$55,000 is much cheaper than hiring developers to do it. It's akin to companies having a contest for a new marketing logo, and the winner get's their work used. The compensation is a line on a resume.
I'm Canadian, and fall about where you would expect on the "right to bear arms" (in general guns are bad because they kill people), but the thought of a drone hovering over my house and yard is highly offensive.
It invades privacy, my sense of well-being, and my gut instinct would be to classify it as a threat towards my children and family.
It's a threat because I don't know the intent behind the drone. Is someone using it to surveille my house or family, take voyeuristic pictures or images of my children, or is it just some idiot who doesn't understand how his or her actions could be interpreted?
Based on the article, I actually have a fair bit of sympathy for Mr. Merideth.at.
I've played a lot of BF, since owning 1942 on release day. I can't think of a version I've missed (though I've stopped buying expansion packs).
That said, I stopped buying on release day a while ago. My gaming time is maybe 2% of what it was a decade or so ago, so it's valuable and not to be wasted on buggy releases and bad games.
I'm embarrassed to say that I pledged $70. I thought being on Kickstarter provided some level of protection against this, and that no one would be so brazen as to hijack people's names and credentials, and post them a popular website to promote their claims.
Thanks, Slashdot. I promise I'll be more careful next time.
If someone tells me the PowerUp 3.0 remote-controlled airplane is a hoax, I'll be devastated...
No, the goal is to get your body to stop storing your calories as fat, and instead burn them right away. The way to do this is to stop your blood sugar from spiking, which in turn leads to an insulin response. Just eating less means your body has less energy for it's day-to-day, and you get tired and sluggish.
Cut out the sugar and the processed foods (including flour). Get your calories from raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, whole grains, protein, and fat. That's really all there is to it. Easy to say, harder to do.
I think companies don't want to bother interviewing and recruiting for someone who's not local. If offered the job, chances are that you'll not actually follow-through with the relocation. I know when we go looking, and we get someone from out of town, they almost always drop out of the running, or can't move in the time-frame required.
It's a chicken and egg thing. Potential employees don't want to move till they get a job. Employers don't want to hire anyone not local.
What about diatomaceous earth? It's fossilized algae, and a natural insecticide, absorbing the lipids from the exoskeletons of insects.
I've read that if you pull your bed from the wall, take 4 empty/clean tuna cans with diatomaceous earth in them, and put one under each leg of the bed, you can get rid of them. They crawl in and out of it on their way to feast on you.
If I had them, in addition to the cans-under-legs, I'd be dusting the floors, the sheets, the bed-frame, the bed-boards, the electrical sockets, etc, to get rid of them.
There was also a BBC show, either Edwardian Farm, or Victorian Farm, where they showed the housewife scrubbing bed frames down twice a year with lye to keep them under control.
Well, as for the price of nuclear power, there is a 30-year, multi-billion dollar cleanup in the works. Even if a private corporation is paying for it, they'll be recouping their money somehow. There is no such thing a free lunch, or a free nuclear decontamination.
From another/. article today,
"A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, equivalent to five year's maximum exposure for a site worker. In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea."
You might be able to argue that, in a safer place, the Fukushima reactor would have been fine, but Japan is one huge earthquake waiting to happen. Maybe solar, wind, and wave power make sense in a place like that.
As for what people "like", using that as a basis for what's right or good is ridiculous. People want want everything for nothing - someone else should pay. They want cheap power, but don't want a power plant in their back yard. On average, we're not a terribly rational species.
Boeing decided to farm out the manufacturing of parts of the plane to various companies around the world. The fuselage was built in Italy, and there were small issues with wrinkles on the surface. The wings were made by Mitsubishi, in Japan, and there were issues with the stringers.
Who knows if they would have had the same issues with in-house development, but there were lots of quality and logistical issues with building a "global" plane.
Way back when Boeing was going for a smaller, more efficient jet. Airbus wanted to build a big plane, aka an Ultra High Capacity Airliner to challenge Boeing's dominance of the large-jet market.
Boeing built the 787, and Airbus built the A380. I guess the market is now forcing Airbus to compete with Boeing's 787, and thus the a350.
It's easy to make fun of IT managers. At the company I worked at, our last one was pretty bad. He was a terrible coder, couldn't estimate or keep a project on track, made bad technology decisions.
Our current one is excellent, however. Not sure how technical he is, as he hasn't had time to write code, but he asks us hard questions that challenge assumptions, projects go through the documentation phases that we need (business rules, elaboration, use cases), there is a full project plan that is updated weekly, and management knows as soon as something start slipping.
It's no problem to get a day off on short notice, he helps out on weekends when servers need to be moved, he fixes issues with vacation-day-allocation HR, and goes back to the product management group when to challenge them when change-requests start to get a bit silly. After every cycle, he drives a process to figure out what could have been done better, and then we attempt to put methodology in place to try to fix it for the next cycle.
Our company is small - 20 or so people, and a dev/qa team of 10, but he's done a great job of getting the maximum return on investment on our development efforts.
Around here,.05 is considered impaired. Your license is seized for 3 days (first offense, up to 30 days for your third), your car is often towed and impounded, and you get to go to court. It's often about $4000 after all is said and done.
There have been all sorts of issues with this. One is that you are tried and convicted at the side of the road with no chance of appeal, possibly due to a faulty machine (and many cases have been tossed due to a suspected bad machine).
There was a case where an older woman who rarely drank had sip of champagne at a celebratory dinner, and drove home. It was dark, she got lost, and made an illegal u-turn. An off-duty police officer was behind her, and pulled her over, got a cruiser to show up, and had her charged. She had poor lung capacity, so it took them over 2 hours to come to the conclusion that they couldn't get a breath sample (they charged her an additional $500 penalty for failing to provide a breath sample).
The woman knew she wasn't over the limit, so she took a cab to the hospital, and got blood drawn; it showed that there was no alcohol in her system. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but she had spent about $10,000 on lawyers by that point.
That's a good guess, but wouldn't Samsung rather have the technology and any potential patents?
Samsung is pretty good at making smart technology moves - buying factories, and other companies at the right time, and then dominating the market. You would think that this would be a nice technology to have with their tv/tablet/phone/laptop screen technology.
So maybe there are issues with the company (inept management, etc), intellectual property (ie the violate someone's patents), or technology (there are still significant barriers to overcome).
Or maybe Samsung sees the future on OLED, and doesn't want to spend resources on a stepping-stone technology that will disappear without a ripple in a few years.
Apple has iOS that powers tablets, phones, and MP3 players. Google has Android, which powers phones, tablets, and other consumer devices.
If Microsoft has a decent mobile OS, it's buried under so much marketing that I don't know what it is. I guess there is "Surface", but it seems pretty limited. I've never used it, much less seen it outside a commercial.
They need to come out with an OS, and brand it differently that "Windows". Windows makes me think big and clunky and slow.
Second, they need to stick with their products, and improve them until they get traction. Their approach seems to be make a few dozen consumer products, and drop the ones that don't immediately succeed - quantity versus quality. Why not pick the niche that helps your business the most, and stick with it. Phones, MP3 players, tablets, or some other technology - do it, and follow "kaizen" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen). Eventually your competitors make a misstep, and the ecosystem is yours for the taking. It takes a willingness to spend money, be stubborn, continuously improve, and wait till the big fish makes a mistake. Apple took out Blackberry, and Android/Samsung/HTC have grabbed a nice chunk of market share from Apple.
Microsoft is coasting on previous successes - Windows, Office, and more recently the XBox, and abandoning not-successes too quickly.
And don't forget that the age/gender demographic of The Consumerist is one that plays games. Ask 60-year old women who the worst corporation is, and you'll get a different response.
In reality, EA is just the worst corporation according to people who read The Consumerist.
The Koch brothers, and their private company, Koch Industries, is another good one for your list of companies that are actually evil.
And that's why my degree was a co-op degree, where at the end of my 5 years, I had 2 years of work experience doing software development and hardware support. The last co-op position ended up being a full-time job post graduation, and I haven't looked back.
I'm just waiting for the next Studio Ghibli film to grace our shores, or maybe a Wallace and Grommit. I'll skip Planes, and I won't take my under-10 kids to see it. The Croods can wait till video (AKA TorrentLeech).
Slashdot Mirror
$55,000 is much cheaper than hiring developers to do it. It's akin to companies having a contest for a new marketing logo, and the winner get's their work used. The compensation is a line on a resume.
I'm Canadian, and fall about where you would expect on the "right to bear arms" (in general guns are bad because they kill people), but the thought of a drone hovering over my house and yard is highly offensive.
It invades privacy, my sense of well-being, and my gut instinct would be to classify it as a threat towards my children and family.
It's a threat because I don't know the intent behind the drone. Is someone using it to surveille my house or family, take voyeuristic pictures or images of my children, or is it just some idiot who doesn't understand how his or her actions could be interpreted?
Based on the article, I actually have a fair bit of sympathy for Mr. Merideth.at.
I have a 9-year old and 11-year old, both into Minecraft, and I thought this might be a fun way to spend a few hours a week together.
Opinions?
We in Canada have a born-again Christian as Prime Minister. We win!
Quick, someone call Kickstarter and get iFind up and running again.
I've played a lot of BF, since owning 1942 on release day. I can't think of a version I've missed (though I've stopped buying expansion packs).
That said, I stopped buying on release day a while ago. My gaming time is maybe 2% of what it was a decade or so ago, so it's valuable and not to be wasted on buggy releases and bad games.
I'm embarrassed to say that I pledged $70. I thought being on Kickstarter provided some level of protection against this, and that no one would be so brazen as to hijack people's names and credentials, and post them a popular website to promote their claims.
Thanks, Slashdot. I promise I'll be more careful next time.
If someone tells me the PowerUp 3.0 remote-controlled airplane is a hoax, I'll be devastated...
"The goal is to make you eat less, anyways"
No, the goal is to get your body to stop storing your calories as fat, and instead burn them right away. The way to do this is to stop your blood sugar from spiking, which in turn leads to an insulin response. Just eating less means your body has less energy for it's day-to-day, and you get tired and sluggish.
Cut out the sugar and the processed foods (including flour). Get your calories from raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, whole grains, protein, and fat. That's really all there is to it. Easy to say, harder to do.
Websites, corporate domains, and so on, still allow "password" and "123456".
You can't use these silly passwords if there is a password-strength check that was set up with a bit of common sense.
I think companies don't want to bother interviewing and recruiting for someone who's not local. If offered the job, chances are that you'll not actually follow-through with the relocation. I know when we go looking, and we get someone from out of town, they almost always drop out of the running, or can't move in the time-frame required.
It's a chicken and egg thing. Potential employees don't want to move till they get a job. Employers don't want to hire anyone not local.
It was 3am - I guess they didn't want to pack up and move. Personally, I'm not sure how they got back to sleep.
What about diatomaceous earth? It's fossilized algae, and a natural insecticide, absorbing the lipids from the exoskeletons of insects.
I've read that if you pull your bed from the wall, take 4 empty/clean tuna cans with diatomaceous earth in them, and put one under each leg of the bed, you can get rid of them. They crawl in and out of it on their way to feast on you.
If I had them, in addition to the cans-under-legs, I'd be dusting the floors, the sheets, the bed-frame, the bed-boards, the electrical sockets, etc, to get rid of them.
There was also a BBC show, either Edwardian Farm, or Victorian Farm, where they showed the housewife scrubbing bed frames down twice a year with lye to keep them under control.
Well, as for the price of nuclear power, there is a 30-year, multi-billion dollar cleanup in the works. Even if a private corporation is paying for it, they'll be recouping their money somehow. There is no such thing a free lunch, or a free nuclear decontamination.
From another /. article today,
"A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, equivalent to five year's maximum exposure for a site worker. In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea."
You might be able to argue that, in a safer place, the Fukushima reactor would have been fine, but Japan is one huge earthquake waiting to happen. Maybe solar, wind, and wave power make sense in a place like that.
As for what people "like", using that as a basis for what's right or good is ridiculous. People want want everything for nothing - someone else should pay. They want cheap power, but don't want a power plant in their back yard. On average, we're not a terribly rational species.
Sounds like the popular iOS game; hopefully no one get sued. I suppose they'll be safe, unless they paint the payload to look like a bird.
Boeing decided to farm out the manufacturing of parts of the plane to various companies around the world. The fuselage was built in Italy, and there were small issues with wrinkles on the surface. The wings were made by Mitsubishi, in Japan, and there were issues with the stringers.
Who knows if they would have had the same issues with in-house development, but there were lots of quality and logistical issues with building a "global" plane.
Way back when Boeing was going for a smaller, more efficient jet. Airbus wanted to build a big plane, aka an Ultra High Capacity Airliner to challenge Boeing's dominance of the large-jet market.
Boeing built the 787, and Airbus built the A380. I guess the market is now forcing Airbus to compete with Boeing's 787, and thus the a350.
It's easy to make fun of IT managers. At the company I worked at, our last one was pretty bad. He was a terrible coder, couldn't estimate or keep a project on track, made bad technology decisions.
Our current one is excellent, however. Not sure how technical he is, as he hasn't had time to write code, but he asks us hard questions that challenge assumptions, projects go through the documentation phases that we need (business rules, elaboration, use cases), there is a full project plan that is updated weekly, and management knows as soon as something start slipping.
It's no problem to get a day off on short notice, he helps out on weekends when servers need to be moved, he fixes issues with vacation-day-allocation HR, and goes back to the product management group when to challenge them when change-requests start to get a bit silly. After every cycle, he drives a process to figure out what could have been done better, and then we attempt to put methodology in place to try to fix it for the next cycle.
Our company is small - 20 or so people, and a dev/qa team of 10, but he's done a great job of getting the maximum return on investment on our development efforts.
British Columbia, Canada.
Around here, .05 is considered impaired. Your license is seized for 3 days (first offense, up to 30 days for your third), your car is often towed and impounded, and you get to go to court. It's often about $4000 after all is said and done.
There have been all sorts of issues with this. One is that you are tried and convicted at the side of the road with no chance of appeal, possibly due to a faulty machine (and many cases have been tossed due to a suspected bad machine).
There was a case where an older woman who rarely drank had sip of champagne at a celebratory dinner, and drove home. It was dark, she got lost, and made an illegal u-turn. An off-duty police officer was behind her, and pulled her over, got a cruiser to show up, and had her charged. She had poor lung capacity, so it took them over 2 hours to come to the conclusion that they couldn't get a breath sample (they charged her an additional $500 penalty for failing to provide a breath sample).
The woman knew she wasn't over the limit, so she took a cab to the hospital, and got blood drawn; it showed that there was no alcohol in her system. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but she had spent about $10,000 on lawyers by that point.
That's a good guess, but wouldn't Samsung rather have the technology and any potential patents?
Samsung is pretty good at making smart technology moves - buying factories, and other companies at the right time, and then dominating the market. You would think that this would be a nice technology to have with their tv/tablet/phone/laptop screen technology.
So maybe there are issues with the company (inept management, etc), intellectual property (ie the violate someone's patents), or technology (there are still significant barriers to overcome).
Or maybe Samsung sees the future on OLED, and doesn't want to spend resources on a stepping-stone technology that will disappear without a ripple in a few years.
Questions questions.
Apple has iOS that powers tablets, phones, and MP3 players. Google has Android, which powers phones, tablets, and other consumer devices.
If Microsoft has a decent mobile OS, it's buried under so much marketing that I don't know what it is. I guess there is "Surface", but it seems pretty limited. I've never used it, much less seen it outside a commercial.
They need to come out with an OS, and brand it differently that "Windows". Windows makes me think big and clunky and slow.
Second, they need to stick with their products, and improve them until they get traction. Their approach seems to be make a few dozen consumer products, and drop the ones that don't immediately succeed - quantity versus quality. Why not pick the niche that helps your business the most, and stick with it. Phones, MP3 players, tablets, or some other technology - do it, and follow "kaizen" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen). Eventually your competitors make a misstep, and the ecosystem is yours for the taking. It takes a willingness to spend money, be stubborn, continuously improve, and wait till the big fish makes a mistake. Apple took out Blackberry, and Android/Samsung/HTC have grabbed a nice chunk of market share from Apple.
Microsoft is coasting on previous successes - Windows, Office, and more recently the XBox, and abandoning not-successes too quickly.
And don't forget that the age/gender demographic of The Consumerist is one that plays games. Ask 60-year old women who the worst corporation is, and you'll get a different response.
In reality, EA is just the worst corporation according to people who read The Consumerist.
The Koch brothers, and their private company, Koch Industries, is another good one for your list of companies that are actually evil.
And that's why my degree was a co-op degree, where at the end of my 5 years, I had 2 years of work experience doing software development and hardware support. The last co-op position ended up being a full-time job post graduation, and I haven't looked back.
I'm just waiting for the next Studio Ghibli film to grace our shores, or maybe a Wallace and Grommit. I'll skip Planes, and I won't take my under-10 kids to see it. The Croods can wait till video (AKA TorrentLeech).
And you can thank goatse.cx for that. I can't imagine looking at that gaping hole a dozen times per day.