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User: n7ytd

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  1. I'm not sure I buy it. There were two people on that aircraft and the current theory is that both made it to the island together. There is some possible evidence of a camp site. Surviving there would not have been beyond their ability, and even if they did die they would surely have left some kind of clear evidence of their having been there. Names carved into a tree, rocks arranged in an S.O.S. pattern or some other sign to those who would eventually find that place.

    It just seems implausible to bring items useful for survival with you to an island (because they would have sank with the aircraft otherwise) but then apparently give up and die without lighting a huge signal fire or even apparently exploring the whole island.

    If they did get marooned on this island, there's nothing to prove that they were not seriously injured during a crash landing, which would have seriously hampered their ability to explore/thrive/not slowly bleed to death of internal injury.

  2. Re:Look for multi-nationals/White guy in a suit on Ask Slashdot: Find a Job In China For Non-native Speaker? · · Score: 1

    You can call yourself "Mr. Potemkin".

  3. Re:Oh come on... on The Shortage of Women In IT · · Score: 1

    So you're on target to save somewhere around $100,000 a year for the next 10 years, and then will be comfortable with an income of something less than $50,000 a year for the rest of your life after that? You have unique motivations. I tip my hat to you, sir.

  4. Flawed premise on The Shortage of Women In IT · · Score: 1

    From the OP:

    [...] The current Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program authorizes five percent of Federal prime and subcontracts to be set aside for WOSBs. While that might sound fair on the surface, in order to invoke the money set aside for this program, the contracting officer at an agency has to have a reasonable expectation that two or more WOSBs will submit offers for the job.

    Sorry, no, that doesn't "sound fair on the surface". Both the idea of "setting aside" any contracting and a token amount of five percent are insulting.

    I'm a white guy, so I get it: I don't have any idea how hard it is to get ahead in a white man's world, I've had everything handed to me on a silver platter, and I'm one of the oppressors keeping women and minorities down.

  5. Re:Question- How did scammers do this? on When Antivirus Scammers Call the Wrong Guy · · Score: 1

    Um. No. My phone works just fine. I also disconnected the line which should have terminated the call immediate, but the scammer was still talking when I reconnected the line. (I figure they were using some override built into the POTS.)

    This is by design. If the called party hangs up the call won't disconnect for many seconds, but if the caller hangs up the disconnect will be quicker. The reason for this is to allow the called party to change extensions.

    For example, if I answered the kitchen phone because I happened to be in the kitchen when you called, but I need to go pick up the phone in the other room before we continue the call. Since you called me, it stands to reason that you were already on the phone you wanted to use before you called.

    As a poster below points out, this works in conjunction with call waiting, too. If I'm already on a call when another comes in, I need to be able to flash between the calls without immediately disconnecting the inactive call.

  6. Measured using known dimensions? on Volunteers Use Annular Eclipse To Measure Sun More Accurately · · Score: 2

    Japanese citizens worked together to improve this estimate. By measuring the borders of the 'ring of fire' effect of the recent eclipse, and using the known size and distance from the Earth of the sun, the radius of the Sun was measured as 696,010 kilometers, with a margin of error of only 20 kilometers."

    Wow! That's some breakthrough science!

  7. Re:He was too ambitious on SAP VP Arrested In False Barcode Scheme · · Score: 4, Funny

    I see old women do this all of the time. Not making their own barcodes, mind you, but swapping the code from the seeded cucumbers to the unseeded ones, or switch the tag from a generic bible and put it onto the fancy one they have their eye on. I wish I wasn't serious.

    I see this all too frequently myself. Yes, even the bible one. The irony of someone stealing a bible is not lost on me, either.

    Well, obviously, that's the person who need it most!

  8. Re:Common Sense on SAP VP Arrested In False Barcode Scheme · · Score: 1

    I worked sales at a car stereo chain (well known in the NW) and was yelled at on the floor, by the manager, for selling the customer the better product instead of the one with more profit.

    I used to get yelled at working at Best Buy for the same thing. It is also why I am no longer in sales... not cut out for it.

    If someone looks me in the face and asks, "What would you recommend," I have to be honest.

    It always makes me sigh when I walk into Best Buy and hear the sales people parrot "and I'm not on commission!", as if that's some sort of guarantee that their advice will be unbiased. Sure, maybe they're not out to screw me, but I'm not convinced that the store isn't trying to squeeze maximum profit out of me-- as witnessed by the cashier who also "is not on commission", but is required to up-sell me on a protective sleeve or an extended warranty.

  9. Re:What a moronic conclusion on Facebook IPO Stumbles Out of the Gate · · Score: 1

    > the closing price ends up at the same price as the IPO price?

    but only because it was proped up by the underwriters: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-18/facebook-underwriters-said-to-support-stock-at-near-38-a-share.html

    "Propped Up" might also be read as "re-bought at what the underwriters thought was a good price at $38" If they are hedging that the price will continue to rise, then buying more shares at $38 will have been a good bargain.

    But you are correct, it also might have been seen as a lack of strength for the price to slide significantly under the opening price.

  10. Re:Not as trivial as everyone is saying on Judge to Oracle: A High Schooler Could Write rangeCheck · · Score: 1

    The problem here is the Lawyers are too simple minded to understand it's not the code itself but how the code affects the design that matters. And the judge knows just enough to understand that code itself is trivial but not enough to look beyond what the lawyers say is important.

    Is it the judge's job to "look beyond" what the lawyers are presenting? If one of the lawyers botches it and doesn't illuminate an important point, is it up to the judge to do it for him?

  11. Re:long time? on The Mathematics of Obesity · · Score: 1

    I'm currently targeting (and mostly hitting) about 2-2.5 kilo fat-loss per week. I think it might be possible to achieve more in a short burst, but it wouldn't be sustainable in a healthy manner.

    That is a significant amount of weight. Good for you! But be careful; losing that much weight, that quickly is usually done with a diet that can't be sustained for the rest of your life. People who fad diet often go through a short, ridiculously low-calorie diet until they reach a certain weight goal, and then resume their previous eating habits, which causes them to bounce back above their starting weight. The key is to get yourself onto a reasonable diet plan that you really can do the rest of your life.

  12. Re:Junk food is the problem on The Mathematics of Obesity · · Score: 1

    Make the exercise time. There's several reasons I say this (and I hope it's clear that I say this form a position of wanting to help, not accusation). First, fitness has been shown to be more important than fatness as a predictor for a long and healthy life. It's not a panacea, and fit and lean is better than fit and fat, but fit and fat is better than thin and not fit. Second, time to exercise is the easiest chink to make in the problem's armor. You can get DVDs that you can do in your living room in half an hour. It's often not the most ideal way to exercise (though some are quite good), but it gets you moving, which is step one. Or just go for a walk every afternoon. Half hour, every afternoon, rain or shine, push a little harder every day.

    If you're working a desk job and can make your schedule fit it, take a 20-25 minute walk away from your building every afternoon, about the time that you start to crash from lunch or get hungry. The sunshine and the fresh air will do worlds of good for you. It can also be helpful to clear your head and when you arrive back at your desk, you will be able to have a fresh go at the task at hand.

    If you are having trouble getting the 30 minutes away from your desk, just remind yourself that the smokers take three or four 15 minute breaks every day, and no one seems to have a problem with that.

  13. Re:Legality? on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 2

    Yes. They fell victim to one of the classic blunders.

    A land war in Asia?

  14. Re:Brick on Anti-WiFi Wallpaper Available Next Year · · Score: 1

    And as a bonus, the brick is a tiger repellant, too!

  15. Re:If you lie about a degree your fired, unless CE on Yahoo Board Director Patti Hart Stepping Down Over Thompson Scandal · · Score: 2

    If you, I, or the next poster lied about a degree then we would most likely be fired. [...] The real intended lesson of automatic termination is never falsify your application. Employers rightfully want a very high price to be associated with such falsification.

    Has Yahoo followed this very common policy of instantly terminating anyone who falsified their application? Why does the CEO get a pass compared to all other employees [/sarcasm]? That is the real question that this controversy raises.

    I can't wait to see the CEO brought up in the first wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Maybe I will try to get myself hired at Yahoo, and then when I get fired after it comes to light that I do not have the 5 Ph.D. degrees and 206 awarded patents that I had claimed on my resume, I will cry mightily about the unfair and uneven application of these policies.

  16. Re:Seems typical, actually. on Yahoo Board Director Patti Hart Stepping Down Over Thompson Scandal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nobody likes lying, and it's pretty hard to defend someone who gets caught telling a lie, but, do you really believe that Yahoo hired Scott Thompson because they thought he had a CS degree, from 1979, from some tiny college that nobody has heard of?

    No, they probably didn't hire him for his CS degree, so why did he feel it necessary to fabricate one? The issue is not if he has a CS degree or not; being a CEO doesn't require knowledge of spanning trees. He probably is a very capable manager-- after all he got this far, right?

    No one comes up smelling like a rose here: the CEO looks like a doofus for fabricating such an easily-debunked lie (or allowing a mistake to propagate, if we want to be generous). The board at large looks like a bunch of doofuses for not bothering to have a secretary make a 5-minute phone call to every institution in his CV. The guy who wants a seat on the board looks like a whiny nit-picker who is just looking for an angle to get leverage for his own agenda.

    The real issue, in my mind, is that if a Chief Officer of a billion dollar company can't be bothered to be ethical about such a stupid, tiddly detail, how can he be trusted to be honest about more weighty matters? Getting this detail wrong in filings to the SEC is at best a lack of fact-checking and at worst flat-out perjury. Who's to say the same guy would not cook the balance sheets or lie to investors?

    If all we can go on is his track record (since his qualifications don't seem to matter), this is a piss-poor first entry in his yet-to-be written record as CEO.

  17. Re:new slogan on TSA's mm-Wave Body Scanner Breaks Diabetic Teen's $10K Insulin Pump · · Score: 1

    They're also illegal for private ownership in NYC...

    What, Geiger counters, or fluorescent bulbs?

  18. Re:It's the hypocricy on Leave Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson Alone! · · Score: 1

    Now if there was a background check form that had him write in his education history anew and sign a "this is true to my knowledge" statement, and he still put the degree on there, perhaps there's some basis for termination just for the explicit lie. But it's not at all clear that that exists. Personally, I think it's just as likely that e-bay doctored the bio at some point to make itself feel better about him, and yahoo simply copied that without much thought.

    Ok, let's go with that. We do know that this fictitious degree was listed on filings with the SEC that he did have to sign his name to as a corporate officer.

  19. Re:Fire Him on Yahoo CEO Wrongly Claimed To Have Degree In Computer Science · · Score: 1

    I say fire him immediately. Having someone at the top who egregiously lied for so long sets the tone for the whole company. That's not how you want to do business, so that's not who you want as your leader.

    You're making a big assumption about how they want to do business. But you do raise a great point: how come no other company has called him out on this yet?
    If I were on the board, I would be even more worried about his willingness to lie on such a stupid, easily checkable fact. What else would he be trying to put over on me?

  20. Re:And he still has a job? on Yahoo CEO Wrongly Claimed To Have Degree In Computer Science · · Score: 1

        Falsifying credentials at hire time are usually grounds for immediate termination, regardless of how long you have worked for a company.

        I wonder what their history of termination for this kind of issue have been.

    For the past two years all that has been newsworthy about Yahoo has been how incredibly stupid their management has been. Tossing him now would be publicly owning up to being so lazy and incompetent that they couldn't even bother checking the resume of a potential multi-million dollar employee. It would be admitting to the latest in a long and steady stream of boneheaded moves, and upper management usually can't admit so quickly that they were so wrong.

    It will be 6-9 months from now, after the attention span of the media runs out, when he "moves on for new opportunities".

  21. Transportation Safety Administration? on Terminal Mixup Implicates TSA Agents In LAX Smuggling Plot · · Score: 1

    Someone please explain how the safety of the aircraft was in jeopardy?

    No, I'm not arguing for more drug trafficking, but the duties of the TSA should be limited to insuring safety. Full Stop. Even if they discovered a terabyte of child porn, $100,000 cash, 1kg of cocaine, and a box of Cuban cigars in my bag, as long as there is nothing to cause harm to the aircraft or the other passengers the proper response should be "Thank you sir, have a nice flight."

  22. Re:Intragam on NY Times: Microsoft Tried To Unload Bing On Facebook · · Score: 1

    Wow, that's revisionist. Schmidt was at Novell when Adwords was launched.. nearly a year before scmidt became CEO (and 6 months before he even worked at google).

    Google does not give away its product for free. Its product is advertising space.

    Indeed. The important things to get right are Google's definition of "product" and "customer". Here's an easy way to tell which is which: if you are using a Google product for free, you aren't a "customer".

  23. Re:Maybe NDA's are more relevant in different fiel on Will Write Code, Won't Sign NDA · · Score: 1

    I worked with a friend a while back while he was trying to scare up funds from VCs for an idea he wanted to turn into a company. He went in with the expectation that they would sign his NDA. They told him GTFO with your little NDA. He soon discovered that from the perspective of the VC's an idea itself is

    <snip>

    On the other hand though, I work for a software company where nobody will talk to us about the work they want us to do unless we sign an NDA. I can't speak for other companies, maybe it's just us. But for me, I kind of agree with the VC's. I have some good ideas too, but have I produced anything from them? Not yet! :)

    Your two examples show why most NDAs are flawed. The main point of TFA is that most NDAs are overly broad, with unreasonable time limits.

    In your first example, your friend was basically saying to the VCs, "I have an idea I will share with you as long as you agree that you will pass up any other idea, no matter how tangentially related to mine, that you might hear in the next 2 years." What possible benefit would the VCs have from such an arrangement? Now, if their negotiations has proceeded to the point that both parties saw that there was real benefit to continuing, I'm sure that the VCs would have insisted on a confidentiality agreement.

  24. Re:They stabbed it with their steely knives... on Warner Bros: New Program To Digitize Your DVDs · · Score: 1

    The self destructing DVDs weren't a terrible idea. It allowed a rental model without having to return them. This would have made it a consumer convenience.

    As another poster has stated, the execution was the problem. At $4.99 a piece, with a selection of maybe 20 titles to choose from, there was no reason to buy. If I'm having to visit a retail location to pick up the movie, I could just as easily drive to a different retail location with thousands of titles to choose from for rent at the same price, or to purchase and keep forever for another ten bucks.

  25. Re:Shilled Wikipedia page on Chevy Volt Meets High Resistance, GM Suspends Sales · · Score: 1

    What I can't find, is any objective truth there. Admittedly, no surprise, since I've never seen any wikipedia car entry that isn't so-obviously written by a fan, or the marketing dept of the manufacturer. The Volt's page was clearly written by someone with connections to GM. Just like so many other wikipedia pages. It's a complete waste of time using wikipedia for anything that has a fanbase, commercial interests, or political implications.

    So go fix it. That's the beauty of Wikipedia.