The Office of the Comptroller of New York City has advised us that it intends to submit the proposal set forth below for consideration at our annual meeting
The submitter doesn't say how small of a shareholder he/she is and obviously the NYC Comptroller controls more shares but publicly traded companies have to have a mechanism for shareholders to submit proposals to the shareholders' meetings. Usually there's a minimum holding for a minimum time, like 1,000 share for 180 days prior to the meeting or somesuch. OK, so 1,000 shares of Google is a whopping pile of cash to a lot of people, but an investment club could easily have that much and could submit a proposal. Anyway, my point is that if you don't like what Big Corp X is doing, buy the required min # of shares and bring up your issue(s) at every meeting until they fix it.
Nevermind changing the oil, what about changing the parts? A modern server has a lot of hot swappable innards; PCI cards, RAM, even CPUs and this elevates the term 'hot swappable' to a new level. Anyone who could afford to install such a convoluted oil pumping rig in their server room has machines that can do such things. I imagine the server tech couldn't be convinced to reach in a server of hot oil to put in a new CPU, even if the oil didn't completely clog up the little socket holes (which I'm sure it would). So really, I don't think anyone is going to be seriously thinking to install this after the initial 'hmm, interesting idea' phase.
Even though Devon mentioned in the pilot episode it was "Completely fuel efficient"
I hope for your sake you've made that up and didn't really know that off the top of your head. That aside, what the heck is 'completely' efficient? Internal combustion engines are far from 100% efficient and no matter how close you think you can get to that level it just isn't attainable if there are any gears or anything like that involved. If Knight Industries has invented a near 100% efficient car they could do a lot better things for the world with the technology than giving one lone model out to one lone guy with big 80's hair.
Watchers of the news from outside you country have a slightly different opinion... exceptions are so easily made that groups of people a treated in an unfair way
Because the rare exception makes for more exciting news than the countless boring reasonably fair cases. It's the same reason why Americans think the rest of the world is constantly having some horrific natural disaster, fighting internal wars, or attending lavish film festivals.
Can I pay $50 more and have a special "OLPC Sponsor" logo etched into the case
Alas, I think you'll find that custom etching will run you more than $50. Still, this idea has some merit. They've said though, and it makes sense, that the reason they won't sell the OLPC machine is because as soon as there is a legit market for the things there will be nefarious individuals who will procede to steal the donated ones and recycle them back into the sale channel.
After 10 weeks bored out of your mind on the couch, watching tv with a beer in your hand and listening to your wife pestering you to find another job? not sure the red shirt will fit anymore
Given that scenario, I bet it would fit around your neck.
PS - I read most of it and couldn't find anything "against" this Fred fellow. If you think a standard warning to an interviewee to "don't let him lead you down paths you don't want to go" and the interviewer "likes to write sensational stories if he can find the dirt so don't give him anything" is somehow "against you", well, you need to talk to your therapist about your paranoia problems.
Wow, whoever put that file together, and it was a prep for a single phone interview on top of a general dossier, is top notch. If only I had a staff to put together stuff like that for my phone meetings!
most of your sphere (by volume) with not being especially habitable. Unlike a ringworld. Or did I miss something?
You didn't miss anything except that it's OK to be like that. The point of a Dyson's sphere is not to provide habitable area. It is to capture the entire energy output of the enclosed star. So all the uninhabited parts are just banks after banks of solar power collectors.
The point is: FV = PV(1 + r)^n Where FV = Future Value, PV = Present Value, r = rate of interest, and n = number of years. When n is 400, the current value had best be pretty darn small or it just isn't worth it.
Let's say it costs the same as Mars Pathfinder, 265 million, to send some widget to Mars to melt the ice or whatever and make Mars habitable in 400 years. That means the real estate on Mars needs to end up being worth $79,243,838,081,000,000 in dollars unadjusted for inflation. To put that in perspective, total real estate value of developed nations is around $52 trillion, or about.1 % of what the value of the real estate on Mars would need to be.
Somehow I don't see ski villas on the slopes on Mons Olympus, while excessively chic, being quite worth that much.
"Start your own company and do it yourself?" The market is saturated- there's already a large number of major OEM computer manufacturers.
But there are no companies that are selling support to a Linux distro on Dells. Here's how it plays out, in familiar slashdot formatting:
1: Pick several models of Dells 2: Pick your favorite Linux distro and get make an image tweaked for models in step 1 3: Sell support contracts for said install image to others whose favorite distro is the same as your 4: Maybe make a little profit but more likely spend half your time explaining why you picked distro X instead of Y and the other half of the time trying to figure out what when wrong when the users heavily modified and recompiled your carefully tweaked image in bizarre ways without admitting to doing so when they call for support.
but one must also consider that parents [i]are[/i] the ones paying their taxroll, in essence
Not in the USA. Here the local homeowners pay the teachers' salaries. The vast majority of education funds come from real estate property tax. Parents, especially new parents of small children, aren't necessarily homeowners and definitely not all homeowners are parents.
"not an announcement that the computers would be loaded and sold with the operating system in the near future"
Retailers hate to announce new features more than just a little bit into the future for fear of someone who was ready to buy today putting off their purchase for any considerable length of time. They don't mind if there is a hard date for consumers to look forward to and start saving up, like if they announced this would start in April. But with no definite time frame some purchasers might hold off indefinitely and then get irritated at the delay and purchase a different brand. So it makes good business sense to jump on this misunderstanding right away just as much as it makes sense to begin this process of trying to provide something some of their potential customers want.
totally flattered about her statement on geeks making great husbands
Well, how much of a real geek is the husband in question? Does she ever wonder why her laptop is always scorching hot and the battery only lasts an hour or so? There are plenty of clever ways to have a laptop call home in case of theft and running a distributed processing client is not one of them.
No scientific discussion can be made without questioning theories
The debate on global climate change has become a political policy discussion and strayed from being a scientific one. The people who claim human activity is the cause versus the people who claim it is part of a larger natural cycle. Both sides have a bad habit of starting from their predetermined conclusion and working backwards.
Censorship is a potent political tool for people who want to force their policy without listening to dissent.
Slashdot Mirror
The Office of the Comptroller of New York City has advised us that it intends to submit the proposal set forth below for consideration at our annual meeting
The submitter doesn't say how small of a shareholder he/she is and obviously the NYC Comptroller controls more shares but publicly traded companies have to have a mechanism for shareholders to submit proposals to the shareholders' meetings. Usually there's a minimum holding for a minimum time, like 1,000 share for 180 days prior to the meeting or somesuch. OK, so 1,000 shares of Google is a whopping pile of cash to a lot of people, but an investment club could easily have that much and could submit a proposal. Anyway, my point is that if you don't like what Big Corp X is doing, buy the required min # of shares and bring up your issue(s) at every meeting until they fix it.
Green & Black's 70% dark chocolate. It's nice to know that the UK is not entirely a gastronomic wasteland
G&B's is from Italy according to the label. What you want is Butler's 70% dark which is made in Ireland.
(as well as a tool set because, well no tools = screwed)
Actually, no tools = build kiln, but that would mean the show needs at least 7 or 8 seasons...
FDA is a canonical abbreviation because you don't
Speak for yourself; I say it all the time. Fda! Fda! Fda! See there?
Nevermind changing the oil, what about changing the parts? A modern server has a lot of hot swappable innards; PCI cards, RAM, even CPUs and this elevates the term 'hot swappable' to a new level. Anyone who could afford to install such a convoluted oil pumping rig in their server room has machines that can do such things. I imagine the server tech couldn't be convinced to reach in a server of hot oil to put in a new CPU, even if the oil didn't completely clog up the little socket holes (which I'm sure it would). So really, I don't think anyone is going to be seriously thinking to install this after the initial 'hmm, interesting idea' phase.
Even though Devon mentioned in the pilot episode it was "Completely fuel efficient"
I hope for your sake you've made that up and didn't really know that off the top of your head.
That aside, what the heck is 'completely' efficient? Internal combustion engines are far from 100% efficient and no matter how close you think you can get to that level it just isn't attainable if there are any gears or anything like that involved. If Knight Industries has invented a near 100% efficient car they could do a lot better things for the world with the technology than giving one lone model out to one lone guy with big 80's hair.
Watchers of the news from outside you country have a slightly different opinion ... exceptions are so easily made that groups of people a treated in an unfair way
Because the rare exception makes for more exciting news than the countless boring reasonably fair cases. It's the same reason why Americans think the rest of the world is constantly having some horrific natural disaster, fighting internal wars, or attending lavish film festivals.
Can I pay $50 more and have a special "OLPC Sponsor" logo etched into the case
Alas, I think you'll find that custom etching will run you more than $50. Still, this idea has some merit. They've said though, and it makes sense, that the reason they won't sell the OLPC machine is because as soon as there is a legit market for the things there will be nefarious individuals who will procede to steal the donated ones and recycle them back into the sale channel.
After 10 weeks bored out of your mind on the couch, watching tv with a beer in your hand and listening to your wife pestering you to find another job? not sure the red shirt will fit anymore
Given that scenario, I bet it would fit around your neck.
PS - I read most of it and couldn't find anything "against" this Fred fellow. If you think a standard warning to an interviewee to "don't let him lead you down paths you don't want to go" and the interviewer "likes to write sensational stories if he can find the dirt so don't give him anything" is somehow "against you", well, you need to talk to your therapist about your paranoia problems.
Wow, whoever put that file together, and it was a prep for a single phone interview on top of a general dossier, is top notch. If only I had a staff to put together stuff like that for my phone meetings!
PS - Don't forget you can always live on the OUTSIDE of a Dyson's sphere. If you want to see the sun, put a skylight in the floor.
most of your sphere (by volume) with not being especially habitable. Unlike a ringworld. Or did I miss something?
You didn't miss anything except that it's OK to be like that. The point of a Dyson's sphere is not to provide habitable area. It is to capture the entire energy output of the enclosed star. So all the uninhabited parts are just banks after banks of solar power collectors.
What is your point?
.1 % of what the value of the real estate on Mars would need to be.
The point is: FV = PV(1 + r)^n
Where FV = Future Value, PV = Present Value, r = rate of interest, and n = number of years.
When n is 400, the current value had best be pretty darn small or it just isn't worth it.
Let's say it costs the same as Mars Pathfinder, 265 million, to send some widget to Mars to melt the ice or whatever and make Mars habitable in 400 years. That means the real estate on Mars needs to end up being worth $79,243,838,081,000,000 in dollars unadjusted for inflation. To put that in perspective, total real estate value of developed nations is around $52 trillion, or about
Somehow I don't see ski villas on the slopes on Mons Olympus, while excessively chic, being quite worth that much.
Have you ever eaten anything for the first time?
Oh, trust me, I take great care that everything I eat is for its first time being eaten...
Actually, his name is Hugo
Lately it seems to be 'Heckler'
what if Google instead just demoted Viacom links a little in the search results
Don't bother. Just buy Viacom and stop suing themselves. Problem solved.
the best way to celebrate is to eat PIE!
Except those pie aren't square; pie are round.
"Start your own company and do it yourself?" The market is saturated- there's already a large number of major OEM computer manufacturers.
But there are no companies that are selling support to a Linux distro on Dells. Here's how it plays out, in familiar slashdot formatting:
1: Pick several models of Dells
2: Pick your favorite Linux distro and get make an image tweaked for models in step 1
3: Sell support contracts for said install image to others whose favorite distro is the same as your
4: Maybe make a little profit but more likely spend half your time explaining why you picked distro X instead of Y and the other half of the time trying to figure out what when wrong when the users heavily modified and recompiled your carefully tweaked image in bizarre ways without admitting to doing so when they call for support.
Those plugins are all very cute, but the plugin I rely on most is the one that displays the Homeland Security department's current threat level.
but one must also consider that parents [i]are[/i] the ones paying their taxroll, in essence
Not in the USA. Here the local homeowners pay the teachers' salaries. The vast majority of education funds come from real estate property tax. Parents, especially new parents of small children, aren't necessarily homeowners and definitely not all homeowners are parents.
"not an announcement that the computers would be loaded and sold with the operating system in the near future"
Retailers hate to announce new features more than just a little bit into the future for fear of someone who was ready to buy today putting off their purchase for any considerable length of time. They don't mind if there is a hard date for consumers to look forward to and start saving up, like if they announced this would start in April. But with no definite time frame some purchasers might hold off indefinitely and then get irritated at the delay and purchase a different brand. So it makes good business sense to jump on this misunderstanding right away just as much as it makes sense to begin this process of trying to provide something some of their potential customers want.
totally flattered about her statement on geeks making great husbands
Well, how much of a real geek is the husband in question? Does she ever wonder why her laptop is always scorching hot and the battery only lasts an hour or so? There are plenty of clever ways to have a laptop call home in case of theft and running a distributed processing client is not one of them.
No scientific discussion can be made without questioning theories
The debate on global climate change has become a political policy discussion and strayed from being a scientific one. The people who claim human activity is the cause versus the people who claim it is part of a larger natural cycle. Both sides have a bad habit of starting from their predetermined conclusion and working backwards.
Censorship is a potent political tool for people who want to force their policy without listening to dissent.
there should be nobody listening to anything I'm doing.
Then stop taking all those overseas calls from known AQ operatives.