That's the funny thing about OS costs. They don't necessarily get blindly passed on to the consumer. If that were to happen, the "bigs" would have certain margins they'd wish to protect -- any additional production costs would be added to the top line. We know this is not the case. Dell, for instance, negotiates (very) low unit prices for Windows, then makes up the difference by charging Google, AOL, and others to piggyback their software on the installations. This means the OS is effectively at no cost to the consumer.
Price out a Windows machine from Dell, then go to a retailer like NewEgg to find comparable components to build it yourself without an OS. Even using crappier versions of the same components, you come within 20% of Dell's price, AND you still have to put it together yourself. You also have to manage the warranties for each component individually, and do not get the on-site service Dell provides for the first year of ownership. That considered, it is more likely they are eating the cost of the OS rather than passing it on.
Or, to take an even more cynical stance, maybe it never really happened as described. The video conveniently leaves out anything showing the chimp using a "spear." The chimp is shown holding a twig that is too flimsy to be used to stab something, then it is shown breaking the tree to get at the bush babies. To believe that the scientist is accurately describing what happened before and after the footage was shot is to do so without any documented evidence.
Or maybe "natural monopoly" has been replaced with a newspeak definition?
Or maybe you don't know the definition of a "natural monopoly." OK, strike the word "maybe" from that last sentence.
A natural monopoly exists for any good whose marginal cost decreases with each unit. Consequently, the price war that develops among the players in the market will eventually drive all of them out of the business. This is known as a market failure, as free market forces will have negative effects on supply availability.
In the US, the government tries to mitigate this market failure by granting monopoly privileges to one provider in each market. For an example, look at how local telephone service works. Whether this is the best way to do things or not is obviously highly debatable, but one plain fact is this kind of policy certainly maintains supply availability.
Personally, I prefer a policy that seeks to make the market conditions amenable to a free market system, instead of abiding a form of market failure in a monopoly. Take control of the marginalizing factors away from the market, and you have an environment where competition can exist. There's no reason we should reasonably expect telecom companies to foot the bill to build infrastructure unless they can directly monetize it in the short-term. Much like we shouldn't expect trucking companies to build roads. This is one area that the government SHOULD stick its nose in, but it doesn't.
What is unethical about cutting an employee loose who has expressed a desire to leave? Get a clue.
The right thing to do when an employee turns in notice is to let him or her go and pay out the two weeks. That way there's no hard feelings, and the relationship isn't dragged out unnecessarily.
No way do they have any legal basis. It would be difficult to collect damages even if you had signed a contract with them. Most states tend to err on the side of the employee, not the employer. Plus, by escorting you from the building before your date of resignation, it is THEY who terminated the employment relationship.
Unfortunately, even the most ridiculous of lawsuits requires a court appearance to settle. I'm no lawyer (not even close), but I would think you need to use a strategy that will provide your former employer with incentive to drop this nonsense. Obviously they can afford more in legal resources than you, so you'll need some kind of counter suit that would be costly to them should they continue this course of action. Look for as many damages you can claim as possible. Also, if you have any dirt on the company, that may provide you leverage in your cause. You need to make the costs of this to them not worth satisfying their spiteful lawsuit.
Given the history of Muslim radicals, I doubt your "shower the world with hugs and kisses" strategy would do anything but make us even more vulnerable. But thanks for trying, Nancy.
Legislation protecting telephone communications is very specifically aimed at the signals being broadcast back and forth between (or among) the participants.
An e-mail message is something that is stored and persisted, unlike a phone conversation. You should have no reason to believe an e-mail you send out is implicitly covered by some law governing another form of communication. It would be no different if you hand-wrote a letter incriminating yourself in some matter of wrongdoing, and dropped it off in public somewhere. In that case, you have no expectation of that letter being protected by search and seizure laws. Nor would you with an e-mail message that is sitting on someone else's servers.
Have you thought about replicating data to another server for querying? You can build indexes on the subscriber that are optimized for selection, and on the publisher that are optimized for insertion. Even in a high-volume environment, it should be almost instantaneous.
A college education is a privilege, not a right. Athletic programs even moreso. It is not unreasonable for the school to place conditions on the privilege it provides, especially when the athlete is a representative of the school.
What are the both of you smoking? The US is still and will continue to be at the forefront of (true and verifiable) scientific advances. What we see from other countries tends to be debunked rather quickly. Granted, peer review isn't what it used to be, but there tends to be a lot more disciplined and methodical research in this country than, say the UK (fake experimental breakthrough du jour) or South Korea ('nuff said). Scientific breakthroughs have real value, and results correlate with resources (money).
The code was amended in the 1990s to broaden the powers of the government in surveillance. 18 USC Sec. 2517 is particularly disturbing because it paints a very broad picture of government uses for communications data.
Phone companies can fight any liability on two fronts. For one, provisions were provided in the law for their actions. Secondly, the argument could be made that the intent of the law was for the content of communications, not statistical data on the endpoints. The latter is obviously some pretty gray area, but if you read the text of the law you can see how a decent attorney could make that argument.
While I'm not an engineer (rather a software developer), I've noticed the attitude about writing is largely the same. "I'm not a writing major, I'm a(an) [insert technical vocation here]." I can't vouch for your curriculum, but I would say there are few changes you could make that would make better writers out of these students. If they don't recognize the importance of effective communication, because they don't think they do or will ever need to, your best efforts will just go in one ear and out the other.
The key to interpretation is having a point of reference. The FA brings up an interesting point, but consider the difference between human cultures today and early civilizations. Written and other persistent, nonverbal records are ubiquitous in today's society. The comparatively high literacy rate, combined with the ease of production of the written word provides a much more vast store from which to draw. Obviously everything we have today will not survive, but just think of what future archaeologists would still manage to find -- a wealth of books to decipher our language, as well as magazines, more realistic drawings and paintings, movie film, etc.
We have learned quite a bit about prehistoric civilizations from just their tools, homes, and a few other artifacts. Does it really seem reasonable to think the evidence we will leave behind won't paint a much more vivid picture to a presumably more advanced society?
By the same token, a company with as large a cash position as Microsoft can make up that ground even faster. Everyone seems to be quick to forget that Microsoft had missed the Internet boat by several years in the late 1990s. By 2000 it was a dominating force in the space, both on the desktop and in the server room.
This is a company that can change directions on a dime. While its current initiatives are very broad, and are leaving it vulnerable, Microsoft has plenty of money in the bank to make it all work.
That is a pretty weak argument. Microsoft is not forcing anyone to do anything. The search box is merely an added convenience, and certainly not the only way a user can perform an internet search. If IE were to hijack the request when a user manually typed in a valid URL or followed a bookmark to another search engine, that would be one thing. But since this is a feature that will not impact regular browser usage, there's no compelling reason to regulate Microsoft's ability to leverage the use of that feature to gain more search traffic.
That was an unwieldy but interesting read. Correct me if I'm wrong, but interexchange VNXX traffic means the endpoints are not local to one another. Since the VNXX traffic ends at the point of connection to the Internet, but this seems to be the condition in dispute:
Global Naps has to dial one or more additional connection points from its inital access point to gain a connectionto the Internet. Somewhere there is a connection that terminates in a different exchange than where it was initiated (i.e. a toll call). The basis of their case appears to be that somehow the interexchange calls initiated by their users, which would have been charged had they been voice calls, should not be charged because the ISP remand order somehow takes precedence. The court obviously disagreed.
I'm no lawyer, but my take is Global Naps thought they'd get away with not paying their phone bill, and sued when Verizon cut off their service.
What a great point. Look at how age limits have decimated the market for cigarettes, booze, and pornography. Thousands of store owners rose up, with a resounding battle cry: "If we can't sell this stuff to kids, then we're not going to sell it at all!"
It doesn't matter (and the parody argument wouldn't hold water anyway). A copyright gives you protection for a specific piece of work -- a script, a character, a painting, a piece of code, etc. If Google copied elements of specific paintings, the Miro family's attorneys *might* have a case. However, if they use ownership of a "style" of work as the basis of their argument, Google will likely win if they were to take this to trial.
Holders of copyrights have used that to stake ownership claims to which they are not entitled. This is not because of the law. Most people, upon receiving a cease and desist letter, will comply with the terms either immediately or after some correspondence. They either can't be bothered with going to court or are afraid of the consequences. A copyright holder can take advantage of this, by having a lawyer send out a threatening letter accusing the "offender" of some copyright violation. When the "offender" backs down, the holder gains ownership not through endorsement of the law, but through simple bullying.
There is no such thing as the "next big thing." The potential innovations and achievements that we hail as the next big thing typically end up fading away (see: Electronica). The truly groundbreaking inventions are judged so by history, and their effects on society are almost never foreseen. Nobody would have guessed how the automobile has been the cornerstone of American culture. There was no speculation that the Wright brothers made the world a much smaller place to live with their exploits in Kitty Hawk. When the internet was a DARPA project, did anyone think ".com" would be a household word twenty years later?
Inventions can be the catalysts of change, but only when we embrace and properly utilize them. Looking for the next big thing before it arrives is nothing short of quixotic.
I'm a big fan of.NET, but Microsoft made a big error in making VB a.NET language. The syntax modifications to pound the square peg that was VB into the round hole that is OO (and to align the platform with other languages) was awkward at best. And it was all for naught, as most VB developers have refused to embrace OOP.
Classic VB was a pretty easy language to pick up. VB.NET is not. C# is much more readable, less verbose, and since it is the language preferred by Microsoft for developing on the.NET platform, you're going to find a lot more support out there.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the funny thing about OS costs. They don't necessarily get blindly passed on to the consumer. If that were to happen, the "bigs" would have certain margins they'd wish to protect -- any additional production costs would be added to the top line. We know this is not the case. Dell, for instance, negotiates (very) low unit prices for Windows, then makes up the difference by charging Google, AOL, and others to piggyback their software on the installations. This means the OS is effectively at no cost to the consumer.
Price out a Windows machine from Dell, then go to a retailer like NewEgg to find comparable components to build it yourself without an OS. Even using crappier versions of the same components, you come within 20% of Dell's price, AND you still have to put it together yourself. You also have to manage the warranties for each component individually, and do not get the on-site service Dell provides for the first year of ownership. That considered, it is more likely they are eating the cost of the OS rather than passing it on.
Or, to take an even more cynical stance, maybe it never really happened as described. The video conveniently leaves out anything showing the chimp using a "spear." The chimp is shown holding a twig that is too flimsy to be used to stab something, then it is shown breaking the tree to get at the bush babies. To believe that the scientist is accurately describing what happened before and after the footage was shot is to do so without any documented evidence.
Or maybe "natural monopoly" has been replaced with a newspeak definition?
Or maybe you don't know the definition of a "natural monopoly." OK, strike the word "maybe" from that last sentence.
A natural monopoly exists for any good whose marginal cost decreases with each unit. Consequently, the price war that develops among the players in the market will eventually drive all of them out of the business. This is known as a market failure, as free market forces will have negative effects on supply availability.
In the US, the government tries to mitigate this market failure by granting monopoly privileges to one provider in each market. For an example, look at how local telephone service works. Whether this is the best way to do things or not is obviously highly debatable, but one plain fact is this kind of policy certainly maintains supply availability.
Personally, I prefer a policy that seeks to make the market conditions amenable to a free market system, instead of abiding a form of market failure in a monopoly. Take control of the marginalizing factors away from the market, and you have an environment where competition can exist. There's no reason we should reasonably expect telecom companies to foot the bill to build infrastructure unless they can directly monetize it in the short-term. Much like we shouldn't expect trucking companies to build roads. This is one area that the government SHOULD stick its nose in, but it doesn't.
I can't help but think about all the other people who have touched those screens before me. And with no way to clean them.
Paper ballots -- it's just plain sanitary
What is unethical about cutting an employee loose who has expressed a desire to leave? Get a clue.
The right thing to do when an employee turns in notice is to let him or her go and pay out the two weeks. That way there's no hard feelings, and the relationship isn't dragged out unnecessarily.
No way do they have any legal basis. It would be difficult to collect damages even if you had signed a contract with them. Most states tend to err on the side of the employee, not the employer. Plus, by escorting you from the building before your date of resignation, it is THEY who terminated the employment relationship.
Unfortunately, even the most ridiculous of lawsuits requires a court appearance to settle. I'm no lawyer (not even close), but I would think you need to use a strategy that will provide your former employer with incentive to drop this nonsense. Obviously they can afford more in legal resources than you, so you'll need some kind of counter suit that would be costly to them should they continue this course of action. Look for as many damages you can claim as possible. Also, if you have any dirt on the company, that may provide you leverage in your cause. You need to make the costs of this to them not worth satisfying their spiteful lawsuit.
Given the history of Muslim radicals, I doubt your "shower the world with hugs and kisses" strategy would do anything but make us even more vulnerable. But thanks for trying, Nancy.
These are two completely different animals.
Legislation protecting telephone communications is very specifically aimed at the signals being broadcast back and forth between (or among) the participants.
An e-mail message is something that is stored and persisted, unlike a phone conversation. You should have no reason to believe an e-mail you send out is implicitly covered by some law governing another form of communication. It would be no different if you hand-wrote a letter incriminating yourself in some matter of wrongdoing, and dropped it off in public somewhere. In that case, you have no expectation of that letter being protected by search and seizure laws. Nor would you with an e-mail message that is sitting on someone else's servers.
Have you thought about replicating data to another server for querying? You can build indexes on the subscriber that are optimized for selection, and on the publisher that are optimized for insertion. Even in a high-volume environment, it should be almost instantaneous.
100% certain? Hardly. Take off your tinfoil hat and quit accepting blogs as bible truth.
A college education is a privilege, not a right. Athletic programs even moreso. It is not unreasonable for the school to place conditions on the privilege it provides, especially when the athlete is a representative of the school.
"the party mode is pretty useless."
That's MIT freshmen for you.
What are the both of you smoking? The US is still and will continue to be at the forefront of (true and verifiable) scientific advances. What we see from other countries tends to be debunked rather quickly. Granted, peer review isn't what it used to be, but there tends to be a lot more disciplined and methodical research in this country than, say the UK (fake experimental breakthrough du jour) or South Korea ('nuff said). Scientific breakthroughs have real value, and results correlate with resources (money).
The code was amended in the 1990s to broaden the powers of the government in surveillance. 18 USC Sec. 2517 is particularly disturbing because it paints a very broad picture of government uses for communications data.
Phone companies can fight any liability on two fronts. For one, provisions were provided in the law for their actions. Secondly, the argument could be made that the intent of the law was for the content of communications, not statistical data on the endpoints. The latter is obviously some pretty gray area, but if you read the text of the law you can see how a decent attorney could make that argument.
While I'm not an engineer (rather a software developer), I've noticed the attitude about writing is largely the same. "I'm not a writing major, I'm a(an) [insert technical vocation here]." I can't vouch for your curriculum, but I would say there are few changes you could make that would make better writers out of these students. If they don't recognize the importance of effective communication, because they don't think they do or will ever need to, your best efforts will just go in one ear and out the other.
The key to interpretation is having a point of reference. The FA brings up an interesting point, but consider the difference between human cultures today and early civilizations. Written and other persistent, nonverbal records are ubiquitous in today's society. The comparatively high literacy rate, combined with the ease of production of the written word provides a much more vast store from which to draw. Obviously everything we have today will not survive, but just think of what future archaeologists would still manage to find -- a wealth of books to decipher our language, as well as magazines, more realistic drawings and paintings, movie film, etc.
We have learned quite a bit about prehistoric civilizations from just their tools, homes, and a few other artifacts. Does it really seem reasonable to think the evidence we will leave behind won't paint a much more vivid picture to a presumably more advanced society?
By the same token, a company with as large a cash position as Microsoft can make up that ground even faster. Everyone seems to be quick to forget that Microsoft had missed the Internet boat by several years in the late 1990s. By 2000 it was a dominating force in the space, both on the desktop and in the server room.
This is a company that can change directions on a dime. While its current initiatives are very broad, and are leaving it vulnerable, Microsoft has plenty of money in the bank to make it all work.
That is a pretty weak argument. Microsoft is not forcing anyone to do anything. The search box is merely an added convenience, and certainly not the only way a user can perform an internet search. If IE were to hijack the request when a user manually typed in a valid URL or followed a bookmark to another search engine, that would be one thing. But since this is a feature that will not impact regular browser usage, there's no compelling reason to regulate Microsoft's ability to leverage the use of that feature to gain more search traffic.
That was an unwieldy but interesting read. Correct me if I'm wrong, but interexchange VNXX traffic means the endpoints are not local to one another. Since the VNXX traffic ends at the point of connection to the Internet, but this seems to be the condition in dispute:
Global Naps has to dial one or more additional connection points from its inital access point to gain a connectionto the Internet. Somewhere there is a connection that terminates in a different exchange than where it was initiated (i.e. a toll call). The basis of their case appears to be that somehow the interexchange calls initiated by their users, which would have been charged had they been voice calls, should not be charged because the ISP remand order somehow takes precedence. The court obviously disagreed.
I'm no lawyer, but my take is Global Naps thought they'd get away with not paying their phone bill, and sued when Verizon cut off their service.
What a great point. Look at how age limits have decimated the market for cigarettes, booze, and pornography. Thousands of store owners rose up, with a resounding battle cry: "If we can't sell this stuff to kids, then we're not going to sell it at all!"
Yeah. That's what happened.
It doesn't matter (and the parody argument wouldn't hold water anyway). A copyright gives you protection for a specific piece of work -- a script, a character, a painting, a piece of code, etc. If Google copied elements of specific paintings, the Miro family's attorneys *might* have a case. However, if they use ownership of a "style" of work as the basis of their argument, Google will likely win if they were to take this to trial.
Holders of copyrights have used that to stake ownership claims to which they are not entitled. This is not because of the law. Most people, upon receiving a cease and desist letter, will comply with the terms either immediately or after some correspondence. They either can't be bothered with going to court or are afraid of the consequences. A copyright holder can take advantage of this, by having a lawyer send out a threatening letter accusing the "offender" of some copyright violation. When the "offender" backs down, the holder gains ownership not through endorsement of the law, but through simple bullying.
than seeing nerd groups fighting with one another. Except, maybe, for the epic feud between snowboarders and skiers.
There is no such thing as the "next big thing." The potential innovations and achievements that we hail as the next big thing typically end up fading away (see: Electronica). The truly groundbreaking inventions are judged so by history, and their effects on society are almost never foreseen. Nobody would have guessed how the automobile has been the cornerstone of American culture. There was no speculation that the Wright brothers made the world a much smaller place to live with their exploits in Kitty Hawk. When the internet was a DARPA project, did anyone think ".com" would be a household word twenty years later?
Inventions can be the catalysts of change, but only when we embrace and properly utilize them. Looking for the next big thing before it arrives is nothing short of quixotic.
I'm a big fan of .NET, but Microsoft made a big error in making VB a .NET language. The syntax modifications to pound the square peg that was VB into the round hole that is OO (and to align the platform with other languages) was awkward at best. And it was all for naught, as most VB developers have refused to embrace OOP.
.NET platform, you're going to find a lot more support out there.
Classic VB was a pretty easy language to pick up. VB.NET is not. C# is much more readable, less verbose, and since it is the language preferred by Microsoft for developing on the
It's a moot point. How is control of an asset that has been developed almost solely by and for US use suddenly up for grabs?