That's really not such a great idea - companies come and go, and the dinosaur ties your fortunes to that one company. Better stay out of company-specific crap and keep your skill-set up to date.
Because they are genuinely that short-sighted. Q4 is shorter, so income drops. That's well-known, but financial circles are really so stupid that this is seen as bad news. Companies react by somehow trying to cut costs, no matter how dearly they'll end up paying for that cost-cutting in Q1. This goes from the typical "no pencil buying" to reducing business trips (resulting in wasted work and slower time to market). In one particular case my company delayed tapeout of a chip. Making masks for a chip is expensive, so moving that into next quarter makes a big difference on the balance sheet. Also cost us a month in time to market and a few million dollars in income. Looked better in Q4, though.
There is always this perception that being laid-off later somehow means you are better. Personally I've even profited from that perception once. The truth is though that companies operate typically in a very short-sighted manner. Working on a vital project is a much better protection against layoffs than personal skill. Even worse - sometimes a company starts a challenging project, pulls in the best people from everywhere to work on it, and then runs out of cash and lays them off.
Also having specialized in-company knowledge is a good way to stay employed - particularly knowing how to maintain badly-coded dinosaur applications. And of course: connections - low performers who are friends with influential people in the company will find a way to stick around. Because their skills are low they know staying is their best bet and they'll put in a lot of effort to do so.
Qualified people with an up-to-date skill set will be less concerned about hanging on to the job. They know they'll find something somewhere else and might even volunteer because the severance package makes it a rather good deal. Last round of layoffs in my company, some engineers took the package (around a year's salary worth) and found a job after a few months. Can be a pretty good move if you are not too worried about the risk.
I think this article is crap, to put it bluntly. Just looking at the first guy in the story: about a quarter of the population of Munich are foreigners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Growth_of_Munich#Population_Structure - somehow all these people find landlords willing to rent to them. On top of that Munich is a place were many people want to live, and as a result is one of the most expensive places in Germany to find accommodation. So a 31 year-old student finds it hard to find an apartment in downtown Munich? What a surprise - it's pretty damn hard for someone with a well-paying job.
I'd be curious if they are better than the first bundle? I've purchased that one, but apart from World of Goo (which I already had) I thought they were rather disappointing. From a technical level it felt like the sort of games I might have played ten years ago (again: apart from World of Goo which has a very professional feel to it).
There is no natural law requiring this, and religious laws (where they apply) tend to favor authority. However in the declaration of independence it says "[...] Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed [...]". The writers of the declaration of independence thought that this was self-evident. Also Abraham Lincoln expressed it rather well in the Gettysburg address as "Of the People, By the People, For the People".
So nothing new about this concept in American history, I think that's fair to say. Certainly in human history there were other approaches, too - e.g. Machiavelli describes a quite different concept of government.
So what if I don't like Drudge and do like Wikileaks? It's still absurd that they are asking for control of the domain for a copyright violation. The courts should reject such attacks on free speech. Unfortunately I have no confidence in the US legal system.
BTW: governments are supposed to be accountable to the electorate - NOT the other way round.
That's not a lot of area which you could cover, and the positioning is not ideal for photovoltaic use. On top of that there is mechanical stress on the photovoltaic panels - you have to expect damage. The rotor would be heavier which would reduce efficiency. I doubt your plan would be economically viable.
Maybe each client could accept requests to transfer bytes from another client. The requests would have a format like "please get me byte x for torrent y from peer z". When you download a file, then for each byte your client would randomly pick another client to make the request.
This way if you serve a file you'd have no idea who actually downloads it - you'd only get requests from random clients which are not actually downloading the file.
You can further complicate this by not making the request directly, but instead add a counter to the request. Each client decrements the request counter by one and forwards the request to another randomly chosen client. Only when the counter is zero will it actually request the byte from the server.
Of course that would add a lot of overhead - probably better not to make it on byte boundaries, but rather use larger blocks. Also the file server isn't really protected. I suspect there are probably lots of better techniques available already.
I don't think so. In fact in the past Taiwan has explicitly renounced that claim. Whether Ma's interpretation (in a single interview) formally changes that, is up for debate. Negotiations between Taiwan and China are not (officially) done on presidential level, anyway.
They agree that there is only one China in this world, and that the mainland and Taiwan belong to that one China
There are differing opinions in Taiwan on that topic, I give you that. Certainly there are people in Taiwan who believe that Taiwan belongs to China, and the current president of Taiwan is among them. However he is far from the majority of Taiwanese on this topic, and previous Taiwanese governments took a different position. It's not clear whether Ma's opinion is official government policy, either.
That Taiwan is still called ROC is at China's "insistence", they regularly threaten war over things like that.
The more interesting question is - what exactly is it that has given China this competitive advantage now?
Low wages (or wage dumping at this point, together with currency manipulations to keep export prices attractive), relative stability (as long as growth rates are high, at least) and the fact that they are in a catching-up position. It's a lot easier (and initially more profitable) to copy proven designs from mature economies instead of coming up with their own. If you look back - Taiwan used to have similar growth rates. Now that wages have increased and they've moved to technology leadership in many fields, rather than being followers, their growth rates have slowed down.
The system has worked so far in propelling China towards becoming the world's largest economy
Largest exporter, actually - that's quite different. The US economy is about three times the size.
Anyway if you lump the GDP of a billion people together, you ought to end up with a large number. If you lump the EU together (and there is some justification for doing that) you'd end up with 500 million people and an economy four times the size of China's. (See here.)
If you compare a country's performance you should really look at something like GDP per head, instead. China is at $3735, Taiwan at $16372, the US at $46436. (Using IMF data.) So the system has worked in the sense that it has increased China's GDP, but right now it's working nowhere near as well as the systems in developed countries.
Wikipedia certainly doesn't break the law in the jurisdiction it operates in. Your interpretation of the "law" would basically make any investigative journalism a criminal activity.
I'm all for government transparency and accountability
You are all for it, as long as those words mean nothing specific. Just a lofty goal "government transparency - yeah I'm for it". Reporting government wrongdoing or dubious activity, if said government would rather nobody found out... well that would take things too far. Transparency is only for those cases when the government likes being transparent, it appears.
I'm assuming PayPal was pressured a bit in this matter.
Poor PayPal. Were they sued? Was there a court order? Or is it enough when some government agency makes threatening phone calls?
Profiling does not work. Islamic terrorist have already used a pregnant Irish girl in an attempt to bomb an aircraft.
When she became pregnant with his child, Hindawi convinced her that they should go to Israel in order to get married. [...] Unknown to [his girlfriend], he intended her to take an explosives-laden bag on board an El Al flight.
Just looking at Bill Gates: he was born in a rich, well-connected family. His grand father was a national bank president, his father a prominent lawyer, his mother was on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. He went to an expensive prep school and from there to Harvard. His mother probably had a lot to do with the fact that his company got that contract with IBM.
He really had every advantage in life. This doesn't mean his accomplishments aren't real, but saying he created a huge company out of nothing is pushing it.
Plus people talking to themselves are not all that rare today, and weren't that rare in 1928 either. It's a lot more likely that someone is acting weird, rubbing their cheek or covering their aching ear and muttering to themselves than someone talking on a cell phone at a time it hadn't been invented yet.
Your taxes have to be higher because these guys have to pay less. You should ask your government to close these loopholes, and have big companies pay a reasonable share of the tax.
It's not "ok", it's just legal. It's also unfair since smaller companies and individuals can't make use of these loopholes.
Moral behavior is not required by law, but that doesn't mean that it has no value. If someone behaves like a jerk, it's good that society calls them on that. Google paying a ridiculously low amount of tax is jerkish behavior to say the least.
Well some people today may have a religion which they believe to resemble what the druids thousands of years ago believed. To be a religion it needs to be a genuinely held belief.
However just because a belief is genuine, doesn't mean it's true. In this particular case, it doesn't mean that their acts of worship are even remotely similar to what the druids practiced, doesn't mean they believe in any of the same things or establish any kind of connection to druids.
So: wouldn't they have some ground to claim "intellectual property" on Stonehenge?
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That's really not such a great idea - companies come and go, and the dinosaur ties your fortunes to that one company. Better stay out of company-specific crap and keep your skill-set up to date.
Because they are genuinely that short-sighted. Q4 is shorter, so income drops. That's well-known, but financial circles are really so stupid that this is seen as bad news. Companies react by somehow trying to cut costs, no matter how dearly they'll end up paying for that cost-cutting in Q1. This goes from the typical "no pencil buying" to reducing business trips (resulting in wasted work and slower time to market). In one particular case my company delayed tapeout of a chip. Making masks for a chip is expensive, so moving that into next quarter makes a big difference on the balance sheet. Also cost us a month in time to market and a few million dollars in income. Looked better in Q4, though.
Also having specialized in-company knowledge is a good way to stay employed - particularly knowing how to maintain badly-coded dinosaur applications. And of course: connections - low performers who are friends with influential people in the company will find a way to stick around. Because their skills are low they know staying is their best bet and they'll put in a lot of effort to do so.
Qualified people with an up-to-date skill set will be less concerned about hanging on to the job. They know they'll find something somewhere else and might even volunteer because the severance package makes it a rather good deal. Last round of layoffs in my company, some engineers took the package (around a year's salary worth) and found a job after a few months. Can be a pretty good move if you are not too worried about the risk.
I think this article is crap, to put it bluntly. Just looking at the first guy in the story: about a quarter of the population of Munich are foreigners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Growth_of_Munich#Population_Structure - somehow all these people find landlords willing to rent to them. On top of that Munich is a place were many people want to live, and as a result is one of the most expensive places in Germany to find accommodation. So a 31 year-old student finds it hard to find an apartment in downtown Munich? What a surprise - it's pretty damn hard for someone with a well-paying job.
I'd be curious if they are better than the first bundle? I've purchased that one, but apart from World of Goo (which I already had) I thought they were rather disappointing. From a technical level it felt like the sort of games I might have played ten years ago (again: apart from World of Goo which has a very professional feel to it).
So nothing new about this concept in American history, I think that's fair to say. Certainly in human history there were other approaches, too - e.g. Machiavelli describes a quite different concept of government.
BTW: governments are supposed to be accountable to the electorate - NOT the other way round.
That's not a lot of area which you could cover, and the positioning is not ideal for photovoltaic use. On top of that there is mechanical stress on the photovoltaic panels - you have to expect damage. The rotor would be heavier which would reduce efficiency. I doubt your plan would be economically viable.
This way if you serve a file you'd have no idea who actually downloads it - you'd only get requests from random clients which are not actually downloading the file.
You can further complicate this by not making the request directly, but instead add a counter to the request. Each client decrements the request counter by one and forwards the request to another randomly chosen client. Only when the counter is zero will it actually request the byte from the server.
Of course that would add a lot of overhead - probably better not to make it on byte boundaries, but rather use larger blocks. Also the file server isn't really protected. I suspect there are probably lots of better techniques available already.
Found it here.
I don't think so. In fact in the past Taiwan has explicitly renounced that claim. Whether Ma's interpretation (in a single interview) formally changes that, is up for debate. Negotiations between Taiwan and China are not (officially) done on presidential level, anyway.
There are differing opinions in Taiwan on that topic, I give you that. Certainly there are people in Taiwan who believe that Taiwan belongs to China, and the current president of Taiwan is among them. However he is far from the majority of Taiwanese on this topic, and previous Taiwanese governments took a different position. It's not clear whether Ma's opinion is official government policy, either.
That Taiwan is still called ROC is at China's "insistence", they regularly threaten war over things like that.
Low wages (or wage dumping at this point, together with currency manipulations to keep export prices attractive), relative stability (as long as growth rates are high, at least) and the fact that they are in a catching-up position. It's a lot easier (and initially more profitable) to copy proven designs from mature economies instead of coming up with their own. If you look back - Taiwan used to have similar growth rates. Now that wages have increased and they've moved to technology leadership in many fields, rather than being followers, their growth rates have slowed down.
The system has worked so far in propelling China towards becoming the world's largest economy
Largest exporter, actually - that's quite different. The US economy is about three times the size. Anyway if you lump the GDP of a billion people together, you ought to end up with a large number. If you lump the EU together (and there is some justification for doing that) you'd end up with 500 million people and an economy four times the size of China's. (See here.)
If you compare a country's performance you should really look at something like GDP per head, instead. China is at $3735, Taiwan at $16372, the US at $46436. (Using IMF data.) So the system has worked in the sense that it has increased China's GDP, but right now it's working nowhere near as well as the systems in developed countries.
I'm all for government transparency and accountability
You are all for it, as long as those words mean nothing specific. Just a lofty goal "government transparency - yeah I'm for it". Reporting government wrongdoing or dubious activity, if said government would rather nobody found out ... well that would take things too far. Transparency is only for those cases when the government likes being transparent, it appears.
I'm assuming PayPal was pressured a bit in this matter.
Poor PayPal. Were they sued? Was there a court order? Or is it enough when some government agency makes threatening phone calls?
I didn't want to get groped anyway ...
I used my credit card. If I can somehow be associated with Wikileaks, then I'm proud of that association.
When she became pregnant with his child, Hindawi convinced her that they should go to Israel in order to get married. [...] Unknown to [his girlfriend], he intended her to take an explosives-laden bag on board an El Al flight.
He really had every advantage in life. This doesn't mean his accomplishments aren't real, but saying he created a huge company out of nothing is pushing it.
Plus people talking to themselves are not all that rare today, and weren't that rare in 1928 either. It's a lot more likely that someone is acting weird, rubbing their cheek or covering their aching ear and muttering to themselves than someone talking on a cell phone at a time it hadn't been invented yet.
You live in a democracy, Washington is the result of your voting choices. Be angry at yourself and your fellow citizens.
Your taxes have to be higher because these guys have to pay less. You should ask your government to close these loopholes, and have big companies pay a reasonable share of the tax.
Moral behavior is not required by law, but that doesn't mean that it has no value. If someone behaves like a jerk, it's good that society calls them on that. Google paying a ridiculously low amount of tax is jerkish behavior to say the least.
To protect against vandalism yes. To maintain a garden? Did you even think about what you posted?
You have a cut: there are national monuments maintained, and you have the opportunity to visit them.
However just because a belief is genuine, doesn't mean it's true. In this particular case, it doesn't mean that their acts of worship are even remotely similar to what the druids practiced, doesn't mean they believe in any of the same things or establish any kind of connection to druids.
So: wouldn't they have some ground to claim "intellectual property" on Stonehenge?
No.