I worked for a startup, was given stock options, then the company went public. After about a month my options were worth about $1M on paper but I couldn't exercise them because that would have diluted the company founder's share value as they busily unloaded their shares. In the end I wrote a check for $24k to the IRS and ended up with nearly worthless options while the company founders cashed in and took their millions off to another startup to repeat the process.
If you're working for stock options you're going to get screwed.
If the whole book is "the word of God" then how are some portions of it more "obscure" than others? What is the "basis in truth" of numerology? If God says whet he says openly, why do I need someone to interpret its meaning for me?
Think about how many people have had info stolen, perhaps multiple times, and their computers turned into spambots over the years when they run MS Windows. Sony has had one network penetration and theft of customer data. Seems sort of small by comparison.
That said, Sony will have a tough time living this incident down. MS still carries the stigma not only of Windows security problems but also Xbox 360 design problems (Red Ring of Death). For a long time it was easy to justify buying PS3 over Xbox because it didn't have such issues. It will be harder to make that justification in the future.
Yes, I am one of those whose info was stolen from Sony's servers. I have not seen any email from Sony about credit protection or free games.
Why on earth, when screens are getting wider, do they keep using up more and more of the vertical real estate for mostly useless menus? Office's displayed work area has shrunk to where you can barely see a paragraph at a time because the screen is full of ribbons. Why not push that crap to one side of the screen and let the document occupy the full height of the screen? If they absolutely must put ribbons on the screen, why not make them autohide like the task bar?
The patent system is a guaranteed monopoly. That is the exact purpose for which it was created. The intent is to reward investment in innovation by granting a temporary monopoly to the inventor. You may argue that the current system has flaws that prevent it from working as intended, especially with regard to the cost and pace of recent technological development, and in light of the development of a secondary market for patent licenses, but eliminating the monopoly granted or imposing a value on a license that doesn't necessarily reflect the market value of the license or the amount of investment that led to the original patent is silly. Your attempt to spread innovation to the market will more likely stifle it and lead companies to keeping innovations to themselves in the form of trade secrets.
Regarding your signature, the correct expression is "for all intents and purposes", and the word whom is not dead. Most people just don't learn how to use it any more.
Back when recording sales had to support factories to churn out discs or tapes, and the trucks and brick and mortar stores to distribute them, one could argue that music should have cost more than it should now because none of that stuff is needed any more. But has the pricing changed? No- music downloads cost about the same as the same music would have cost back when it was supporting all that expensive infrastructure. Now add in the fact that most music is sold as mp3 or other lossy compressed files, so you're getting an inferior technical quality product, and then throw in the loss of convenience caused by DRM and music should be almost free.
The recording industry has decided what a recording is worth and not asked their customers what it is worth. Back when the customer got a piece of physical media they might perceive that they were getting something of intrinsic value and would be willing to pay more than someone getting a lower quality, possibly DRM riddled data file they can't see, touch, or resell when they tire of it. With the advent first of CDROM recorders in computers and later portable music players that play music saved as data files the value of getting the physical media from a record store all but disappeared. If someone knows they can download the music using a computer they already have and burn that music to a blank CD that they purchase for about 10 cents (or dump the data into their portable player), why would they go to a record store and pay $10-15 for a CD? It doesn't make any sense, yet this is the model the recording industry clings to.
The disc stores have mostly disappeared now because they have become irrelevant. The record companies are choking down their last gasps as they drown in their own tears.
Your feature list describes EAC and there's no linux application that does all those things as far as I know. It's no problem because EAC runs under wine in linux with no problems.
I haven't ripped a CD in a couple years but I used to use EAC running under wine in linux to do it. My CD collection (about 600 discs) is stored as flac files on two HDDs, one in a server and the other a back-up disk. I stream audio to three squeezeboxes- a classic, a duet, and a boom scattered around my apartment. Back when I lived in a bigger place I had a very nice system including biamped Quad ESL-63 speakers with some bass units, amps, and crossovers I built myself. I haven't had time or space for "serious listening" for the last few years but both will improve soon and I plan to set up the old system again.
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I worked for a startup, was given stock options, then the company went public. After about a month my options were worth about $1M on paper but I couldn't exercise them because that would have diluted the company founder's share value as they busily unloaded their shares. In the end I wrote a check for $24k to the IRS and ended up with nearly worthless options while the company founders cashed in and took their millions off to another startup to repeat the process.
If you're working for stock options you're going to get screwed.
If the whole book is "the word of God" then how are some portions of it more "obscure" than others?
What is the "basis in truth" of numerology?
If God says whet he says openly, why do I need someone to interpret its meaning for me?
Think about how many people have had info stolen, perhaps multiple times, and their computers turned into spambots over the years when they run MS Windows. Sony has had one network penetration and theft of customer data. Seems sort of small by comparison.
That said, Sony will have a tough time living this incident down. MS still carries the stigma not only of Windows security problems but also Xbox 360 design problems (Red Ring of Death). For a long time it was easy to justify buying PS3 over Xbox because it didn't have such issues. It will be harder to make that justification in the future.
Yes, I am one of those whose info was stolen from Sony's servers. I have not seen any email from Sony about credit protection or free games.
Why on earth, when screens are getting wider, do they keep using up more and more of the vertical real estate for mostly useless menus? Office's displayed work area has shrunk to where you can barely see a paragraph at a time because the screen is full of ribbons. Why not push that crap to one side of the screen and let the document occupy the full height of the screen? If they absolutely must put ribbons on the screen, why not make them autohide like the task bar?
The patent system is a guaranteed monopoly. That is the exact purpose for which it was created. The intent is to reward investment in innovation by granting a temporary monopoly to the inventor. You may argue that the current system has flaws that prevent it from working as intended, especially with regard to the cost and pace of recent technological development, and in light of the development of a secondary market for patent licenses, but eliminating the monopoly granted or imposing a value on a license that doesn't necessarily reflect the market value of the license or the amount of investment that led to the original patent is silly. Your attempt to spread innovation to the market will more likely stifle it and lead companies to keeping innovations to themselves in the form of trade secrets.
Regarding your signature, the correct expression is "for all intents and purposes", and the word whom is not dead. Most people just don't learn how to use it any more.
That would reduce profits. Raising fuel prices will have the same effect on the consumer but increase profit margins considerably.
Back when recording sales had to support factories to churn out discs or tapes, and the trucks and brick and mortar stores to distribute them, one could argue that music should have cost more than it should now because none of that stuff is needed any more. But has the pricing changed? No- music downloads cost about the same as the same music would have cost back when it was supporting all that expensive infrastructure. Now add in the fact that most music is sold as mp3 or other lossy compressed files, so you're getting an inferior technical quality product, and then throw in the loss of convenience caused by DRM and music should be almost free.
The recording industry has decided what a recording is worth and not asked their customers what it is worth. Back when the customer got a piece of physical media they might perceive that they were getting something of intrinsic value and would be willing to pay more than someone getting a lower quality, possibly DRM riddled data file they can't see, touch, or resell when they tire of it. With the advent first of CDROM recorders in computers and later portable music players that play music saved as data files the value of getting the physical media from a record store all but disappeared. If someone knows they can download the music using a computer they already have and burn that music to a blank CD that they purchase for about 10 cents (or dump the data into their portable player), why would they go to a record store and pay $10-15 for a CD? It doesn't make any sense, yet this is the model the recording industry clings to.
The disc stores have mostly disappeared now because they have become irrelevant. The record companies are choking down their last gasps as they drown in their own tears.
Your feature list describes EAC and there's no linux application that does all those things as far as I know. It's no problem because EAC runs under wine in linux with no problems. I haven't ripped a CD in a couple years but I used to use EAC running under wine in linux to do it. My CD collection (about 600 discs) is stored as flac files on two HDDs, one in a server and the other a back-up disk. I stream audio to three squeezeboxes- a classic, a duet, and a boom scattered around my apartment. Back when I lived in a bigger place I had a very nice system including biamped Quad ESL-63 speakers with some bass units, amps, and crossovers I built myself. I haven't had time or space for "serious listening" for the last few years but both will improve soon and I plan to set up the old system again.