Except that the majority of upper management and executives are still white male. Of course you don't get that high up without friends giving you a leg up.
As for females? All my jobs in over three decades have become more and more male dominated over time.
Yup. Doesn't matter if you make a profit, you've got to make a big enough profit. This isn't just with hedge funds, but even having a great year but making record profits but less than predicted by an analyst can cause huge selloffs. These are not longer investors, they're gamblers. We've also changed what it means to be a good company to invest in; it used to mean steady and reliable dividends, now it means continual quarterly increase in stock value.
It's a contracted product, when the product arrives it is owned by the government. If they make sure that's in the contract of course. Nobody is harmed because if they company required ongoing royalties it would not have accepted the contract in the first place.
But government entities make shortcuts. They know how extremely long and tedious a normal process takes. They're required by law to put things up for a bid, but that takes forever. They also can't make any low level decisions, it all has to be passed through people empowered to make decisions, then approved for compliance with various laws and standards, then approved by people who make sure the processis followed, etc. (a corporation can say "screw the process, just get it done!" but a government agency can't) Utlimately more money is spent to ensure that the government is saving money than the amount of money actually saved. Thus the shortcuts. For example, put out a bid request that is detailed enough that only one company offers up a bid (or at least a small handful). In the bid request there may be certain requirements, like "must work with X, Y, and Z software packages".
As for corporations, they screw this up too. I laugh when people call corporations fast or agile or efficient. They can have the same sort of restrictions. CEO says "make it so" and then they are foiled; the development team can't get the tools because some IT manager says the tools aren't approved for use, the supply chain screws up and the manufacturing group spends months trying to approve a new supplier, and so on. Just because management said that the deadline is next Thursday does not mean the product will be ready next Thursday Corporations can fail, and corporate projects and products fail a lot. Corporate management can be every bit as incompetent as government management.
Corporations however are making calculated risks every day, whereas government agencies are not allowed to take risks at all.
I think this is part of the reason for the rise of the tea party and their attitudes towards mainstream moderate Republicans. The hypocrisy of the political parties is evident; both parties give out subsidies to their friends but then complain when the other party does the same thing. The Republican party really has not been an example of fiscal prudence despite marketing itself as such. Since we're de-facto a two party system in a country with more than two viewpoints, both parties are an alliance of strange bedfellows who can agree on nothing except that they don't like the other party.
Because there's a disconnect in the Republican Party at times. There's a conflict between fiscal reponsibility (saving money) versus supporting businesses (promoting the market). So they will on the same day complain about government waste in the morning and then provide huge subsidies to their friends in the afternoon.
As for open source, many republican and democratic politicians despise it. Too socialist, not enough American jobs created, potentionally developed by enemies of the US, no lobbying gifts or CEOs to have golf with, etc.
Government agencies don't operate like corporations. Nothing gets done without approval from higher up. Thus it takes forever for anything to happen. If they speed it up and let lower level functionaries make decisions then they get yelled at for wasting the government's money. So they're all gun shy, better to have a committee to make a decision than to have an embarrassed undersecretary.
They have a core group of dedicated fans. They don't care about the cheapest, they care that it's online and that they never leave their chairs. Amazon has been getting people hooked on this with Amazon Prime, so even if some people care about the money they still feel that they must make use of that expenditure and get free shipping rather than head down to the local stores with the local employees.
(I laugh when some of these fans say "but Prime is essentially free because it pays for itself!")
Except that this actually happens without workers ever getting paid. Usually this is back wages, as in the workers may be paid monthly but after bankruptcy announcement there is no further paycheck. Sure, perhaps you can't do this legally but under the US system you have to file suit and generally file suit one by one rather than as a class action (especially if you have no union). I have especially heard from some contractors who stop being paid, but I guess they're not employees.
The standardization of English spelling occured after the American colonies were well established. What was originally used in the colonies was the common usage of the day. There were multiple allowed spelling options, and Webster chose those common options that were simplified and more uniform and more logical. "Color" is used in some Shakespeare. Johnson's dictionary in England preferred "-our" suffix rather than make a distinction between Latin or French original, whereas Webster went the other way and used "-or" regardless of etymology. Johnson was somewhat predisposed to the Old French style anyway, which had little to do with how the common person spelled or thought. Most of Webster's original reformed spellings were rejected anyway. Any changes in spelling in England were not adopted in America. Other English colonies that did not break away so soon did adopt the English changes as they continued to use textbooks published in England.
Anyway, insisting on only one spelling is stupid, whether it is from language fascists trying to halt evolution, or someone who insists "potatoe" is the only correct answer versus those who were equally wrong in insisting "potato" is the only valid one. Language changes, deal with it.
Still waiting for England to officially acknowledge that it is not the ultimate arbiter of the English language. After all what they're insisting is the standard is what was the upper class elite use of the language, whereas in America we standardized on the common usage. And they forget that spelling actually changed in England after the American revolution. Never mind that language is fluid and evolves, trying to halt that evolution is futile.
(And really really annoyed with all my Australian coworkers who feel the need to say "what language were you speaking, it's unintelligble?" every time I say "aluminum" or the like.)
Well. That seems like a half thought out idea. Several places actually. The UEFI firmware should be able to survive even if this happens, at least having a default state that allows recovery. The OS may want this data for some reason, but make it read-only, and preferably not even mounted until some tool explicitly wants access to it. But then, I have to spend time on my job thinking about how things can go wrong so maybe I have the wrong perspective...
BIOS is just a bootloader. UEFI is just a boot loader. They *should* be small and simple, except that the PC grew up in a model where the BIOS did most of the heavy lifting, being used even after boot up. UEFI expands the feature creep. Many systems would just have a simple and small first stage boot loader that's nearly impossible to brick through OS actions, then a second stage boot loader if there's something more to do (like GRUB, etc). That second stage can be screwed up of course but it shouldn't brick the system as a whole.
Yup, why should a boot time OS-agnostic system rely on putting it's own values on the OS media? It shouldn't be in any media except that built in to the mother board (NVRAM if small and sane, or more if it's a bloated boot loader like UEFI, but never a hard drive).
Last I worked with USB, almost nothing supported CDC device class. Except for some cable or ISDN modems. Everything else that supposedly should be CDC uses proprietary drivers, like ethernet and serial adapters (even though there is provision for ethernet in CDC). None of the boxes make it clear from the outside if CDC is supported or what sort of driver to use (the only way to know if a new device uses FTDI vs Prolific is to buy one and try it or look inside). I only briefly flipped through the CDC specification but it seems a bit lacking and overly generic, which may be why products aren't using it. It's possible of course that it has improved over the years.
But comcast is not the only cable provider, and it does not own all content. Cable companies often end up in feuds with providers, threatening to drop entire channels if the cost is too high, and sometimes actually going through with it. Comcast may own NBC but they will not be happy at all if ABC, ESPN, Turner, and whatnot decide to discontinue working with them.
They do want their own converter box to receive shows though, they are required to authenticate, provide DRM, and whatever else the content providers insist on. However they may not necessarily care about additional set top box features like DVR service.
To be fair here, I think ominous people behind the scenes to be concerned about are the Hollywood content providers. Content providers are the ones who insist that the cable companies enforce their rules and who have the power to bankrupt some of these supplier companies if they wanted to.
Key things that Hollywood wants are no HD recording without DRM, ever. They'd prefer no low def recordings either but so far they've not figured out how to ban analog DVRs. They especially do not want any pixel perfect recordings of movies. They greatly prefer to restrict any time shifting of content if they can. DRM everywhere, encryption all the way to the TV.
Slashdot Mirror
That would imply that eventually whites and males are in the minority in the work force. At which point you should be a protected class??
I see tons of incompetent white men running departments or entire companies or even countries.
Except that the majority of upper management and executives are still white male. Of course you don't get that high up without friends giving you a leg up.
As for females? All my jobs in over three decades have become more and more male dominated over time.
Yup. Doesn't matter if you make a profit, you've got to make a big enough profit. This isn't just with hedge funds, but even having a great year but making record profits but less than predicted by an analyst can cause huge selloffs. These are not longer investors, they're gamblers. We've also changed what it means to be a good company to invest in; it used to mean steady and reliable dividends, now it means continual quarterly increase in stock value.
That probably explains why our California calendars stopped being useful in 2012.
It's a contracted product, when the product arrives it is owned by the government. If they make sure that's in the contract of course. Nobody is harmed because if they company required ongoing royalties it would not have accepted the contract in the first place.
But government entities make shortcuts. They know how extremely long and tedious a normal process takes. They're required by law to put things up for a bid, but that takes forever. They also can't make any low level decisions, it all has to be passed through people empowered to make decisions, then approved for compliance with various laws and standards, then approved by people who make sure the processis followed, etc. (a corporation can say "screw the process, just get it done!" but a government agency can't) Utlimately more money is spent to ensure that the government is saving money than the amount of money actually saved. Thus the shortcuts. For example, put out a bid request that is detailed enough that only one company offers up a bid (or at least a small handful). In the bid request there may be certain requirements, like "must work with X, Y, and Z software packages".
As for corporations, they screw this up too. I laugh when people call corporations fast or agile or efficient. They can have the same sort of restrictions. CEO says "make it so" and then they are foiled; the development team can't get the tools because some IT manager says the tools aren't approved for use, the supply chain screws up and the manufacturing group spends months trying to approve a new supplier, and so on. Just because management said that the deadline is next Thursday does not mean the product will be ready next Thursday Corporations can fail, and corporate projects and products fail a lot. Corporate management can be every bit as incompetent as government management.
Corporations however are making calculated risks every day, whereas government agencies are not allowed to take risks at all.
I think this is part of the reason for the rise of the tea party and their attitudes towards mainstream moderate Republicans. The hypocrisy of the political parties is evident; both parties give out subsidies to their friends but then complain when the other party does the same thing. The Republican party really has not been an example of fiscal prudence despite marketing itself as such. Since we're de-facto a two party system in a country with more than two viewpoints, both parties are an alliance of strange bedfellows who can agree on nothing except that they don't like the other party.
Because there's a disconnect in the Republican Party at times. There's a conflict between fiscal reponsibility (saving money) versus supporting businesses (promoting the market). So they will on the same day complain about government waste in the morning and then provide huge subsidies to their friends in the afternoon.
As for open source, many republican and democratic politicians despise it. Too socialist, not enough American jobs created, potentionally developed by enemies of the US, no lobbying gifts or CEOs to have golf with, etc.
Government agencies don't operate like corporations. Nothing gets done without approval from higher up. Thus it takes forever for anything to happen. If they speed it up and let lower level functionaries make decisions then they get yelled at for wasting the government's money. So they're all gun shy, better to have a committee to make a decision than to have an embarrassed undersecretary.
They have a core group of dedicated fans. They don't care about the cheapest, they care that it's online and that they never leave their chairs. Amazon has been getting people hooked on this with Amazon Prime, so even if some people care about the money they still feel that they must make use of that expenditure and get free shipping rather than head down to the local stores with the local employees.
(I laugh when some of these fans say "but Prime is essentially free because it pays for itself!")
Except that this actually happens without workers ever getting paid. Usually this is back wages, as in the workers may be paid monthly but after bankruptcy announcement there is no further paycheck. Sure, perhaps you can't do this legally but under the US system you have to file suit and generally file suit one by one rather than as a class action (especially if you have no union). I have especially heard from some contractors who stop being paid, but I guess they're not employees.
The standardization of English spelling occured after the American colonies were well established. What was originally used in the colonies was the common usage of the day. There were multiple allowed spelling options, and Webster chose those common options that were simplified and more uniform and more logical. "Color" is used in some Shakespeare. Johnson's dictionary in England preferred "-our" suffix rather than make a distinction between Latin or French original, whereas Webster went the other way and used "-or" regardless of etymology. Johnson was somewhat predisposed to the Old French style anyway, which had little to do with how the common person spelled or thought. Most of Webster's original reformed spellings were rejected anyway. Any changes in spelling in England were not adopted in America. Other English colonies that did not break away so soon did adopt the English changes as they continued to use textbooks published in England.
Anyway, insisting on only one spelling is stupid, whether it is from language fascists trying to halt evolution, or someone who insists "potatoe" is the only correct answer versus those who were equally wrong in insisting "potato" is the only valid one. Language changes, deal with it.
Still waiting for England to officially acknowledge that it is not the ultimate arbiter of the English language. After all what they're insisting is the standard is what was the upper class elite use of the language, whereas in America we standardized on the common usage. And they forget that spelling actually changed in England after the American revolution. Never mind that language is fluid and evolves, trying to halt that evolution is futile.
(And really really annoyed with all my Australian coworkers who feel the need to say "what language were you speaking, it's unintelligble?" every time I say "aluminum" or the like.)
Yes, "billion" is such a bilious word.
Well. That seems like a half thought out idea. Several places actually. The UEFI firmware should be able to survive even if this happens, at least having a default state that allows recovery. The OS may want this data for some reason, but make it read-only, and preferably not even mounted until some tool explicitly wants access to it. But then, I have to spend time on my job thinking about how things can go wrong so maybe I have the wrong perspective...
BIOS is just a bootloader. UEFI is just a boot loader. They *should* be small and simple, except that the PC grew up in a model where the BIOS did most of the heavy lifting, being used even after boot up. UEFI expands the feature creep. Many systems would just have a simple and small first stage boot loader that's nearly impossible to brick through OS actions, then a second stage boot loader if there's something more to do (like GRUB, etc). That second stage can be screwed up of course but it shouldn't brick the system as a whole.
Yup, why should a boot time OS-agnostic system rely on putting it's own values on the OS media? It shouldn't be in any media except that built in to the mother board (NVRAM if small and sane, or more if it's a bloated boot loader like UEFI, but never a hard drive).
The glob expansion won't do this if you start with "*" so it shouldn't search hidden files or directories.
It seems absurd to me. The game is just a few hours on Sunday. So who cares about all the stuff happening during the week?
It's in the US constitution: all foreigners count as 1/10th of a person.
That's because they didn't have database-backed nipple recognition.
He's probably the cheapest.
Last I worked with USB, almost nothing supported CDC device class. Except for some cable or ISDN modems. Everything else that supposedly should be CDC uses proprietary drivers, like ethernet and serial adapters (even though there is provision for ethernet in CDC). None of the boxes make it clear from the outside if CDC is supported or what sort of driver to use (the only way to know if a new device uses FTDI vs Prolific is to buy one and try it or look inside). I only briefly flipped through the CDC specification but it seems a bit lacking and overly generic, which may be why products aren't using it. It's possible of course that it has improved over the years.
But comcast is not the only cable provider, and it does not own all content. Cable companies often end up in feuds with providers, threatening to drop entire channels if the cost is too high, and sometimes actually going through with it. Comcast may own NBC but they will not be happy at all if ABC, ESPN, Turner, and whatnot decide to discontinue working with them.
They do want their own converter box to receive shows though, they are required to authenticate, provide DRM, and whatever else the content providers insist on. However they may not necessarily care about additional set top box features like DVR service.
To be fair here, I think ominous people behind the scenes to be concerned about are the Hollywood content providers. Content providers are the ones who insist that the cable companies enforce their rules and who have the power to bankrupt some of these supplier companies if they wanted to.
Key things that Hollywood wants are no HD recording without DRM, ever. They'd prefer no low def recordings either but so far they've not figured out how to ban analog DVRs. They especially do not want any pixel perfect recordings of movies. They greatly prefer to restrict any time shifting of content if they can. DRM everywhere, encryption all the way to the TV.