Ok, show of hands. Who among you has actually consumed a twinkie after grade school? Last one I had was during the Reagan administration. Obviously they sell but I cannot recall the last time I saw anyone actually eat one. It's like the National Enquirer of foods. They apparently sell lots but you never actually see anyone buying them.
I don't really know any geeks who eat twinkies either. Is this a thing in some part of the country? I know some geeks who are overly fond of sugary treats (I'm one) but twinkies never seem to be in the shopping cart.
I don't know where you get all this BS. Most doctors work for themselves or for a small group of doctors
How about The New England Journal of Medicine? How about NPR? How about the doctor I am married to? Hospitals hire huge numbers of doctors and the rate has been increasing in recent years dramatically.
Every time I've been to a hospital (and everyone I've ever known has), I got multiple bills, one being from the hospital, and one being from the doctor.
That has precisely nothing to do with how the doctor is compensated for his/her take home pay. While it is possible that they two are independent (there are lots of independent doctor's offices), a great many practices are actually fully owned subsidiaries of hospital systems. Just because you are not in the main hospital does not mean the hospital does not own the practice. If you look you'll often see that an outpatient clinic or seemingly independent surgery center is actually affiliated with one of the major hospital systems in your area. Hospitals have been on a buying spree for the last decade. Bills for medical care are commonly not integrated. The mere fact that you received multiple bills means very little by itself. Hospital systems also are the largest category of employer for new doctors. Just because you have some limited personal experience with a few practices doesn't mean anything regarding who actually employs doctors.
Doctors DO NOT work for hospitals.
Like hell they don't. 1 in 6 works directly for a hospital and over half work for so called integrated delivery systems which is basically the hospital's wider network. Effectively captured business or subsidiary businesses. There has been a 75% rise in the number of doctors employed directly by hospitals since 2000.
I'm sorry... are you saying $175,000/ year isn't a FUCK TON of money?
Basically that is exactly what I'm saying. While no one is asking anyone to cry for the doctors, you seem to think they are incredibly wealthy which demonstrably is not true. Many do quite well in the long run but they pay a steep price to get there.First off that is gross pay and makes no allowance for cost of living in your area. $175K in NYC doesn't go far when even a crappy condo can easily cost $500K. Where I live the gross salary for a GP is more like $90-120K/year. Cut that salary number in half once taxes are taken into account. Furthermore a huge number of doctors graduate with between a quarter million to a half million in debt from their schooling. That takes $20-50K per year right off the top of their pay just in debt service. Don't forget the huge insurance costs which are in the tens of thousands of dollars. Also bear in mind that doctors are not paid for the 4 years on medical school on top of 4+ years of undergrad school and are paid a rather low salary (usually around $40K/year) while in residency which can last for between 3-8 years. That's effectively a decade or more of less than minimum wage work once you calculate the hourly wage while piling up enough debt to pay for a fairly nice house. The opportunity cost is enormous.
Did you start your career 10 years after your college educated peers with a mountain of debt and limited transferable skills? Did anyone have to pass laws to prohibit you from being forced to work more than 80+ hours a week for no extra compensation? (laws which regularly get ignored and endanger patients by the way) Have you ever been required to work 36 hour shifts without any sleep? No. You just looked at the gross salary number and decided they make just a bit less than Bill Gates and live lives of luxury and ease. The real world is a little more complicated than a gross salary figure.
60 - 80 hours a week? Welcome to minimum wage just trying to get by while supporting a family.
I've been there working very long hours for minimum wage or less. Know what? Doctors often have it worse when it comes to lifestyle. They give up a decade or more of your life training working your ass off for an hourly rate of less than minimum wage just to get started in your career with a mountain of debt. They might make a decent salary but many of them hardly get to enjoy it. I've worked a 14 hour day, and my wife who left for work before me was still at work. I've seen her pull 36 hour shifts at the hospital. Being on call means you effectively do not get any sleep and some doctors are on call as often as every 3rd or 4th night and they often don't get a day off in between. My wife spent a year or two working for minimum wage in a lab before medical school and refers to it as the happiest year of her life. Sure she had to scrape to make ends meet but her time outside of work was her own. Becoming a doctor is a objectively miserable experience and even once you begin your career the lifestyle still sucks for many doctors. I don't know how many I've spoken to who would choose another profession if they had the chance to do it all over.
FIX YOUR PERSPECTIVE!
You have no idea what my perspective is. I've been poorer than a church mouse and worked my ass off to get where I am today. I've also have worked with and lived with doctors (including my wife) and seen what they have to go through first hand. I know up close and personal what I am talking about and I'm pretty sure you do not.
Does that mean a pig is now a unit of currency as I used it to buy goods and services (off the same person).
Probably not since the pig is not used as a medium of exchange and it is not used as a as a unit of account so it does not meet the definition of being money. (It is arguably a store of value however) While it would be possible to use pigs as currency in theory, in common practice it would simply be used in barter transactions. You can barter for goods or services. While you could channel your inner Guy Fieri and say that bacon is "money", it wouldn't be in the financial sense of the word.
Bitcoin on the other hand fits the definition of money (medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account) to the letter. Doesn't mean using it is a good idea as it is very risky and relatively illiquid. But it certainly would be accurate to describe bitcoin as a currency.
Surgeons and lawyers are very different professions: they own their own businesses, they're their own bosses, and they make a ton of money
You are a quite incorrect. Better pick another example to compare to if you want your argument to hold any water.
Most doctors do not own their own business and many aren't even paid all that well especially considering the hours required. The majority work for hospitals and thus are employed by someone else. The amount of money they make varies greatly by specialty. General practitioners as a rule do not actually make particularly high salaries. The lowest paid GPs have salaries of less than $90K per year with the mean somewhere around $175K. And they typically work 60-80 hours weeks to get that salary. Specialists tend to do better (though not always) and academic positions pay significantly worse than private practice as a rule of thumb. I'm married to an MD and she is not a business owner.
I don't know about lawyers quite as well but the data I've seen says about 20% are self employed. Lots of lawyers work for large law firms and most of them that do so are not partners.
That is like saying the author of "The Anarchist Handbook" is liable for somebody building a bomb after being "inspired by" the book.,
They could (theoretically) be held liable in several ways. For example one could pretty easily make an argument that it could be regarded as a public nuisance or incitement to commit a crime or even some form of negligence. It wouldn't be hard for a competent lawyer to come up with some grounds to hold the author liable.
Please note that I am in no way saying that the author should be (or should not be) held liable Merely pointing out that they could be.
Confirmation from an American authority that Bitcoin is a legitimate form of money.
I don't think anyone has argued that it was anything other than a form of money. It meets all the criteria of one. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean using bitcoin is a good idea (it is VERY risky) but it certainly is a form of money.
A form of money they have absolutely no control over.
Keep on believing that. There are *plenty* of regulations that cover any activity you care to use bitcoin for. Bitcoin is hardly the only other currency in existence. It is an asset and a financial instrument and as such any use of it within US borders or in countries with appropriate treaties with the US is covered under the regulations dealing with assets and financial instruments. Furthermore new laws governing financial transactions involving bitcoin can be passed at any time further regulating its use. The US also has a LOT of influence internationally and is pretty good at getting other countries to pass similar regulations even when doing so might not be a good idea. Claiming that the US government would not have any influence here is quite naive.
Thunderbolt is Apple proprietary. The Intel version which is freely licensable is called Lightpeak.
Your facts are wrong. Intel developed this technology and the code name for it was Light Peak. Apple registered the trademark for Thunderbolt but transferred the rights to that trademark to Intel two years ago. Thunderbolt is not proprietary to Apple in any meaningful way.
Hardly anything supports it.
Thunderbolt is just PCI Express and Displayport with DC power baked in. Both PCIe and DP are well supported and widespread. A Thunderbolt port can be used for PCIe or Displayport devices. It's accurate however that Thunderbolt is not widely used outside of Apple products at this time.
Light Peak was the code name for Thunderbolt which was developed by Intel and Intel owns the full rights to the trademark. It uses an Apple developed connector and Apple was the first ones to put Thunderbolt on their machines but it is unambiguously an Intel owned technology.
Intel developed Lightpeak, Apple simply purchased the technology and named it Thunderbolt, hence Apple owns the trademark on that one.
Apple transferred the Thunderbolt trademark to Intel about two years ago.
If you want to use IEEE1394, you need to pay... Apple.
As well as 9 other corporations that hold essential patent rights to the technology in IEEE1394.
Waiting for the inevitable mod-down by Apple fanboys who dont like the truth.
Since virtually all your facts are wrong you might consider taking a less adversarial tone.
Yes, blurry image when compared with LCDs. All CRTs have a (slightly) fuzzy image. Calibration helps (though it is almost never done in practice) and it can be minimized to the point you probably won't notice but CRTs do not produce as sharp an image as an LCD.
Power usage? Sorry, but the massive Sun CRT I mentioned did around 100 Watt, which is just as much as a professional level (like the Sun) LCD uses, like those from Eizo.
LCDs consume 50-70% less energy when in use than CRTs of a similar size. The precise amount varies but any argument that CRTs are competitive on power consumption is easily refuted in almost all cases. I'm sure you can probably find a corner case where some CRTs are competitive with specific LCDs but such examples would be rare at best.
Flicker is utter nonsense. It's true that below their recommended refresh rate the phosphor pixels will fade faster than they are refreshed, leading to an uncomfortable experience. Even at 75 Hz I never had any issues, nor 60 Hz for older (15") CRTs.
Right. Millions of people have just hallucinated that CRTs flicker. [/sarcasm] Seriously, don't even start with this one. CRTs flicker and most were never set at sufficiently high refresh rates. A CRT at 75Hz is usually bearable but the flicker is still observable to many and uncomfortable for some. Personally I can still see flicker in some conditions even at 85Hz though it no longer is uncomfortable for me at that refresh rate. I can't remember the last time I used a PC that the person using it had set the refresh rate higher than 75Hz and most seemed to leave it at 60Hz which would drive me crazy.
CRTs are now a niche product. For most applications they are inferior to other available display technologies. They have their advantages but their disadvantages are legion. I don't miss using them even a little bit.
The average (quality) CRT is perfectly fine for most people.
Fine? Agreed. Good? No. CRTs are bulky, heavy, flickered, hot, fragile, limited in size, have a (slighly) blurry image, contain considerable toxic chemicals (particularly lead, barium and cadmium) and drain 2-4X the power of a LCD or LED. They were useful but they were never without a lot of drawbacks. Positives? Good color and color depth, good black level, good viewing angle, minimal distortion, can display multiple resolutions and decent response time.
They do not emit any high-frequency noises, nor do they have major flickering or geometry issues.
Some of them certainly do emit a high pitched noise (heard it with my own ears) though this may be due to malfunctions in most cases. And if you think they don't have flickering or geometry issues then I want some of whatever you are smoking. It's not even a debate that they flicker - some quite badly especially below 85Hz. Their non-flat screen and projected image causes all sorts of geometry issues. They don't have a lot of distortion but they do have geometry problems.
To suggest that all CRTs are crappy is doing them a total disservice.
There are quality CRTs out there but even the best of them have some pretty significant drawbacks.
No. Can't say I've ever seen or heard of anyone having trouble with LEDs specifically. I honestly cannot even see a flicker in most LED screens whereas I was pretty sensitive to it on CRT screens. I find LEDs to be much easier on my eyes than even the best CRTs. I've seen light sensitivities that are due to interactions with poor quality or old fluorescent bulbs. My last office was next to a window which made for some glare problems and excessive brightness problems at times. I've also seen issues with brightness due to external stimuli or just a larger brightly lit screen. My wife is actually rather light sensitive so I had to dial the brightness down on a 24" monitor at home.
I'd be curious it the original poster's issue is with the LEDs or with the backlighting or with something else unrelated to the LED screen.
If an employee cannot even convince his/her own manager it is a case worth pursuing, then why should IT bother with it?
I am a manager. I have a staff of about a dozen people that report to me. If one of my employees needs to involve IT for some aspect of their work then they should do that without wasting my time needlessly. If their request could or would impact something beyond their ability to do their own work then sure, come to me first. I expect them to know when something might have external ramifications. I'm fine if they consult me when they are unsure about something but I really do not want them wasting my time (or anyone elses) on issues where I would just have to refer them to IT anyway. I hired smart competent people and I expect them to be able to interact with other parts of our business without asking for permission first. If they need my involvement to make something complicated (and necessary) happen I'm happy to oblige. If I didn't trust them to make reasonable requests and handle issues with IT themselves then I hired the wrong person.
How exactly do accountants and marketeers make money for the company?
Both are cost centers very much like IT. In fact there is only one job (sales) that is not a cost center in any company. However that does not mean they contribute nothing to helping the company make money.
The job of marketing is the creation and maintenance of the perceptions of the relationship between potential and current customers and the company as well as its products. Marketing differs from sales because marketing is only indirectly concerned with the actual generation of sales. Without a positive perception of the company and its products, customers are unlikely to purchase anything unless they have no alternative. Done properly the return on investment for marketing can be and is measured. The effect of good marketing can be seen on the bottom line. You put $X into marketing and sales change by $Y is a key task for any marketing department. Sometimes the relationship between $X and $Y is easy to determine and sometimes it is more difficult.
As for accounting I can speak to that directly since I am an accountant. Accounting is a lot more than just paying the bills and depositing payments received. Accountants are intimately involved in quoting new business, cost reduction activities, production and budget planning, purchasing and more. Profitability comes from revenue minus costs. If you don't understand your costs, you are highly unlikely to be profitable. Accountants job is the help the company understand their costs and thus understand whether and how they are making money. Without accounting the company is quite literally operating blind.
And more so than accounting, IT can also be a differentiator even in non-tech firms.
Spoken well and truly like someone who knows nothing about accounting. Accounting (like IT) can be a very significant differentiator for companies that do it well and I can tell you from first hand experience that many do their accounting quite badly and it hurts them in ways that are easily measured. Efficient accounting operations can help the company win business they would not otherwise and to keep costs low. That is one of the biggest possible differentiators there is.
That is like blaming the accountant for the accounting policies. The sysadmin implement what management decide. If you do not like it, talk to your manager.
"I was just following orders" is a poor argument. If the sysadmin or the accountant is aware that there is a problem that requires management authorization then they have a duty to bring it to the attention of management. The users have a similar obligation but if the problem involves IT or accounting, those departments are the first place to bring the issue up. You go to management once you get some sort of consensus recommendation on a course of action. Furthermore those departments would be rightfully pissed off if someone tried to do an end run around them.
Furthermore, a great many policies are not decided by management but by the IT staff. They may have management's backing but management typically does not have the time to make every decision themselves. If IT tells them that a policy change is a good idea, odds are good management will listen. If a user makes the same request about IT, the first question any good manager should have is whether IT is on board with the proposal.
Oh I've thought about it. My background is as an engineer but I'm also an accountant. I *totally* understand why they did what they did and could probably give you a pretty good model of what the costs look like and the decision tree to make the decisions they did. My point is just that I'm a little surprised (emphasis on little) that they weren't a little more forward thinking.
When I see ancient equipment like this in use long after it is considered obsolete, what it typically tells me is that they didn't do a good enough job defining their interfaces. They spent their effort getting a working system and didn't make the layers of the system sufficiently abstract. Easier said than done I know but really they should be able to plug any computer that can programmed to handle the instruction set for the robot and the underlying architecture shouldn't matter. Likewise the robot shouldn't care that its instructions are coming from a PDP-11. They should have some form of well defined interface layer between the computer and the robot so either can be swapped out without affecting the other half of the system. Again, easy to say, not quite so easy to do. But that is how it ideally should be handled. Then you can swap the hardware or update it or test it and have it make economic sense. Also it permits safety features not otherwise available. You can have several controllers with different architectures and see if they agree (basically what they do on the space shuttle). If you can arrive at the same answer using multiple different methods then odds are good you have a safe system.
'Dianne Feinstein, who is also chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said the issue of drones worried her far more than telephone and internet surveillance, which she believes are subject to sufficient legal oversight.'"
What oversight? Maybe she is in the inner circle that knows what is going on with the NSA but that is hardly what I would call oversight. A (mostly) secret program with secret directives overseen by a secret court with secret findings is not what I consider adequate oversight. There is no means by which the public will ever be informed of the findings of the surveillance and thus there is no possible way for the public to know if their rights are being compromised or if laws are being broken.
With regard to restricting the use of drones to protect citizens' privacy, Mueller said, 'It is still in nascent stages but it is worthy of debate and legislation down the road.'
Meaning the FBI is doing whatever they feel like until someone tells them to cut it out. Apparently the FBI thinks oversight means spying on us from the sky.
You can't own a number. A number merely is. BitCoin mining is the process of finding that number.
It also is an economic activity that results in gaining an asset. More on that below.
Since you can't own a number, a number has no value, intrinsic or otherwise. Now somebody might be willing to pay you to reveal a number. That's when the taxable event occurs.
Tidy argument but quite wrong. First off, it isn't just "a number", it is an asset in the same way the number that represents my bank balance is an asset. Bitcoins are an asset. An asset is ANYTHING (tangible or intangible) that is owned or controlled to that can reasonably be expected to produce future economic value. Bitcoins clearly fit this definition as they have a non-zero economic value to other people and they can be owned/controlled. Second, the earliest taxable event occurs when the asset is obtained/controlled ("mined" in this case) because it becomes property at that point. Mining is actually a fairly good term here because it is little different than if you dug gold or oil out of the ground. In formal accounting terms it is a current asset. The big difference is that oil or gold would be inventory whereas bitcoins would be considered cash or cash equivalents. When you acquire cash equivalents or acquire the reasonable expectation of receiving cash equivalents (accounts receivable), you are considered to have income. Income is taxable. So is property. It would be no different than digging up a coin you found on the beach because that is income.
That's one of the arguments against fiat currencies, yes. There isn't material value backing them up, just the government's word that "we're good for it".
And it is a silly argument. What backs up ANY asset is nothing more than the belief by people that it has value. What makes you think the promise to deliver the material backing up the currency is in any way an iron-clad guarantee? How can you be sure the other party actually has the gold to back up their dollars? Backing a currency with another asset like gold gives some people a (misplaced) degree of comfort but only because they really haven't thought it through. Having one asset (fiat currency) based on the value of another asset (gold) doesn't change what gives either one value (belief). Worse it makes it difficult to adjust policy to deal with economic ups and downs.
There are many important things that backers of the gold standard tend to overlook. The foremost is that the promise to (theoretically) exchange some amount of gold for a dollar is nothing more than a promise that can be broken. There is no way to force an unwilling government to actually hand over gold in exchange for dollars. Worse there is no way to truly be certain the other party actually has the gold they say they do. The "backing" is just theoretical. It's an IOU, no different than your "we're good for it" of a fiat currency AND it introduces a host of logistical, policy and administrative challenges.
Incidently, they go up in flames when the government backing them stops acting in a fiscally responsible way and attempt to monetize away their debt.
A gold standard (or equivalent fixed monetary base) does not prevent a government from doing irresponsible things nor does it prevent bad things from happening. Worse it does prevent governments from doing many necessary and responsible things especially during a financial crisis.
These days you can probably replace them with Arduinos.
Theoretically true but not necessarily a good idea. The equipment installed is already known to work and whatever issues it has are probably very well understood. Any installation of new hardware is going to bring new bugs and a nuke plant isn't exactly a place you want to beta test things if you don't have to. Plus there are a host of operational certification issues in play. I get why they haven't "upgraded" the hardware.
On the other hand I'm a little bit surprised (only a little) that doing things this way is the most economical method available, even accounting for the risk involved with updating systems.
This is the only valid argument for changing an existing and well-understood model when there's no new evidence to consider.
There is one more possible reason which is if it makes the information somehow more comprehensible or easier to work with to someone appropriately trained. I'm not a chemist so I can't really speak to the difficulty or failings of the current periodic table versus this proposed one. However if this proposed version is somehow easier to work with and gives equivalent (or better) results then that could be a credible reason to use it. If it saves time or mental horsepower then that could be a good reason to use it.
If you hold Bitcoins, they have no cash value, and thus are not taxable.
Not remotely true. Bitcoins have a market value and can be exchanged for cash. The rules are no different than those for barter. If you mine bitcoins you are realizing taxable income in the form of an asset with value and I promise you that the IRS will consider it taxable. You can be taxed on income in the form of assets other than cash. If you give someone (not family) a car they have to pay tax on the value they received. Happens all the time to winners of prizes.
Until I can purchase gas, groceries, and beer with Bitcoins or Battle.net Gold, it's not a real currency.
Doesn't have to be a currency to be an asset. As long as it has a market value the IRS can consider it income. Bitcoins might be a bad idea (I think they are) but they can be exchanged for cash or other assets. The IRS will not remotely care whether you can buy beer with them directly or not.
I do know of one drug dealer in my area that accepts bitcoin, but he's not paying taxes on that income already anyway so fake money is fine for him.
Then he is in violation of the tax code. Specifically his income is supposed to be declared on Line 21 of the 1040 which exists specifically for cases like this. That is how they put Al Capone in jail - they nailed him for tax evasion. Income is supposed to be declared regardless or source or legality.
Not necessarily true. The IRS may consider it income if it has a market value which Bitcoins do. Whether the asset is tangible or intangible is not relevant. You could receive an intangible asset like a copyright and in some circumstances that could be considered income.
Right now the numbers are small enough that the IRS doesn't much care but technically speaking mining bitcoins IS income and has to be declared on your 1040. Line 21 if nowhere else. In fact you have to declare income from any source, even illegal drug sales which is why Line 21 exists.
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The geek food staple the Twinkie is coming back.
Ok, show of hands. Who among you has actually consumed a twinkie after grade school? Last one I had was during the Reagan administration. Obviously they sell but I cannot recall the last time I saw anyone actually eat one. It's like the National Enquirer of foods. They apparently sell lots but you never actually see anyone buying them.
I don't really know any geeks who eat twinkies either. Is this a thing in some part of the country? I know some geeks who are overly fond of sugary treats (I'm one) but twinkies never seem to be in the shopping cart.
I don't know where you get all this BS. Most doctors work for themselves or for a small group of doctors
How about The New England Journal of Medicine? How about NPR? How about the doctor I am married to? Hospitals hire huge numbers of doctors and the rate has been increasing in recent years dramatically.
Every time I've been to a hospital (and everyone I've ever known has), I got multiple bills, one being from the hospital, and one being from the doctor.
That has precisely nothing to do with how the doctor is compensated for his/her take home pay. While it is possible that they two are independent (there are lots of independent doctor's offices), a great many practices are actually fully owned subsidiaries of hospital systems. Just because you are not in the main hospital does not mean the hospital does not own the practice. If you look you'll often see that an outpatient clinic or seemingly independent surgery center is actually affiliated with one of the major hospital systems in your area. Hospitals have been on a buying spree for the last decade. Bills for medical care are commonly not integrated. The mere fact that you received multiple bills means very little by itself. Hospital systems also are the largest category of employer for new doctors. Just because you have some limited personal experience with a few practices doesn't mean anything regarding who actually employs doctors.
Doctors DO NOT work for hospitals.
Like hell they don't. 1 in 6 works directly for a hospital and over half work for so called integrated delivery systems which is basically the hospital's wider network. Effectively captured business or subsidiary businesses. There has been a 75% rise in the number of doctors employed directly by hospitals since 2000.
I'm sorry... are you saying $175,000/ year isn't a FUCK TON of money?
Basically that is exactly what I'm saying. While no one is asking anyone to cry for the doctors, you seem to think they are incredibly wealthy which demonstrably is not true. Many do quite well in the long run but they pay a steep price to get there.First off that is gross pay and makes no allowance for cost of living in your area. $175K in NYC doesn't go far when even a crappy condo can easily cost $500K. Where I live the gross salary for a GP is more like $90-120K/year. Cut that salary number in half once taxes are taken into account. Furthermore a huge number of doctors graduate with between a quarter million to a half million in debt from their schooling. That takes $20-50K per year right off the top of their pay just in debt service. Don't forget the huge insurance costs which are in the tens of thousands of dollars. Also bear in mind that doctors are not paid for the 4 years on medical school on top of 4+ years of undergrad school and are paid a rather low salary (usually around $40K/year) while in residency which can last for between 3-8 years. That's effectively a decade or more of less than minimum wage work once you calculate the hourly wage while piling up enough debt to pay for a fairly nice house. The opportunity cost is enormous.
Did you start your career 10 years after your college educated peers with a mountain of debt and limited transferable skills? Did anyone have to pass laws to prohibit you from being forced to work more than 80+ hours a week for no extra compensation? (laws which regularly get ignored and endanger patients by the way) Have you ever been required to work 36 hour shifts without any sleep? No. You just looked at the gross salary number and decided they make just a bit less than Bill Gates and live lives of luxury and ease. The real world is a little more complicated than a gross salary figure.
60 - 80 hours a week? Welcome to minimum wage just trying to get by while supporting a family.
I've been there working very long hours for minimum wage or less. Know what? Doctors often have it worse when it comes to lifestyle. They give up a decade or more of your life training working your ass off for an hourly rate of less than minimum wage just to get started in your career with a mountain of debt. They might make a decent salary but many of them hardly get to enjoy it. I've worked a 14 hour day, and my wife who left for work before me was still at work. I've seen her pull 36 hour shifts at the hospital. Being on call means you effectively do not get any sleep and some doctors are on call as often as every 3rd or 4th night and they often don't get a day off in between. My wife spent a year or two working for minimum wage in a lab before medical school and refers to it as the happiest year of her life. Sure she had to scrape to make ends meet but her time outside of work was her own. Becoming a doctor is a objectively miserable experience and even once you begin your career the lifestyle still sucks for many doctors. I don't know how many I've spoken to who would choose another profession if they had the chance to do it all over.
FIX YOUR PERSPECTIVE!
You have no idea what my perspective is. I've been poorer than a church mouse and worked my ass off to get where I am today. I've also have worked with and lived with doctors (including my wife) and seen what they have to go through first hand. I know up close and personal what I am talking about and I'm pretty sure you do not.
Does that mean a pig is now a unit of currency as I used it to buy goods and services (off the same person).
Probably not since the pig is not used as a medium of exchange and it is not used as a as a unit of account so it does not meet the definition of being money. (It is arguably a store of value however) While it would be possible to use pigs as currency in theory, in common practice it would simply be used in barter transactions. You can barter for goods or services. While you could channel your inner Guy Fieri and say that bacon is "money", it wouldn't be in the financial sense of the word.
Bitcoin on the other hand fits the definition of money (medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account) to the letter. Doesn't mean using it is a good idea as it is very risky and relatively illiquid. But it certainly would be accurate to describe bitcoin as a currency.
Surgeons and lawyers are very different professions: they own their own businesses, they're their own bosses, and they make a ton of money
You are a quite incorrect. Better pick another example to compare to if you want your argument to hold any water.
Most doctors do not own their own business and many aren't even paid all that well especially considering the hours required. The majority work for hospitals and thus are employed by someone else. The amount of money they make varies greatly by specialty. General practitioners as a rule do not actually make particularly high salaries. The lowest paid GPs have salaries of less than $90K per year with the mean somewhere around $175K. And they typically work 60-80 hours weeks to get that salary. Specialists tend to do better (though not always) and academic positions pay significantly worse than private practice as a rule of thumb. I'm married to an MD and she is not a business owner.
I don't know about lawyers quite as well but the data I've seen says about 20% are self employed. Lots of lawyers work for large law firms and most of them that do so are not partners.
That is like saying the author of "The Anarchist Handbook" is liable for somebody building a bomb after being "inspired by" the book.,
They could (theoretically) be held liable in several ways. For example one could pretty easily make an argument that it could be regarded as a public nuisance or incitement to commit a crime or even some form of negligence. It wouldn't be hard for a competent lawyer to come up with some grounds to hold the author liable.
Please note that I am in no way saying that the author should be (or should not be) held liable Merely pointing out that they could be.
Confirmation from an American authority that Bitcoin is a legitimate form of money.
I don't think anyone has argued that it was anything other than a form of money. It meets all the criteria of one. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean using bitcoin is a good idea (it is VERY risky) but it certainly is a form of money.
A form of money they have absolutely no control over.
Keep on believing that. There are *plenty* of regulations that cover any activity you care to use bitcoin for. Bitcoin is hardly the only other currency in existence. It is an asset and a financial instrument and as such any use of it within US borders or in countries with appropriate treaties with the US is covered under the regulations dealing with assets and financial instruments. Furthermore new laws governing financial transactions involving bitcoin can be passed at any time further regulating its use. The US also has a LOT of influence internationally and is pretty good at getting other countries to pass similar regulations even when doing so might not be a good idea. Claiming that the US government would not have any influence here is quite naive.
The thing is it's not positioned as a financial instrument, but a currency.
Currency or money is a form of financial instrument. All currencies are financial instruments though not all financial instruments are currencies.
Thunderbolt is Apple proprietary. The Intel version which is freely licensable is called Lightpeak.
Your facts are wrong. Intel developed this technology and the code name for it was Light Peak. Apple registered the trademark for Thunderbolt but transferred the rights to that trademark to Intel two years ago. Thunderbolt is not proprietary to Apple in any meaningful way.
Hardly anything supports it.
Thunderbolt is just PCI Express and Displayport with DC power baked in. Both PCIe and DP are well supported and widespread. A Thunderbolt port can be used for PCIe or Displayport devices. It's accurate however that Thunderbolt is not widely used outside of Apple products at this time.
No, Lightpeak is Intel, Thunderbolt is Apple
Light Peak was the code name for Thunderbolt which was developed by Intel and Intel owns the full rights to the trademark. It uses an Apple developed connector and Apple was the first ones to put Thunderbolt on their machines but it is unambiguously an Intel owned technology.
Intel developed Lightpeak, Apple simply purchased the technology and named it Thunderbolt, hence Apple owns the trademark on that one.
Apple transferred the Thunderbolt trademark to Intel about two years ago.
If you want to use IEEE1394, you need to pay... Apple.
As well as 9 other corporations that hold essential patent rights to the technology in IEEE1394.
Waiting for the inevitable mod-down by Apple fanboys who dont like the truth.
Since virtually all your facts are wrong you might consider taking a less adversarial tone.
Blurry image?
Yes, blurry image when compared with LCDs. All CRTs have a (slightly) fuzzy image. Calibration helps (though it is almost never done in practice) and it can be minimized to the point you probably won't notice but CRTs do not produce as sharp an image as an LCD.
Power usage? Sorry, but the massive Sun CRT I mentioned did around 100 Watt, which is just as much as a professional level (like the Sun) LCD uses, like those from Eizo.
LCDs consume 50-70% less energy when in use than CRTs of a similar size. The precise amount varies but any argument that CRTs are competitive on power consumption is easily refuted in almost all cases. I'm sure you can probably find a corner case where some CRTs are competitive with specific LCDs but such examples would be rare at best.
Flicker is utter nonsense. It's true that below their recommended refresh rate the phosphor pixels will fade faster than they are refreshed, leading to an uncomfortable experience. Even at 75 Hz I never had any issues, nor 60 Hz for older (15") CRTs.
Right. Millions of people have just hallucinated that CRTs flicker. [/sarcasm] Seriously, don't even start with this one. CRTs flicker and most were never set at sufficiently high refresh rates. A CRT at 75Hz is usually bearable but the flicker is still observable to many and uncomfortable for some. Personally I can still see flicker in some conditions even at 85Hz though it no longer is uncomfortable for me at that refresh rate. I can't remember the last time I used a PC that the person using it had set the refresh rate higher than 75Hz and most seemed to leave it at 60Hz which would drive me crazy.
CRTs are now a niche product. For most applications they are inferior to other available display technologies. They have their advantages but their disadvantages are legion. I don't miss using them even a little bit.
The average (quality) CRT is perfectly fine for most people.
Fine? Agreed. Good? No. CRTs are bulky, heavy, flickered, hot, fragile, limited in size, have a (slighly) blurry image, contain considerable toxic chemicals (particularly lead, barium and cadmium) and drain 2-4X the power of a LCD or LED. They were useful but they were never without a lot of drawbacks. Positives? Good color and color depth, good black level, good viewing angle, minimal distortion, can display multiple resolutions and decent response time.
They do not emit any high-frequency noises, nor do they have major flickering or geometry issues.
Some of them certainly do emit a high pitched noise (heard it with my own ears) though this may be due to malfunctions in most cases. And if you think they don't have flickering or geometry issues then I want some of whatever you are smoking. It's not even a debate that they flicker - some quite badly especially below 85Hz. Their non-flat screen and projected image causes all sorts of geometry issues. They don't have a lot of distortion but they do have geometry problems.
To suggest that all CRTs are crappy is doing them a total disservice.
There are quality CRTs out there but even the best of them have some pretty significant drawbacks.
So do LEDs bother your eyes?
No. Can't say I've ever seen or heard of anyone having trouble with LEDs specifically. I honestly cannot even see a flicker in most LED screens whereas I was pretty sensitive to it on CRT screens. I find LEDs to be much easier on my eyes than even the best CRTs. I've seen light sensitivities that are due to interactions with poor quality or old fluorescent bulbs. My last office was next to a window which made for some glare problems and excessive brightness problems at times. I've also seen issues with brightness due to external stimuli or just a larger brightly lit screen. My wife is actually rather light sensitive so I had to dial the brightness down on a 24" monitor at home.
I'd be curious it the original poster's issue is with the LEDs or with the backlighting or with something else unrelated to the LED screen.
If an employee cannot even convince his/her own manager it is a case worth pursuing, then why should IT bother with it?
I am a manager. I have a staff of about a dozen people that report to me. If one of my employees needs to involve IT for some aspect of their work then they should do that without wasting my time needlessly. If their request could or would impact something beyond their ability to do their own work then sure, come to me first. I expect them to know when something might have external ramifications. I'm fine if they consult me when they are unsure about something but I really do not want them wasting my time (or anyone elses) on issues where I would just have to refer them to IT anyway. I hired smart competent people and I expect them to be able to interact with other parts of our business without asking for permission first. If they need my involvement to make something complicated (and necessary) happen I'm happy to oblige. If I didn't trust them to make reasonable requests and handle issues with IT themselves then I hired the wrong person.
How exactly do accountants and marketeers make money for the company?
Both are cost centers very much like IT. In fact there is only one job (sales) that is not a cost center in any company. However that does not mean they contribute nothing to helping the company make money.
The job of marketing is the creation and maintenance of the perceptions of the relationship between potential and current customers and the company as well as its products. Marketing differs from sales because marketing is only indirectly concerned with the actual generation of sales. Without a positive perception of the company and its products, customers are unlikely to purchase anything unless they have no alternative. Done properly the return on investment for marketing can be and is measured. The effect of good marketing can be seen on the bottom line. You put $X into marketing and sales change by $Y is a key task for any marketing department. Sometimes the relationship between $X and $Y is easy to determine and sometimes it is more difficult.
As for accounting I can speak to that directly since I am an accountant. Accounting is a lot more than just paying the bills and depositing payments received. Accountants are intimately involved in quoting new business, cost reduction activities, production and budget planning, purchasing and more. Profitability comes from revenue minus costs. If you don't understand your costs, you are highly unlikely to be profitable. Accountants job is the help the company understand their costs and thus understand whether and how they are making money. Without accounting the company is quite literally operating blind.
And more so than accounting, IT can also be a differentiator even in non-tech firms.
Spoken well and truly like someone who knows nothing about accounting. Accounting (like IT) can be a very significant differentiator for companies that do it well and I can tell you from first hand experience that many do their accounting quite badly and it hurts them in ways that are easily measured. Efficient accounting operations can help the company win business they would not otherwise and to keep costs low. That is one of the biggest possible differentiators there is.
That is like blaming the accountant for the accounting policies. The sysadmin implement what management decide. If you do not like it, talk to your manager.
"I was just following orders" is a poor argument. If the sysadmin or the accountant is aware that there is a problem that requires management authorization then they have a duty to bring it to the attention of management. The users have a similar obligation but if the problem involves IT or accounting, those departments are the first place to bring the issue up. You go to management once you get some sort of consensus recommendation on a course of action. Furthermore those departments would be rightfully pissed off if someone tried to do an end run around them.
Furthermore, a great many policies are not decided by management but by the IT staff. They may have management's backing but management typically does not have the time to make every decision themselves. If IT tells them that a policy change is a good idea, odds are good management will listen. If a user makes the same request about IT, the first question any good manager should have is whether IT is on board with the proposal.
Not really if you think about it.
Oh I've thought about it. My background is as an engineer but I'm also an accountant. I *totally* understand why they did what they did and could probably give you a pretty good model of what the costs look like and the decision tree to make the decisions they did. My point is just that I'm a little surprised (emphasis on little) that they weren't a little more forward thinking.
When I see ancient equipment like this in use long after it is considered obsolete, what it typically tells me is that they didn't do a good enough job defining their interfaces. They spent their effort getting a working system and didn't make the layers of the system sufficiently abstract. Easier said than done I know but really they should be able to plug any computer that can programmed to handle the instruction set for the robot and the underlying architecture shouldn't matter. Likewise the robot shouldn't care that its instructions are coming from a PDP-11. They should have some form of well defined interface layer between the computer and the robot so either can be swapped out without affecting the other half of the system. Again, easy to say, not quite so easy to do. But that is how it ideally should be handled. Then you can swap the hardware or update it or test it and have it make economic sense. Also it permits safety features not otherwise available. You can have several controllers with different architectures and see if they agree (basically what they do on the space shuttle). If you can arrive at the same answer using multiple different methods then odds are good you have a safe system.
'Dianne Feinstein, who is also chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said the issue of drones worried her far more than telephone and internet surveillance, which she believes are subject to sufficient legal oversight.'"
What oversight? Maybe she is in the inner circle that knows what is going on with the NSA but that is hardly what I would call oversight. A (mostly) secret program with secret directives overseen by a secret court with secret findings is not what I consider adequate oversight. There is no means by which the public will ever be informed of the findings of the surveillance and thus there is no possible way for the public to know if their rights are being compromised or if laws are being broken.
With regard to restricting the use of drones to protect citizens' privacy, Mueller said, 'It is still in nascent stages but it is worthy of debate and legislation down the road.'
Meaning the FBI is doing whatever they feel like until someone tells them to cut it out. Apparently the FBI thinks oversight means spying on us from the sky.
You can't own a number. A number merely is. BitCoin mining is the process of finding that number.
It also is an economic activity that results in gaining an asset. More on that below.
Since you can't own a number, a number has no value, intrinsic or otherwise. Now somebody might be willing to pay you to reveal a number. That's when the taxable event occurs.
Tidy argument but quite wrong. First off, it isn't just "a number", it is an asset in the same way the number that represents my bank balance is an asset. Bitcoins are an asset. An asset is ANYTHING (tangible or intangible) that is owned or controlled to that can reasonably be expected to produce future economic value. Bitcoins clearly fit this definition as they have a non-zero economic value to other people and they can be owned/controlled. Second, the earliest taxable event occurs when the asset is obtained/controlled ("mined" in this case) because it becomes property at that point. Mining is actually a fairly good term here because it is little different than if you dug gold or oil out of the ground. In formal accounting terms it is a current asset. The big difference is that oil or gold would be inventory whereas bitcoins would be considered cash or cash equivalents. When you acquire cash equivalents or acquire the reasonable expectation of receiving cash equivalents (accounts receivable), you are considered to have income. Income is taxable. So is property. It would be no different than digging up a coin you found on the beach because that is income.
That's one of the arguments against fiat currencies, yes. There isn't material value backing them up, just the government's word that "we're good for it".
And it is a silly argument. What backs up ANY asset is nothing more than the belief by people that it has value. What makes you think the promise to deliver the material backing up the currency is in any way an iron-clad guarantee? How can you be sure the other party actually has the gold to back up their dollars? Backing a currency with another asset like gold gives some people a (misplaced) degree of comfort but only because they really haven't thought it through. Having one asset (fiat currency) based on the value of another asset (gold) doesn't change what gives either one value (belief). Worse it makes it difficult to adjust policy to deal with economic ups and downs.
There are many important things that backers of the gold standard tend to overlook. The foremost is that the promise to (theoretically) exchange some amount of gold for a dollar is nothing more than a promise that can be broken. There is no way to force an unwilling government to actually hand over gold in exchange for dollars. Worse there is no way to truly be certain the other party actually has the gold they say they do. The "backing" is just theoretical. It's an IOU, no different than your "we're good for it" of a fiat currency AND it introduces a host of logistical, policy and administrative challenges.
Incidently, they go up in flames when the government backing them stops acting in a fiscally responsible way and attempt to monetize away their debt.
A gold standard (or equivalent fixed monetary base) does not prevent a government from doing irresponsible things nor does it prevent bad things from happening. Worse it does prevent governments from doing many necessary and responsible things especially during a financial crisis.
These days you can probably replace them with Arduinos.
Theoretically true but not necessarily a good idea. The equipment installed is already known to work and whatever issues it has are probably very well understood. Any installation of new hardware is going to bring new bugs and a nuke plant isn't exactly a place you want to beta test things if you don't have to. Plus there are a host of operational certification issues in play. I get why they haven't "upgraded" the hardware.
On the other hand I'm a little bit surprised (only a little) that doing things this way is the most economical method available, even accounting for the risk involved with updating systems.
This is the only valid argument for changing an existing and well-understood model when there's no new evidence to consider.
There is one more possible reason which is if it makes the information somehow more comprehensible or easier to work with to someone appropriately trained. I'm not a chemist so I can't really speak to the difficulty or failings of the current periodic table versus this proposed one. However if this proposed version is somehow easier to work with and gives equivalent (or better) results then that could be a credible reason to use it. If it saves time or mental horsepower then that could be a good reason to use it.
If you hold Bitcoins, they have no cash value, and thus are not taxable.
Not remotely true. Bitcoins have a market value and can be exchanged for cash. The rules are no different than those for barter. If you mine bitcoins you are realizing taxable income in the form of an asset with value and I promise you that the IRS will consider it taxable. You can be taxed on income in the form of assets other than cash. If you give someone (not family) a car they have to pay tax on the value they received. Happens all the time to winners of prizes.
Until I can purchase gas, groceries, and beer with Bitcoins or Battle.net Gold, it's not a real currency.
Doesn't have to be a currency to be an asset. As long as it has a market value the IRS can consider it income. Bitcoins might be a bad idea (I think they are) but they can be exchanged for cash or other assets. The IRS will not remotely care whether you can buy beer with them directly or not.
I do know of one drug dealer in my area that accepts bitcoin, but he's not paying taxes on that income already anyway so fake money is fine for him.
Then he is in violation of the tax code. Specifically his income is supposed to be declared on Line 21 of the 1040 which exists specifically for cases like this. That is how they put Al Capone in jail - they nailed him for tax evasion. Income is supposed to be declared regardless or source or legality.
Only if you make real money do you have to pay.
Not necessarily true. The IRS may consider it income if it has a market value which Bitcoins do. Whether the asset is tangible or intangible is not relevant. You could receive an intangible asset like a copyright and in some circumstances that could be considered income.
Right now the numbers are small enough that the IRS doesn't much care but technically speaking mining bitcoins IS income and has to be declared on your 1040. Line 21 if nowhere else. In fact you have to declare income from any source, even illegal drug sales which is why Line 21 exists.