Your friend needs the advice of a tax attorney, or even the basest of tax books.
A higher tax bracket only applies to that marginal income.
If your friend worked all year, his income taxes of the first 10.5 months would stay the same, and the rate of the higher bracket would only apply to the money IN THAT BRACKET, i.e. the money he earned from months 10.5 - 12.
Read this interview for a summary of TCPA, what is is, and more importantly to you, what it is NOT.
"TCPA is an industry specification that defines mechanisms for "trusted" client/server...[Trust is the] ability to feel confident that the software environment in a platform is operating as expected."
"While somebody could write a DRM application using the TPM, they could also write one without it. Non-DRM applications can be developed under TCPA. The example I thought of is an improved VPN for companies that are super-paranoid about their data (think about it... 2048 bit keys, no hash load on the system CPU, ability to tie accessibility to a unique platform)."
"Adding TCPA & TPM to a system doesn't automatically add DRM to a platform. Some application has to tie the TPM to the "media" being "protected". Merely adding TCPA to [hardware] doesn't constitute DRM."
I thought the point of OpenSource was sharing. Now you've got the source for a potentially great streaming media server, and you're bitching about not having the codecs?
The whole point of Open Source IS sharing.
The whole point of Free Software, and Debian GNU/Linux, is sharing, free modification and distribution, without limits. You may disagree with their philosphy, but proprietary codecs do not fit in what they believe in.
I suppose you'd rather re-write the whole server, AND the codecs yourself instead of just the codecs.
No, they would not rather write the server and codecs themselves, but if the alternative is an Open Source, but non-Free Software, server, along with proprietary codecs, they would rather not use them at all.
Just a choice they made for themselves. They are not forcing you to accept Debian's terms. The poster you are quoting is just postulating what Debian might do, for its users only, and forced on no one.
1. The Influence of Pretrial Publicity on Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analysis
At present, 15 studies have been found which test the hypothesis that negative pretrial publicity increases the likelihood of "guilty" verdicts by jurors. In support of the hypothesis, the meta-analysis has uncovered a significantly higher level of guilty verdicts in subjects exposed to negative pretrial publicity, compared to control (no pretrial publicity) subjects, Zma = 11.23, p less than.0001. The overall effect size, r =.17, indicates a small effect across the studies. Additional analyses address moderator variables, such as type of publicity, while discussion focuses on the application of the findings to courtroom decision-making.
Link
2. The Faltering Common Law Jury System: A Psychological Perspective
Moran and Cutler (1991) surveyed potential jurors in order to determine any effects that may be occurring as the result of pre-trial media exposure. Their findings showed that exposure to publicity regarding the crime and the accused was highly correlated to the existence of predetermined conclusions of the defendants guilt. Linz and Pinrod (1992) found that this effect goes far beyond the jurors preconceived beliefs, and that even after unbiased and judicially significant information was provided to the subjects during the trial, jurors who had received greater amounts of media exposure were more prone to convict the accused. Baron and Bryne (1997) suggest that pretrial publicity, which in its most dramatic form shows the suspect being taken away in handcuffs, forces us to form an impression of that suspect. This first impression is most often one of guilt. This first impression in turn influences the acceptance of all subsequent information, possibly leading one to accept questionable information that implies guilt, while rejecting information that favors innocence.
Link
3. Relating Pretrial Publicity, Judicial Instruction, and Thought Suppression With Guilt Ratings Link
The recent rash of DMCA cases have involved actions taken before the statute was in place.
The original alleged infringement might have happened before the DMCA went into effect, but if Skylink is still selling the universal remotes, then they are still infringing.
Each and every sale is an infringment, and so the plaintiff can use laws in effect as of the last sale.
XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. It's no product, it's an open source project which is developed and maintained by lots of people from all over the world. (emphasis mine)
I don't know the details about the MPEG4 patents and licensing terms, but it does not seem that XviD is a "a third choice, a totally Free Software media codec solution", but rather an open source (but still probably patent violating) implementation of the MPEG4 standard.
----------
On a separate point, I found this point from the article interesting (no sides, just interesting):
"Microsoft's licensing fees are for the use of technology and don't necessarily cover an indemnification (i.e. patent rights), while MPEG LA's license covers patent rights and comes without technology."
- Microsoft is selling a product without the underlying patent rights
- MPEG LA is selling patent rights without a product.
It's an eternal shame that such advanced concepts and ideas seem to have gone to waste in Passenger Aviation.
I'm not so sure the concepts have gone to waste. Technology lives on as R&D for the next generation. The problem is that there is not enough demand and the idea was not financially feasible.
A trans-Atlantic round trip ticket on Concorde costs just under $10,000. EACH. Add to that the fact that because of the sonic boom and local noise restrictions, Concorde only flies coast to coast routes over oceans. In fact, the only profitable routes are NY-London & NY-Paris.
If there was money to made off of Concorde-style supersonic aircraft, more would be in service. While the technology is cool, the business aspects have doomed it.
There was an interesting article in a recent BusinessWeek magazine (sorry, online version requires subscription) that discussed the internal fighting going on about the future of Boeing's commercial aircraft division.
There is large support from some for the full development of a Blended Wing Body (BWB) airliner, and there are significant arguements for that development. The concept is over 50 years old (Northrop), the current design is at least 10 years old (acquired when Boeing bought McDonnell), and an implementation exists as the B-2 stealh bomber. There is very high interest from airlines and the military due to lower operating costs (more people, less fuel), increased payload, and ability to operate within current airports. Reportedly one airline has offered to pitch in $1 billion to develop the concept further, and the thought is that Boeing could get the US Government to grant at least several $billion more, since the plane has military applications.
The opposing side (unfortunately including the head of Boeing's commercial aircraft business) seems to really dislike the BWB, and favor(s/ed) the Sonic Cruiser. Tube and wings approach. The BWB isn't "sexy" enough. They claim that the downsides of the BWB are no windows for most passengers, and too much pitch in turns for the outside passengers (far from the roll axis). The first really is a silly reason to shelf a revolutionary idea, and computer simulations show that the second isn't really a problem if the pilot doens't act like he is flyinhg a fighter plane. Problem is, no one really WANTS the thing. It has increased fuel requirements (operating costs) for a small speed gain, and the airlines can't see the benefit to their bottom line.
The thrust of the article was that Boeing, or at least the pro-BWB faction inside Boeing, should keep up the research and development, keep pitching the idea upward (where *some* senior Boeing management seem to be keen on it - Phil Condit (CEO) for one).
Now that the Sonic Cruiser has been canned, it will be interesting to see if the other (r)evolutionary design, the BWB, gains traction and sees a greater chance of production.
Other than sheer size, and aesthetic concerns about mass-commodification (which I can understand your dislike of, if not necessarily agree with), what in particular do you disagree with about these companies?
Control of marketplace? (legal unless otherwise proven)
Unhealthy food that McDonald's serves? (a thousand others are as bad)
Some sort of disagreement with minimum wage laws? (non-specific to these particular companies - that is a problem with a policy viewpoint)
Concerns about anti-globalization? (aesthetic, I would think. *Specific* economical or policy-based arguements, please)
I see people rail against large corporations, mostly under the guise of the the "anti-globalization movement" (whatever that hodge-podge of ever-changing alliances of otherwise-non-related fringe groups might stand for at that particular non-productive protest)
My question is: specifics, please? What exactly are you against?
According to Kernel Trap, Linus merged
the "device mapper" code, the kernel component of Sistina's LVM2 volume manager, around 2.5.45.
In addition, the EVMS team then recognized the implication of this decision vis-a-vis the inclusion of EVMS in Linus' tree in the near future, and decided that a significant rewrite of some of their code was in order.
"As many of you may know by now, the 2.5 kernel feature freeze has come and gone, and it seems clear that the EVMS kernel driver is not going to be included. With this in mind, we have decided to rework the EVMS user-space administration tools (the Engine) to work with existing drivers currently in the kernel, including (but not necessarily limited to) device mapper and MD."
This announcement was met with TONS of positive praise on lkml: for the actual technical decision, for the mature and pleasant manner in which it was handled, and for the public policy of removing duplication of kernel code in general, simplifying the MD/device mapper code specifically.
Finally, Alan Cox stated about 2.4:
"I plan to try and push LVM2 to Marcelo after the next release. Whether he will take it I don't know. Obviously its good to have the ability to move back nicely to older kernels."
What they can't do is stop you from giving away (or selling for $5) the copy you bought from them for $299. The GPL doesn't say anything about you having to give away your software, or about charging only what it costs to physically transfer the copy. It just says that you cannot then place any restrictions on further distribution of that GPLed software.
FALSE. Lindows sure CAN stop you from selling copies of their distribution.
The GPL license only applies to specific pieces of GPLed software. The Lindows CD contains a number of packages of GPLed software. THOSE you can redistribute for $0 if you wish.
However, Lindows has a copyright on their layout and packaging of the CD, and I would imagine that there is at least 1 package on the CD that is not GPL (ex. installer, Clinck-n-Run client, etc.) The copyrighted layout and the copyrighted, non-GPLed software allows them to disallow redistribution of unaltered copies of their CD.
So no free copies of the Lindows CD.
You could remove all non-GPLed software from their CD and give THAT away - the GPL, of course, allows that. But nothing in the GPL allows you to copy any CD JUST BECAUSE it has some GPLed software on it.
You worked 60 hours, and that is the denominator, because productivity is a measure of output per labor hour.
----------
As an aside, in my mind, you also got paid for 60 hours (exception - you have a lawful claim for back wages owed).
Whether you realize it or not, you got paid for working 60 hours. You work and they pay you for that work - no more, no less.
Expectations about a 'normal' work week no longer apply. If you are salaried, and were hired anticipating 40 hours, and now work 60 hours with no increase in pay, then you and your employer had an implicit salary renegotiation - and you lost.
If you no longer think you are getting paid what you deserve, then you are free to leave. If you have difficulty finding a higher paying position, or similar pay with only 40 hours, then evidently you are getting paid an appropriate market rate for those 60 hours.
"Output measures for
business and nonfarm business are based on measures of gross domestic product
prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of
Commerce."
and
"Quarterly output measures for manufacturing reflect indexes of
industrial production independently prepared by the Board of Governors of the
Federal Reserve System."
If you will scan down the recent listings, you'll see that Gates sells blocks of shares in round millions all of the time.
Todays sale is not particularly relevant. He owns 616 million shares, selling a few million means nothing to him - probably program trades, cash for quarterly tax payments, a new yacht, etc.
(Officer Barbrady voice) :
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.
Is there some development methodology or practice a company can implement to protect itself from "rogue" programmers like this? The NSA / CIA / FBI / Pentagon must have software that they want to guarantee is uncompromised. How do they do it?
Yes, there is. Here is a story about the software engineers (these people actually deserve the title) who design the inflight systems for the Space Shuttles.
The product is the process , moreso than the actual code. It is a fascinating read.
remember you are taxed at end of year on inventory. That includes replacement parts
INCORRECT. Most/all states do not have an ad-valorem tax for property owned, and certainly not for raw materials inventory. Companies are concerned about federal & state INCOME taxes primarily.
Please see this post for a comment about the financial statement impact of the warranty decisions.
Net effect: reducing the warranty from 3 years to 1 year will not have an effect on current cash, but will increase net income and EPS as the new drives get sold (by reducing warranty accrual expenses). And eventually, this will also increase the bottom line by using fewer othewise-revenue-producing drives to service warranty claims.
"A company has to put $XX in the bank and not touch it to cover their warranty costs. If they reduce the warranty, they can use the $$ on other things, such as R&D to make more reliable drives."
Not true. A company does NOT have to accumulate & set aside cash to cover future warranty claims. A company must accrue the expected future warranty expenses, record that amount as liability, and book the increase in the total accrued warranty liability as an expense (or to income, if total warranty liability decreased).
Future warranty claims have no effect on curent cash, just on current income. Big difference.
For WD, IBM, Seagate and the like, this is an easy wasy to increase their current net income & EPS. It will have an effect on future cash to the extent that the company has to use otherwise-revenue producing drives to service warranty claims. It has no effect on current cash. It DOES have an effect on current and future net income.
Hemos, your thoughts about the liability of corporate employees is not entirely true.
Under most U.S. law (mostly State law relating to fiduciary obligations of Directors, Officers & Executives (DOE)), the standard is called the Business Judgement Rule (BJR).
Under the BJR, a DOE is protected from suits for breach of fiduciary duty if the DOE (1) is disinterested (i.e. financially independant of the outcome), (2) acts in good faith, and (3) exercises due care in reaching the decision.
Every decision that a DOE makes does not have to directly accrue to the financial benefit of the corporation. Corporations can, and are expected to, contribute to the local community, support charities, exercise some respect for the environment, i.e perform "good acts".
These "good acts" will not always (or even ever) benefit the corporation financially. Nonetheless, DOEs are never successfully sued because they should have given a dividend instead of donating a piece of land to the city for a park, decided to give employees a day off to help with Habitat for Humnaity, or install CO2 scubbers when the fines are cheaper.
So, contrary to what I see posted on Slashdot frequently, every decision an employee of a company makes DOES NOT have to be the short-term, profit-maximizing decision. Believe it or not, the law allows some leeway in the decision making of running a company.
(and please don't respond with "but Enron...." or "look at WorldCom, Global Crossing, etc." I am speaking about the applicable law of fiduciary duties, not engaging in a public policy debate or Crossfire-esque corporate-bashing)
As JoeBuck says in another reply, the for binary packages, the different builds or components should be split up into different packages.
For source-based packages, and in response to the point about Gentoo:
Portage is the source-based build and package management system that forms the core of the Gentoo distribution.
It does, indeed, allow fine-grained control over dependancies and build options. You can set global environment variables that tell Portage to download and build the requested package with./configure flags that will compile a binary with just the features you wish.
The.ebuild scripts are kept in a tree at/usr/portage. emerge uses the USE environment variables with the.ebuild scripts to download the source file (and download and build any dependancies), then runs./configure with all of the flags set according to the USE variables, with no extraneous options. Then emerge runs make; make install (with your favorite and optimized GCC flags for system arch) into a temp directory, then properly manages the system installation of the resulting binary package.. Viola! Instant perfect packge installed.
You can also do "USE="-gnome -gtk; emerge foo" to override the global USE options for that one package.
Of course, package removal, dependancy handling, package searching, local modifications of the.ebuild scripts, multiple versions of core packages, many versions of patched kernel trees (gentoo, security, plain, mjc, redhat, mandrake, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
Your friend needs the advice of a tax attorney, or even the basest of tax books.
A higher tax bracket only applies to that marginal income.
If your friend worked all year, his income taxes of the first 10.5 months would stay the same, and the rate of the higher bracket would only apply to the money IN THAT BRACKET, i.e. the money he earned from months 10.5 - 12.
Remember: tax rates apply to marginal income.
Read this interview for a summary of TCPA, what is is, and more importantly to you, what it is NOT.
"While somebody could write a DRM application using the TPM, they could also write one without it. Non-DRM applications can be developed under TCPA. The example I thought of is an improved VPN for companies that are super-paranoid about their data (think about it ... 2048 bit keys, no hash load on the system CPU, ability to tie accessibility to a unique platform)."
"Adding TCPA & TPM to a system doesn't automatically add DRM to a platform. Some application has to tie the TPM to the "media" being "protected". Merely adding TCPA to [hardware] doesn't constitute DRM."
I thought the point of OpenSource was sharing. Now you've got the source for a potentially great streaming media server, and you're bitching about not having the codecs?
The whole point of Open Source IS sharing.
The whole point of Free Software, and Debian GNU/Linux, is sharing, free modification and distribution, without limits. You may disagree with their philosphy, but proprietary codecs do not fit in what they believe in.
I suppose you'd rather re-write the whole server, AND the codecs yourself instead of just the codecs.
No, they would not rather write the server and codecs themselves, but if the alternative is an Open Source, but non-Free Software, server, along with proprietary codecs, they would rather not use them at all.
Just a choice they made for themselves. They are not forcing you to accept Debian's terms. The poster you are quoting is just postulating what Debian might do, for its users only, and forced on no one.
No, this is:
1. An attempt, and order by the COURTS to uphold the LAW as written by the CONGRESS that you elected.
2. It is an act by the government to uphold the Constitution which sets up the 3 independent branches of government.
1. The Influence of Pretrial Publicity on Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analysis
At present, 15 studies have been found which test the hypothesis that negative pretrial publicity increases the likelihood of "guilty" verdicts by jurors. In support of the hypothesis, the meta-analysis has uncovered a significantly higher level of guilty verdicts in subjects exposed to negative pretrial publicity, compared to control (no pretrial publicity) subjects, Zma = 11.23, p less than .0001. The overall effect size, r = .17, indicates a small effect across the studies. Additional analyses address moderator variables, such as type of publicity, while discussion focuses on the application of the findings to courtroom decision-making.
Link
2. The Faltering Common Law Jury System: A Psychological Perspective
Moran and Cutler (1991) surveyed potential jurors in order to determine any effects that may be occurring as the result of pre-trial media exposure. Their findings showed that exposure to publicity regarding the crime and the accused was highly correlated to the existence of predetermined conclusions of the defendants guilt. Linz and Pinrod (1992) found that this effect goes far beyond the jurors preconceived beliefs, and that even after unbiased and judicially significant information was provided to the subjects during the trial, jurors who had received greater amounts of media exposure were more prone to convict the accused. Baron and Bryne (1997) suggest that pretrial publicity, which in its most dramatic form shows the suspect being taken away in handcuffs, forces us to form an impression of that suspect. This first impression is most often one of guilt. This first impression in turn influences the acceptance of all subsequent information, possibly leading one to accept questionable information that implies guilt, while rejecting information that favors innocence.
Link
3. Relating Pretrial Publicity, Judicial Instruction, and Thought Suppression With Guilt Ratings
Link
If you scroll down on the article link, there are links to the:
- Complaint
- Amended Complaint
- Motion for Summary Judgement.
The recent rash of DMCA cases have involved actions taken before the statute was in place.
The original alleged infringement might have happened before the DMCA went into effect, but if Skylink is still selling the universal remotes, then they are still infringing.
Each and every sale is an infringment, and so the plaintiff can use laws in effect as of the last sale.
From XviD.org:
What is XviD?
XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. It's no product, it's an open source project which is developed and maintained by lots of people from all over the world. (emphasis mine)
I don't know the details about the MPEG4 patents and licensing terms, but it does not seem that XviD is a "a third choice, a totally Free Software media codec solution" , but rather an open source (but still probably patent violating) implementation of the MPEG4 standard.
----------
On a separate point, I found this point from the article interesting (no sides, just interesting):
"Microsoft's licensing fees are for the use of technology and don't necessarily cover an indemnification (i.e. patent rights), while MPEG LA's license covers patent rights and comes without technology."
- Microsoft is selling a product without the underlying patent rights
- MPEG LA is selling patent rights without a product.
It's an eternal shame that such advanced concepts and ideas seem to have gone to waste in Passenger Aviation.
I'm not so sure the concepts have gone to waste. Technology lives on as R&D for the next generation. The problem is that there is not enough demand and the idea was not financially feasible.
A trans-Atlantic round trip ticket on Concorde costs just under $10,000. EACH. Add to that the fact that because of the sonic boom and local noise restrictions, Concorde only flies coast to coast routes over oceans. In fact, the only profitable routes are NY-London & NY-Paris.
If there was money to made off of Concorde-style supersonic aircraft, more would be in service. While the technology is cool, the business aspects have doomed it.
There was an interesting article in a recent BusinessWeek magazine (sorry, online version requires subscription) that discussed the internal fighting going on about the future of Boeing's commercial aircraft division.
There is large support from some for the full development of a Blended Wing Body (BWB) airliner, and there are significant arguements for that development. The concept is over 50 years old (Northrop), the current design is at least 10 years old (acquired when Boeing bought McDonnell), and an implementation exists as the B-2 stealh bomber. There is very high interest from airlines and the military due to lower operating costs (more people, less fuel), increased payload, and ability to operate within current airports. Reportedly one airline has offered to pitch in $1 billion to develop the concept further, and the thought is that Boeing could get the US Government to grant at least several $billion more, since the plane has military applications.
The opposing side (unfortunately including the head of Boeing's commercial aircraft business) seems to really dislike the BWB, and favor(s/ed) the Sonic Cruiser. Tube and wings approach. The BWB isn't "sexy" enough. They claim that the downsides of the BWB are no windows for most passengers, and too much pitch in turns for the outside passengers (far from the roll axis). The first really is a silly reason to shelf a revolutionary idea, and computer simulations show that the second isn't really a problem if the pilot doens't act like he is flyinhg a fighter plane. Problem is, no one really WANTS the thing. It has increased fuel requirements (operating costs) for a small speed gain, and the airlines can't see the benefit to their bottom line.
The thrust of the article was that Boeing, or at least the pro-BWB faction inside Boeing, should keep up the research and development, keep pitching the idea upward (where *some* senior Boeing management seem to be keen on it - Phil Condit (CEO) for one).
Now that the Sonic Cruiser has been canned, it will be interesting to see if the other (r)evolutionary design, the BWB, gains traction and sees a greater chance of production.
(non-troll - I truly want your opinion)
Other than sheer size, and aesthetic concerns about mass-commodification (which I can understand your dislike of, if not necessarily agree with), what in particular do you disagree with about these companies?
Control of marketplace? (legal unless otherwise proven)
Unhealthy food that McDonald's serves? (a thousand others are as bad)
Some sort of disagreement with minimum wage laws? (non-specific to these particular companies - that is a problem with a policy viewpoint)
Concerns about anti-globalization? (aesthetic, I would think. *Specific* economical or policy-based arguements, please)
I see people rail against large corporations, mostly under the guise of the the "anti-globalization movement" (whatever that hodge-podge of ever-changing alliances of otherwise-non-related fringe groups might stand for at that particular non-productive protest)
My question is: specifics, please? What exactly are you against?
According to Kernel Trap, Linus merged the "device mapper" code, the kernel component of Sistina's LVM2 volume manager, around 2.5.45.
In addition, the EVMS team then recognized the implication of this decision vis-a-vis the inclusion of EVMS in Linus' tree in the near future, and decided that a significant rewrite of some of their code was in order.
"As many of you may know by now, the 2.5 kernel feature freeze has come and gone, and it seems clear that the EVMS kernel driver is not going to be included. With this in mind, we have decided to rework the EVMS user-space administration tools (the Engine) to work with existing drivers currently in the kernel, including (but not necessarily limited to) device mapper and MD."
This announcement was met with TONS of positive praise on lkml: for the actual technical decision, for the mature and pleasant manner in which it was handled, and for the public policy of removing duplication of kernel code in general, simplifying the MD/device mapper code specifically.
Finally, Alan Cox stated about 2.4:
"I plan to try and push LVM2 to Marcelo after the next release. Whether he will take it I don't know. Obviously its good to have the ability to move back nicely to older kernels."
See THIS LINK in the story.
What they can't do is stop you from giving away (or selling for $5) the copy you bought from them for $299. The GPL doesn't say anything about you having to give away your software, or about charging only what it costs to physically transfer the copy. It just says that you cannot then place any restrictions on further distribution of that GPLed software.
FALSE. Lindows sure CAN stop you from selling copies of their distribution.
The GPL license only applies to specific pieces of GPLed software. The Lindows CD contains a number of packages of GPLed software. THOSE you can redistribute for $0 if you wish.
However, Lindows has a copyright on their layout and packaging of the CD, and I would imagine that there is at least 1 package on the CD that is not GPL (ex. installer, Clinck-n-Run client, etc.) The copyrighted layout and the copyrighted, non-GPLed software allows them to disallow redistribution of unaltered copies of their CD.
So no free copies of the Lindows CD.
You could remove all non-GPLed software from their CD and give THAT away - the GPL, of course, allows that. But nothing in the GPL allows you to copy any CD JUST BECAUSE it has some GPLed software on it.
See, for example, SuSE, OpenBSD
You worked 60 hours, and that is the denominator, because productivity is a measure of output per labor hour.
----------
As an aside, in my mind, you also got paid for 60 hours (exception - you have a lawful claim for back wages owed).
Whether you realize it or not, you got paid for working 60 hours. You work and they pay you for that work - no more, no less.
Expectations about a 'normal' work week no longer apply. If you are salaried, and were hired anticipating 40 hours, and now work 60 hours with no increase in pay, then you and your employer had an implicit salary renegotiation - and you lost.
If you no longer think you are getting paid what you deserve, then you are free to leave. If you have difficulty finding a higher paying position, or similar pay with only 40 hours, then evidently you are getting paid an appropriate market rate for those 60 hours.
Please see this post.
Productivity = Output / Hour Worked
where Output
For business & non-farm = GDP
For manufacturing = FedReserve indexes of industrial production
It is a macroeconomic indicator.
The U.S. Burueau of Labor and Statisitcs defines productivity as:
"output per hour of all persons",
where
"Output measures for business and nonfarm business are based on measures of gross domestic product prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce."
and
"Quarterly output measures for manufacturing reflect indexes of industrial production independently prepared by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System."
If you will scan down the recent listings, you'll see that Gates sells blocks of shares in round millions all of the time.
Todays sale is not particularly relevant. He owns 616 million shares, selling a few million means nothing to him - probably program trades, cash for quarterly tax payments, a new yacht, etc.
(Officer Barbrady voice) :
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.
Is there some development methodology or practice a company can implement to protect itself from "rogue" programmers like this? The NSA / CIA / FBI / Pentagon must have software that they want to guarantee is uncompromised. How do they do it?
Yes, there is. Here is a story about the software engineers (these people actually deserve the title) who design the inflight systems for the Space Shuttles.
The product is the process , moreso than the actual code. It is a fascinating read.
remember you are taxed at end of year on inventory. That includes replacement parts
INCORRECT. Most/all states do not have an ad-valorem tax for property owned, and certainly not for raw materials inventory. Companies are concerned about federal & state INCOME taxes primarily.
Please see this post for a comment about the financial statement impact of the warranty decisions.
Net effect: reducing the warranty from 3 years to 1 year will not have an effect on current cash, but will increase net income and EPS as the new drives get sold (by reducing warranty accrual expenses). And eventually, this will also increase the bottom line by using fewer othewise-revenue-producing drives to service warranty claims.
"A company has to put $XX in the bank and not touch it to cover their warranty costs. If they reduce the warranty, they can use the $$ on other things, such as R&D to make more reliable drives."
Not true. A company does NOT have to accumulate & set aside cash to cover future warranty claims. A company must accrue the expected future warranty expenses, record that amount as liability, and book the increase in the total accrued warranty liability as an expense (or to income, if total warranty liability decreased).
Future warranty claims have no effect on curent cash, just on current income. Big difference.
For WD, IBM, Seagate and the like, this is an easy wasy to increase their current net income & EPS. It will have an effect on future cash to the extent that the company has to use otherwise-revenue producing drives to service warranty claims. It has no effect on current cash. It DOES have an effect on current and future net income.
Hemos, your thoughts about the liability of corporate employees is not entirely true.
Under most U.S. law (mostly State law relating to fiduciary obligations of Directors, Officers & Executives (DOE)), the standard is called the Business Judgement Rule (BJR).
Under the BJR, a DOE is protected from suits for breach of fiduciary duty if the DOE (1) is disinterested (i.e. financially independant of the outcome), (2) acts in good faith, and (3) exercises due care in reaching the decision.
Every decision that a DOE makes does not have to directly accrue to the financial benefit of the corporation. Corporations can, and are expected to, contribute to the local community, support charities, exercise some respect for the environment, i.e perform "good acts".
These "good acts" will not always (or even ever) benefit the corporation financially. Nonetheless, DOEs are never successfully sued because they should have given a dividend instead of donating a piece of land to the city for a park, decided to give employees a day off to help with Habitat for Humnaity, or install CO2 scubbers when the fines are cheaper.
So, contrary to what I see posted on Slashdot frequently, every decision an employee of a company makes DOES NOT have to be the short-term, profit-maximizing decision. Believe it or not, the law allows some leeway in the decision making of running a company.
For more information, see this link
(and please don't respond with "but Enron...." or "look at WorldCom, Global Crossing, etc." I am speaking about the applicable law of fiduciary duties, not engaging in a public policy debate or Crossfire-esque corporate-bashing)
As JoeBuck says in another reply, the for binary packages, the different builds or components should be split up into different packages.
For source-based packages, and in response to the point about Gentoo:
Portage is the source-based build and package management system that forms the core of the Gentoo distribution.
It does, indeed, allow fine-grained control over dependancies and build options. You can set global environment variables that tell Portage to download and build the requested package with ./configure flags that will compile a binary with just the features you wish.
USE="slang readline gpm berkdb gdbm pam ssl tk lm_sensors ldap sdl gtk mmx mitshm guile 3dnow tcl ogg libg++ directfb snmp gnome X opengl pdflib gpg -nls -kde -qt -esd -motif -alsa"
The .ebuild scripts are kept in a tree at /usr/portage. emerge uses the USE environment variables with the .ebuild scripts to download the source file (and download and build any dependancies), then runs ./configure with all of the flags set according to the USE variables, with no extraneous options. Then emerge runs make; make install (with your favorite and optimized GCC flags for system arch) into a temp directory, then properly manages the system installation of the resulting binary package.. Viola! Instant perfect packge installed.
You can also do "USE="-gnome -gtk; emerge foo" to override the global USE options for that one package.
Of course, package removal, dependancy handling, package searching, local modifications of the .ebuild scripts, multiple versions of core packages, many versions of patched kernel trees (gentoo, security, plain, mjc, redhat, mandrake, etc.)
Absolutely phenomenal.
"oligotrophic" and "festering" is a good example, for one.
Not after Google indexes your post :)
First rule of Googlewhacking - never talk about your googlewhack.
You are mis-thinking about a different location. Colorado internet vs. Idaho shootout
Ruby
Ranch
Colorado
NOT
Ruby
Ridge
Idaho