, and oh yeah, the world economy not to collapse on account of running out of the resources that keep it going. And in fact, I'm willing to make some changes to contribute, no matter how slightly, to these goals.
But I also really like to swim.
"Decadent?" Screw that. The whole purpose of civilization is to make people comfortable; else we'd all still be living in caves and scratching for roots and berries. And you can rail against it all you like, but in the absence of an apocalypse, you will never make people give up the creature comforts they feel they've earned. Oh, they may make some changes -- say, walking a little farther instead of driving now and then, or paying a couple cents extra per kilowatt-hour on their electric bill for power generated from renewable sources -- but asking them to give up their cars and swimming pools and big houses entirely? Forget it. It is just not going to happen, nor should it.
The only way out is through. Better power generation sources, better use of the ones we already have, bits and pieces of conservation here and there (which can add up to a whole lot)... that's the only way it's going to work. North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia are not going to climb down from their thrones voluntarily; nor are central Asia, South America, and eventually Africa going to surrender the idea of trying to climb up. That's the reality, and I'll say it again, that is as it should be. People want to lead comfortable lives, and the definition of "comfort" keeps getting revised upwards, and it's easy to sneer at this impulse, but honestly I think it's done more for the welfare of the human race than any ideology ever has.
Maybe instead of criticizing your neighbors as decadent, you could say, "That's a cool heating system you've got for your pool. Ever thought about using it for your house water, too? Here's a Web site..." Just a thought.
That's really all there is to it. If there were large enough numbers of transhumanist nutjobs to gain recognition for their nutty beliefs, those beliefs would cease to be regarded as nutty, and when some transhumanist blowhard got up on TV to talk about his chosen brand of nuttiness, everyone would nod wisely and stroke their chins and say, "Well, of course we must respect the views of those who follow the transhumanist faith..."
So get out there and start converting the heathens, brother!
Oops. Dvorkin's law -- "Every/. post of reasonable length will contain at least one typo, no matter how many times you use the Preview button." That should be "... calculations using it..." above, of course.
This is true of almost every simple equation that gets called a "law," is the problem. Newton's laws? Well-known to be imperfect approximations, but they work well for almost every real-world engineering task. Boyle's law? Only covers the non-existent "ideal gas," and only applies macroscopically, and within a range of temperature and pressure such that phase changes aren't a concern -- but it's remarkable how well off-the-cuff calculations suing it work. Etc.
For the vast majority of coders, business pays their salary.
That being said, I agree that this is an article for suits (well, what do you expect from Fortune) and it's packed with business jargon that means very little. A lot of non-tech types make fun of techie jargon, but the jargon means something; when we say "TCP/IP," it's because it's a lot quicker than saying "transmission control protocol and internet protocol," and a whole lot quicker than spelling out, in detail, what each of those terms actually means. Suits have long had a habit of either taking technical jargon (from various fields, not just CS) and twisting it until it doesn't mean anything, or just making up jargon that didn't mean anything in the first place.
"Six sigma," mentioned in the article, is a fine example of this. How many suits really understand what a "sigma" is in this (or any) context, or why six of them is an interesting quantity? Then the six-sigma crowd compounded their sins by using the phrase "black belt." And of course there's all the military talk they love to throw around, this bunch of lifelong civilians who wouldn't know which end of an M16 the bullet comes out of. As a mathematician, a martial artist, and a veteran, I find this particular combination to be the Holy Trinity of bad suit-speak.
So the answer to the question, "Why should we care?" is, "Because that's where the money is" -- but that shouldn't keep us from pointing out what a bunch of jackasses they are.
I said deep underground. When manure is plowed back into the soil, it's still part of the carbon cycle. Now, to be fair, the purpose of doing this is to fertilize the soil, and the alternative is to use manufactured fertilizers which themselves require a lot of energy to manufacture -- but the problem is that AFAIK, most modern farming uses manufactured fertilizers anyway, while the manure collects in waste ponds and eventually ends up in groundwater. "Cow power" may not be perfect by a long shot, but it really does seem to me that it's a lot closer to carbon neutrality than anything else we're likely to do with the stuff.
No, it doesn't, because the carbon was recently removed from the atmosphere by the growing of the plants that the cows ate to produce the, um, fuel. OTOH, when we burn oil, we're bringing up carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago, and putting it back into the atmosphere instead of leaving it in the ground. The only way this isn't closer to carbon-neutral than burning oil is if the cow manure that is going to be burned for power would otherwise be buried deep underground, which I kind of doubt would happen.
Seriously, I think details like this are a Good Thing, because they help counteract the stereotypes about scientists, usually either "frustrated geek who can't get laid" or the basically sexless "mad genius working alone in his lab." In the case of Einstein, who is surely the most recognizable scientist in the public mind, another, only slightly more complementary stereotype has been created: the secular saint, the gentle, wise old man who spouted (pseudo-)profound sayings but couldn't tie his shoelaces. The more people realize that scientists are, you know, people, who when they're not busy being mad geniuses pretty much do the same things everybody else does, the better.
If morale is not based on business success then what is it based on?
Um... being treated like a human being?
I've worked for companies that were making money hand over fist, and treated their employees like shit, and I was miserable. I've also worked for companies that were barely making enough money to stay in business, and treated their employees well, and I was reasonably happy ("reasonably" because, of course, if the company is in real trouble, the prospect of a layoff doesn't make anyone happy.) And although it's by no means a sure thing, it does seem to me that companies which treat their employees well are more likely to get through the lean times than those which treat them like cattle, because happy employees are going to feel like they have a personal stake in the company's survival, and work harder accordingly. If your employer is the type that ends up on fuckedcompany.com, OTOH, you're not going to try to do anything to help it; you will, at the least, jump ship for a better job at the first opportunity, and depending on how pissed off you are, you may do your best to screw your current employer before you go.
Mr. deSouza pointed out that many spammers work on contract for other people's businesses. "If you're contracted by a company that sells watches or drugs, you might be perfectly happy spamming about watches or drugs," he said.
Very true, and this is why I've said for a long time that if we ever want to do anything about spam, there's a way to do it without infringing on anyone's freedom of speech: follow the money. You have the right to send any e-mail you want, including spam, and that's the way it should be. You do not have the right to commit other crimes -- e.g. fraud, practicing medicine without a license, etc. -- just because it's "DIFFERENT, this is on the INTERNET." Go after the people who are paying the bills, and most of the "spam kings" will find themselves out of business in short order.
This DoJ? Are you kidding? When it comes to antitrust enforcement, the current DoJ doesn't use tanks. They use Yugos with Super Soakers mounted on top.
From TFA: a difficult process considering he believed himself to be 19, and that Ronald Reagan was still president.
So this guy's in coma for 19 years, and he wakes up, and he asks, "How's President Reagan doing?" And the doctor says, "Sir, Reagan is dead." And the guy says, "Oh God, no, that means Bush is President!"
(The original was Eisenhower and Nixon. The more things change...)
Long story short: If any employees suggest OpenOffice, or indeed any "quality" open-source program, I'm throwing them out on their ass. And they're not getting severance pay. And I'm filing it as them quitting so they don't get any unemployment checks. Morons don't deserve to be paid.
Do you make a habit of announcing your intent to commit illegal acts in public forums?
You'd better pray that you never, ever have any ex-employees who read Slashdot, because you have just handed them ammunition for a massive lawsuit, as well as leaving yourself open to criminal prosecution. Have fun with that.
Slashdot Mirror
You like Free Software, but you do not value it, otherwise you would not be so willing to discard your freedom and use yet another "alternative" proprietary operating system.
In the real world, people can value many different things at once, and they have to make decisions based on the relative values of all these different things (which can change over time, sometimes very quickly.) You seem to be unwilling to admit that someone can value something without exalting it over all else.
Apple had gone down the same braindead route as Microsoft in this respect - having a case aware but case insensitive filesystem. NeXTstep used a "normal" case-sensitive Unix filesystem, so I can't understand why they switched bahaviour instead of adding the extra metadata and fork support to UFS.
Because doing that would have killed them during the transition from OS 9 to OS X, probably. The entire Mac user base was used to case-insensitivity; making Classic work with UFS was impossible. (No Classic app would have known what to do with a directory containing the files "Foo.txt" and "foo.txt".) Now that they're killing Classic for the Intel transition, they could probably do it, but there will be enough PowerPC machines running Classic apps out there for a while that I doubt Apple will be in any hurry to make the change.
"Why do the 'clueless' managers make so much money, when I'm obviously so much smarter? Why do I have less job security when I'm the one working 100 hour weeks, fueled by Mountain Dew and fear of downsizing?"
... more business jargon.
These are legitimate questions, and you sneer at the people asking them without providing any real answer.
But really, it's little different than if the CEO said: "I don't understand your C++ code; it just looks like a bunch of random characters you threw together. Therefore, it's stupid."
Whether the person looking at the code understands it or not, it produces a result that everyone understands: a working program. Business jargon produces
Like it or not, there is such a thing as skill in business -- and oftentimes, it's rarer and less replaceable than technical skill.
Agreed. However, there is a notable lack of evidence that such skill has any positive association with the enormous compensation packages and golden parachutes that characterize the "C*O" level of major corporations.
What's newsworthy about this is not the competition between Microsoft and Google, but what Turner's comments reveal about Microsoft's attitude. The arrogance and lack of understanding of the competition that those few sentences encapsulate are breathtaking.
Companies, like countries, tend to talk the toughest when they're in trouble. Seeing their domains as God-given rights instead of something they had to work for, making threats they can't back up, getting into fights with much smaller competitors that it seems like they should be able to win easily but somehow can't ... Yep.
If I were a Microsoft stockholder or employee, I'd be very worried right now.
A Congress with guts would interpret signing statements as declaration of intent to break the law, and therefore strong evidence for impeachment the instant the law goes into effect and is presumably broken. "You signed this bill, therefore it is law. Nothing you say about it has any legal force; only the bill itself, and your signature, represent the law. We're watching you, buddy."
Oh, I just re-read the first four words of my post. Never mind.
It's a bait and switch:
..."
..."
..."
President: "Under my constitutional authority
Supreme Court, playing along: "You don't have that constitutional authority."
Rubber-stamp Congress: "Under the President's constitutional authority
Supreme Court: "The law clarifies the President's constitutional authority
Bang! You and I and everyone else who gives a damn about freedom can howl all we want, but all it takes is one Supreme Court decision to enshrine this previously-nonexistent authority as precedent.
I feel like a conspiracy-theorist nutcase even making this post, but you know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
East District of Michigan v. Nixon
W hoSaidBushSucks! 9/11! The Nixon administration? 9/11! That's a different world you're talking about! 9/11!
Don't you understand? It's a different world! 9/11 changed everything! The US has never ever ever faced an enemy as dangerous to its very existence as AlQaedaSaddamHusseinHezbollahSomeGuyDownTheStreet
Oh, and in case you forgot, 9/11! 9/11! MP3 pirates! 9/11! Child porn! 9/11! 9/11!
These types of folks will replace the VP of IT types that write these articles, not the specialized IT skillsets that we have today.
Which is why articles like this keep getting written and read, of course. Most of management's time is spent justifying its own existence.
You expect someone else to make the effort on a grand scale and you jump in defending you lifestyle when it has not been mentioned.
... no, unless you're eligible for AARP membership.
Huh? I'm honestly not sure how you got that out of my post. I don't expect a grand-scale effort on anyone's part; I expect a whole bunch of medium- and small-scale efforts, and I think that trying to get people to give up their lifestyles is a much grander effort than any alternative. And it's not my lifestyle specifically; it's the lifestyle of the civilized world.
You must be a kid?
Er
Face it, govt will not make the effort, it's down to us each to do a small part.
Agreed, but --
Big tax breaks work for solar. Germany and Japan give the biggest breaks, and by a remarkable coincdence, they also have by far the biggest uptake of solar.
You're contradicting yourself here. Which do you want, government encouragement of solar, or not? There are good arguments either way, but you're not making any of them.
Perhaps you should learn to read before spouting drivel. We live in the same size houses, we all have a pool, have similar size family.
None of which you (I'm assuming you're the same AC who made the original post) mentioned before. In your original post, it sounded like you were criticizing your neighbors simply for having pools. Perhaps you should learn to write before accusing others of not reading.
Do we live an uncomfortable life? Certainly not. For a ~2500 square foot house, it costs about $3800 to install solar for domestic water, now credit 30% tax break and maybe $500 rebate from the state. It costs ~$3400 for an 11,000 gallon pool with no breaks.
Fair enough, and this is all interesting and relevant information. But you could have provided it before, instead of spouting off like some Deep Ecology nutcase who thinks we should all give up the benefits of modern civilization and go live out in the woods somewhere. Sorry if that seems extreme, but whenever I hear people using words like "decadent," I've learned to brace myself for some kind of fanaticism to follow.
You claim you do care, so what exactly do you and your family do about it? Turn lights and fans off when not in a room? Power computer(s) off when not in use, totally power off TV/video/DVD/STB/stereo at night instead of leaving them in standy by mode? If your not doing at least these, you clearly don't give a fsck. If you are, great! The hard part is persuading others to make these tiny efforts too.
All of the above, actually; I also walk or take the bus instead of driving whenever practical, subscribe to my power company's wind program (I pay a fractionally higher electricity rate in return for a guarantee that a certain percentage of the power on their grid is wind-generated) and contribute generously out of my not-very-substantial income to environmental groups, focusing on those which are doing something direct and useful rather being primarily political in nature. And while I'm always happy to discuss these options with people and try to persuade them to my point of view, I think just doing these things is much more useful than insulting people who don't make the same choices I do.
The problem is our attitude. Here in FL, most solar installs are not to heat domestic water, but to heat the pools. We need to be a little less decadent. When I talk to people about these issues, they really don't give a hoot about polution and energy consumption, despite the people being well edumucated and having a good income. Even our power bill being around half of theirs for the same size family and house doesn't make them think that maybe they could actually do something about their consumption.
... that's the only way it's going to work. North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia are not going to climb down from their thrones voluntarily; nor are central Asia, South America, and eventually Africa going to surrender the idea of trying to climb up. That's the reality, and I'll say it again, that is as it should be. People want to lead comfortable lives, and the definition of "comfort" keeps getting revised upwards, and it's easy to sneer at this impulse, but honestly I think it's done more for the welfare of the human race than any ideology ever has.
..." Just a thought.
Here's the thing: I do give a hoot. A lot of people do. I really want cleaner air and water, a stable climate, and oh yeah, the world economy not to collapse on account of running out of the resources that keep it going. And in fact, I'm willing to make some changes to contribute, no matter how slightly, to these goals.
But I also really like to swim.
"Decadent?" Screw that. The whole purpose of civilization is to make people comfortable; else we'd all still be living in caves and scratching for roots and berries. And you can rail against it all you like, but in the absence of an apocalypse, you will never make people give up the creature comforts they feel they've earned. Oh, they may make some changes -- say, walking a little farther instead of driving now and then, or paying a couple cents extra per kilowatt-hour on their electric bill for power generated from renewable sources -- but asking them to give up their cars and swimming pools and big houses entirely? Forget it. It is just not going to happen, nor should it.
The only way out is through. Better power generation sources, better use of the ones we already have, bits and pieces of conservation here and there (which can add up to a whole lot)
Maybe instead of criticizing your neighbors as decadent, you could say, "That's a cool heating system you've got for your pool. Ever thought about using it for your house water, too? Here's a Web site
cult (n): a small, unpopular religion.
..."
religion (n): a large, popular cult.
That's really all there is to it. If there were large enough numbers of transhumanist nutjobs to gain recognition for their nutty beliefs, those beliefs would cease to be regarded as nutty, and when some transhumanist blowhard got up on TV to talk about his chosen brand of nuttiness, everyone would nod wisely and stroke their chins and say, "Well, of course we must respect the views of those who follow the transhumanist faith
So get out there and start converting the heathens, brother!
Oops. Dvorkin's law -- "Every /. post of reasonable length will contain at least one typo, no matter how many times you use the Preview button." That should be "... calculations using it ..." above, of course.
This is true of almost every simple equation that gets called a "law," is the problem. Newton's laws? Well-known to be imperfect approximations, but they work well for almost every real-world engineering task. Boyle's law? Only covers the non-existent "ideal gas," and only applies macroscopically, and within a range of temperature and pressure such that phase changes aren't a concern -- but it's remarkable how well off-the-cuff calculations suing it work. Etc.
To be fair, I know some people who work for Genentech, and they seem to be pretty happy with their work conditions.
For the vast majority of coders, business pays their salary.
That being said, I agree that this is an article for suits (well, what do you expect from Fortune) and it's packed with business jargon that means very little. A lot of non-tech types make fun of techie jargon, but the jargon means something; when we say "TCP/IP," it's because it's a lot quicker than saying "transmission control protocol and internet protocol," and a whole lot quicker than spelling out, in detail, what each of those terms actually means. Suits have long had a habit of either taking technical jargon (from various fields, not just CS) and twisting it until it doesn't mean anything, or just making up jargon that didn't mean anything in the first place.
"Six sigma," mentioned in the article, is a fine example of this. How many suits really understand what a "sigma" is in this (or any) context, or why six of them is an interesting quantity? Then the six-sigma crowd compounded their sins by using the phrase "black belt." And of course there's all the military talk they love to throw around, this bunch of lifelong civilians who wouldn't know which end of an M16 the bullet comes out of. As a mathematician, a martial artist, and a veteran, I find this particular combination to be the Holy Trinity of bad suit-speak.
So the answer to the question, "Why should we care?" is, "Because that's where the money is" -- but that shouldn't keep us from pointing out what a bunch of jackasses they are.
I said deep underground. When manure is plowed back into the soil, it's still part of the carbon cycle. Now, to be fair, the purpose of doing this is to fertilize the soil, and the alternative is to use manufactured fertilizers which themselves require a lot of energy to manufacture -- but the problem is that AFAIK, most modern farming uses manufactured fertilizers anyway, while the manure collects in waste ponds and eventually ends up in groundwater. "Cow power" may not be perfect by a long shot, but it really does seem to me that it's a lot closer to carbon neutrality than anything else we're likely to do with the stuff.
No, it doesn't, because the carbon was recently removed from the atmosphere by the growing of the plants that the cows ate to produce the, um, fuel. OTOH, when we burn oil, we're bringing up carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago, and putting it back into the atmosphere instead of leaving it in the ground. The only way this isn't closer to carbon-neutral than burning oil is if the cow manure that is going to be burned for power would otherwise be buried deep underground, which I kind of doubt would happen.
Seriously, I think details like this are a Good Thing, because they help counteract the stereotypes about scientists, usually either "frustrated geek who can't get laid" or the basically sexless "mad genius working alone in his lab." In the case of Einstein, who is surely the most recognizable scientist in the public mind, another, only slightly more complementary stereotype has been created: the secular saint, the gentle, wise old man who spouted (pseudo-)profound sayings but couldn't tie his shoelaces. The more people realize that scientists are, you know, people, who when they're not busy being mad geniuses pretty much do the same things everybody else does, the better.
If morale is not based on business success then what is it based on?
... being treated like a human being?
Um
I've worked for companies that were making money hand over fist, and treated their employees like shit, and I was miserable. I've also worked for companies that were barely making enough money to stay in business, and treated their employees well, and I was reasonably happy ("reasonably" because, of course, if the company is in real trouble, the prospect of a layoff doesn't make anyone happy.) And although it's by no means a sure thing, it does seem to me that companies which treat their employees well are more likely to get through the lean times than those which treat them like cattle, because happy employees are going to feel like they have a personal stake in the company's survival, and work harder accordingly. If your employer is the type that ends up on fuckedcompany.com, OTOH, you're not going to try to do anything to help it; you will, at the least, jump ship for a better job at the first opportunity, and depending on how pissed off you are, you may do your best to screw your current employer before you go.
Unless you're in school. Every student, even the ones who can vote, must have a guardian.
Do you have a citation for this? I mean a law, not a school policy. This seems really unlikely to me when we're talking about 18-year-olds.
Mr. deSouza pointed out that many spammers work on contract for other people's businesses. "If you're contracted by a company that sells watches or drugs, you might be perfectly happy spamming about watches or drugs," he said.
Very true, and this is why I've said for a long time that if we ever want to do anything about spam, there's a way to do it without infringing on anyone's freedom of speech: follow the money. You have the right to send any e-mail you want, including spam, and that's the way it should be. You do not have the right to commit other crimes -- e.g. fraud, practicing medicine without a license, etc. -- just because it's "DIFFERENT, this is on the INTERNET." Go after the people who are paying the bills, and most of the "spam kings" will find themselves out of business in short order.
This DoJ? Are you kidding? When it comes to antitrust enforcement, the current DoJ doesn't use tanks. They use Yugos with Super Soakers mounted on top.
From TFA: a difficult process considering he believed himself to be 19, and that Ronald Reagan was still president.
...)
So this guy's in coma for 19 years, and he wakes up, and he asks, "How's President Reagan doing?" And the doctor says, "Sir, Reagan is dead." And the guy says, "Oh God, no, that means Bush is President!"
(The original was Eisenhower and Nixon. The more things change
Long story short: If any employees suggest OpenOffice, or indeed any "quality" open-source program, I'm throwing them out on their ass. And they're not getting severance pay. And I'm filing it as them quitting so they don't get any unemployment checks. Morons don't deserve to be paid.
Do you make a habit of announcing your intent to commit illegal acts in public forums?
You'd better pray that you never, ever have any ex-employees who read Slashdot, because you have just handed them ammunition for a massive lawsuit, as well as leaving yourself open to criminal prosecution. Have fun with that.