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  1. For those who say she's overpriced on US IT Worker Files Hiring Lawsuit Against Infosys, Class Action Proposed · · Score: 2

    I'm sorry, but when I hear "so-and-so's overqualified and more experienced and therefore more expensive" I really have to wonder how this becomes such a common topic in hiring conversations.

    Certainly, some positions require a great deal of negotiation for both parties to arrive at a price - but most jobs really don't work that way at all, do they?

    No, most jobs have a static pay rate or relatively fixed contract budget and either you accept what they offer, or you move on.

    Same for the other side of the table - do most managers really have the authority to grossly overspend on talent? Really? "Spent too much on that guy, $50K to script batch processes at 3rd shift at a colo, and he just isn't innovating... That's what I get for hiring a college graduate... "

    If you are looking for the best, you spend and take that risk, if not, you make a reasonable offer and if they counter too high, you say, "this is what the position pays, do you want it or not?"

    At some businesses, you start as a temp, no matter what your experience. At a Big NYC Agency, you start in the mail room, even if you've passed the bar exam in 2 states. Given that this model is successful for some very successful firms, maybe businesses that "overpay for talent" are really just overpaying too many middle-managers or doing a piss-poor job of recruiting. Or, maybe it's a complaint without any merit at all, designed to create a chilling effect on an aging workforce to get them to give up things like benefits

  2. Silly moviegoers.... on Hollywood's Love of Analytics Couldn't Prevent Six Massive Blockbuster Flops · · Score: 2

    It is said, in Hollywood, that the most creative people in Hollywood, are the accountants. How else does a film like Forrest Gump not turn a sizeable profit and pay Tom Hanks points on the gross?

  3. Re:the real question is... on What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It · · Score: 2

    A series of tubes.

  4. Re:Wouldn't it leave the antenna in spheres of wav on What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It · · Score: 2

    More like a donut than a sphere, commonly, but it all comes down to the type of antennae alignment of antennae, and the frequency and amplitude of the waves.

  5. Really wanna know how they'd look in meatspace? on What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It · · Score: 1

    Buy a copy of AirMagnet Surveyor or another viz tool, an AP, a supported wifi NIC, and get a hold of some blueprints for the space in question.

  6. Don't overthink it. See who needs help and ask how on Ask Slashdot: How To Donate Older Computers to Charity? · · Score: 1

    As others have mentioned, there are a number of local entities that recycle/ refurbish / re-purpose old computers. All you have to do is a little looking. In Arizona, a very popular program is Arizona StRUT ( Students Recycling Used Technology) - http://www.azstrut.org/ - look at their website, it might be able to point you in a direction that applies to those in need in your area.

    Other ideas: Church-affiliated thrift stores are popular in rural areas. Homeless shelters need computers so their customers can look for jobs / housing resources and stay in contact with family. Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs still exist in many urban areas, and may be in need of some equipment. Retirement housing and elderly care facilities may be interested. Look around and ask how you can help.

  7. Blowing smoke? on How Not To Launch a Gadget · · Score: 3, Funny

    A device called "starfish" turns out to be vaporware? Color me surprised.

  8. Re:Where's the independent study? on San Diego Drops Red-Light Cameras · · Score: 1

    It's not always that simple, though. Why was the car stopping? Risking other motorists' lives for that of a butterfly isn't what a reasonable person does. A thylacine, maybe... But stopping for a changing light - it probably could be successfully argued that the other person was following too close. I'm sure this happens fairly often when car was stopping for a fire truck or policeman. I'm sure that AU has some provisions for that. The US sure does - I know because I've been rear-ended whilst pulling over for an oncoming ambulance that the person behind me had totally ignored. I explained it quickly to the cop and he let me be on my way (I was in a large truck, which only had a scratch on the bumper). I assume that he'd either checked with dispatch, or just believed me.

    More to the point, though: In the US, there exists "comparative negligence" laws that make it possible that even if I am perhaps 60% at fault for stopping abruptly and receive a citation, you, and the 3 people following you might be considered - in civil court, not traffic court - to be 40% at fault for the accident because you were following too close and possibly speeding. Now, let's pretend that the four of you folks (really, your insurance companies) decide that you don't want to pay for my heavy foot on the brake, and you sue the city for its' comparative negligence role in the accident - shortening its' yellow light cycle from 3 seconds to 2.2 seconds at the lights where it has cameras, (in an attempt to increase revenue). You can see how this could cost quite a bit in legal fees alone, regardless of whom is decided to be at what part at fault, even in a single accident.

  9. Re:My favorite traffic camera story on San Diego Drops Red-Light Cameras · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know of a lawyer who beat a photo-cop speeding ticket in this way:

    1. He was driving in his wife's car and was perhaps a little over the limit, and the machine flagged him.
    2. His wife received the ticket in the mail.
    3. Under local law, since she owned the car, but was not the one in the photo, it falls on her to identify the driver of the car at the time, so that he may be cited.
    4. This, of course, meant that the lawyer's wife was being compelled to testify against her husband, which is illegal.
    5. The lawyer simply told her to ignore it (like thousands of other people do), as there would need to be a summons served to her.
    6. No summons was ever served, and the citation was dropped.

  10. Where's the independent study? on San Diego Drops Red-Light Cameras · · Score: 2

    In 25 years of watching these systems try to replace traffic cops, I've yet to read any independent data on whether there's a net increase in safety in using speed and red-light cameras.

    There are those who are pro-camera, who usually turn out to be affiliated with the makers of these systems, and those who are against, usually the expert witness traffic engineers who testify against municipalities in cases of those involved in rear-end accidents with the people who stopped for a changing light.

    That said, I think they're probably useful in intersections that already have a high accident rate within the intersection itself, but as a pervasive means of generating revenue, I think their net effectiveness and their profitability for local governments may be outweighed by the liabilities of enforcement - such as increasingly necessitating a summons-server in the process - and collateral accidents that occur because people may be distracted or alter their behavior to avoid a ticket.

    Likewise, cops going after DUIs in a fashion that renders the officer little more than a citation-machine doesn't seem like a good revenue model either - ie: targeting late-night drivers with "loose license-plates" rather than those who in broad daylight cause multiple-vehicle pileups; the largest number of easy convictions aren't always the ones that benefits society most.

  11. Sell off News.com domain on CNET Parent CBS Blocks Review and Award To Dish Over Legal Dispute · · Score: 1

    C|net should give CBS a handful of baubles and trinkets and GTFO. Do they really need CBS, or is it the other way around?

    If CBS doesn't care about journalistic integrity any longer, it should simply change it's initials to mean: Copyright Based Sustenance

  12. Re:In other words... on NYC Police Gathering Cellphone Logs · · Score: 1

    "Hi, this is Rachel from Card Services..."

    There's certainly another possibility, guy:

    You might not be shady at all. You might be one of the millions of VICTIMs of criminals.

  13. Apple's not the first to do this on Sealed-Box Macs: Should Computers Be Disposable? · · Score: 1

    Motorola has been making phones this way since the late 90's. The original "Razor" was practically glued together; Very few fasteners, very few sub-assemblies, very little to repair. It's all on one chip, one board, one focus of fabrication. Assembly matters, not dis-assembly.

    Look at cars, too - the use of adhesives and foams and plastic clips that are effectively "consumables" - as they are often destroyed during dis-assembly - has grown every year. The shift is to pass the cost of assembly off on to the cost of repair - many goods are no longer meant to be repaired as they had in the past. The manufacturing processes have dictated that only the major systems can be replaced, not individual components.

    Cars, phones, computers - most products - are better built than in the past (often, by robots) and last longer regardless. The fetish of the new is what most often gets us to purchase anew. There's still a market for the upgrade/repair customer - but it is they who will be paying the premium for this flexibility.

  14. I thought that too, but then I noticed that he had brought his kids.
    Say what you will, but "the Force is strong with this one;" just try and wrench a kid's attention from McDonald's once the subject has come up.
    I dare ya.
    To them, fries are foie gras.

  15. The Root of the Problem on FTC To Revisit Robocall Menace · · Score: 1
    The crux is this:

    1. The Do Not Call List:
    A. Is opt-out only for legally-operating businesses.
    B. Is a sales leads vector for illegal businesses, or businesses that can make a claim to a pre-existing customer relationship.

    2. ANI/Caller ID, prepaid cell phones, VOIP:
    A. As others have noted, VOIP makes it trivial to spoof ANI/Caller ID data, requiring a detailed (and often costly) "harassing call" investigation on the part of the consumer's carrier to decipher the actual source, if possible.
    B. Prepaid cell phones are ubiquitous now, and allow one to easily use a line (or merely an ANI number) for nefarious purposes and ditch it before it reaches a threshold of suspicion.

    3. Consumers lack the sophistication to delineate legal "annoying calls" from illegal "harassing calls."
    A. Title 47 has no longer has the teeth to grasp offenders unless they are extremely high-profile in their offenses. 10 years ago, it was a misdemeanor to call a wireless device with an automated service or to "spam-fax." A caller was to identify themselves and their employer and to provide a means by which to opt-out of future calls.
    B. Thus, Federal and local regulatory and law enforcement agencies don't have the sophistication, funding, or inclination to tackle the problem.
    C. And, carriers don't want to be in the business of preventing calls of any kind.

    From my recent personal experience, a large number of the fraud businesses (credit-rebuilding scams) are leveraging a combination of all of these phenomena in order to operate with impunity: they use a robodailer, pitch only when a person answers (not voicemail), and use a "burn-phone"/prepaid cell number as their ANI source or callback opt-out number. I get about 2-3 of these calls per month on my mobile, a number that isn't publicly shared in any other directory than the Do Not Call List. I have a constantly-growing list of 20 numbers that my carrier now blocks, but I believe that the scammers are only likely to be using a given number for only days at a time.

  16. Re:"Journalism" on Witness Ridicules 'Hands-On' Reviews of Surface · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Journalism's been dying for years, but like a frog in a pan of water, it will not flex a muscle to save itself. Though it boils violently in it's own excrement, its' audience can scarcely be bothered, as the spectacle isn't awful enough.

    Pardon my anecdote:

    I was at E3 2000 when MS revealed another (pardon the pun) "game changer" in much the same way as this "iPad-killer": The X-Box.

    There was no case, no controller (it was a Logitech PC controller) and myself and 20 or so journalists sat in a makeshift theatre watched a fly-through demo highlighting what we all knew was a basic PC Direct-X graphics engine. No one steered the flythrough, none of us were allowed to touch the controller or the clunky plexiglass and PC-guts that sat on a small, cloth-draped a/v rack. None of our questions could really be answered, either. To this day, I'm not at all sure why they didn't call individual reporters up to breakout rooms or hotel suites, because those of us who weren't in our early 20's were thoroughly unimpressed.

    I'm sure someone gave them props. After all, E3, gaming and the Web (still) were booming, and fact-checked news and Comdex were showing their age.

    Read the Web articles of the NYT, WashPo, WSJ, - any of the leading print publications from the past 30 years or more. How often do you see grammatical, spelling, or factual errors? I see them with exponentially increasing frequency. I think it's indicative of the "death of print," and more distressingly, the "dumbing-down of America." No one cares about quality reporting anymore. They want HuffPo, Brietbart, TMZ, and Gawker. They want blood.

    Bradbury was right.

  17. She's hiding something... on Defendant Ordered To Decrypt Laptop Claims She Had Forgotten Password · · Score: 1

    When I originally read of this woman's story here, it got me wondering:

    If you are arrested for some material crime, is it common practice for the prosecution to force you to explain every key on your keychain, and to unlock the lock it to which it belongs?

    What if you have a drawer literally full of old keys? Is the burden of proof on you to prove that the prosecutor's evidence isn't being secured somewhere and hidden by you, facilitated by one of those keys?


    I think there's likely a simpler explanation for why this woman is being coerced - there is other hard evidence that she used that laptop and used encryption to secure the evidence that the court seeks. Perhaps a phone conversation, email or confession to that effect?

    Still, it does beg the question as to whom is doing the prosecution's job.

  18. Re:Misleading headline on Hackers Bringing Telnet Back · · Score: 1

    Yes, that headline would be more suitable, but the analogy is trite. Water is not "wet" when it is a solid, or a vapor. I wish people would let this expression die.

  19. HP Quickweb, Android / ChromeOS/ WebOS on Comparing Windows and Ubuntu On Netbooks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I bought an HP Mini that ships with Quickweb - a highly optimized Linux-based alternative to the Windows Starter also installed. It handles email, Skype, media, Web-surfing (Firefox "lite"), and it boots in about 10 seconds. It has a pretty painless "integration" with Windows too, so even novice users can choose what suits them best for a given task. For many netbook customers, all they really ever need is something like this. Supposedly, a ChromeOS netbook will drop any day, and Android tablets have been popping up on the radar. If HP gets its' act together and drops a netbook/tablet with an SSD and WebOS, it could undercut the iPad and the become the darling of the low-priced, entry-level set. Dual-boot takes care of any enterprise requirements, such as a Citrix client, W32 apps, etc.

  20. Re:How soon we forget on Palin Email Hacker Found · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter if you get to choose the question, because you get to choose the answers; You have control of that part, therefore it can be secure as you want. Ever think of answering those questions w/o using autobiographical data?

  21. Re:This is only going to get worse. on Defusing the Threat of Disgruntled IT Workers · · Score: 1

    What about when union certified people then take side-jobs off-union?

    This will happen and it will undermine the union.

    So again, management will offshore or relocate to places, even right here in the good ole USA, where the unions have no leverage because of local labor laws. You can't snap a finger and lay all the necessary framework overnight.

    I'm not defending the inequity of the pay/work, but if you look at history, this is what every industry that has unionized has done in the past.

    You likely would not see the real benefit during your lifetime.

  22. How soon we forget on Palin Email Hacker Found · · Score: 1

    As others previously posted, there is much more at stake here:
    1. She has little understanding of the principles of security protocol and best practices by making it so easy to get into the Yahoo account.
    2. It appears she is not using the account for official business beyond providing a cc: for emails that are official, so that she may check them remotely.
    3. How does anyone really know what she's using the Yahoo account for, if she's been deleting mail that could cause her trouble, knowing that there had already been attention focused on her for this?
    4. This has to stop. When government ceases to operate with accountability, it is no longer being run with the consent of the governed.

  23. Re:Sixth Ammedment on Judge Rules Defense Can Get DUI Machine Source Code · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Convicted of a DWI.

    What I found most intellectually troubling is that, in AZ (among toughest DUI laws in the country), the violations schedule awards the most "points" for potential crimes - actions that are crimes because of their potential to cause harm, property damage or death. The next "rung" down on the "ladder" includes crimes that result in harm, property damage or death.

    I know I was wrong, and I no longer drink at all. Drunk driving is a serious problem, that should be addressed.

    However, the way in which DUIs laws are written, there is little room for a judge's interpretation of circumstances. In AZ, you are LIKELY to be convicted if you have ANY amount of alcohol in your system and take a Breathalyzer test - under "impaired to the slightest degree."

    What that conviction would get you typically sentenced to is: 90-day revocation of your driver's license, (30-days complete restriction, 60 allowed of work/school restricted), 30 days incarceration (29 suspended), $500-1500 in fines, 6-10 weeks of alcohol education, 1 year of driving with an ignition interlock (a breathalyzer to start your car), 20 hours of community service, and possibly, 2 years of probation. Your insurance goes up 30-50%.

    This is mandatory minimum sentencing, and the judge has little power to affect the outcome except to change a few numbers on the jail term (more), fines, education and probation.

    Also, 'probable cause" is not necessary to even make the original traffic stop. The term used now is "reasonable suspicion," and does not require you to commit any other violations: You might be driving just after the bars close at 2am. You might be in an area know for its' nightlife, and happen upon a roadblock - in short, your civil rights are intrinsically limited whenever you get in a car.

    BTW- atorneys anecdotally say that the Intoxalyzers' readings often can be off by as much as 20%.

  24. Re:Idiotic on Judge Rules Defense Can Get DUI Machine Source Code · · Score: 3, Informative

    Um, that assumes that you are comparing the result with a known value. The point of a breathalyzer is to determine an unknown value.

    Unless of course this attorney is saying that they already know the accused are drunk, in which case the breathalyzer is redundant.

    INAL, but I was convicted of a DWI.

    The known value is an reference alcohol unit pre-applied prior to each test as a calibration, to establish that the machine is accurate. The unit is equivalent to a reading obtained in medical studies show to prove the average person intoxicated. This calibration is noted on your Breathalyzer card, along with your results (usually 2, spaced an hour apart, with different reference units), which will be noted on the complaint, and included in the arrest report.

  25. Improvised weapon... on What Examples of Security Theater Have You Encountered? · · Score: 4, Funny

    Some 3 weeks after 9/11, I was flying from PHX to SJO and had my toenail clipper confiscated by airport security.

    As I walked to the gate and sat in the waiting area, I spied a very-cute young blonde. I sat next to her and noticed that she was knitting.

    I asked what she was making, and in the process of telling me, she explained that the needles she was using were 16" long and made of stainless steel.

    I was so struck with the absurdity of the situation that I became flustered, and unable to secure her phone number.