The summary missed the most damning part of the article:
After a clandestine meeting at a Hampton park, FBI agents say engineer Mostafa Ahmed Awwad provided four computer-aided design drawings of the Ford and described where to strike the vessel with a missile to sink it.
Carly Fiorina still has not paid off the loans her 2010 campaign took out, despite having a net worth of $30 million to $120 million according to campaign paperwork she filed in 2009. From the WP article:
The organization, Carly for California, still owed vendors nearly $500,000 as of the end of September, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The committee’s outstanding debts included more than $80,000 to strategist Martin Wilson and his former firm; $43,000 owed to D.C. law firm Patton Boggs, where campaign counsel Benjamin Ginsberg worked at the time; $36,000 to fundraiser Renee Croce; $5,000 to press aide Jennifer Kerns; and $7,500 to political director Jeff Corless.
The Fiorina campaign also owed $30,000 to Joe Shumate, a storied political strategist in California who served as Fiorina’s senior adviser and died one month before Election Day in 2010.
Fiorina “hasn’t really communicated with anybody in 18 months about how she intends to deal with the campaign debt,” said Wilson, now a vice president at the California Chamber of Commerce. “Hopefully, if she gets more serious about running for another office, she’ll revisit the issue and get some of those bills paid off.”
In a new round of funding, Uber is likely to raise another $2 billion in addition to the $1.6 billion it has raised to date. The new round will value the San Francisco-based ride-sharing service at a whopping $30 billion, up from its $18.2 billion valuation from the last round of funding.
Think about that $30 billion "valuation" for a moment, and compare it to the valuations of other transportation companies. Norfolk Southern railroad has a market cap of just over $35 billion, while Delta Airlines has a market cap of just over $36 billion.
Uber is a mobile app. Does anyone here think that app is really worth 85% of a railroad that *owns* 21,500 route miles of fiber optic right-of-way (with railroad tracks on top) in 22 eastern states? Does anyone really think a ride sharing app is really worth 84% of an airline that operates 5,400 flights daily over an international network that includes 333 destinations in 64 countries on six continents... and has its own mobile apps?
- Plenty of wacky revenue-free, shaky business model companies generating huge VC investments and crazy valuations
During the dotcom bubble, because I was reading fuckedcompany.com each today. That site did an amazing job of documenting the stupid business models in vogue back then.
Is there a site today that is documenting the current bubble? My guess is if there is, it's either a reddit forum or a twitter feed.
The Home Depot has discovered that a file containing your email address may have been taken during the payment card breach we announced in September. The file contained email addresses, but it did not contain passwords, payment card information, or other sensitive personal information. We apologize for this incident and for the inconvenience and frustration this may cause you.
In all likelihood this event will not impact you, but we recommend that you be on the alert for phony emails requesting personal or sensitive information. If you have any questions or would like additional information on how to protect yourself from email scams, please visit our website or call 1-800-HOMEDEPOT.
Again, we apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this incident may have caused. Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Home Depot
I was struck by how the letter did not say anything about what HD has done to ensure that something like this will not happen again to them.
I save more than $10k a year even with those payments. How would that make me financially irresponsible?
If you are a US worker making $80k, you can put $17,500 a year into your 401K and another $5,500 into a Roth IRA..... so your saving $10k/year is less than 1/2 the money you could be putting into your retirement accounts for the year.
If you are over age 50, you could be putting in $23,500 (401K) and $6,500 (Roth IRA)..... so your saving $10k/year would be only a third of what you could be saving, in your retirement account alone.
Harris worked for Home Depot's ".com business" per a quote from the Home Depot Corporate Communications Manager in this CNN article. The Preliminary Hearing did an amazing job of describing his typical workday: After watching cartoons with his child, then taking him out for breakfast, Harris eventually arrived at his office at about 10 AM. About 90 minutes later, he went out for a long lunch, with a carload of coworkers. After eating, the group stopped at a store to puchase some items. After lunch, Harris is at his desk for a few hours, but then he was out the door at 4 PM, off to watch a movie with some of his coworkers.
The hearing documented that he put in, at most, about five hours of work. During those five hours, he was IMing women on dating sites and also IMing a couple coworkers about a small startup/consulting business they had.
A gigantic set of the population is no longer even used to the concept of wearing a watch, because they have their phone. This device doesn't replace their phone. What exactly is the reason to have this as well, as opposed to pulling your phone out of your pocket?
You're thinking about it wrong: People wear watches because they are in fashion, not because wearing a watch is a necessary thing to do.
I noticed that they showed several different styles of watches -- that means every fashionista will have to buy several. Ker-ching $$$$$$
Consider that as you re-read the example I choose for the summary:
At Politics and Prose, the traditional [AMAZON BUY IT NOW] version — featuring the iconic eyes floating on a blue background — sold better than the DiCaprio [AMAZON BUY IT NOW] cover.
Do you see the problem now?
I'll end with a shout-out to the NPR program On The Media - I look forward to hearing OTM cover this issue!
Since 2009, Georgia electric customers have been paying a "Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” fee to fund the building of the Plant Vogle reactors. This tax currently adds 7.6% to a customer's electric monthly bill.
They point out that the Nuke owners are guaranteed a 11.5% return no matter how late the plant is:
In 2009, the Georgia General Assembly passed “Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act,” making it legal for Georgia electric utilities to charge customers in advance to construct the nuclear reactors. The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) subsequently approved Georgia Power and other owners of Plant Vogtle to charge the CWIP tax which will be collected during the whole construction period, no matter how long it will take, and allow Georgia Power and the other Vogtle owners a guaranteed profit with a protected return on investment of 11.15%.
The facility, named for the former U.S. Senator from Georgia, is one the largest federal office buildings on the East Coast. It encompasses 1.87 million square feet of space. The structure straddles a busy downtown street. The building is also located atop an underground train tunnel of the Atlanta transit system, MARTA. The building units include the remodeled 1924 department store, Rich's, which was a downtown Atlanta landmark and an Atlanta institution.
Now this renovated six-story building and its beloved clock are a visual cornerstone for the center. Other elements are a 10-story mid-rise section, an eight-story bridge, six stories over Forsyth Street and a 24-story high-rise tower. Adjacent to the building is a 10-story parking garage. Construction of the building was a joint urban redevelopment enterprise of the City of Atlanta and the Federal Government. The design architect for the facility was the California firm of Kohn, Peterson, Fox and Associates. Newcomb & Boyd, a large Atlanta firm, was chosen as the project engineer.
Designed For 24-Hour Operation Southeastern Facility Management, Inc., is contracted by GSA to operate this facility. The system was designed for 24-hour seven days a week operation to accommodate the mission of the various agencies housed in the facility. One or more of the 1,310-ton chillers were to operate, depending on the building load, between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. After 6:00 p.m., the 400-ton chiller was to carry all computer rooms and miscellaneous building loads. As a consequence, the facility designers and engineers needed to plan for continuous occupancy. Atlanta has significant cooling loads for much of the year and high humidity as well. The goal of the HVAC system design was to assure complete comfort in the building around the clock, year-round. To achieve this, significant emphasis was placed on humidity control with a central chilled water plant, air handlers for each area and a zone-
controlled VAV air delivery system. Building designers also recognized that an important part of the office environment is acoustic performance. For this reason, rigorous sound level standards were set for occupied areas throughout the facility. The air conditioning system efficiency was extremely important due to the 24/7 operation.
Last year, two men claiming to be members of the Cherokee Nation who had traveled from Oklahoma came to Seattle with a simple goal: score some scrap copper.
Dressed in beads and fringed suede, with one wearing a cap that said “Native,” they headed to the offices of Seattle City Light, where they chanced upon its superintendent, Jorge Carrasco, in the lobby. They told him they ran a nonprofit that taught disabled children how to make jewelry and needed some copper wire.
Minutes after meeting them, Carrasco authorized the men to be given some scrap.
But the two were actually con men. Once inside City Light’s secure facilities, they were able to drive off with 20 tons of copper wire and scrap metal worth $120,000.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says he will not give City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco a pay raise, citing “judgment” issues, including a contract aimed partly at boosting Carrasco’s online image.
Murray made the comments at a City Hall news conference Wednesday.
The Seattle City Council had authorized a pay increase of up to $119,000 for Carrasco, who currently makes $245,000. Murray’s office previously had said he was considering raising Carrasco’s pay by $60,000.
Minix was really the first of its kind; a Unix-like OS that you could run on cheap (relatively speaking at the time) commodity hardware and that you could get the source code for. A lot of the computing we take for granted now comes from Tanenbaum's work.
Truly!
I first learned of Minix by reading about it in Byte magazine. At the time, I was an undergrad at a big US university, a member of the Association of American Universities. The only multitasking computers on the entire campus were a Unix mainframe, a VAX, and a cluster (lab) of Sun workstations that only graduate engineering students could have accounts on. The Unix and VAX machines could be accessed using VT-100 (and later) terminals in computer labs spread out all over the campus. There were also BYOF (Bring Your Own Floppies) computer labs filled with DOS (pre-windows) PCs, and a few labs filled with early Macs, but those labs were mostly used by humanities majors hunting-and-pecking their term papers out.
Booting a multitasking unix-like OS on a personal computer was a huge deal back then.
CEO Jenaro Garcia was a Director of Advanced Refractive Technologies, a penny stock fraud whose shares were revoked by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to a photographer that hiked into the scene and posted his photographs, there were 6 (six) 737 fuselages on the train and 5 of those are heavily damaged:
The photographer also thinks this derailment will really screw up Boeing's 737 production:
The 737 bodies did remain firmly attached to the flatcars for the most part. The only one to show signs of weakness in mounting was the one with the huge crack around the middle. What is going to hurt Boeing is not only having 6 missing aircraft, but losing the 6 fuselage carrier car sets. I imagine both BNSF and Boeing want those cars sent to the repair shop ASAP!
Slashdot Mirror
After a clandestine meeting at a Hampton park, FBI agents say engineer Mostafa Ahmed Awwad provided four computer-aided design drawings of the Ford and described where to strike the vessel with a missile to sink it.
Megalomaniac fuck-ups never realize that they are the problem.
I wish I had submitted my story with that as its headline!
The organization, Carly for California, still owed vendors nearly $500,000 as of the end of September, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The committee’s outstanding debts included more than $80,000 to strategist Martin Wilson and his former firm; $43,000 owed to D.C. law firm Patton Boggs, where campaign counsel Benjamin Ginsberg worked at the time; $36,000 to fundraiser Renee Croce; $5,000 to press aide Jennifer Kerns; and $7,500 to political director Jeff Corless.
The Fiorina campaign also owed $30,000 to Joe Shumate, a storied political strategist in California who served as Fiorina’s senior adviser and died one month before Election Day in 2010.
Fiorina “hasn’t really communicated with anybody in 18 months about how she intends to deal with the campaign debt,” said Wilson, now a vice president at the California Chamber of Commerce. “Hopefully, if she gets more serious about running for another office, she’ll revisit the issue and get some of those bills paid off.”
Now Microsoft trying to be more open. Should we be a bit more welcoming to Microsoft?
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
What you view as "trying to be more open" strikes me as being "Embrace".
Uber is a Pump and Dump (on the Chumps) stock scheme.
Last week, Uber put out a press release that said they were valued at $30 billion. Several media outlets published articles with that $30 billion number; here's an example: According to various sources, Uber is about to go for another financing round with the intention to raise an additional $2 billion
In a new round of funding, Uber is likely to raise another $2 billion in addition to the $1.6 billion it has raised to date. The new round will value the San Francisco-based ride-sharing service at a whopping $30 billion, up from its $18.2 billion valuation from the last round of funding.
Think about that $30 billion "valuation" for a moment, and compare it to the valuations of other transportation companies. Norfolk Southern railroad has a market cap of just over $35 billion, while Delta Airlines has a market cap of just over $36 billion.
Uber is a mobile app. Does anyone here think that app is really worth 85% of a railroad that *owns* 21,500 route miles of fiber optic right-of-way (with railroad tracks on top) in 22 eastern states? Does anyone really think a ride sharing app is really worth 84% of an airline that operates 5,400 flights daily over an international network that includes 333 destinations in 64 countries on six continents... and has its own mobile apps?
- Plenty of wacky revenue-free, shaky business model companies generating huge VC investments and crazy valuations
During the dotcom bubble, because I was reading fuckedcompany.com each today. That site did an amazing job of documenting the stupid business models in vogue back then.
Is there a site today that is documenting the current bubble? My guess is if there is, it's either a reddit forum or a twitter feed.
I think you just raised the bar on this "hate on bennett" thing. Hope it doesn't escalate from there...
Douglas Held -- not me -- added the line to wikipedia. I merely saw the sentence when I googled to find out who the heck this Bennett guy is.
Bennett Haselton (born November 20, 1978) is a frequent commenter on the website Slashdot.org, where he is widely disliked by readers.
Dear Valued Customer,
The Home Depot has discovered that a file containing your email address may have been taken during the payment card breach we announced in September. The file contained email addresses, but it did not contain passwords, payment card information, or other sensitive personal information. We apologize for this incident and for the inconvenience and frustration this may cause you.
In all likelihood this event will not impact you, but we recommend that you be on the alert for phony emails requesting personal or sensitive information. If you have any questions or would like additional information on how to protect yourself from email scams, please visit our website or call 1-800-HOMEDEPOT.
Again, we apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this incident may have caused. Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Home Depot
I was struck by how the letter did not say anything about what HD has done to ensure that something like this will not happen again to them.
Would you explain how easy or hard the search for Malaysia Airlines (MH) #93 must be?
I imagine that the hard part would be recognizing every traffic signal when the signals are dark (power is out).
I save more than $10k a year even with those payments. How would that make me financially irresponsible?
If you are a US worker making $80k, you can put $17,500 a year into your 401K and another $5,500 into a Roth IRA..... so your saving $10k/year is less than 1/2 the money you could be putting into your retirement accounts for the year.
If you are over age 50, you could be putting in $23,500 (401K) and $6,500 (Roth IRA)..... so your saving $10k/year would be only a third of what you could be saving, in your retirement account alone.
When I watched Justin Ross Harris' Preliminary Hearing, I was stunned by how little work Home Depot's developers seem to do.
Harris worked for Home Depot's ".com business" per a quote from the Home Depot Corporate Communications Manager in this CNN article. The Preliminary Hearing did an amazing job of describing his typical workday: After watching cartoons with his child, then taking him out for breakfast, Harris eventually arrived at his office at about 10 AM. About 90 minutes later, he went out for a long lunch, with a carload of coworkers. After eating, the group stopped at a store to puchase some items. After lunch, Harris is at his desk for a few hours, but then he was out the door at 4 PM, off to watch a movie with some of his coworkers.
The hearing documented that he put in, at most, about five hours of work. During those five hours, he was IMing women on dating sites and also IMing a couple coworkers about a small startup/consulting business they had.
A gigantic set of the population is no longer even used to the concept of wearing a watch, because they have their phone. This device doesn't replace their phone. What exactly is the reason to have this as well, as opposed to pulling your phone out of your pocket?
You're thinking about it wrong: People wear watches because they are in fashion, not because wearing a watch is a necessary thing to do.
I noticed that they showed several different styles of watches -- that means every fashionista will have to buy several. Ker-ching $$$$$$
I'm not having a serious problem with this.
Did you know that Politics and Prose is the best independent bookstore in Washington and, IMHO, one of the best bookstores in the country? The Politics and Prose wikipedia page says it original co-owners "became known as literary tastemakers."
Consider that as you re-read the example I choose for the summary:
At Politics and Prose, the traditional [AMAZON BUY IT NOW] version — featuring the iconic eyes floating on a blue background — sold better than the DiCaprio [AMAZON BUY IT NOW] cover.
Do you see the problem now?
I'll end with a shout-out to the NPR program On The Media - I look forward to hearing OTM cover this issue!
(This post not edited by Brooke.)
Here is an October 2013 article about a protest against the tax: Georgia Power Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Tariff Excites Local Protest
And here's an organization that is protesting the tax: STOPCWIP.COM, which is short for STOP Construction Work In Progress
They point out that the Nuke owners are guaranteed a 11.5% return no matter how late the plant is:
In 2009, the Georgia General Assembly passed “Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act,” making it legal for Georgia electric utilities to charge customers in advance to construct the nuclear reactors. The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) subsequently approved Georgia Power and other owners of Plant Vogtle to charge the CWIP tax which will be collected during the whole construction period, no matter how long it will take, and allow Georgia Power and the other Vogtle owners a guaranteed profit with a protected return on investment of 11.15%.
Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job?
Sorry about that - you apply for federal jobs at USA Jobs Website
There are not any patent examiner openings posted right now, but here are some current IT openings at the Patent Office:
IT Acquisitions Specialist - DE
IT Specialist (APPSW) - Software Developer - DE
Systems Development Lead - IT Specialist (SYSANALYSIS/APPSW) - DE
It's an electrical problem in a single building.
Actually, the complex is four separate builidings connected in a U-shape; the tallest is 24 stories. The complex has its own entry on skyscraperpage.com and is also described in this 6-page PDF by Trane, the air-conditioning company. That PDF includes this description of the buildings in the complex and how it is all designed for 24/7 operation:
The facility, named for the former U.S. Senator from Georgia, is one the largest federal office buildings on the East Coast. It encompasses 1.87 million square feet of space. The structure straddles a busy downtown street. The building is also located atop an underground train tunnel of the Atlanta transit system, MARTA. The building units include the remodeled 1924 department store, Rich's, which was a downtown Atlanta landmark and an Atlanta institution.
Now this renovated six-story building and its beloved clock are a visual cornerstone for the center. Other elements are a 10-story mid-rise section, an eight-story bridge, six stories over Forsyth Street and a 24-story high-rise tower. Adjacent to the building is a 10-story parking garage. Construction of the building was a joint urban redevelopment enterprise of the City of Atlanta and the Federal Government. The design architect for the facility was the California firm of Kohn, Peterson, Fox and Associates. Newcomb & Boyd, a large Atlanta firm, was chosen as the project engineer.
Designed For 24-Hour Operation Southeastern Facility Management, Inc., is contracted by GSA to operate this facility. The system was designed for 24-hour seven days a week operation to accommodate the mission of the various agencies housed in the facility. One or more of the 1,310-ton chillers were to operate, depending on the building load, between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. After 6:00 p.m., the 400-ton chiller was to carry all computer rooms and miscellaneous building loads. As a consequence, the facility designers and engineers needed to plan for continuous occupancy. Atlanta has significant cooling loads for much of the year and high humidity as well. The goal of the HVAC system design was to assure complete comfort in the building around the clock, year-round. To achieve this, significant emphasis was placed on humidity control with a central chilled water plant, air handlers for each area and a zone- controlled VAV air delivery system. Building designers also recognized that an important part of the office environment is acoustic performance. For this reason, rigorous sound level standards were set for occupied areas throughout the facility. The air conditioning system efficiency was extremely important due to the 24/7 operation.
Here's the article: Nunn federal building expected to reopen Monday
Another article Jorge Carasco would like you to forget: The Seattle Times: City Light leader Jorge Carrasco fell for copper con
Last year, two men claiming to be members of the Cherokee Nation who had traveled from Oklahoma came to Seattle with a simple goal: score some scrap copper.
Dressed in beads and fringed suede, with one wearing a cap that said “Native,” they headed to the offices of Seattle City Light, where they chanced upon its superintendent, Jorge Carrasco, in the lobby. They told him they ran a nonprofit that taught disabled children how to make jewelry and needed some copper wire.
Minutes after meeting them, Carrasco authorized the men to be given some scrap.
But the two were actually con men. Once inside City Light’s secure facilities, they were able to drive off with 20 tons of copper wire and scrap metal worth $120,000.
Short Fuse: Jorge Carrasco's Polarizing Tenure at the Top of City Light
I also see that the deal with brand.com has cost Jorge Fiasco a six figure pay raise: The Seattle Times: No pay raise for City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says he will not give City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco a pay raise, citing “judgment” issues, including a contract aimed partly at boosting Carrasco’s online image.
Murray made the comments at a City Hall news conference Wednesday.
The Seattle City Council had authorized a pay increase of up to $119,000 for Carrasco, who currently makes $245,000. Murray’s office previously had said he was considering raising Carrasco’s pay by $60,000.
Minix was really the first of its kind; a Unix-like OS that you could run on cheap (relatively speaking at the time) commodity hardware and that you could get the source code for. A lot of the computing we take for granted now comes from Tanenbaum's work.
Truly!
I first learned of Minix by reading about it in Byte magazine. At the time, I was an undergrad at a big US university, a member of the Association of American Universities. The only multitasking computers on the entire campus were a Unix mainframe, a VAX, and a cluster (lab) of Sun workstations that only graduate engineering students could have accounts on. The Unix and VAX machines could be accessed using VT-100 (and later) terminals in computer labs spread out all over the campus. There were also BYOF (Bring Your Own Floppies) computer labs filled with DOS (pre-windows) PCs, and a few labs filled with early Macs, but those labs were mostly used by humanities majors hunting-and-pecking their term papers out.
Booting a multitasking unix-like OS on a personal computer was a huge deal back then.
The report includes this tidbit:
CEO Jenaro Garcia was a Director of Advanced Refractive Technologies, a penny stock fraud whose shares were revoked by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Gowex appears to be short for "Goto Wex", since Wex is the name of a community-built, freely available legal dictionary and legal encyclopedia hosted by the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School: Wex, LII's community-built, freely available legal dictionary and legal encyclopedia
According to a photographer that hiked into the scene and posted his photographs, there were 6 (six) 737 fuselages on the train and 5 of those are heavily damaged:
Trainorders.com - Birds in the Water!!!!
The photographer also thinks this derailment will really screw up Boeing's 737 production:
The 737 bodies did remain firmly attached to the flatcars for the most part. The only one to show signs of weakness in mounting was the one with the huge crack around the middle. What is going to hurt Boeing is not only having 6 missing aircraft, but losing the 6 fuselage carrier car sets. I imagine both BNSF and Boeing want those cars sent to the repair shop ASAP!