It's not like anyone is actually proposing building a 92 square mile facility. That's the total area that would be required. It's much more likely to be split up over 100 or so facilities across the southwest.
Big deal. The way SCO is burning through money, it'll be in bankruptcy by the end of the year anyway. Earlier, if Novell gets its way and gets the Microsoft and Sun licence money put into trust.
I believe she's also mentioned her shyness in posts about attending conferences, etc.. It may be that this simply stems from not wanting to be identified as PJ, but does sound like she really is shy.
The bnet lawsuit is exactly why Blizzard, even though they were my favourite game company, are on my shitlist of companies I will never do business with again.
Right now that list consists only of Blizzard, Sony, and Lexmark for their actions which demonstrate that they seem to believe that their customers exist only to do their will.
I think the saddest thing is that I've decided that those companies exist on that list, but I'm still waffling about Microsoft. Blizzard is the only one that I've given significant amounts of money in the past to, though.
This probably has nothing to do with your account. I started getting stock touting emails, and was suspicious that someone had sold my email address. However, now I get at least 1 a day on 5 different email accounts, including at work.
I've heard these emails being cited as evidence that this or that brokerage, investor service, or whatever has been compromised. However, email addresses I never used to sign up for anything, internal email aliases at work, etc., are all being hit. The most reasonable explanation is a spate of dictionary attacks.
Let's all stop being hysterical about this for a minute, stop and think.
We've already had a huge run in commodities prices. If prices rise 10-fold, the economy will collapse. Prices on gold, copper and zinc now seem to be almost entirely speculator-driven, with normal industrial demand forming little of recent price increases (especially where industrial demand tends to drop off as prices rise).
If we do get to a 10x rise in prices, it will be speculators selling to speculators.
I don't think that's the case. You may be thinking about margin requirements, where you are only allowed to borrow a certain amount using your stocks as collateral.
I think the highest you can borrow is 60% of the value of your stocks in a margin account. But, there's nothing preventing you from borrowing money based on your general creditworthiness and then buying stocks with the money.
Why not?
It's not as big a problem. Your general creditworthiness doesn't rise or fall with your stocks. What happened in the '20s was you would buy stocks. Because you were buying stocks, you could borrow the whole amount. If the value of the underlying stock went up (which they invariably did), you could borrow even more money. It spiralled on and on, until the crash. Then nobody could afford to pay back the loans.
Again, your banker (or student loan person) isn't going to loan you more money just because the shares you bought last week are up 50%. Your broker will, but if the shares drop, you have to come up with enough cash to bring you back into compliance with the margin requirements (60% or less). If you don't, they liquidate your holdings, and hold you responsible for any loss they incur. With a maximum margin amount of 60%, that means your stocks can drop 40% before there's any risk that borrowed money is lost. For more speculative sorts of stocks, the margin allowed is even lower.
I have a friend who owns a convenience store/gas station. He said the 3 big profit items for the grocery chains are meat, produce, and milk (YMMV on the milk though - there's a wierd regulatory thing going on here). He drives a lot of traffic to his store by selling produce and milk at half the grocery chain's margin. He has an arrangement to sell produce to a local restaurant if it doesn't sell right away.
It's a lot cheaper to plant acres of plants than to build acres of solar panels, though. Biodiesel is also able to take advantage of the existing infrastructure to get fuel into vehicles. To some extent, that's also true of solar power, but there is also a much larger set of vehicles that could take advantage of biodiesel.
I suspect that biodiesel will be part of the transition to more renewable resources (including solar) in the long term.
I could also see biodiesel being used in places where batteries aren't suitable. Planes, for instance.
Not a problem. It's our dirty little secret, but not everybody in Canada loves hockey or Tim Horton's. I was born and raised here, but never learned to like Tim's. And I'm the only hockey fan in my family.
Hey! I'm an English major. Don't go trying to bury ID there. I actually believe that ID should be presented in the science curriculum. It's glaring weaknesses provide a perfect counterexample to the scientific method.
But a security hole in IE is an operating system security hole. A hole in Firefox/Mozilla isn't in most cases, because neither browser is tightly integrated with the operating system.
I think the most important part of his article came at the end:
the United States will grow ever more reliant upon foreign brainpower to design its scientific and manufacturing endeavors.
Why shouldn't it? The world has depended to a great extent on US innovation for years, but most of the world does not live in the US. Everybody would be better off if the rest of the world could contribute a proportionate amount of technical/scientific innovation. As this is occurring, however, you hear nothing but bitching that the US is losing ground. Maybe everything is evening out.
You are exactly right. More MBAs and lawyers with tech degrees would be a very good thing. There are too many people in the world today making big decisions about matters they know nothing about.
I'm not sure that better teaching is necessarily going to help. I know part of the role of an engineering/technical university education is to teach you how to learn the stuff you need to know; not just now, but all through your career. First year is probably the best place to learn that nobody's going to hold your hand or carry you.
Another problem I see with this article is the author 1) assumed high marks in high school automatically translated into an ability to succeed at genius level courses without damaging his gpa, and 2) when he had difficulty, he didn't reassess and lighten his courseload, he switched majors altogether. Actually, maybe that last part wasn't a problem. Engineering requires a commitment and a certain amount of intellectual discipline, and those that lack those traits should not be in engineering.
All told, the article explains why there are a lot of liberal arts majors, and why students drop out of engineering, but students have been dropping out of engineering for years. You're always going to lose a significant portion of any incoming group of freshmen, in any discipline. I suspect the cause behind recent declines in enrollment in technological fields has to do with a perceived lack of opportunities for graduates. There's always been a boom/bust cycle, and we're coming out of a bust.
Well, I don't think you can get 5 Indians for the price of a US citizen anymore. I think the costs are starting to even out. Additional offshoring becomes more difficult as India's capacity to produce techies that stay in India levels off. Companies looking to hire in India will raise the rates there. Meanwhile, communication and coordination overhead when you're dealing with someone 12 timezones away gets very expensive. A quick exchange of information is difficult when one party is going to bed when the other is just headed in to work. Also, expectations may be culturally based, and lead to errors.
It's not about good ideas, it's about teams and communication. Companies will find it easier to work and communicate with teams in North America. That can be translated into a dollar figure. When the cost of a team in India plus the cost of the overhead equals the cost of a team in North America, offshoring will reach an equilibrium. We're almost there now.
Well, I guess it depends on what you're teaching. I'm finishing up a BA, with a double major in Economics and English (I've already finished my CS degree). In every English class where students have been asked to introduce themselves, somewhere around 80% of the class introduced themselves as BA/BEd students, doing a major/honours in English. At my school, that would be approximately 400 prospective English teachers at the university at any given point in time, with 80 or so getting their teaching licences every year, most of whom are from the area and wish to teach here. There is already a glut of English teachers in my province, and the number of graduating teachers is outstripping the number of retirements.
Math, Science, Computer Science, and French teachers are all in demand, with shortages predicted in the next five years.
Actually, at my school, a huge percentage of the graduating class in CS has, for the last few years, gone to grad school as a result of the perception of a poor job market. I'm just glad I found a job, 'cause I'd have to compete against all those MCS and PhD students graduating next spring.
What's really startling is the number of first year CS students this year. This year, it was about 1/4th of the number of students entering in '99 and 2000. Once that glut of grad students has worked its way through, we will be seeing shortages.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not like anyone is actually proposing building a 92 square mile facility. That's the total area that would be required. It's much more likely to be split up over 100 or so facilities across the southwest.
When Mexicans want to stop living in a failed state, they'll go back to Mexico.
Big deal. The way SCO is burning through money, it'll be in bankruptcy by the end of the year anyway. Earlier, if Novell gets its way and gets the Microsoft and Sun licence money put into trust.
I believe she's also mentioned her shyness in posts about attending conferences, etc.. It may be that this simply stems from not wanting to be identified as PJ, but does sound like she really is shy.
Give them a break. They can't possibly be expected to respond to every crackpot who has some theory about infringement or 'intellectual property'.
The bnet lawsuit is exactly why Blizzard, even though they were my favourite game company, are on my shitlist of companies I will never do business with again.
Right now that list consists only of Blizzard, Sony, and Lexmark for their actions which demonstrate that they seem to believe that their customers exist only to do their will.
I think the saddest thing is that I've decided that those companies exist on that list, but I'm still waffling about Microsoft. Blizzard is the only one that I've given significant amounts of money in the past to, though.
This probably has nothing to do with your account. I started getting stock touting emails, and was suspicious that someone had sold my email address. However, now I get at least 1 a day on 5 different email accounts, including at work.
I've heard these emails being cited as evidence that this or that brokerage, investor service, or whatever has been compromised. However, email addresses I never used to sign up for anything, internal email aliases at work, etc., are all being hit. The most reasonable explanation is a spate of dictionary attacks.
Let's all stop being hysterical about this for a minute, stop and think.
We've already had a huge run in commodities prices. If prices rise 10-fold, the economy will collapse. Prices on gold, copper and zinc now seem to be almost entirely speculator-driven, with normal industrial demand forming little of recent price increases (especially where industrial demand tends to drop off as prices rise).
If we do get to a 10x rise in prices, it will be speculators selling to speculators.
I don't think that's the case. You may be thinking about margin requirements, where you are only allowed to borrow a certain amount using your stocks as collateral.
I think the highest you can borrow is 60% of the value of your stocks in a margin account. But, there's nothing preventing you from borrowing money based on your general creditworthiness and then buying stocks with the money.
Why not?
It's not as big a problem. Your general creditworthiness doesn't rise or fall with your stocks. What happened in the '20s was you would buy stocks. Because you were buying stocks, you could borrow the whole amount. If the value of the underlying stock went up (which they invariably did), you could borrow even more money. It spiralled on and on, until the crash. Then nobody could afford to pay back the loans.
Again, your banker (or student loan person) isn't going to loan you more money just because the shares you bought last week are up 50%. Your broker will, but if the shares drop, you have to come up with enough cash to bring you back into compliance with the margin requirements (60% or less). If you don't, they liquidate your holdings, and hold you responsible for any loss they incur. With a maximum margin amount of 60%, that means your stocks can drop 40% before there's any risk that borrowed money is lost. For more speculative sorts of stocks, the margin allowed is even lower.
It's the only way Microsoft can increase revenue on their annual licences.
I have a friend who owns a convenience store/gas station. He said the 3 big profit items for the grocery chains are meat, produce, and milk (YMMV on the milk though - there's a wierd regulatory thing going on here). He drives a lot of traffic to his store by selling produce and milk at half the grocery chain's margin. He has an arrangement to sell produce to a local restaurant if it doesn't sell right away.
Maybe all those dupes ARE his backups?
It's a lot cheaper to plant acres of plants than to build acres of solar panels, though. Biodiesel is also able to take advantage of the existing infrastructure to get fuel into vehicles. To some extent, that's also true of solar power, but there is also a much larger set of vehicles that could take advantage of biodiesel.
I suspect that biodiesel will be part of the transition to more renewable resources (including solar) in the long term.
I could also see biodiesel being used in places where batteries aren't suitable. Planes, for instance.
Not a problem. It's our dirty little secret, but not everybody in Canada loves hockey or Tim Horton's. I was born and raised here, but never learned to like Tim's. And I'm the only hockey fan in my family.
Hey! I'm an English major. Don't go trying to bury ID there. I actually believe that ID should be presented in the science curriculum. It's glaring weaknesses provide a perfect counterexample to the scientific method.
But a security hole in IE is an operating system security hole. A hole in Firefox/Mozilla isn't in most cases, because neither browser is tightly integrated with the operating system.
I already broke it at work Tuesday night.
If it breaks again, my colleagues can fix it again.
It's a fun show, but what drives me nuts is when one of them describes what they do as science. That's the point I have to change channels.
Maybe I'm just being an asshole, but I dream of a day when slashdot runs its stories through a spellchecker. Perserved? WTF?
You are exactly right. More MBAs and lawyers with tech degrees would be a very good thing. There are too many people in the world today making big decisions about matters they know nothing about.
I'm not sure that better teaching is necessarily going to help. I know part of the role of an engineering/technical university education is to teach you how to learn the stuff you need to know; not just now, but all through your career. First year is probably the best place to learn that nobody's going to hold your hand or carry you.
Another problem I see with this article is the author 1) assumed high marks in high school automatically translated into an ability to succeed at genius level courses without damaging his gpa, and 2) when he had difficulty, he didn't reassess and lighten his courseload, he switched majors altogether. Actually, maybe that last part wasn't a problem. Engineering requires a commitment and a certain amount of intellectual discipline, and those that lack those traits should not be in engineering.
All told, the article explains why there are a lot of liberal arts majors, and why students drop out of engineering, but students have been dropping out of engineering for years. You're always going to lose a significant portion of any incoming group of freshmen, in any discipline. I suspect the cause behind recent declines in enrollment in technological fields has to do with a perceived lack of opportunities for graduates. There's always been a boom/bust cycle, and we're coming out of a bust.
Well, I don't think you can get 5 Indians for the price of a US citizen anymore. I think the costs are starting to even out. Additional offshoring becomes more difficult as India's capacity to produce techies that stay in India levels off. Companies looking to hire in India will raise the rates there. Meanwhile, communication and coordination overhead when you're dealing with someone 12 timezones away gets very expensive. A quick exchange of information is difficult when one party is going to bed when the other is just headed in to work. Also, expectations may be culturally based, and lead to errors.
It's not about good ideas, it's about teams and communication. Companies will find it easier to work and communicate with teams in North America. That can be translated into a dollar figure. When the cost of a team in India plus the cost of the overhead equals the cost of a team in North America, offshoring will reach an equilibrium. We're almost there now.
Well, I guess it depends on what you're teaching. I'm finishing up a BA, with a double major in Economics and English (I've already finished my CS degree). In every English class where students have been asked to introduce themselves, somewhere around 80% of the class introduced themselves as BA/BEd students, doing a major/honours in English. At my school, that would be approximately 400 prospective English teachers at the university at any given point in time, with 80 or so getting their teaching licences every year, most of whom are from the area and wish to teach here. There is already a glut of English teachers in my province, and the number of graduating teachers is outstripping the number of retirements.
Math, Science, Computer Science, and French teachers are all in demand, with shortages predicted in the next five years.
Actually, at my school, a huge percentage of the graduating class in CS has, for the last few years, gone to grad school as a result of the perception of a poor job market. I'm just glad I found a job, 'cause I'd have to compete against all those MCS and PhD students graduating next spring.
What's really startling is the number of first year CS students this year. This year, it was about 1/4th of the number of students entering in '99 and 2000. Once that glut of grad students has worked its way through, we will be seeing shortages.