But the truth is, if gas was back below 3 bucks a gallon most folks in the U.S. wouldn't even entertain the notion of a non-SUV.
Three years ago, a study out of the EU found that if fuel prices were in the same ballpark as the United States, people would consider buying SUVs. High fuel prices are a great motivator.
I was talking about inflated wages for union memberships. The lower union membership is one of the many reasons wages have stagnated in this country. Thirty years ago Canada and the United States had an equal number up its workforce in unions, around 30%. Today, Canada has the same 30% and the United States has around 11%.
I do not want to get into a union vs non-union debate. Personally, I dispise unions in general because they are as dishonest and corrupt as management. In general. There are industries (farming, janitorial) where unions are needed because government enforcement of labor laws in the United States are extremely weak, and collective bargining makes sense.
Real competition is all about price per hour. The same with out-sourcing or off-shoring. It has never been about quality.
Unions inflate wages for those who are unqualified and deflate wages for those are overqualified.
Sounds exactly like management. You are mistaken if you think it works differently in the non-union IT world. It is not a meritocracy out there; it is mostly based on senority and connections.
It inflates the cost of construction not for the benefit of safety, but for the unions.
There's no longer any reason why paper cheques should be transferred between individuals either,
Sure there is. How do you pay a non-merchant? How would you pay a landlord?
This is not possible using account transfers.
In Finland, it sounds like account transfers use the push method. In the U.S., under ACH, it is both push and pull. If using a checking account to pay bills through the merchant website, the merchant pulls the money. You can of course get a paper bill and use online bill paying through ACH, where the money is pushed.
There's nothing you can do with just my bank account number (except add money to it).
In the U.S. you would also need the routing number. This is how direct deposit works through employers.
I've never heard of anybody successfully breaching bank security here in Finland, as I said in my original message, it really is very difficult.
That is what ACH does. Paper is no longer transfered between banks. If you pay bills online in the U.S. and the recipient has an ACH enabled account, it is all done electronicly. If not, an actual paper check is printed and sent. When a person takes a paper check to the bank, it is scanned and an ACH transaction is created. The paper check is then destroyed.
Upside of using electronic transfers is that they are very traceable,
What has happened in the credit card industry is happening in the check world. Either you have merchants scamming or you have people using your account information. Unlike the credit card, the money is taken immediately.
ACH will not allow checks that are older than 45 days. Banks generally follow this rule whether the check has printed void dates or not.
it's not possible to say what your balance on any given day should be, which makes it hard to spot problems as they occur.
It is possible at the close of the account month. You reconcile with the statement. You can easily see if a transaction was never recorded or it is for a different amount. The 60 day rule is in play until you report the suspected fraud.
Checks have the routing and account number on the bottom, and that is all you need to transfer funds. My checks only have my name, no address or phone number. To get the transaction history you would need the SSN, address, and phone number. My bank will not send statements to a different address, nor will they give transaction information over the phone. You have to go into the branch and request a copy. Make sure you have identification. My bank also has a fingerprint scanner. And my address and phone on file are not the same as my residence. Good luck.
If you read the article... The customer had 60 days (as required by federal law) to report the suspected fraud. Basically, the man did not pay attention to his statements. He does say that he was not aware of the 60 day rule. Banks send out updated customer agreements all the time. The account was 20 years old. I suspect he was unaware of it because he never scrutinzed his agreement, the same way he never scrutinzed his statements.
Itanium will be around for awhile but it will never become commonplace outside of high end, massively SMP UNIX servers.
They never were marketed as such. Itanium competes on the same playing field as Power and Sparc. The primary problem with Itanium was it was three years behind schedule and rushed out to replace the aging PA and MIPS (and the end-of-lifed Alpha) and lost momentum with its flaws. This happened years before 64bit hit the x86 CPUs. The idea of moving x86 code to Itanium was not the compelling selling point for large enterprise customers; they had to replace their existing PA, Alpha, and MIPS systems.
DEC died because they could not scale up to what the intel side was doing. you had thousands of motherboards made per hour for Intel with maybe 4 a day for Alpha. It's game over at that point.
You clearly do not understand the high end market. You cannot compare low end servers with P2 chips and systems based around Alpha (or Power, PA, etc). Alpha died because DEC was sold to Compaq (an Intel partner). Prior to the sale, Alpha systems were doing brisk business. This was 1998 folks. The P3 would not be rleased until the following year and Itanium would not see the light of day until 2001.
What may be unlawful on the side of the phone companies is that they gave out private information, which maybe that violates privacy laws, but it's not what the 4th amendment is talking about. The 4th amendment specifies what the government is not allowed to do.
Unless the phone companies were acting as agents of the government.
So what you're saying is: Intel doesn't have much a problem with granted licenses for x86 clones?
I never said that. Company A and B have patents and both companies want to produce products that may infringe on the other's patents. They enter into a cross license agreement. Sometimes it is done as part of the settlement of a lawsuit.
Even if they didn't want to grant one to nVidia they can always follow the Cyrix route and try all-out patent warfare.
Only if they use a manufacturer that has a license agreement with Intel that covers x86 related patents. Using their current partner (TSMC) does not give them any cover.
here's all of the unlicensed x86 compatibles and their descendants
All your examples were licensed.
Cyrix got around the license by having its chips manufactured by companies that held cross licensing agreements. Intel and Cyrix were in a patent dispute for years. It ended with a settlement; Intel agreed Cyrix had a right to sell x86 compatible CPUs. Cyrix then sued Intel for patent infringement and the case was settled with a cross license agreement.
Centaur (WinChip) was a fabless subsidiary of IDT (which has a cross license agreement with Intel) and the chips were manufactured by IDT.
NEC has a cross license agreement with Intel.
IBM has a cross license agreement with Intel.
NexGen was fabless, having its chips produced by IBM. Like Cyrix, they depended on the licensed manufacturer.
The $74,880 salary is for 40 hours per week only. If you routinely work more than 40 hours, say 50 hours, then your employer would need to pay you a salary of $93,600 to be safe.
60 hours = $112,320
70 hours = $131,040
80 hours = $149,760
Once your employer fails to pay the correct salary for the calendar year, your classification switches to non-exempt for that entire year.
Engineering means a professional engineer (mechanical, civil, geological) not a computer engineer.
The professional exemtpion applies to all professionals that are licensed or certified by the State of California and primarily engaged in the practice of law, medicine, dentistry, optometry, architecture, engineering, teaching, or accounting. The exemption is based on responsibilities not the job title.
An employee is also exempt as a professional if he/she is primarily engaged in an occupation recognized as a learned or artistic profession. This means work requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field or science, or an education customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction, or work that is original and creative in character in a recognized field of artistic endeavor. The work must be predominantly intellectual and varied in character, and the output or result cannot be standardized. Professional employees must be engaged in the functions of their profession; a lawyer digging ditches is not exempt, nor is a CPA whose duties are basically book keeping.
California has the computer professional exemption. Most IT workers do not meet its requirements. A worker must perform one of these duties 50% of the time.
The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures including consulting with users to determine hardware, software, or system specifications.
The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications.
The documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to the design of software or hardware for computer operating systems.
And their salary must match the hourly rate of $36 begining Jan 2008. Simply earning $74,880 will not make you exempt. It will only make you exempt if you never work more than 40 hours in a week. As soon as you work 41 hours in a week, the exemption would fail, impacting your classification for the whole year while making you elegible for past overtime. If you worked 50 hours in any week, your employer would need to pay you a salary of $93,600 to safely keep you at the $36 per hour rate. For 60 hours it goes up to $112,320, 70 hours is $131,040, and 80 hours is $149,760.
Prior to 2008, the hourly rate was $49.77: 40 hours = $103,522, 50 hours = $129,402, 60 hours = $155,282, 70 hours = $181,163, and 80 hours = $207,044. You have 4 years to claim past overtime.
Employers in Calfornia must still track all hours worked by their exempt employees. I have never worked at a company that actually did this. They track the standard 8 hour day for benefits (PTO, sick, vacation) purposes, not the actual hours worked. Exempt employees need to keep a detailed work log because employers routinely abuse the exempt classifications. Employers pay salary because it is easy (and often cheaper).
Many programmers (especially interns and entry level) are non-exempt. I fail to see how a call center worker would be exempt from overtime rules.
In California, most exempt workers operate under the administrative exemption. An employee is an exempt administrator if he/she regularly exercises discretion and independent judgment, performs under only general supervision, and is primarily engaged in duties that require the exercise of discretion and independent judgment. This means that in the course of day-to-day activities, the employee frequently compares and evaluates possible courses of conduct and, after considering various possibilities, acts or makes a decision. An employee who follows a prescribed procedure, or determines which procedure to follow, is not exercising independent judgment.
While most if not all employees are required to exercise discretion in decision making, an exempt employee must be dealing with matters that are significant to the policies or operations of the business or its customers.
it was established that first-sale doctrine will override any EULA-based argument.
That is not what the court said. In the SoftMan Products Co. v. Adobe Systems Inc. case, the court found that based on the transaction, SoftMan purchased a copy of the software not the license (because the EULA had to be executed upon installation). There was no contractual relationship between SoftMan and Adobe.
There is case law that allows exceptions to first-sale via contracts (licensing).
My response was simply a statement that there was NO LEGAL REQUIREMENT that the buyer pay the sales tax as a separate line item. It was you that made it into something else. Get off the soapbox.
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But the truth is, if gas was back below 3 bucks a gallon most folks in the U.S. wouldn't even entertain the notion of a non-SUV.
Three years ago, a study out of the EU found that if fuel prices were in the same ballpark as the United States, people would consider buying SUVs. High fuel prices are a great motivator.
I was talking about inflated wages for union memberships. The lower union membership is one of the many reasons wages have stagnated in this country. Thirty years ago Canada and the United States had an equal number up its workforce in unions, around 30%. Today, Canada has the same 30% and the United States has around 11%.
I do not want to get into a union vs non-union debate. Personally, I dispise unions in general because they are as dishonest and corrupt as management. In general. There are industries (farming, janitorial) where unions are needed because government enforcement of labor laws in the United States are extremely weak, and collective bargining makes sense.
Real competition is all about price per hour. The same with out-sourcing or off-shoring. It has never been about quality.
Unions inflate wages for those who are unqualified and deflate wages for those are overqualified.
Sounds exactly like management. You are mistaken if you think it works differently in the non-union IT world. It is not a meritocracy out there; it is mostly based on senority and connections.
It inflates the cost of construction not for the benefit of safety, but for the unions.
It benefits society.
There's no longer any reason why paper cheques should be transferred between individuals either,
Sure there is. How do you pay a non-merchant? How would you pay a landlord?
This is not possible using account transfers.
In Finland, it sounds like account transfers use the push method. In the U.S., under ACH, it is both push and pull. If using a checking account to pay bills through the merchant website, the merchant pulls the money. You can of course get a paper bill and use online bill paying through ACH, where the money is pushed.
There's nothing you can do with just my bank account number (except add money to it).
In the U.S. you would also need the routing number. This is how direct deposit works through employers.
I've never heard of anybody successfully breaching bank security here in Finland, as I said in my original message, it really is very difficult.
Does not mean it has not happened.
Everybody uses electronic transfers
That is what ACH does. Paper is no longer transfered between banks. If you pay bills online in the U.S. and the recipient has an ACH enabled account, it is all done electronicly. If not, an actual paper check is printed and sent. When a person takes a paper check to the bank, it is scanned and an ACH transaction is created. The paper check is then destroyed.
Upside of using electronic transfers is that they are very traceable,
What has happened in the credit card industry is happening in the check world. Either you have merchants scamming or you have people using your account information. Unlike the credit card, the money is taken immediately.
Rich people live differently.
ACH will not allow checks that are older than 45 days. Banks generally follow this rule whether the check has printed void dates or not.
it's not possible to say what your balance on any given day should be, which makes it hard to spot problems as they occur.
It is possible at the close of the account month. You reconcile with the statement. You can easily see if a transaction was never recorded or it is for a different amount. The 60 day rule is in play until you report the suspected fraud.
The "slow" leak approach is very common just BECAUSE it goes under the radar
Not if reconciled the statements.
Checks have the routing and account number on the bottom, and that is all you need to transfer funds. My checks only have my name, no address or phone number. To get the transaction history you would need the SSN, address, and phone number. My bank will not send statements to a different address, nor will they give transaction information over the phone. You have to go into the branch and request a copy. Make sure you have identification. My bank also has a fingerprint scanner. And my address and phone on file are not the same as my residence. Good luck.
If you read the article... The customer had 60 days (as required by federal law) to report the suspected fraud. Basically, the man did not pay attention to his statements. He does say that he was not aware of the 60 day rule. Banks send out updated customer agreements all the time. The account was 20 years old. I suspect he was unaware of it because he never scrutinzed his agreement, the same way he never scrutinzed his statements.
Itanium will be around for awhile but it will never become commonplace outside of high end, massively SMP UNIX servers.
They never were marketed as such. Itanium competes on the same playing field as Power and Sparc. The primary problem with Itanium was it was three years behind schedule and rushed out to replace the aging PA and MIPS (and the end-of-lifed Alpha) and lost momentum with its flaws. This happened years before 64bit hit the x86 CPUs. The idea of moving x86 code to Itanium was not the compelling selling point for large enterprise customers; they had to replace their existing PA, Alpha, and MIPS systems.
It is not uncommon to give up your right to appeal through a plea agreement. It is done in all the 50 states and on the federal level.
Frontline did show on the plea process, the pros and cons.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea
DEC died because they could not scale up to what the intel side was doing. you had thousands of motherboards made per hour for Intel with maybe 4 a day for Alpha. It's game over at that point.
You clearly do not understand the high end market. You cannot compare low end servers with P2 chips and systems based around Alpha (or Power, PA, etc). Alpha died because DEC was sold to Compaq (an Intel partner). Prior to the sale, Alpha systems were doing brisk business. This was 1998 folks. The P3 would not be rleased until the following year and Itanium would not see the light of day until 2001.
What may be unlawful on the side of the phone companies is that they gave out private information, which maybe that violates privacy laws, but it's not what the 4th amendment is talking about. The 4th amendment specifies what the government is not allowed to do.
Unless the phone companies were acting as agents of the government.
So what you're saying is: Intel doesn't have much a problem with granted licenses for x86 clones?
I never said that. Company A and B have patents and both companies want to produce products that may infringe on the other's patents. They enter into a cross license agreement. Sometimes it is done as part of the settlement of a lawsuit.
Even if they didn't want to grant one to nVidia they can always follow the Cyrix route and try all-out patent warfare.
Only if they use a manufacturer that has a license agreement with Intel that covers x86 related patents. Using their current partner (TSMC) does not give them any cover.
here's all of the unlicensed x86 compatibles and their descendants
All your examples were licensed.
Cyrix got around the license by having its chips manufactured by companies that held cross licensing agreements. Intel and Cyrix were in a patent dispute for years. It ended with a settlement; Intel agreed Cyrix had a right to sell x86 compatible CPUs. Cyrix then sued Intel for patent infringement and the case was settled with a cross license agreement.
Centaur (WinChip) was a fabless subsidiary of IDT (which has a cross license agreement with Intel) and the chips were manufactured by IDT.
NEC has a cross license agreement with Intel.
IBM has a cross license agreement with Intel.
NexGen was fabless, having its chips produced by IBM. Like Cyrix, they depended on the licensed manufacturer.
The $74,880 salary is for 40 hours per week only. If you routinely work more than 40 hours, say 50 hours, then your employer would need to pay you a salary of $93,600 to be safe.
Once your employer fails to pay the correct salary for the calendar year, your classification switches to non-exempt for that entire year.
Engineering means a professional engineer (mechanical, civil, geological) not a computer engineer.
The professional exemtpion applies to all professionals that are licensed or certified by the State of California and primarily engaged in the practice of law, medicine, dentistry, optometry, architecture, engineering, teaching, or accounting. The exemption is based on responsibilities not the job title.
An employee is also exempt as a professional if he/she is primarily engaged in an occupation recognized as a learned or artistic profession. This means work requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field or science, or an education customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction, or work that is original and creative in character in a recognized field of artistic endeavor. The work must be predominantly intellectual and varied in character, and the output or result cannot be standardized. Professional employees must be engaged in the functions of their profession; a lawyer digging ditches is not exempt, nor is a CPA whose duties are basically book keeping.
California has the computer professional exemption. Most IT workers do not meet its requirements. A worker must perform one of these duties 50% of the time.
And their salary must match the hourly rate of $36 begining Jan 2008. Simply earning $74,880 will not make you exempt. It will only make you exempt if you never work more than 40 hours in a week. As soon as you work 41 hours in a week, the exemption would fail, impacting your classification for the whole year while making you elegible for past overtime. If you worked 50 hours in any week, your employer would need to pay you a salary of $93,600 to safely keep you at the $36 per hour rate. For 60 hours it goes up to $112,320, 70 hours is $131,040, and 80 hours is $149,760.
Prior to 2008, the hourly rate was $49.77: 40 hours = $103,522, 50 hours = $129,402, 60 hours = $155,282, 70 hours = $181,163, and 80 hours = $207,044. You have 4 years to claim past overtime.
Employers in Calfornia must still track all hours worked by their exempt employees. I have never worked at a company that actually did this. They track the standard 8 hour day for benefits (PTO, sick, vacation) purposes, not the actual hours worked. Exempt employees need to keep a detailed work log because employers routinely abuse the exempt classifications. Employers pay salary because it is easy (and often cheaper).
Many programmers (especially interns and entry level) are non-exempt. I fail to see how a call center worker would be exempt from overtime rules.
In California, most exempt workers operate under the administrative exemption. An employee is an exempt administrator if he/she regularly exercises discretion and independent judgment, performs under only general supervision, and is primarily engaged in duties that require the exercise of discretion and independent judgment. This means that in the course of day-to-day activities, the employee frequently compares and evaluates possible courses of conduct and, after considering various possibilities, acts or makes a decision. An employee who follows a prescribed procedure, or determines which procedure to follow, is not exercising independent judgment.
While most if not all employees are required to exercise discretion in decision making, an exempt employee must be dealing with matters that are significant to the policies or operations of the business or its customers.
it was established that first-sale doctrine will override any EULA-based argument.
That is not what the court said. In the SoftMan Products Co. v. Adobe Systems Inc. case, the court found that based on the transaction, SoftMan purchased a copy of the software not the license (because the EULA had to be executed upon installation). There was no contractual relationship between SoftMan and Adobe.
There is case law that allows exceptions to first-sale via contracts (licensing).
If you do not want to pay alimony, have a prenup or do not get married.
Compaq was not the first company to clone the IBM PC 5150.
You are the one making the claim, you need to provide some references.
My response was simply a statement that there was NO LEGAL REQUIREMENT that the buyer pay the sales tax as a separate line item. It was you that made it into something else. Get off the soapbox.