> A porn actress makes about $1000 a day. Actors (the men) $200. (I guess the benefits are a trade off for the pay.) >
Now if we could just get past the general subjugation of women thing....
I dunno about the subjugation thing - a gender-based 500% pay differential doesn't sound like subjugation to me.
Which reminds me, when I was in college, the feminist contingent was always ranting about how "women only make 67% of what men make".
Of course, when you normalized out age and education levels, it was more like 95%, but the truth never got in the way of a good headline-grabbing statistic.
But I'd say that with a 500% pay advantage over males, the obvious solution to the "gender gap" is to have bigger domestic pr0n industry!
And while I'm just whorin' for (+1, Funny) points with that thought, it reminds me that with the amount of bandwidth required for streaming video - in all seriousness, I'm in favor of the widespread adoption of streaming pr0n. The more there is, the cheaper bandwidth costs will be for everyone.
> And why is entertainment that plays to the 15-year old mind called "adult entertainment"?
ROFL. Reminds me of the time when I drove by a sign that said "Adult lifestyle community, new homes still available!".
I actually thought it was a swingers' resort until a few minutes later when I realized that "adult" also serves as a euphemism for "old folks", and "lifestyle" means bocce ball and shuffleboard.
Why does the word "adult" (as opposed to "parent", for instance) almost always carry a negative connotation? Adult entertainment is for perverts, and adult lifestyle communities are for people too old to remember being perverts. No wonder everything in politics is done "for the chyllldrun" - if there are any adults left in the country, they must be embarassed as hell to admit it.
One thing's for sure - they sure as hell aren't voting, or there might actually be enough adults elected to Congress and sitting on the bench to make a difference.
I suppose I ought to accept God's apology for the inconvenience of losing Mr. Adams at 49. Very well, God. Apology accepted, though I'm sure it was more than an inconvenience for Mr. Adams himself.
Speaking of whom, suffice it to say that he has nothing to fear from the Total Perspective Vortex.
I've retrieved my autographed recipe (signed at a book-signing of his some ~13 years ago) for the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, put it up on the wall, and am about to smash my brains out with a slice of lemon wrapped 'round a large gold brick.
Multiple times, if I last long enough after the first one.
So long, Mr. Adams, and thanks for all the radio plays, books, works of interactive fiction, more books, more interactive fiction, and yes, fish.
> > [spammer, 55-gal barrel, cinderblock, Marianas Trench, do what comes naturally >> Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers
first. > >
Either way, what bliss.
And just think how many spammers we'd have to throw overboard to get a valid statistical sample to definitively answer the question!
> In late breaking news today Sesame Street's Count ha filed a
class action patent lawsuit against the world claiming that people
from all walks of life are infringing on his works.
Wow, that was a close one for me!
While I was writing my post about how Roxio isn't trying to get
access to Gracenote (the thing Gracenote does own) for free,
but is trying not to access Gracenote in order to
use freedb (the thing Gracenote doesn't own) instead.
I almost said "One of these things is not like the other, Dave,
one of these things does not belong."
And on that note, how the fuck can Roxio be said to
be circumventing Gracenote's access control mechanism under DMCA,
when the whole point is not to access Gracenote at all?!?!
I really don't think the landsharks at Gracenote realize that
freedb and CDDB aren't the same thing.
But if they don't know the difference, why aren't they suing freedb?
(Oh yeah, it's because they can't... or maybe it's because they really
don't know the difference, and think they'd be suing themselves!;-)
No, it's even dumber than you think:
> Intel sues AMD for circumventing their ability to make
money from selling x86 processors.
No, Intel suing Compaq for selling CPUs with AMD in them.
> Microsoft sues Linus T. for circumventing their licensing
agreements designed to protect their OS sales...
No, MSFT suing Slackware for giving Linux away.
> Marvel sues Penny Arcade for providing free comics that take away
from their sales...
No, Marvel suing you for reading Penny Arcade.
> Ford sues feet for providing free transportation...
No, Ford suing your local shoe store for selling Nike.
> Phillips sues the sun for providing free light and
disrupting their lightbulb sales...
No, Phillips suing you for installing a sunroof.
> Et cetera Etc...
Bottom line: If Gracenote asserts ownership of the database, they
should be suing freedb, not Roxio.
But they can't, of course, because they don't own freedb database. They only own the Graceless database.
Unless Roxio had a contract with Graceless to use their DB, suing Roxio for switching to a competitor doesn't make sense. (And even if they did, the suit would be for breach of contract, not a DMCA charge.)
DMCA doesn't enter into it. This is a business decision,
made by one company, to stop using a for-pay product, and to start
using a not-for-pay product.
Technological countermeasures? What the ring-tailed-rambling fuck
is Graceless smoking, and can I have some?
Prediction: Roxio asks the judge to throw it out as a frivolous lawsuit, and he does...
Fervent hope:...but not before bitch-slapping Graceless into the next millennium with punitive damages. This suit isn't merely frivolous, it's malicious. Were I the judge, I'd do as much research as possible to see if I could also add words like "barratry", "malicious", and "RICO" into said millennial bitchslap, and I'd tell Graceless to get the fuck out of my courtroom and never come back until they'd acquired some clue, to say nothing of some manners.
> I would not go near there with a 10-foot pole. There is really no way you can pull that off without
generating a lot of ill will for your company from at least one of the parties involved. I also don't see
how that will convince them to switch to your company immediately, no matter how right you are.
I agree.
The poster had better have a goddamn good answer to the following question:
"Suppose I show up, give them the demo of the exploit, impress the hell out of them, walk out the door at 5:30 with their CTO for a beer to talk about how to fix it. How am I gonna explain it to them if some skr1pt k1dd13 wanders by and hax0rz the living shit out of them tonight?"
Of course, the client might not call you back at all, in which case you'll only have to explain it to the cops.
If, as the article implies, > Samsung Electronics Co. can stop paying SDRAM and DDR royalties to Rambus if a court in any geographic
region of the world determines that any company does not infringe the synchronous patents.
...then I'd love to have a tap on RMBS's phones first thing tomorrow morning, when Samsung's landshark comes a-callin'.
Going back to my other comment on this issue, I'd wager 500 quatloos that the phrase "flying fuck through a rolling doughnut" is uttered.
> 3.5% royalty for DDR? That's a mighty big incentive for companies to fight back.
No, that's a mighty big incentive for companies to build RDRAM instead of DDR.
Getting SDRAM royalties would have been icing on the cake for RMBS - their goal all along was the elimination of DDR, whether by hook ("All your bus are belong to us!" infringement suits) or by crook (punitive royalty fees on anyone who falls for the "hook"). Frankly, I'd see the 3.5% royalty on DDR as an action bordering on antitrust.
But it's all moot, thanks to this ruling.
RMBS has a right to royalties on RDRAM. They invented RDRAM and can license the tech.
RMBS can go take a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut when it comes to royalties on SDRAM and DDR.
If the market decides that DDR provides better performance over RDRAM, then RMBS goes bankrupt. They invented a technology that the market decided not to adopt. Tough tittie for them.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of shitweasels.
> Someone invented sex, or had it, or did it or what ever you want to call it. The Karma Sutra extened it. I want to meet the
guy working on what's better than sex.
I saw Linus do a keynote address at LinuxWorld, and also bumped into RMS in the.org pavillion. Doesn't that qualify?
> A hundred years ago, oil bubbled up out of the ground. You could dig up coal with a hand shovel.
Nowadays, it takes so much technology just to extract fuel and ores that, if the technology were unusable, there
would be no way to get the fuel and raw materials needed to build the technology.
A hundred years from Judgement Day, oil will still be diggable with a shovel - just head for the ruins of the cities and throw the plastic, styrofoam, and polyethelene over a fire to make oil. Metals will also be widely available where the cities once were, and in many cases, already refined.
IIRC, this type of "mining" (most valuable commodity: copper wire) is already taking place in the mostly-abandoned military complexes of Siberia.
Re:Unions are unnecessary in IT
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
> Tech is a field where employees have a marketable skill which they leverage to increase their salaries and
benefits. This system works very well: most tech workers are paid much better than average and are treated
much better than average.
But isn't this basically what unionization was supposed to be about in the first place -- the means to the (Marxist) goal that the workers own the means of production, and that by owning the means of production, workers can get better treatment.
I happen to have a strong personal distaste for Marxism, but let's take this particular notion at face value: that workers should own the means of production", presumably because doing so allows them to extract better working conditions from management.
In a steel mill, a worker cannot own the means of production in any meaningful sense of the word. Collective bargaining is required by virtue of the fact that it takes dozens - often hundreds, maybe thousands - of people working together to make a steel mill work. If a worker leaves, he or she can be replaced, as the means of production (the physical plant and tools required to maintain it) remain on-site. The workers themselves are interchangeable.
But in most software shops, the means of production are the neurons in the head of each IT worker. Each worker already owns the means of production; a departing worker takes with him or her a significant body of knowledge, and you can't just hire another off the street. Sure, the new hire may know C++ just as well as the guy who just left -- but do they know all the ins and outs of the class structure your application uses? Not by a long shot.
Hey, those on the right don't believe in unionization in principle; I'm not addressing you, because we already agree;-)
But if you're on the left - question your motives. Is unionization supposed to be an end in itself? Or is it merely the means by which one ought to put control of the means of production in the hands of those who do the producing?
If you believe unionization is merely a means to this end, and you believe that this end (workers controlling the means of production) is a desirable one, is it not logical to conclude that unions are, by definition, redundant, when it comes to the IT profession?
If you work in IT, you already own the means of production.
Hell, I'll go one step further. I'll put my Marxist glasses on and look around. I work in a nicely air-conditioned office, and just got a double-digit percentage raise, and a bonus of triple that.
I guess the Marxists are right - ownership of the means of production really is the way to go!
Of course, since I already control the means of production and have managed to use that control to extract concessions (a high wage and an excellent working environment) from management, it's too bad for the union organizer that I no longer need him as a middleman.
> We could save up towards 40% of fuel we already have, if they choose (or, more likely having to be
regulated into) to make more efficient vehicles, and appliances.
Why yes, conservation has worked wonderfully for California. That's why they're having rolling blackouts in May, before summer even gets started.
> If you're so gung-ho on nuclear power, you should build a power plant in your OWN backyard!!
Acutally, yes.
If I were in the market for a house, the first place I'd look is somewhere close to a proposed nuclear power plant site. Property values would be considerably depressed due to the irrational fears of people like you, and I could have several acres all to myself.
If the plant's construction were ultimately prevented, I could resell the land at a considerable profit as property values reflated. If construction went forward, I'd own a much nicer home (and more land) than I would otherwise have been able to afford, and would have received excellent value for my money.
If I already owned property at the time a site was announced, and the property was for my own use (rather than as an investment), I would still support construction of the plant, and I would continue to live there after the plant went operational.
> I'll give you a kilo of carbon and nitrogen. How much would it cost you to make one CD-RW disk?
Nothing. All I have to do tell you to go out and buy me a CD-RW disk or I'll release two kilos of cyanide into the air, and we'll see which of us can hold his breath the longest.
(Aaw shit, all I've got is this lump of coal sitting in a nitrogen-enriched atmosphere. Well, no point holding our breaths... but if it's a small enough room, maybe the partial pressure of oxygen in the room will drop to the point that we'd still be better off having you go out and buy me a CD-RW:-)
> When I get sick of them I pitch them in the trash
(or leave them on the driver's side window of other cars in parking garages...)
That is the coolest thing I've heard of this week.
Best use for a CD-R that you don't need anymore? Leave it where someone else might find it. Stick a note on it saying "when you're done listening to me, leave me somewhere for the next person to hear." Far out.
> Between CD-R's at $0.30 each, and gas at three bucks a gallon, it looks like a gloomy summer ahead
for Joe American Consumer and Pr0n Hound.
Yeah, but with no power in California, what good is pr0n on CD-R?
Gas is going to $3.00 per gallon 'cuz all the environmentalists who opposed power plant construction in CA will be sitting in their SUVs, idling the engine to run the air conditioning during the rolling blackouts.
If you want pr0n, better start stocking up on AC inverters, hard drives, and flat screens!
We're in agreement on most points, but I'm gonna call you on this one:
> Who uses software that's three years old anyway? I mean - at my
company, Office 97 is almost impossible to find anymore. Users want the latest and greatest.
Lemme get this straight - the secretary knocks on your door and says "I want Office 2000! Because Clippy is just soooo much cuter in 2000!"
Where I work, the secretary says "Oh shit, you mean I have to learn Office all over again?", often followed by with "...and it'll make my computer run slower, won't it?"
Wanna find out if your users really "want the latest and greatest?" Grab a nontechnical user who remembers working with Windows 3.1 in an office environment.
Install Windows 3.1 and Office 4.2 on a modern PC (i.e., P166 or greater).
Reboot. Sit the user in front of the PC. Type "win" from the DOS prompt. Windows will be up and running in less than 3 seconds.
If the first word out of their mouth is anything other than "Wow!", I think I've made my point.
(OK, my example breaks down because they also want a web browser, most likely IE4 or higher, and network connectivity. So they'll probably want their Win9x or NT box back after a few minutes. But I'll still bet the first word out of their mouth is "wow".)
> Fatalities would probably be much higher than 50% per city in the event of a global war; the
complete breakdown of almost all social supports means that not only do the injured or buried have
just about no chance of getting aid, but anyone in a big city is going to start getting really hungry
pretty soon
This is a self-limiting situation. If there's enough food for 3 million survivors for three days, and 90% of them starve, the 10% remaining have a month's worth of food.
That month is long enough for the clued survivors to leave the cities for the farms on the countryside. The unclued ones, well... I guess it's self-selecting as well as self-limited.
With a lack of infrastructure (particularly fuel), modern factory farms will be starved of production capacity. That's where the urban survivors come in - to haul tractors, combines, etc, and/or use their skills at repairing equipment.
You end up with a much smaller economy, but it's still a functional economy. Land is valuable, as are mechanical/electrical skills. Those without such skills can trade labor for food.
Everything I just said applies just as well in the event of asteroid impact (i.e., multiple fragment impact, not K/T-boundary impact!), and better, because you don't have the issue of fallout affecting crop yields and the health of the laborers.
Bottom line: It (be it global thermonuclear war or a series of asteroid fragment impacts) would majorly suck. But homo sapiens would, in all likelihood, survive - not just as a species, but as a technologically-advanced species. I would conservatively estimate time to restoration at 50-100 years.
Think my 50-year figure is nuts? Look at the major cities of Europe. Better yet, Japan. 55 years ago, most of those cities were little more than smoking craters.
Think my 100-year figure is nuts? We didn't have electricity 100 years ago. (Oh, wait a minute, California still doesn't!;-)
But we did make the transition - from an agrarian society with a small urban component into a nearly completely-urbanized techno-society - in the past 100 years.
Moreover, the first time around, we had to derive all the science from first principles before we could even think about building the technology. This time around, we'd have the science stored in books everywhere, and working prototypes for damn near everything we need, stored in the attics and basements of damn near every home that was unaffected by the blast and/or looting. My 100-year estimate is probably woefully pessimistic.
> You're talking about a test-tube baby here, not some kind of freak.
I think I was the one who brought up test-tube babies. IIRC, the first ones were picked on as some kinds of freaks, whether in the form of bullying at school or by having their faces plastered on Time Magazine as some sort of medical marvels.
A few years later, test-tube babies (IVF) were regarded (rightfully) as perfectly normal sproggen.
I predict the same thing for this case - the first GM humans will be regarded as medical marvels. 10 years from now, we'll think it's kinda neat. 20 years from now, we'll know someone who had one. 30 years from now, it'll be commonplace.
> You're right though. It takes macho huevos to play the options markets, especially puts? Not a
good idea in a turn around market.
Agreed. Good idea with the stock at $18. Not necessarily a good idea with the stock now at $15.
(Remember, RMBS dropped to $15 from ~30ish on the first "big hints" that they were gonna lose the case - we can therefore assume that "RMBS Loses" means a stock price of around $15.)
The dismissal of 54 claims the other week was the other "big hint". The high probability of them losing the case had already been priced into the stock until yesterday, when RMBS ran up to $18 on the news of the 3.5% gouging on DDR contracts in an effort to squeeze DDR out of the market.
Only with the stock at $18 was put-buying "easy money", and had I done so, I'd probably have taken some money off the table as soon as the stock reopened for trading this afternoon.
And I still wouldn't have done it with more than about 2-3% of my portfolio. As you say, it takes macho huevos, and the RMBS game is a little too heavy for me to play anywhere but on paper.
Quoth a RMBS CEO: > "If today's
decision is allowed to stand, all
companies that innovate risk
having their intellectual property
rights unjustly expropriated."
Ah, I love the smell of roasted landsharks in the morning. Smells like... victory.
You can always tell how desperate a company is by the number of times it uses the word "innovate".
My only regret is that I lacked the testicular fortitude to load up on RMBS puts this morning. Easy money.
> Imagine a Gattaca-like future 100 years from now, when everybody's DNA is vigorously
scrubbed free of defective genes. Maybe people have different skin, hair, or eye color, just for
fashion's sake, but internally we all look pretty much the same. Wouldn't this drastically increase
the risk of some killer pathogen taking advantage of such a uniform field of hosts?
Perhaps.
But with developments in gene therapy (see the recent developments in stem cell research), we could also fix the problem in situ by introducing genes for resistance.
I'd say that by the time we start productizing this technology, we'll have a large reservoir of "raw" DNA in the form of frozen eggs, sperm, and embryos. If things get bad, we can always introduce the raw strains. Indeed, if things get bad, the market will demand the reintroduction of raw strains.
> Can you imagine how much a kid would get picked on in school once the other children learned
they were genetically modified?
About the same as the first "test-tube babies". Razzing for a few years, then the bullies move on to razzing people for other things as the technology becomes commonplace.
> I'm just saying in a world that hasn't even overcome racism or religious intolerance, these kids
could have a hard time.
Given that these mods are much smaller than the ones that code for race, or the cultural conditioning that codes religion, the kids aren't at any disadvantage.
If we're talking about more interesting mods (say, infrared vision), the correct response is "Yeah? With my hax0red eyes, I can see straight through that bra, and it's padded, Brenda. Want me to tell all the girls in the locker room? By the way, tell your boyfriend to take the sock out of his pants, it's not fooling anyone but you."
> I wonder how long until all the quake mod geeks become human mod geeks.
Added to my Things To Do List:
Break into the local infertility clinic, grab all the eggs I can get my hands on, and hack the mitochondrial DNA to encode the string "ALL YOUR BASE PAIR ARE BELONG TO US", encoded in ASCII with "G"s as 1s, and "T"s as 0s, then return the eggs to storage.
(Why yes, I do have a long-term plan to confuse the shit out of any anthropologists 2 million years from now;-)
Slashdot Mirror
> Now if we could just get past the general subjugation of women thing....
I dunno about the subjugation thing - a gender-based 500% pay differential doesn't sound like subjugation to me.
Which reminds me, when I was in college, the feminist contingent was always ranting about how "women only make 67% of what men make".
Of course, when you normalized out age and education levels, it was more like 95%, but the truth never got in the way of a good headline-grabbing statistic.
But I'd say that with a 500% pay advantage over males, the obvious solution to the "gender gap" is to have bigger domestic pr0n industry!
And while I'm just whorin' for (+1, Funny) points with that thought, it reminds me that with the amount of bandwidth required for streaming video - in all seriousness, I'm in favor of the widespread adoption of streaming pr0n. The more there is, the cheaper bandwidth costs will be for everyone.
Pr0n. It does a network good.
ROFL. Reminds me of the time when I drove by a sign that said "Adult lifestyle community, new homes still available!".
I actually thought it was a swingers' resort until a few minutes later when I realized that "adult" also serves as a euphemism for "old folks", and "lifestyle" means bocce ball and shuffleboard.
Why does the word "adult" (as opposed to "parent", for instance) almost always carry a negative connotation? Adult entertainment is for perverts, and adult lifestyle communities are for people too old to remember being perverts. No wonder everything in politics is done "for the chyllldrun" - if there are any adults left in the country, they must be embarassed as hell to admit it.
One thing's for sure - they sure as hell aren't voting, or there might actually be enough adults elected to Congress and sitting on the bench to make a difference.
Mornington Crescent!
I suppose I ought to accept God's apology for the inconvenience of losing Mr. Adams at 49. Very well, God. Apology accepted, though I'm sure it was more than an inconvenience for Mr. Adams himself.
Speaking of whom, suffice it to say that he has nothing to fear from the Total Perspective Vortex.
I've retrieved my autographed recipe (signed at a book-signing of his some ~13 years ago) for the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, put it up on the wall, and am about to smash my brains out with a slice of lemon wrapped 'round a large gold brick.
Multiple times, if I last long enough after the first one.
So long, Mr. Adams, and thanks for all the radio plays, books, works of interactive fiction, more books, more interactive fiction, and yes, fish.
>> Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers first.
>
> Either way, what bliss.
And just think how many spammers we'd have to throw overboard to get a valid statistical sample to definitively answer the question!
Wow, that was a close one for me!
While I was writing my post about how Roxio isn't trying to get access to Gracenote (the thing Gracenote does own) for free, but is trying not to access Gracenote in order to use freedb (the thing Gracenote doesn't own) instead.
I almost said "One of these things is not like the other, Dave, one of these things does not belong."
And on that note, how the fuck can Roxio be said to be circumventing Gracenote's access control mechanism under DMCA, when the whole point is not to access Gracenote at all?!?!
I really don't think the landsharks at Gracenote realize that freedb and CDDB aren't the same thing.
But if they don't know the difference, why aren't they suing freedb? (Oh yeah, it's because they can't... or maybe it's because they really don't know the difference, and think they'd be suing themselves! ;-)
No, Intel suing Compaq for selling CPUs with AMD in them.
> Microsoft sues Linus T. for circumventing their licensing agreements designed to protect their OS sales...
No, MSFT suing Slackware for giving Linux away.
> Marvel sues Penny Arcade for providing free comics that take away from their sales...
No, Marvel suing you for reading Penny Arcade.
> Ford sues feet for providing free transportation...
No, Ford suing your local shoe store for selling Nike.
> Phillips sues the sun for providing free light and disrupting their lightbulb sales...
No, Phillips suing you for installing a sunroof.
> Et cetera Etc...
Bottom line: If Gracenote asserts ownership of the database, they should be suing freedb, not Roxio.
But they can't, of course, because they don't own freedb database. They only own the Graceless database.
Unless Roxio had a contract with Graceless to use their DB, suing Roxio for switching to a competitor doesn't make sense. (And even if they did, the suit would be for breach of contract, not a DMCA charge.)
DMCA doesn't enter into it. This is a business decision, made by one company, to stop using a for-pay product, and to start using a not-for-pay product.
Technological countermeasures? What the ring-tailed-rambling fuck is Graceless smoking, and can I have some?
Prediction: Roxio asks the judge to throw it out as a frivolous lawsuit, and he does...
Fervent hope: ...but not before bitch-slapping Graceless into the next millennium with punitive damages. This suit isn't merely frivolous, it's malicious. Were I the judge, I'd do as much research as possible to see if I could also add words like "barratry", "malicious", and "RICO" into said millennial bitchslap, and I'd tell Graceless to get the fuck out of my courtroom and never come back until they'd acquired some clue, to say nothing of some manners.
I agree.
The poster had better have a goddamn good answer to the following question:
"Suppose I show up, give them the demo of the exploit, impress the hell out of them, walk out the door at 5:30 with their CTO for a beer to talk about how to fix it. How am I gonna explain it to them if some skr1pt k1dd13 wanders by and hax0rz the living shit out of them tonight?"
Of course, the client might not call you back at all, in which case you'll only have to explain it to the cops.
> Samsung Electronics Co. can stop paying SDRAM and DDR royalties to Rambus if a court in any geographic region of the world determines that any company does not infringe the synchronous patents.
Going back to my other comment on this issue, I'd wager 500 quatloos that the phrase "flying fuck through a rolling doughnut" is uttered.
Any takers?
No, that's a mighty big incentive for companies to build RDRAM instead of DDR.
Getting SDRAM royalties would have been icing on the cake for RMBS - their goal all along was the elimination of DDR, whether by hook ("All your bus are belong to us!" infringement suits) or by crook (punitive royalty fees on anyone who falls for the "hook"). Frankly, I'd see the 3.5% royalty on DDR as an action bordering on antitrust.
But it's all moot, thanks to this ruling.
RMBS has a right to royalties on RDRAM. They invented RDRAM and can license the tech.
RMBS can go take a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut when it comes to royalties on SDRAM and DDR.
If the market decides that DDR provides better performance over RDRAM, then RMBS goes bankrupt. They invented a technology that the market decided not to adopt. Tough tittie for them.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of shitweasels.
I saw Linus do a keynote address at LinuxWorld, and also bumped into RMS in the .org pavillion. Doesn't that qualify?
A hundred years from Judgement Day, oil will still be diggable with a shovel - just head for the ruins of the cities and throw the plastic, styrofoam, and polyethelene over a fire to make oil. Metals will also be widely available where the cities once were, and in many cases, already refined.
IIRC, this type of "mining" (most valuable commodity: copper wire) is already taking place in the mostly-abandoned military complexes of Siberia.
But isn't this basically what unionization was supposed to be about in the first place -- the means to the (Marxist) goal that the workers own the means of production, and that by owning the means of production, workers can get better treatment.
I happen to have a strong personal distaste for Marxism, but let's take this particular notion at face value: that workers should own the means of production", presumably because doing so allows them to extract better working conditions from management.
In a steel mill, a worker cannot own the means of production in any meaningful sense of the word. Collective bargaining is required by virtue of the fact that it takes dozens - often hundreds, maybe thousands - of people working together to make a steel mill work. If a worker leaves, he or she can be replaced, as the means of production (the physical plant and tools required to maintain it) remain on-site. The workers themselves are interchangeable.
But in most software shops, the means of production are the neurons in the head of each IT worker. Each worker already owns the means of production; a departing worker takes with him or her a significant body of knowledge, and you can't just hire another off the street. Sure, the new hire may know C++ just as well as the guy who just left -- but do they know all the ins and outs of the class structure your application uses? Not by a long shot.
Hey, those on the right don't believe in unionization in principle; I'm not addressing you, because we already agree ;-)
But if you're on the left - question your motives. Is unionization supposed to be an end in itself? Or is it merely the means by which one ought to put control of the means of production in the hands of those who do the producing?
If you believe unionization is merely a means to this end, and you believe that this end (workers controlling the means of production) is a desirable one, is it not logical to conclude that unions are, by definition, redundant, when it comes to the IT profession?
If you work in IT, you already own the means of production.
Hell, I'll go one step further. I'll put my Marxist glasses on and look around. I work in a nicely air-conditioned office, and just got a double-digit percentage raise, and a bonus of triple that. I guess the Marxists are right - ownership of the means of production really is the way to go!
Of course, since I already control the means of production and have managed to use that control to extract concessions (a high wage and an excellent working environment) from management, it's too bad for the union organizer that I no longer need him as a middleman.
Why yes, conservation has worked wonderfully for California. That's why they're having rolling blackouts in May, before summer even gets started.
> If you're so gung-ho on nuclear power, you should build a power plant in your OWN backyard!!
Acutally, yes.
If I were in the market for a house, the first place I'd look is somewhere close to a proposed nuclear power plant site. Property values would be considerably depressed due to the irrational fears of people like you, and I could have several acres all to myself.
If the plant's construction were ultimately prevented, I could resell the land at a considerable profit as property values reflated. If construction went forward, I'd own a much nicer home (and more land) than I would otherwise have been able to afford, and would have received excellent value for my money.
If I already owned property at the time a site was announced, and the property was for my own use (rather than as an investment), I would still support construction of the plant, and I would continue to live there after the plant went operational.
Call me a YIMBY. Yes, in my backyard.
Nothing. All I have to do tell you to go out and buy me a CD-RW disk or I'll release two kilos of cyanide into the air, and we'll see which of us can hold his breath the longest.
(Aaw shit, all I've got is this lump of coal sitting in a nitrogen-enriched atmosphere. Well, no point holding our breaths... but if it's a small enough room, maybe the partial pressure of oxygen in the room will drop to the point that we'd still be better off having you go out and buy me a CD-RW :-)
That is the coolest thing I've heard of this week.
Best use for a CD-R that you don't need anymore? Leave it where someone else might find it. Stick a note on it saying "when you're done listening to me, leave me somewhere for the next person to hear." Far out.
Yeah, but with no power in California, what good is pr0n on CD-R?
Gas is going to $3.00 per gallon 'cuz all the environmentalists who opposed power plant construction in CA will be sitting in their SUVs, idling the engine to run the air conditioning during the rolling blackouts.
If you want pr0n, better start stocking up on AC inverters, hard drives, and flat screens!
> Who uses software that's three years old anyway? I mean - at my company, Office 97 is almost impossible to find anymore. Users want the latest and greatest.
Lemme get this straight - the secretary knocks on your door and says "I want Office 2000! Because Clippy is just soooo much cuter in 2000!"
Where I work, the secretary says "Oh shit, you mean I have to learn Office all over again?", often followed by with "...and it'll make my computer run slower, won't it?"
Wanna find out if your users really "want the latest and greatest?" Grab a nontechnical user who remembers working with Windows 3.1 in an office environment.
Install Windows 3.1 and Office 4.2 on a modern PC (i.e., P166 or greater). Reboot. Sit the user in front of the PC. Type "win" from the DOS prompt. Windows will be up and running in less than 3 seconds.
If the first word out of their mouth is anything other than "Wow!", I think I've made my point.
(OK, my example breaks down because they also want a web browser, most likely IE4 or higher, and network connectivity. So they'll probably want their Win9x or NT box back after a few minutes. But I'll still bet the first word out of their mouth is "wow".)
This is a self-limiting situation. If there's enough food for 3 million survivors for three days, and 90% of them starve, the 10% remaining have a month's worth of food.
That month is long enough for the clued survivors to leave the cities for the farms on the countryside. The unclued ones, well... I guess it's self-selecting as well as self-limited.
With a lack of infrastructure (particularly fuel), modern factory farms will be starved of production capacity. That's where the urban survivors come in - to haul tractors, combines, etc, and/or use their skills at repairing equipment.
You end up with a much smaller economy, but it's still a functional economy. Land is valuable, as are mechanical/electrical skills. Those without such skills can trade labor for food.
Everything I just said applies just as well in the event of asteroid impact (i.e., multiple fragment impact, not K/T-boundary impact!), and better, because you don't have the issue of fallout affecting crop yields and the health of the laborers.
Bottom line: It (be it global thermonuclear war or a series of asteroid fragment impacts) would majorly suck. But homo sapiens would, in all likelihood, survive - not just as a species, but as a technologically-advanced species. I would conservatively estimate time to restoration at 50-100 years.
Think my 50-year figure is nuts? Look at the major cities of Europe. Better yet, Japan. 55 years ago, most of those cities were little more than smoking craters.
Think my 100-year figure is nuts? We didn't have electricity 100 years ago. (Oh, wait a minute, California still doesn't! ;-)
But we did make the transition - from an agrarian society with a small urban component into a nearly completely-urbanized techno-society - in the past 100 years.
Moreover, the first time around, we had to derive all the science from first principles before we could even think about building the technology. This time around, we'd have the science stored in books everywhere, and working prototypes for damn near everything we need, stored in the attics and basements of damn near every home that was unaffected by the blast and/or looting. My 100-year estimate is probably woefully pessimistic.
I think I was the one who brought up test-tube babies. IIRC, the first ones were picked on as some kinds of freaks, whether in the form of bullying at school or by having their faces plastered on Time Magazine as some sort of medical marvels.
A few years later, test-tube babies (IVF) were regarded (rightfully) as perfectly normal sproggen.
I predict the same thing for this case - the first GM humans will be regarded as medical marvels. 10 years from now, we'll think it's kinda neat. 20 years from now, we'll know someone who had one. 30 years from now, it'll be commonplace.
Agreed. Good idea with the stock at $18. Not necessarily a good idea with the stock now at $15.
(Remember, RMBS dropped to $15 from ~30ish on the first "big hints" that they were gonna lose the case - we can therefore assume that "RMBS Loses" means a stock price of around $15.)
The dismissal of 54 claims the other week was the other "big hint". The high probability of them losing the case had already been priced into the stock until yesterday, when RMBS ran up to $18 on the news of the 3.5% gouging on DDR contracts in an effort to squeeze DDR out of the market.
Only with the stock at $18 was put-buying "easy money", and had I done so, I'd probably have taken some money off the table as soon as the stock reopened for trading this afternoon.
And I still wouldn't have done it with more than about 2-3% of my portfolio. As you say, it takes macho huevos, and the RMBS game is a little too heavy for me to play anywhere but on paper.
> "If today's decision is allowed to stand, all companies that innovate risk having their intellectual property rights unjustly expropriated."
Ah, I love the smell of roasted landsharks in the morning. Smells like... victory.
You can always tell how desperate a company is by the number of times it uses the word "innovate".
My only regret is that I lacked the testicular fortitude to load up on RMBS puts this morning. Easy money.
Perhaps.
But with developments in gene therapy (see the recent developments in stem cell research), we could also fix the problem in situ by introducing genes for resistance.
I'd say that by the time we start productizing this technology, we'll have a large reservoir of "raw" DNA in the form of frozen eggs, sperm, and embryos. If things get bad, we can always introduce the raw strains. Indeed, if things get bad, the market will demand the reintroduction of raw strains.
About the same as the first "test-tube babies". Razzing for a few years, then the bullies move on to razzing people for other things as the technology becomes commonplace.
> I'm just saying in a world that hasn't even overcome racism or religious intolerance, these kids could have a hard time.
Given that these mods are much smaller than the ones that code for race, or the cultural conditioning that codes religion, the kids aren't at any disadvantage.
If we're talking about more interesting mods (say, infrared vision), the correct response is "Yeah? With my hax0red eyes, I can see straight through that bra, and it's padded, Brenda. Want me to tell all the girls in the locker room? By the way, tell your boyfriend to take the sock out of his pants, it's not fooling anyone but you."
Added to my Things To Do List:
Break into the local infertility clinic, grab all the eggs I can get my hands on, and hack the mitochondrial DNA to encode the string "ALL YOUR BASE PAIR ARE BELONG TO US", encoded in ASCII with "G"s as 1s, and "T"s as 0s, then return the eggs to storage.
(Why yes, I do have a long-term plan to confuse the shit out of any anthropologists 2 million years from now ;-)