What the heck is their business model, or is this just a hobby site? About the only way I can think of to make some money is to take some under the table in exchange for a higher rating.
What, exactly, did he post that was so damn controversial that CNN felt the need to let him go?
He doesn't say exactly, although while complaining about being fired for controversial material he called Lou Dobbs a 'fascist demagogue'. It isn't too hard to guess from there. If you need help, just go through any of the 'politics' categories here on slashdot and look at the rants against Bush & krew.
So based on my screen name, he decided what country I was from? I'm from Canada... I live in Canada... I've never lived anywhere other than Canada. Other countries can use the word "Wombat", unless those copyright laws have gotten way too out of hand...
Really, this is like a huge guy called 'Tiny' getting defensive about being asked why he's called that. If you take the handle of a distinctive animal that lives in one certain place get used to people thinking you're likely from there or at least try not to be harsh when they make an honest mistake. If ever a handle sounded like an Australian currently living abroad and missing home, 'wandering wombat' is it. Maybe "still in the old home town moose" is a better choice; then you wouldn't have to get all prickly.
First they want to make energy from our food. Now they are making it out of our drink
I'm reminded of a mediocre Niven/Pournelle novel where dramatic climate change was blamed on inhabitants of a space station needing to be resupplied with oxygen from time to time. What will burning all the water do to the planet? Won't someone please think of the fishes??
(most) People can go out to get more education to advance from a menial job to a more skilled one when taken over by a robot but wtf do we do if the machines are as smart as we are? Who is going to hire any people to do even the most advanced thinking jobs when the machine that works for electricity 24/7 can do it? This kind of thing will bring on the luddite revolution in a hurry.
Why is Fossett's wife in a rush to declare that her husband is dead?
5 months is hardly 'in a rush' - remember with Fosset there are billions on the line and political and legal positioning to grab a slice of it will just pile up more and more the longer she waits. She's doing what needs to be done to protect the estate, as callous as that sounds but it needs to be done. One assumes someone who lives dangerously and has so much money like Fosset has left a will but greedy relatives and business partners can chew it all up in legal bills rather than whatever it was Fosset wanted done with his assets after he was gone.
You've just condemned all good musicians to be one hit wonders - they'll all have 'accidents' as soon as there is one positive cash flow peice of work to avoid paying them any royalties.
It would seem that INconsistency in the law is the root of all tyranny. The tyrant and his cohorts get exceptions to escape consequences while everyone else gets exceptionally strong consequences. This is the kind of thing that the Magna Carta tried to level out and is a cornerstone of western democracies that everyone from the King on down is supposed to be equal under the law. It isn't perfect in practice but is a lot better than places where there is only the thinnest pretense of equality. interestingly, the worst offenders do so in the name of Marxism, supposedly the great equalizer. See any state where the ruling single party or cabal is unaccountable to the law (most former Soviet bloc nations, most of Africa, Asia, South America) while what passes for law is applied heavy handedly to the general populace.
I wish the mod was used strictly for those being obnoxious and not contributing to the discussion
When was the last time you volunteered to meta-moderate? If enough people meta-moderate unfair Troll moderations then the people who hand those out for opposing viewpoints become less likely to get points.
the teddy bear was named after a popular kid in the class named Muhammad
An irrelevant technicality - the teacher was not jailed then expelled because the teddy bear was named after a little boy. The fuss was because the teddy bear was named 'Muhammad'.
It's worth noting that a number of those pictures were made by Muslim artists, too
I don't think religion of the artist matters; only that a picture ye old prophet was displayed. After all, a group of muslim children named a teddy bear after him but their teacher was the one who was almost stoned to death.
Originally budgeted at about a billion dollars, the estimated cost had "ballooned" to $1.8 billion
Ballooned is in quotes to make us think the energy dept official is either exaggerating or looking for a lame excuse - when the *estimated* costs have already almost doubled, it *is* ballooned. Just imagine what the final cost would actually total if this is what the estimate does before any work is started!! I for one am actually impressed that FOR ONCE, increasing amounts of taxpayer money is not being thrown down on some project with out of control cost increases.
Dedicated servers for each field office is out of the question... such as authenticating over a WAN, print queues, etc
Print queues over WAN is taking the consolidation thing a little to the extreme, isn't it? Login authentications and print jobs really want to be local. Sorry about your predicament but you're going to get a lot of comments telling you to switch outsourcers or bite the bullet on their prices. What is the other traffic (as if that isn't bad enough): one assumes email, but are there big apps hosted on remote servers with lots of data traffic to db servers and the like? Simple document file sharing shouldn't be that much of a problem, or is it? You're going to get a lot of guesses without knowing the exact needs of your remote traffic. Good luck!
If they're XP machines then the AD policy can be set to suspend the PC after some time of inactivity. Amazingly the AD policy where I work replaces 'turn monitor off after x minutes' with 'run screensaver graphics after x minutes'. The result is tens of thousands of monitors left running.
Isn't the overhead of a distributed index usually not worth the bother? This scheme sounds similar to the way Teradata handles its distribution and it manages to get a lot done with hardly any secondary indexes. I think the thinking in the article indicates standalone database server box thinking.
Do you really think that you can power a whole hard drive over a pair of #24 wires?
My first thought was a standard skinny 80 pin flat cable with a couple of fat wires for power running down one side making it look all lopsided. what would be the retail prices on something like that, lol...
it also means we have to add yet another 12v rail to the motherboard to support the power
Not only that but any add-on cards for laptops will need a wall wart providing power in to them. Now talk about loose fitting; every USB2 and FW add on PCMCIA card I've had to use has had a miserable loose little socket for device power. I far prefer to use the wall wart that goes straight to the drive. I suspect I'm not the only one adding drives to laptops and this power over the data cable is not going to help there at all.
It took you that long to realise his objection was communist in origin? One of the 10 steps to achieve communism in Marxist theory is a heavily progressive tax on income. In my original post I naively assumed everyone knew that in addition to the special interest deduction crowd the largest opponents of the Fair Tax are all the Marxists who insist it is not progressive. Even though it works out in its own way to be progressive because rich people buy brand new large ticket items such as cars and houses which are taxed under that system while second hand cars, houses, etc, are not.
I assume you mean the Fair Tax. Which isn't his idea (although I hear he supports it) and isn't "nutty". Alas there are too many special interests with a finger in the pie of special deductions who will tell you all kinds of lies about how bad the FT is. Except for the 'but what about MY deduction' there are no good arguments against the FT.
Although not running, if elected I will serve, and the Fair Tax would be my #1 priority.
Slashdot Mirror
In India, a Honda Insight is a 6 passenger vehicle
In South Africa it could be a cattle truck.
What the heck is their business model, or is this just a hobby site? About the only way I can think of to make some money is to take some under the table in exchange for a higher rating.
What, exactly, did he post that was so damn controversial that CNN felt the need to let him go?
He doesn't say exactly, although while complaining about being fired for controversial material he called Lou Dobbs a 'fascist demagogue'. It isn't too hard to guess from there. If you need help, just go through any of the 'politics' categories here on slashdot and look at the rants against Bush & krew.
Were you driven to point that out?
So based on my screen name, he decided what country I was from? I'm from Canada... I live in Canada... I've never lived anywhere other than Canada. Other countries can use the word "Wombat", unless those copyright laws have gotten way too out of hand...
Really, this is like a huge guy called 'Tiny' getting defensive about being asked why he's called that. If you take the handle of a distinctive animal that lives in one certain place get used to people thinking you're likely from there or at least try not to be harsh when they make an honest mistake. If ever a handle sounded like an Australian currently living abroad and missing home, 'wandering wombat' is it. Maybe "still in the old home town moose" is a better choice; then you wouldn't have to get all prickly.
They should just keep working on their replacement to the SR-71 so there isn't any to track
I thought everyone knew the SR71 was only retired because the Aurora had already taken over active spyplane duty.
First they want to make energy from our food. Now they are making it out of our drink
I'm reminded of a mediocre Niven/Pournelle novel where dramatic climate change was blamed on inhabitants of a space station needing to be resupplied with oxygen from time to time. What will burning all the water do to the planet? Won't someone please think of the fishes??
(most) People can go out to get more education to advance from a menial job to a more skilled one when taken over by a robot but wtf do we do if the machines are as smart as we are? Who is going to hire any people to do even the most advanced thinking jobs when the machine that works for electricity 24/7 can do it? This kind of thing will bring on the luddite revolution in a hurry.
Why is Fossett's wife in a rush to declare that her husband is dead?
5 months is hardly 'in a rush' - remember with Fosset there are billions on the line and political and legal positioning to grab a slice of it will just pile up more and more the longer she waits. She's doing what needs to be done to protect the estate, as callous as that sounds but it needs to be done. One assumes someone who lives dangerously and has so much money like Fosset has left a will but greedy relatives and business partners can chew it all up in legal bills rather than whatever it was Fosset wanted done with his assets after he was gone.
They? I'm pretty sure you're the only immature fuck calling it "Worst Buy".
No, he's not; I call it that all the time.
make the copyright end when the artist dies
You've just condemned all good musicians to be one hit wonders - they'll all have 'accidents' as soon as there is one positive cash flow peice of work to avoid paying them any royalties.
Start processing the regolith and non-water ice to make an atmosphere
You've got a great plan except for one small detail: how do you propose to increase the gravity so the atmosphere stays around?
as consistency in law is the root of all tyranny
It would seem that INconsistency in the law is the root of all tyranny. The tyrant and his cohorts get exceptions to escape consequences while everyone else gets exceptionally strong consequences. This is the kind of thing that the Magna Carta tried to level out and is a cornerstone of western democracies that everyone from the King on down is supposed to be equal under the law. It isn't perfect in practice but is a lot better than places where there is only the thinnest pretense of equality. interestingly, the worst offenders do so in the name of Marxism, supposedly the great equalizer. See any state where the ruling single party or cabal is unaccountable to the law (most former Soviet bloc nations, most of Africa, Asia, South America) while what passes for law is applied heavy handedly to the general populace.
I wish the mod was used strictly for those being obnoxious and not contributing to the discussion
When was the last time you volunteered to meta-moderate? If enough people meta-moderate unfair Troll moderations then the people who hand those out for opposing viewpoints become less likely to get points.
the teddy bear was named after a popular kid in the class named Muhammad
An irrelevant technicality - the teacher was not jailed then expelled because the teddy bear was named after a little boy. The fuss was because the teddy bear was named 'Muhammad'.
It's worth noting that a number of those pictures were made by Muslim artists, too
I don't think religion of the artist matters; only that a picture ye old prophet was displayed. After all, a group of muslim children named a teddy bear after him but their teacher was the one who was almost stoned to death.
Originally budgeted at about a billion dollars, the estimated cost had "ballooned" to $1.8 billion
Ballooned is in quotes to make us think the energy dept official is either exaggerating or looking for a lame excuse - when the *estimated* costs have already almost doubled, it *is* ballooned. Just imagine what the final cost would actually total if this is what the estimate does before any work is started!! I for one am actually impressed that FOR ONCE, increasing amounts of taxpayer money is not being thrown down on some project with out of control cost increases.
The author was British but Big Brother was in the fictional country of Oceania.
Dedicated servers for each field office is out of the question ... such as authenticating over a WAN, print queues, etc
Print queues over WAN is taking the consolidation thing a little to the extreme, isn't it? Login authentications and print jobs really want to be local. Sorry about your predicament but you're going to get a lot of comments telling you to switch outsourcers or bite the bullet on their prices. What is the other traffic (as if that isn't bad enough): one assumes email, but are there big apps hosted on remote servers with lots of data traffic to db servers and the like? Simple document file sharing shouldn't be that much of a problem, or is it? You're going to get a lot of guesses without knowing the exact needs of your remote traffic. Good luck!
On a Windows XP system
If they're XP machines then the AD policy can be set to suspend the PC after some time of inactivity. Amazingly the AD policy where I work replaces 'turn monitor off after x minutes' with 'run screensaver graphics after x minutes'. The result is tens of thousands of monitors left running.
in that it uses brute force instead of indexing
Isn't the overhead of a distributed index usually not worth the bother? This scheme sounds similar to the way Teradata handles its distribution and it manages to get a lot done with hardly any secondary indexes. I think the thinking in the article indicates standalone database server box thinking.
Do you really think that you can power a whole hard drive over a pair of #24 wires?
My first thought was a standard skinny 80 pin flat cable with a couple of fat wires for power running down one side making it look all lopsided. what would be the retail prices on something like that, lol...
it also means we have to add yet another 12v rail to the motherboard to support the power
Not only that but any add-on cards for laptops will need a wall wart providing power in to them. Now talk about loose fitting; every USB2 and FW add on PCMCIA card I've had to use has had a miserable loose little socket for device power. I far prefer to use the wall wart that goes straight to the drive. I suspect I'm not the only one adding drives to laptops and this power over the data cable is not going to help there at all.
5) This is starting to sound communist.
It took you that long to realise his objection was communist in origin? One of the 10 steps to achieve communism in Marxist theory is a heavily progressive tax on income. In my original post I naively assumed everyone knew that in addition to the special interest deduction crowd the largest opponents of the Fair Tax are all the Marxists who insist it is not progressive. Even though it works out in its own way to be progressive because rich people buy brand new large ticket items such as cars and houses which are taxed under that system while second hand cars, houses, etc, are not.
his nutty ... dissolving the IRS idea
I assume you mean the Fair Tax. Which isn't his idea (although I hear he supports it) and isn't "nutty". Alas there are too many special interests with a finger in the pie of special deductions who will tell you all kinds of lies about how bad the FT is. Except for the 'but what about MY deduction' there are no good arguments against the FT.
Although not running, if elected I will serve, and the Fair Tax would be my #1 priority.