Slashdot Mirror


User: jbolden

jbolden's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
13,627
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 13,627

  1. Re:heh on Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing · · Score: 1

    Note you are quoting the heritage foundation here.

    But it seems to me the article isn't that damning. The US government purchased a credit swap where the split the interest from the 14.5% Chrysler would have had to pay and effectively lent at $10.5% for 3 years in exchange for warrants. That looks like the sort of thing Wall Street financiers do all the time for most American companies. That is just standard operating procedure in the USA.

    So how does that say anything one way or another about unions?

  2. Re:heh on Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The US auto industry is one of the only US manufacturing industries that has survived, thrived and grown from 1970-2006. Look at Steel, textiles.... it doesn't appear that unionization and high wages were that destructive.

    And if the auto companies wanted (or still want) worker concessions one way to achieve that is employee ownership. They could have discussed stock plans with the unions as part of contract negotiations.

  3. Re:Consequences on MySpace Verdict a Danger To Depressed Kids · · Score: 1

    Sorry "Lori Drew hung herself" should be "Megan hung herself..."

  4. Re:heh on Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Precisely. Unions have a long term interest in the company, the executives often have a mid term interest in the stock price.

  5. Re:heh on Tech Firms Oppose Union Organizing · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problems in tech have mainly been caused by short term thinking of employers. Unions by tieing employers and employees more closely can cure short term thinking problems.

  6. Re:Consequences on MySpace Verdict a Danger To Depressed Kids · · Score: 1

    The question is how far you want to push back causation. Lets exaggerate to make the point. One doesn't die from being shot, rather they die from bleeding from a bullet wound. It is not the fact the bullet hit them that killed them but their hearts insistence on pumping before the wound was properly tied off. And then the person convicted of the homicide isn't the bullet bur rather just pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

    No one buys that sort of nonsense. Pulling the trigger and pointing the gun is the proximate cause of the death even if it occurs days later. And even if the victim did stuff like tried to run away which increased their blood flow.

    In the case of megan breaking up with her boyfriend and his spreading private messages to her school friends was the proximate reason she was so emotionally distressed she believed suicide was an appropriate response.

    Another example people who die while trying to escape from an armed robbery, rape or kidnapping are considered murder victims. Person A was trying to rape person B and B jumps out 6 story window to escape, A can be sentenced to life for murder.

    Lori Drew hung herself because she was successfully emotionally attacked by Lori, her daughter and Ashley Grills. There is a serious risk when you attack someone that the attack could turn out to do more damage than expected, in which case the penalty could be higher than expected. Lori Drew's intent was not to cause death, but her intent was to cause harm. Someone who intends to cause harm and accidentally causes death committed homicide but not murder.

  7. Consequences on MySpace Verdict a Danger To Depressed Kids · · Score: 1

    Most law is dependent on the actual consequences of actions.

    1) The difference between battery and murder is how much damage you did.

    2) The difference between vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment and DWI has to do with effect.

    There is nothing unusual here. You tease someone and they suck it up you get off. You tease someone and they become severely distressed and you have problems. You tease someone and they die because of it, its homicide.

  8. Re:N-dimensions -1 on Apple's 3D Desktop Patent Filing Examined · · Score: 1

    Actually our vision is designed for 3+ dimensions. A huge percentage of our visual system is designed around detecting motion and changes in motion. A huge percentage is dedicated to depth. We want to use as much of the eye / brain system as possible not as little as possible to get information into the brain as quickly as possible.

  9. Re:Story about a Software Patent on Apple's 3D Desktop Patent Filing Examined · · Score: 1

    Obviously software patents are terrible. Apple generally patents stuff they are working on and they have spent billions on 3D technology, and a long history of innovation so there is no reason to believe they aren't genuinely working on this. So I think the "should there be software patents" should be separated off from "is Apple engaged in a con".

  10. Re:Wrong question. on 64-Bit Java For Linux · · Score: 1

    Other than processing masses of data and doing computations what reason is there for computers? That's like 99% of what they do. The compelling reason for upgrading is:

    1) do floating point computations faster
    2) be able to handle more data

  11. Re:128 bit computing is around the corner on 64-Bit Java For Linux · · Score: 1

    128 bit may not have anything to do with memory. The Crays made use of wide vector pipes for rapid vector computations. As we move towards more 3D effects we may see the same sorts of moves. For example we already see the GTX 280 using a 512 bit bus.

  12. Re:Don't tell this to Dell on The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks · · Score: 1

    I agree with you. Fully embracing Linux would IMHO drastically cut support costs, but it would require substantial upfront costs. For example assume Flash 12 is compiled against the next version of glib ....

  13. Re:I seem to prefer GNOME on Samba's Jeremy Allison On Linux's Future · · Score: 1

    Apple has spent a fortune on things like core video, core image integrating quick time. They aren't going to be able to close that gap anytime soon.

  14. Re:Ah yes. All this 'choice' is sooooo great on Samba's Jeremy Allison On Linux's Future · · Score: 1

    Since about 1999 KDE has had problems with major distributions. It started with Debian (though that is fixed) then RedHat was very pro-Gnome, and Sun's Java desktop. Just look at who are the members of the Gnome foundation particularly 6-8 years ago. The OEM versions Progeny and User Linux were both Gnome based.

    In the end though KDE has out innovated Gnome fairly consistently. Linux users pick KDE over Gnome for themselves by a large but not overwhelming majority. Ubuntu started off Gnome only but KDE users demanded a KDE version. On the other hand Mandriva (Mandrake) had to go the other way.

    There just isn't a clear winner today. Moreover the two diverged heavily in their plusses and minuses and design choices.

  15. Re:Welcome to GPL/OSS on Is MySQL's Community Eating the Company? · · Score: 1

    Not really. Frequently there is a great deal of expertise which is fairly specialized. For example Sun is way ahead of any other company (not government or University) in terms of their SSH servers and codes. While they give it away no one has the right combination of deep math and complex software to do what they do.

  16. Re:Linux on the desktop? on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1

    Can you elaborate on what you want to do differently between a workstation and a desktop? What specifically do you see as different?

  17. Re:Don't tell this to Dell on The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dell internally treats enterprise/government and small business/home as two separate companies. For example they use different advertising agencies, different help desks, different software to price out their systems. The only thing they share is they both draw on Dell's manufacturing capacity in a sort of client / vendor way.

    The corporate side may not yet understand what their customers want in a netbook so they want to sell a basic configuration. Because once they start supporting a LInux they are going to need to be able to address issues corporate & governement concerns on Linux / Netbooks and they don't know what those are.

    I can think of lots of reasons they are interested in having an experimental project in a school. Support in incredibly expensive, lets assume on the mini 9, $20 a call. These netbooks have light margins particularly if they do some sort of educator/large business discount (since after all you could have just ordered from the home store) lets say $35 or less.

    1) They are likely to get call from the girls as things go wrong (they are kids)
    2) Returns are likely to be high as these things get broken.
    3) They are going to support educational packages and different use cases for the corporate market.

    How do they not get 2 calls / unit with those sorts of numbers?

    Dell internally essentially exists as a home and small business corporation, an enterprise corporation and a service corporation.

  18. Re:I don't get it on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1

    I bought an Inspiron 6000 which was 1ghz Pentium III with 512mb of ram back in 6/01. This was a laptop (a high end laptop but still). A 4 year consumer desktop shouldn't upgrade OS at all.

  19. Re:Microsoft's Turd on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1

    Can you name a feature that makes Vista better than XP in a way that can't be tweaked with a registry key or some free add-on?

    Driver virtualization
    Use of a window manager (i.e. virtualization of windows)
    WDDM
    Windows Colors System (very useful for color printing)
    Hybrid sleep
    and Paint got a lot better

    (I'm am OSX user BTW)

  20. Re:It will work... on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1

    For $150 you couldn't have helped them do an XP install from an older version?

  21. Re:It will work... on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1
  22. Re:It will work... on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1

    2008 was the first year there was a substantial education gap favoring the democrats. George Bush was elected by the smart and stupid in equal numbers.

  23. Re:It's right for you. Will you be allowed to buy on The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks · · Score: 1

    Then I'm surprised. OK I'll drop the Socratic method....

    CUPS was not designed as a simple end user printer configuration system. It was designed to unify: spooling, filtering and networking into a single configuration. Prior to CUPS there was no way for example to detect what data types a remote printer would accept so there was no way to properly filter for remote printers automatically.

    Similarly given a local machine running network protocols A,B and C and a server running D,E,F and a printer running G and H it was very complicated to figure out the right sorts of data routes.

    In other words CUPS was designed for network administrators who didn't need a full featured print solution but needed something more complex that LPD (see http://lpd.brooksnet.com/index.html for a good discussion of LPD). The assumption was they did in fact understand to make life easier for people with lots of printers to get the right kind of data to their printers (which is what Apple uses it for) using network protocols the printer will accept.

    The problem with the rant is that it assumes Aunt Tillie should be using CUPS. And yes CUPS is a PITA. But try configuring something like a university department network with 200 workstations and 15 printers bought over a period of say 10 years with different permissions running different networking software needing different filters and you'll love CUPS.

  24. Re:The manufacturers should be careful on The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks · · Score: 1

    Any hypothesis as to why the Xandros on the Asus is so poor?

  25. Re:SSD on The Economist Suggests Linux For Netbooks · · Score: 1

    Oh and Asus runs Xandros.