Sparkle is developed in C#, and due to its compilation to.NET's CLR, it's unlikely that it will be a channel for virus writers to exploit. First off, Sparkle developers don't need to worry about buffer overruns, which have been the hole used in many previous exploits. Second, the CLR can block the use of unauthorized code, preventing the installation of spyware and other trojans. Admittedly, the CLR hasn't yet been as widely adopted as Internet Explorer, so there still may be bugs in the underlying technology. But generally Sparkle's developed using a much more secure architecture than previous Microsoft products and therefore it's unlikely to see the same issues as IIS, IE, and Outlook.
I've researched trusts before, but I've never seen much about having a trust that you can contribute money to and withdraw money from without penalties. It seems like most trusts are designed to shelter inheritance from estate taxes or shelter income ultimately destined for charitable giving. In both cases, I believe their are penalities for withdrawing money early, and the trust must pay taxes on any income coming into it. (Though you can use the gift tax loophole to shield $10k/year from income taxes, or $20k/year if you're married.)
Does anyone have any details or links about trusts that you can use to shelter taxable income during one's lifetime?
You are incorrect. According to Fairmark's Tax Guide for Investors, in their Your Tax Bracket article:
Tax brackets and earnings: Some people have in mind the general notion that their tax bracket depends on how much they earn. That's roughly true. But it doesn't mean you can hold onto the same tax bracket as long as your earned income stays the same. Your tax bracket depends on your taxable income, regardless of the source of that income. For example, you can move into a higher tax bracket because of increased investment income or a distribution from a pension plan -- or even because of a decrease in your deductions.
Therefore accepting a $1 salary has little effect on the tax bracket of someone earning billions from investment income.
According to the US Food & Nutrition Service, which runs state food stamp programs:
Food Stamp Asset Limits: If you have more than $2,000 ($3,000 if your household has a member who is age 60 or older or disabled) in cash, a bank account, other readily available source (and in some states part of value of a motor vehicle) you may not be eligible for Food Stamps.
Considering that the Google executives have billions of dollars in their names, they exceed the asset limits for the food stamps program.
Can we honestly say "good faith" is their motive and not income tax?
Receiving additional income does not result in a situation where you're paying more in taxes than that income. So Page, Brin and Schmidt suddenly started making $1 million/year in salary, they would still be taking home more money after income taxes than if they weren't receiving that money. So there's no motivation based on income taxes to not receive additional salary.
Personally I think they take $1 salaries because they want to appear approachable at work and remain effective leaders. Steve Jobs does the same thing.
Correct, Vista is planned for the end of 2006. From there, Microsoft has already planned Vista SP1 for mid-2007, followed by XP SP3 in late 2007. Basically there's 4-8 months between releases, so developers have a span of time to dedicate themselves to each project.
Considering they're at version 8.0 right now of their player, I can't imagine how hard it would be to interface with a browser's status window and at least tell me something.
Actually, Flash does have support for representational state transfer through URLs: FlashStates. The basic premise is that anchors are placed after the URL to denote the proper Flash frame (or other state) to begin displaying. Here is a simple example. Another great example is the Yahoo! Maps Beta, which is all done in Flash. Yahoo! Maps Beta updates the URL to always represent the current map coordinates and zoom magnitude, so that you can easily copy the URL and paste it to your friends with AIM, a blog, email, etc etc.
Of course, not many Flash applications currently take advantage of FlashStates. But it's not an inherent shortcoming of Flash.
The efficient markets hypothesis works great for companies that are growing at the risk-free rate quarter after quarter. But it doesn't work for high growth companies because the questions of human fallibility enter the equation.
For example, how do you value Google, which previously has had revenues growing 95% year-over-year? Well, a truly conservative investor would say that Google is worth 14 times its yearly earnings. This is how those investors judge industrial companies like Caterpillar and American Express, after all. Given this valuation, one would expect to buy Google's stock for $63.12/share.
Now let's take me, a fairly aggressive kinda guy. I see that Google's growing 95%, and I predict that Google's growth will continue and next year these same investors will pay 95% more for the stock -- putting it at $123/share.
But then Jim Cramer comes along, see's there's huge potential for online advertising in 10 years, and predicts an overall growth of 1000% in the 10 years. That puts the stock at $631.20/share! (plus/minus inflation and the time value of money)
This is crazy! How can we trust Google to actually grow that well? We can't. All we can do is look at data points we get today to see if growth is on track. And lets say our trust in the current direction dies out around 3 years out. Therefore if the earnings grow on track this year, the stock will grow an equivalent amount -- even though everyone has the same high hopes for the future!
This is where, in my opinion, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis breaks down. Future expectations of growth are not trusted past a certain point. This lack of trust means that short-term results are used to extrapolate the long term, and therefore have a direct impact on the current stock price. So even if everyone has a rosy view of the future, stock prices will not efficiently value that view until it happens.
As a web developer, I find that the advantage of Web Forms 2.0 is not field validation, but the formal declaration of field types so that browsers can assist users to enter proper data without getting confused. For example, the 'email' input type can offer to bring up the user's address book, and can provide context-based feedback of errors on manually typed addresses. If browsers truly adopted Web Forms 2.0, web developers could stop worrying about writing form validation Javascript while providing a more standardized interface for entering strongly-typed data.
Why stop at ? I use CSS so that I don't even need a ! I can change the entire content of the page by just changing the style sheet. Localization is a snap: I serve the same HTML to everyone, and just change the CSS for each locale! Here's an example:
I'm confused about why Microsoft doesn't diversify into some unrelated fields, e.g. open a restaurant chain or something.
From my perspective, it seems like Microsoft is diversify into unrelated fields. For example, the XBox 360 is largely unrelated to their operating system and office suite products. Another example is Microsoft's foray into customer relationship management (CRM) services, a la their Great Plains Software acquisition. While one could say these fields are close to their existing markets, I argue that it would be foolish for Microsoft to stray too far from their core competencies. There's a lot of very different niches in software, so Microsoft really doesn't need to go into restaurants to find markets to diversify and expand into.
Aww, I was about to do the opposite, but both E*Trade and Schwab are giving me similar error messages:
This stock is either ineligible to be shorted or shares are not available to short. If you require further assistance with this order please call a Schwab Representative at (888)393-XXXX
Anyone know if pink sheets are actually shortable? Or are all of Schwab's and E*Trade's shares tied up in shorts already?
You can already do this. A simple example: If you have Acrobat, go to File > Create PDF > From Web Page, enter the URL of a site with Flash on it (www.adobe.com works great), and click Create. The created PDF will contain the Flash movie and it will play perfectly within the PDF.
But embedded Flash isn't specific to converted web pages, or to Flash movies only -- PDF natively supports embedded multimedia formats in much the same way as browsers do. You can even turn architectural drawings into navigatable 3D environments inside your PDF, so that when you print the PDF it looks like an architect's design plan, but when you're on a more capable environment (a PC), you can actually see the perspective.
That said, there's certainly lots of room for new integration between PDF and Flash. But I'm not sure what shape it will take!
Disclaimer: While I am an Adobe employee, the above post is my own and any perspectives are mine and not necessarily those of Adobe.
Raise your hand if you think Google's current shareholders would vote "yes" to acquisition by Microsoft under any balanced and reasonable terms (i.e., terms Microsoft would potentially also agree to).
I think Microsoft could get Google's shareholders to agree, given a high enough price. But I think the corporate cultures would clash so much as to make the merger completely detrimental to Google's future prospects.
Give google time and they will either be bought out by another media firm, or they will become one of them.
I'm not sure who has money to buy them. Google's now worth 50% more than Time Warner, including its AOL division. Google's worth over twice as much as Disney and Viacom (individually). GE (owner of NBC) is still well in front of Google in market value... but GE's already $350 billion in debt and more focused on industrial products and services.
Whether Google will become a media firm: They're more becoming like a cable company. They don't produce much media, but instead they make it easy to access it. Yahoo's much more of a media firm.
in SF [BART] stops frequently and goes to many major destinations
BART doesn't go to any major destinations besides the Financial District, the Civic Center, and the Mission. Thankfully I lived in the Mission a couple months ago, so it was convenient for me when I wanted to go downtown. But to get to any neighborhoods with culture, such as the Haight, Chinatown, North Beach, the Marina, and arguably Nob Hill, BART does nothing to help.
It would be truly awesome if BART would run up Van Ness to Broadway or so, and then either end-of-line up at Fort Mason or turn east through North Beach and reconnect to the main line. MUNI is putting in a line from SBC/PacBell park up to Chinatown, and eventually on to North Beach, but why isn't there something up and down Van Ness??
Adding an additional 2 hops for database content won't make much sense for web applications.
There wouldn't be an extra two hops if you're fetching the data from the client-side with AJAX or Macromedia Flex. In fact, Google Base's servers might be faster than your own hosting. Of course, I don't think it makes business sense to store user data solely with Google, but the performance penalties can be factored out.
Slashdot Mirror
Sparkle is developed in C#, and due to its compilation to .NET's CLR, it's unlikely that it will be a channel for virus writers to exploit. First off, Sparkle developers don't need to worry about buffer overruns, which have been the hole used in many previous exploits. Second, the CLR can block the use of unauthorized code, preventing the installation of spyware and other trojans. Admittedly, the CLR hasn't yet been as widely adopted as Internet Explorer, so there still may be bugs in the underlying technology. But generally Sparkle's developed using a much more secure architecture than previous Microsoft products and therefore it's unlikely to see the same issues as IIS, IE, and Outlook.
I've researched trusts before, but I've never seen much about having a trust that you can contribute money to and withdraw money from without penalties. It seems like most trusts are designed to shelter inheritance from estate taxes or shelter income ultimately destined for charitable giving. In both cases, I believe their are penalities for withdrawing money early, and the trust must pay taxes on any income coming into it. (Though you can use the gift tax loophole to shield $10k/year from income taxes, or $20k/year if you're married.)
Does anyone have any details or links about trusts that you can use to shelter taxable income during one's lifetime?
Therefore accepting a $1 salary has little effect on the tax bracket of someone earning billions from investment income.
Considering that the Google executives have billions of dollars in their names, they exceed the asset limits for the food stamps program.
Can we honestly say "good faith" is their motive and not income tax?
Receiving additional income does not result in a situation where you're paying more in taxes than that income. So Page, Brin and Schmidt suddenly started making $1 million/year in salary, they would still be taking home more money after income taxes than if they weren't receiving that money. So there's no motivation based on income taxes to not receive additional salary.
Personally I think they take $1 salaries because they want to appear approachable at work and remain effective leaders. Steve Jobs does the same thing.
I thought Windows Vista was due this year?
Correct, Vista is planned for the end of 2006. From there, Microsoft has already planned Vista SP1 for mid-2007, followed by XP SP3 in late 2007. Basically there's 4-8 months between releases, so developers have a span of time to dedicate themselves to each project.
It's disappointing to see people spam on Slashdot. If I had mod points I would spend them all on you right now.
compressed air duster cans
Is that what geeks are calling their colons these days?
Considering they're at version 8.0 right now of their player, I can't imagine how hard it would be to interface with a browser's status window and at least tell me something.
Actually, Flash does have support for representational state transfer through URLs: FlashStates. The basic premise is that anchors are placed after the URL to denote the proper Flash frame (or other state) to begin displaying. Here is a simple example. Another great example is the Yahoo! Maps Beta, which is all done in Flash. Yahoo! Maps Beta updates the URL to always represent the current map coordinates and zoom magnitude, so that you can easily copy the URL and paste it to your friends with AIM, a blog, email, etc etc.
Of course, not many Flash applications currently take advantage of FlashStates. But it's not an inherent shortcoming of Flash.
Your story was a dupe.
The efficient markets hypothesis works great for companies that are growing at the risk-free rate quarter after quarter. But it doesn't work for high growth companies because the questions of human fallibility enter the equation.
For example, how do you value Google, which previously has had revenues growing 95% year-over-year? Well, a truly conservative investor would say that Google is worth 14 times its yearly earnings. This is how those investors judge industrial companies like Caterpillar and American Express, after all. Given this valuation, one would expect to buy Google's stock for $63.12/share.
Now let's take me, a fairly aggressive kinda guy. I see that Google's growing 95%, and I predict that Google's growth will continue and next year these same investors will pay 95% more for the stock -- putting it at $123/share.
But then Jim Cramer comes along, see's there's huge potential for online advertising in 10 years, and predicts an overall growth of 1000% in the 10 years. That puts the stock at $631.20/share! (plus/minus inflation and the time value of money)
This is crazy! How can we trust Google to actually grow that well? We can't. All we can do is look at data points we get today to see if growth is on track. And lets say our trust in the current direction dies out around 3 years out. Therefore if the earnings grow on track this year, the stock will grow an equivalent amount -- even though everyone has the same high hopes for the future!
This is where, in my opinion, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis breaks down. Future expectations of growth are not trusted past a certain point. This lack of trust means that short-term results are used to extrapolate the long term, and therefore have a direct impact on the current stock price. So even if everyone has a rosy view of the future, stock prices will not efficiently value that view until it happens.
I feel the education I am getting right now is a more expensive
If you're using feeling to judge something that's easily quantifiable, perhaps engineering is not the right discipline for you.
Weird... are you using Firefox? I was using IE... and I knew it probably wasn't cross-browser compatible, but wtf, it's a Slashdot posting :).
Do you think SVG will actually become widely adopted? Who is pushing for it at this point? Who is actively developing viewers for it?
As a web developer, I find that the advantage of Web Forms 2.0 is not field validation, but the formal declaration of field types so that browsers can assist users to enter proper data without getting confused. For example, the 'email' input type can offer to bring up the user's address book, and can provide context-based feedback of errors on manually typed addresses. If browsers truly adopted Web Forms 2.0, web developers could stop worrying about writing form validation Javascript while providing a more standardized interface for entering strongly-typed data.
Why stop at ? I use CSS so that I don't even need a ! I can change the entire content of the page by just changing the style sheet. Localization is a snap: I serve the same HTML to everyone, and just change the CSS for each locale! Here's an example:
.t { background:url('hello world!') }l es[0].style.background.substring(4,16))">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
</style>
<body onLoad="document.write(document.styleSheets[0].ru
</body>
</html>
Err, that's what you meant, right?
I'm confused about why Microsoft doesn't diversify into some unrelated fields, e.g. open a restaurant chain or something.
From my perspective, it seems like Microsoft is diversify into unrelated fields. For example, the XBox 360 is largely unrelated to their operating system and office suite products. Another example is Microsoft's foray into customer relationship management (CRM) services, a la their Great Plains Software acquisition. While one could say these fields are close to their existing markets, I argue that it would be foolish for Microsoft to stray too far from their core competencies. There's a lot of very different niches in software, so Microsoft really doesn't need to go into restaurants to find markets to diversify and expand into.
Aww, I was about to do the opposite, but both E*Trade and Schwab are giving me similar error messages:
This stock is either ineligible to be shorted or shares are not available to short. If you require further assistance with this order please call a Schwab Representative at (888)393-XXXX
Anyone know if pink sheets are actually shortable? Or are all of Schwab's and E*Trade's shares tied up in shorts already?
embedding Flash "things" in PDF files
You can already do this. A simple example: If you have Acrobat, go to File > Create PDF > From Web Page, enter the URL of a site with Flash on it (www.adobe.com works great), and click Create. The created PDF will contain the Flash movie and it will play perfectly within the PDF.
But embedded Flash isn't specific to converted web pages, or to Flash movies only -- PDF natively supports embedded multimedia formats in much the same way as browsers do. You can even turn architectural drawings into navigatable 3D environments inside your PDF, so that when you print the PDF it looks like an architect's design plan, but when you're on a more capable environment (a PC), you can actually see the perspective.
That said, there's certainly lots of room for new integration between PDF and Flash. But I'm not sure what shape it will take!
Disclaimer: While I am an Adobe employee, the above post is my own and any perspectives are mine and not necessarily those of Adobe.
Raise your hand if you think Google's current shareholders would vote "yes" to acquisition by Microsoft under any balanced and reasonable terms (i.e., terms Microsoft would potentially also agree to).
I think Microsoft could get Google's shareholders to agree, given a high enough price. But I think the corporate cultures would clash so much as to make the merger completely detrimental to Google's future prospects.
In fact, Google has become the 20th most valuable company in the world in the last few weeks.
I'm not sure who has money to buy them. Google's now worth 50% more than Time Warner, including its AOL division. Google's worth over twice as much as Disney and Viacom (individually).
GE (owner of NBC) is still well in front of Google in market value
Whether Google will become a media firm: They're more becoming like a cable company. They don't produce much media, but instead they make it easy to access it. Yahoo's much more of a media firm.
in SF [BART] stops frequently and goes to many major destinations
BART doesn't go to any major destinations besides the Financial District, the Civic Center, and the Mission. Thankfully I lived in the Mission a couple months ago, so it was convenient for me when I wanted to go downtown. But to get to any neighborhoods with culture, such as the Haight, Chinatown, North Beach, the Marina, and arguably Nob Hill, BART does nothing to help.
It would be truly awesome if BART would run up Van Ness to Broadway or so, and then either end-of-line up at Fort Mason or turn east through North Beach and reconnect to the main line. MUNI is putting in a line from SBC/PacBell park up to Chinatown, and eventually on to North Beach, but why isn't there something up and down Van Ness??
It would be useful if they actually provided some simple notification of updates to the services they provide
They do, it's called the Slashdot home page. In fact, there's even a simple reminder mechanism called Google Dupes.
Aids to Pass Drug Tests - Posting is not permitted for the promotion of products such as drug cleansing shakes and urine test additives.
Clearly this is to prevent Google employees from finding jobs elsewhere. Now we know what they're spending all their IPO money on!!
Adding an additional 2 hops for database content won't make much sense for web applications.
There wouldn't be an extra two hops if you're fetching the data from the client-side with AJAX or Macromedia Flex. In fact, Google Base's servers might be faster than your own hosting. Of course, I don't think it makes business sense to store user data solely with Google, but the performance penalties can be factored out.