OOPS. Just violated the rules, and RTFA, rather than depended on what I heard on TV while dressing.
You would not have made anything, unless the Yahoo! people can get the premium jacked up over its current 62%, in which case they should be drafted by the Federal Government for something. Negotiating skill like that should not be wasted!
If I hadn't left Yahoo! in Feb of 2007, I would leave Yahoo! on principle. But my stock option strike price was $32 and change, so I wouldn't have been sacrificing anything either.
You realize that the $44 offer makes those options now worth a good bit? Even if antitrust considerations eventually stop the deal (unlikely, as MS doesn't really compete at Yahoo's level with them, any more than if they had decided to buy Ford or GM), arbitragers will raise the price quite a bit before it is withdrawn. Sorry, but staying another year would have made you a lot of money, so you DID end up sacrificing a lot (as a percentage of the options' values, at least).
Lets flood their feedback forum with messages to let them know how we (the users) feel about the idea of having Microsoft as the new keeper of our email and other data.
You send a message to low level employees, telling them that shareholders should avoid the 1/3 of current share price premium? If Yahoo! doesn't accept that rich an offer, unless they can somehow get MS to raise it even higher, the board members will be sued by the vast majority of the Yahoo stockholders.
Send a message to various antitrust departments (US, if you are American, EU if European), and maybe to the top two campaigns of either major party so that the next administration might be "disenclined to acquiess," to quote Capt. Barbossa. Buy MS stock, so you can legitimately (as in: have legal standing) bitch about the huge premium, or check if any mutual funds that you own or have your IRA/401K/whetever in have MS shares, and send them a message that they should send MS a message).
PS, do not use email' no one will care. Use telegrams or real letters.
> Does M$ really want this deal, or is it simply a > last ditch attempt by Ballmer to survive.
Ballmer survives as long as his college roommate does, barring a huge mistake.
> Not only does M$ have to bear the cost of buying > Yahoo but also the cost of virtually writing off MSN.
How profitable has it been, anyway? Maybe this is just a recognition that it hasn't been able to compete, and Yahoo has. Besides, what else is Microsoft to do with its HUGE store of cash? Pay a dividend?
That last bit was sarcastic, if you didn't guess. MS should have been paying regular dividends from the time it went public; its cash reserves have not been used for anything else, and MS was able to grow just on its income. Theoretically, the cash can be better spent or invested by its shareholders.
> Only if you stock enough bullets to stop all the poor.:-)
Nah, you just need enough to kill the lead group. Then the rest run away.
Why do you think that there was anyone to try for the Boston Massacre or Kent State? One volley with intent, by only a dozen or so, each time, broke up the oncoming riot quite nicely.
> without knowing what the full ramifications will be.
Well, I did once say that scientists should be forced to read Frankenstein, and to remember that only great scientists can do great harm like Victor did.
Nevertheless, NOTHING is ever safe. Sometimes, it is safe enough, given its benefits. Frex, my comment about flint knapping.
The most likely scenario is that we have engineered a huge set of stop codons, since no tRNA should support a triplet with the either of new bases in any of the three positions. The only way that they would produce proteins is (1) if they are too close to normal bases for comfort, and the tRNA "thinks" that xGA is TGA, frex, ir (2) if we next engineer a full set of tRNAs to handle them, and suitable machinery to make the new tRNA (and for the ribosome to use them, if it is too specific, now).
Choice #1 might warrant the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag. That would be unfortunate.
:set sarc=on Flint knapping: Overpopulation leading to the extinction of the wooly mamooth, the cave bear, and the giant sloth.
We were much better off, staying in the trees, and being eaten by lions all the time.:set sarc=off
BTW, most global warming comes from EXTERNAL combustion engines. BTW*2: Odd, that there was far more varied forms of life during the previous Interglacial, which was warmer than the most sky-is-falling predictions for our effects.
Tell it to the judge, when the PA cop pulls you over. At least there, signalling is required by law. Of course, so is obeying speed limits, and barring driving in a rain storm or fog, that never happens when a cop is not around (or sometimes in hospital or school zones).
> More referring to their tendency to stop at yield signs
Reasonable, if you are not certain that there is no one in the other lanes. Too many trees, or a night in the rain, it is only prudent.
This rail gun has 1/3 the range of tomahawk missiles, and about the same damage (assuming that you even WANT a big bang at the end). This is not a super weapon; it is just a cheaper weapon, for when you can afford to get as close as 200 or so miles from target.
OK, it is also a way-cool weapon, but that just gets the wargamers (and Japanese anime authors) horny.
> I'd resort to deploying ships with 50 or 100 MT nukes designed > to detonate when impacted by high-energy rounds.
1) I don't think that anyone keeps those around, anymore. I am not even sure that the Russians didn't build them just for the tests in which they were fired, to scare Europe rather than as practical weapons. 2) They won't be much use when the tomahawk battery sets them off at 700 miles away, will they? 3) Why not launch the 50 MT weapons, instead? 4) If we have a nation with 50 MT weapons, won't they (and come on, they will be Russia, China, or India only if they are stupid) have a few smaller, maybe only 1MT, weapons to rain on the ConUS? I would point out that the USA arsenal doesn't bother with more than about 230 KT (that's kilo-ton), as the effectiveness per KT drops exponentially as the blast increases (never goes negative, of course, but the slope of the power curve does).
> For comparison the big bad ass cannons on the side of a WWII Battleship
Umm, they were on the centerline, facing fore and aft except in actual use. You are thinking of the 5 inchers, used for close-in shore bombardment, which did line the sides between the AA guns.
the most interesting combination i've ever seen as a default was U:r0ot P:U53r.. This was on an Open Networks ADSL router. It still fails the strength test (too short, and derived from a known string), but at least it's better than Admin/Password
No, Admin/Password is better because you should guess that something that generic should be changed, whereas U53r might mislead you into thinking that it was good. Personally, I think the default password should be something like ChangeMe or IsAFool, so that it it obvious what needs done. Of course, the companies could probably just set their "wizards" to require it to be changed, but I have never used one - logging in to the router via the browser has always been too easy.
I have often wondered (living in the mosquito-ridden South), if mosquitoes have any benefit to the ecosystem at all. We often hear about how if you remove one creature from the ecosystem, the whole thing changes. But mosquitoes? I'm not sure they would be missed by any creature.
Parasites and predators prevent an ecosystem from being totally dominated by the "best" animal for that niche. This increase in diversity is better in the long run, but no victim will be grateful to the wolf eating its vitals or the mosquito giving it Dengue Fever, Malaria, or Yellow Fever (to pick some diseases with single species vectors).
> Antisemitism doesn't actually refer to hating Jews. What it refers to is hating semitic peoples
Wrong. It was invented to have a fancy way of referring to hating Jews, by people who would describe them as being "of the Jewish Persuation" rather than just "Jewish" because it used more words, and thus made them seem (to themselves, at least) more sophisticated.
> BTW the Bill Shatner add for this was pretty amusing.
I take it that you didn't see Mr. T's ad, then. Now THAT was funny.
In it, he claims to have created a new class or race, called a Mohawk, that (naturally enough) looks like him with his mohawk haircut (although not the gold from his A-Team days). Just a mod, I suppose (unless someone has seen him in the wild?).
> but I was taught Pascal because there was a perception that it was > more within the grasp of the instructors in the local employment pool.
Interesting. I was taught it because it was believe that programming in that fascistic language would force you to learn the rules, before C taught you how (and why) to break them. Learning in C sounds to me like learning to fly in a Sopwith Camel (notoriously unstable WWI fighter, therefore very nimble), guaranteed to kill you or make you great (and probably the former).
> You mean everyone should DIE once, to really appreciate life?
Or almost die/think that they are going to die. That is why people like roller coasters and horror/monster movies. And war, for that matter.
Re:Software is under the eyes of regulators
on
Geekonomics
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· Score: 1
It's way too easy to blame the initial inventors of the C language for not checking for buffer overflows, but that too is a mistake.
They did, they just did checks in the outer interface functions, rather than in every *d++ = *s++. Remember C was written for professionals, not hobbyists.
They did not write it intending for it to be used to build large business systems, nor could anyone have envisioned just how far computing would come in so short a time.
Yeah, they just wrote it to run the AT&T telephone network, while it was still a monopoly. Nothing large or critical, there.
Re:It varies by industry
on
Geekonomics
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· Score: 1
For example, most smart cell phones aren't engineered for untra-security. If I am a terrorist and I know ACME Electric Company uses the Plinko 100(TM) cell phone to communicate with its field operators, I can hire some cyber-criminals to schedule an attack on their phones at the same time as I set off a few bombs that take out a few major transmission lines.
Why bother with a cyber attack on the phones? Cell phones are only wireless to the cell, usually; cell sites usually use higher capacity land lines to communicate with the phone switches. Blow the switch, and the cell network is dead until the cell sites are connected to a new switch. With GSM, you could get the same effect by taking out the HLRs (only one or two per network provider) and wait for the caches to get old.
Anyway, cell phones aren't secure in any sense. If one wants that, perhaps one should get a subscription to a satellite provider like Iridium (bought by the US government, for use by the NSA and CIA, after it went broke)?:-)
> And if you dare to try to compete against them on their > platform, like netscape, or they will crush you.
Netscape pretty much owned the browser market, before MS wrote IE.
Therefore, it is "And if you dare to have a product that they can reimplement in a mediocre fashion and compete against you, they will, and then they will crush you."
Oh, yes, then we will have a wonderful civilization, until we all die of the plague from unsanitized telephone receivers, just like the last time (and don't say to convert to personal cell phone, because then it will be the exit doors from restrooms, or something).
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You would not have made anything, unless the Yahoo! people can get the premium jacked up over its current 62%, in which case they should be drafted by the Federal Government for something. Negotiating skill like that should not be wasted!
You realize that the $44 offer makes those options now worth a good bit? Even if antitrust considerations eventually stop the deal (unlikely, as MS doesn't really compete at Yahoo's level with them, any more than if they had decided to buy Ford or GM), arbitragers will raise the price quite a bit before it is withdrawn. Sorry, but staying another year would have made you a lot of money, so you DID end up sacrificing a lot (as a percentage of the options' values, at least).
You send a message to low level employees, telling them that shareholders should avoid the 1/3 of current share price premium? If Yahoo! doesn't accept that rich an offer, unless they can somehow get MS to raise it even higher, the board members will be sued by the vast majority of the Yahoo stockholders.
Send a message to various antitrust departments (US, if you are American, EU if European), and maybe to the top two campaigns of either major party so that the next administration might be "disenclined to acquiess," to quote Capt. Barbossa. Buy MS stock, so you can legitimately (as in: have legal standing) bitch about the huge premium, or check if any mutual funds that you own or have your IRA/401K/whetever in have MS shares, and send them a message that they should send MS a message).
PS, do not use email' no one will care. Use telegrams or real letters.
> Does M$ really want this deal, or is it simply a
> last ditch attempt by Ballmer to survive.
Ballmer survives as long as his college roommate does, barring a huge mistake.
> Not only does M$ have to bear the cost of buying
> Yahoo but also the cost of virtually writing off MSN.
How profitable has it been, anyway? Maybe this is just a recognition that it hasn't been able to compete, and Yahoo has. Besides, what else is Microsoft to do with its HUGE store of cash? Pay a dividend?
That last bit was sarcastic, if you didn't guess. MS should have been paying regular dividends from the time it went public; its cash reserves have not been used for anything else, and MS was able to grow just on its income. Theoretically, the cash can be better spent or invested by its shareholders.
Nah, you just need enough to kill the lead group. Then the rest run away.
Why do you think that there was anyone to try for the Boston Massacre or Kent State? One volley with intent, by only a dozen or so, each time, broke up the oncoming riot quite nicely.
Well, I did once say that scientists should be forced to read Frankenstein, and to remember that only great scientists can do great harm like Victor did.
Nevertheless, NOTHING is ever safe. Sometimes, it is safe enough, given its benefits. Frex, my comment about flint knapping.
> is keeping the poor people from taking away.
Then taxpayers with guns should get a tax break?
Choice #1 might warrant the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag. That would be unfortunate.
:set sarc=on
:set sarc=off
Flint knapping: Overpopulation leading to the extinction of the wooly mamooth, the cave bear, and the giant sloth.
We were much better off, staying in the trees, and being eaten by lions all the time.
BTW, most global warming comes from EXTERNAL combustion engines.
BTW*2: Odd, that there was far more varied forms of life during the previous Interglacial, which was warmer than the most sky-is-falling predictions for our effects.
Wrong. Governments also engage in civil engineering activities.
So that is three differences.
> Turn signals are a courtesy, nothing else.
Tell it to the judge, when the PA cop pulls you over. At least there, signalling is required by law. Of course, so is obeying speed limits, and barring driving in a rain storm or fog, that never happens when a cop is not around (or sometimes in hospital or school zones).
> More referring to their tendency to stop at yield signs
Reasonable, if you are not certain that there is no one in the other lanes. Too many trees, or a night in the rain, it is only prudent.
> As long as ONE nation has super weapons,
This rail gun has 1/3 the range of tomahawk missiles, and about the same damage (assuming that you even WANT a big bang at the end). This is not a super weapon; it is just a cheaper weapon, for when you can afford to get as close as 200 or so miles from target.
OK, it is also a way-cool weapon, but that just gets the wargamers (and Japanese anime authors) horny.
> I'd resort to deploying ships with 50 or 100 MT nukes designed
> to detonate when impacted by high-energy rounds.
1) I don't think that anyone keeps those around, anymore. I am not even sure that the Russians didn't build them just for the tests in which they were fired, to scare Europe rather than as practical weapons.
2) They won't be much use when the tomahawk battery sets them off at 700 miles away, will they?
3) Why not launch the 50 MT weapons, instead?
4) If we have a nation with 50 MT weapons, won't they (and come on, they will be Russia, China, or India only if they are stupid) have a few smaller, maybe only 1MT, weapons to rain on the ConUS? I would point out that the USA arsenal doesn't bother with more than about 230 KT (that's kilo-ton), as the effectiveness per KT drops exponentially as the blast increases (never goes negative, of course, but the slope of the power curve does).
> For comparison the big bad ass cannons on the side of a WWII Battleship
Umm, they were on the centerline, facing fore and aft except in actual use. You are thinking of the 5 inchers, used for close-in shore bombardment, which did line the sides between the AA guns.
No, Admin/Password is better because you should guess that something that generic should be changed, whereas U53r might mislead you into thinking that it was good. Personally, I think the default password should be something like ChangeMe or IsAFool, so that it it obvious what needs done. Of course, the companies could probably just set their "wizards" to require it to be changed, but I have never used one - logging in to the router via the browser has always been too easy.
Parasites and predators prevent an ecosystem from being totally dominated by the "best" animal for that niche. This increase in diversity is better in the long run, but no victim will be grateful to the wolf eating its vitals or the mosquito giving it Dengue Fever, Malaria, or Yellow Fever (to pick some diseases with single species vectors).
Wrong. It was invented to have a fancy way of referring to hating Jews, by people who would describe them as being "of the Jewish Persuation" rather than just "Jewish" because it used more words, and thus made them seem (to themselves, at least) more sophisticated.
I take it that you didn't see Mr. T's ad, then. Now THAT was funny.
In it, he claims to have created a new class or race, called a Mohawk, that (naturally enough) looks like him with his mohawk haircut (although not the gold from his A-Team days). Just a mod, I suppose (unless someone has seen him in the wild?).
> but I was taught Pascal because there was a perception that it was
> more within the grasp of the instructors in the local employment pool.
Interesting. I was taught it because it was believe that programming in that fascistic language would force you to learn the rules, before C taught you how (and why) to break them. Learning in C sounds to me like learning to fly in a Sopwith Camel (notoriously unstable WWI fighter, therefore very nimble), guaranteed to kill you or make you great (and probably the former).
> You mean everyone should DIE once, to really appreciate life?
Or almost die/think that they are going to die. That is why people like roller coasters and horror/monster movies. And war, for that matter.
They did, they just did checks in the outer interface functions, rather than in every *d++ = *s++. Remember C was written for professionals, not hobbyists.
Yeah, they just wrote it to run the AT&T telephone network, while it was still a monopoly. Nothing large or critical, there.
Why bother with a cyber attack on the phones? Cell phones are only wireless to the cell, usually; cell sites usually use higher capacity land lines to communicate with the phone switches. Blow the switch, and the cell network is dead until the cell sites are connected to a new switch. With GSM, you could get the same effect by taking out the HLRs (only one or two per network provider) and wait for the caches to get old.
Anyway, cell phones aren't secure in any sense. If one wants that, perhaps one should get a subscription to a satellite provider like Iridium (bought by the US government, for use by the NSA and CIA, after it went broke)? :-)
> And if you dare to try to compete against them on their
> platform, like netscape, or they will crush you.
Netscape pretty much owned the browser market, before MS wrote IE.
Therefore, it is "And if you dare to have a product that they can reimplement in a mediocre fashion and compete against you, they will, and then they will crush you."
> Politicians, Lawyers and phone sanitizers.
Oh, yes, then we will have a wonderful civilization, until we all die of the plague from unsanitized telephone receivers, just like the last time (and don't say to convert to personal cell phone, because then it will be the exit doors from restrooms, or something).
Idiots! Don't you ever learn?
> Guess which country never actually declared war on Germany during WW2
And when did Sweden declare war on Germany? I forget.
So it is the Greater Trantor Metropolitan Area?