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User: Carbonite

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  1. It's a little more complicated though:

    The $350B is over 5 years, so assuming the same $100k base salary/person/year that's $10B.

    Also, the "fully loaded cost" of an employee is often 2x base salary once benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc...), bonus, overhead (rent, equipment) are taken into account. So the cost to Apple for those 20,000 employees is likely around $20B total.

    That's about 5.7%, not an insignificant amount, either in dollar or as fraction of the total spend. Of course, folks are free to debate whether the amount could/should be even higher....

  2. Re:overpaid? on Pentagon Lost Billions, Pennies At a Time · · Score: 5, Informative

    His salary was equivalent to about $70,000 today, which isn't too shabby (though hardly "overpaid"). Also, the article mentioned that there was a financial incentive for discovering ways to save money. Davey admitted that he was hoping to get some award from his discovery.

  3. Re:nice on Use Your iPhone To Get Out of a Ticket · · Score: 3, Informative

    If the ticket is upheld, you pay: $12.50 (deposit) + $25.00 (ticket) = $37.50

    You receive: $12.50 (refund) + $2.50 (10% of ticket) = $15.00

    Net paid: $37.50 - $15.00 = $22.50

    Savings = $2.50

  4. Re:Profit Margins in Publishing on Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Jobs · · Score: 1

    Going from a 50% margin to a 2% margin is a sign of poor management...

    50% is gross profit margin, while the 2% is net profit margin. To get from gross to net, you have to take into account rent, labor, taxes, depreciation, interest payments, insurance and lots of other expenses. Perhaps there is some poor management, but 2% net profit margin doesn't necessarily indicate this.

  5. Re:Not really a surprise. on US Has Been In Recession Since December 2007 · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure if or how healthcare is included in inflation calculations, but it's certainly possible for its rate of increase to exceed the overall inflation rate.

    Let's say healthcare costs are increasing by 30% per year. Inflation without these costs might be 3% (I'm just making these numbers up). Inflation including healthcare costs would be higher, perhaps 4%. Either way, healthcare is rising much faster than inflation.

  6. Re:So show us. on Improving Wikipedia Coverage of Computer Science · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe you're right, but thus far you've acted exactly as the parent post described: Complaining about how bad Wikipedia is without providing any links as evidence. So why not show us these "minor edits" that were reverted by corrupt admins so we can judge for ourselves?

  7. Re:This is aimed at power users... on Microsoft Cuts Vista Price In 70 Countries · · Score: 1

    I seriously doubt I am all that unique in the amount of computers I have running...

    Maybe it's not unique, but I would consider it to be rather rare for a family (outside of the Slashdot crowd) to have seven computers in their home.

  8. Re:Oh come on! on Mass Effect's Aftermath · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think you're greatly oversimplifying. The complexity isn't in storing the bits of data, it's in designing a system that's intuitive for players. Not to mention that I'd bet that the actual data structures are much more complex than you described above.

  9. Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed on Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps · · Score: 1

    Check your social skills. I used a 31 day month to show an upper limit, not to attempt to match his figure. The error is several orders of magnitude, not a few percent.

  10. Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed on Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps · · Score: 1

    ...there are 9,331,200,000 seconds in a month.

    Check your math. 60 * 60 * 24 * 31 = 2,678,400 seconds in a (31 day) month.

  11. Re:Care to cite that? on Airport Profilers Learn to Read Facial Expressions · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, I'm also going to have to call bullshit. There's no way the TSA has the technology, resources or competence to match passengers' destinations with their clothes. Even if such a system did exist, it would be utterly useless due to the number of false positives it would produce.

  12. Re:Misreading on Bill Gates Denied Visa To Nigeria · · Score: 4, Funny

    You are aware that a joke is a short story or ironic depiction of a situation communicated with the intent of being humorous. Jokes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers. The desired response is generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen flat" or "needs the ropes". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke/

  13. Re:So on Turned Off iPhone Gets $4800 Bill from AT&T · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He deserves a huge bill simply because he brought his iPhone(s) to another country? I don't think so. I'm all for personal responsibility, but it's not like he was intentionally using the phone. He had them turned off and could reasonably have assumed it wasn't going to be accessing the network.

  14. Re:does anyone use that? on AT&T Stops 'Time', Ends An Era · · Score: 1

    Don't worry, I'm sure that newfangled "watch" invention will find its way to rural America in due time.

  15. Re:Way to spin it into a PS3 problem zonk. on PS3 Issues Caused GTA IV Delay? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The GP was claiming that the article never blamed the PS3 for a delay, presenting this as evidence of Zonk's bias. This simply isn't true, as the quote I provided proves. You can make the argument that Sony shouldn't be blamed for the delay, but it's obvious that they are being blamed for the delay (at least in the article).

  16. Re:Way to spin it into a PS3 problem zonk. on PS3 Issues Caused GTA IV Delay? · · Score: 4, Informative

    RTFA. The first paragraph of the article:

    Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter says Take-Two management has "stumbled badly for the first time" with the delay of GTA IV, and said that he believes difficulties porting the game to the PlayStation 3 are to blame and that the company's new green light policy appears to be a failure.

  17. Re:better hope it's real stealthy on USAF Developing New "SR-72" Supersonic Spy? · · Score: 1

    Assuming such lasers exist, shooting down a satellite is much, much harder than hitting any airplane.

    From the rest of your argument, I think you meant that shooting down a plane (with a laser) is much harder than hitting a satellite.

  18. Re:There are no HD equipped 360's on 360 Limiting GTA IV In Some Ways · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think the "HD" refers to hard drive, not HD-DVD.

  19. Re:It comes down to this on 360 Limiting GTA IV In Some Ways · · Score: 1

    GTA4 isnt the only game strugling with the 360, you'll notice many highend EA projects have now moved from 360 to PS3 due to the space and processing issues.

    Any specific examples?

  20. Re:Similar to Vista. on Some Blu-Ray, HD DVD Discs Sell Only 200 Copies · · Score: 1

    I'd guess that less than 1% of parents even know what Region 0 is so I don't think it's affecting sales too much.

  21. Re:I don't buy the crowd control thing on The Real Reasons Phones Are Kept Off Planes · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In my experience, people tend to talk louder on cell phones than when talking to the person next to them. It's probably to compensate for a perceived lack of clarity in the connection.

  22. Re:He's been way off-the-mark for years... on Mathematician Predicts Yankees To Dominate · · Score: 1

    In general that may be true, but I highly doubt that MLB teams are changing their behavior due to predictions.

  23. Re:GTA IV - Gimped Thanks To The Xbox 360 on GTA IV Trailer Released, Slows Sites · · Score: 1

    No, if fewer XBox 360s were sold it would only mean that companies would be less likely to release games for the 360. It's not a zero sum game. Fewer 360 games does not imply more PC games. In any case, companies already have 10 million+ 360s to market their games to.

  24. Re:How many times is the media going to do this? on Sinbad Rises From Wikipedia Grave · · Score: 1

    Who has claimed that Wikipedia is accurate, authoritative and truthful? Can you provide links to these claims being made?

  25. Re:News Flash on Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It? · · Score: 1

    IMO all businesses will have to shift to a 24/7 business model to compete globally.

    Some businesses will shift, but all? No way. For example, I work for an insurance company with 99%+ of its customers (for a particular product line) in one state. There's a 24/7 claims hotline, but otherwise it's standard business hours. Many businesses have little, if any, reason to expand globally.