Currently, commuting between Ketchikan and the airport requires taking one of two ferries, which are limited in capacity. During the summer when all the rich tourists are up catching their salmon, the ferries are somewhat packed.
Ahh.. so to make this somewhat on topic, Alaska simply needs to inact an anti-ferry neutrality bill. Rather than allow anyone to use the limited "pipes" (Ferry bandwidth), more "legitimate" traffic (local commuters) should get priority over junk traffic (rich tourists). Just have a special line for folks with monthly passes, and load them first before you take anyone with a day pass.
Oh wait, you want the tourists, too? How about a $1-3 surcharge on all 1, 2, and 3 day passes, put into a bank account, that will eventually pay for a bridge? That's better than me or anyone else in the rest of the United States paying for a bridge to help your tourism industry.
Guild Wars is not an MMORPG. By it's own developers' explanation, it is a Competitive Online Role-Playing Game, CORPG.
By their own definition they don't qualify for this chart. Moreover, this is in the MMOGChart.com FAQ: "Guild Wars developers say in their own FAQ that they do not consider their game a MMOG"
Also, MMOGChart.com explains that they do have trouble tracking subscription-free games based on their current metrics, so even if the Guild Wars developers called their game an MMORPG, it probably wouldn't be tracked.
why would the police care if you have an open network? Clearly they do... that's why they're using resources to wardrive. I doubt the training that individual patrol officers got was technical or detailed enough to explain the difference between intentional and unintentional open networks. Most likely, all it said was that "open is bad" and listed many crimes that could take place that would be traced back to the wrong person.
If a cop, when faced with someone who chooses to open his network, starts running through the list of crimes in an attempt to convince the person to close his network, I would consider that "hassling" per my original post.
What do you want to bet that the police will hassle the first person who: A) has permission from their service provider to offer a Wifi hot spot, B) wants to leave it open for the public, and C) tells this to the police officer who tries to give him a brochure?
Fortunately for New Hampshire, the death penalty the approved punishment for violating the state's eavesdropping and wiretap laws by using an electronic device.
HSBC (www.hsbcdirect.com) now offers savings accounts with 4.8% interest rates, FDIC insured, will not lose value - and you get an ATM card.
I have a Paypal account (no money it) and a "Premier Business" Paypal credit card from my days as a seller, but the lack of any banking securities just gives me the heebie-jeebies. If Google agrees to let themselves be regulated as a bank, I'll open an account.
Many things specifically say "blah blah, not for commercial distribution".
Yes, this is so that the CEO of Dish Network can't go down to Best Buy, purchase a copy of a show just released to DVD, and then broadcast it to all his customers. The copyright holder of a DVD copy of a movie is granting you an explicit right to show it for private purposes: you can watch it all you want, you can even invite all your friends over and show it at your birthday party. In other words, the distribution license for the content you purchased allows you to redistribute the content to others as long as admission is not open to the general public, and you do not make a profit.
BUT
You have more rights than those granted to you by this license. US law allows you to sell the DVD and transfer your license. You can even rent the DVD to someone else, and make a profit by renting it often enough to recoup your initial costs. Moreover, you have fair use rights to use portions of the work for parody, commentary, or criticism. A judge will look at the purpose and character of your use, and one such use that has been found to be valid for fair use in some cases is for education.
In other words, the parent's posters argument that "the license only allows for private use, so anything that isn't private isn't allowed" is incomplete. You have other rights. Unfortunately, neither I nor anyone else on Slashdot can tell you if those rights include what you are doing. Go hire a real lawyer. It will be cheaper than getting sued, if you are are within your rights to do what you do.
New London is very small, with a high population for it's size. They had to move some people in order to make this go through, or they'd lose the tax base of having that industry to a neighboring, richer town.
Sorry, but my response to this is "Boo hoo". So New London is a small town that zoned too much land for residential, then got upset when it didn't have space for commercial developments. Yes, too much residential land without a good tax base sucks - but that doesn't mean that you can or should go around the constitution (regardless of what SCOTUS said) to fix it.
The way for the city to fix what it did was simple and legal: rezone properties from residential to commercial. This won't seize the land or evict the residents, but it will keep them from making substantial new investments as residences. Then, the city can set up a separate development corporation, which could make offers to buy properties from residents who wished to sell, and hold the land for commercial deals. This might not get a large, cohesive lot all at once, but it would be a legal method to turn residential properties into commercial ones.
That's insane. No one is going to leave college over this. Like many (commercial) markets where "if you don't like it, leave" is brought up as the free-market response to a problem, there are barriers to any service provider transfer that can make it more trouble that its worth. (Yes, this leads into the debate over service providers whose service just good enough to keep customers from switching, but no better, and whether this is good for society.)
The greater effect could be felt when prospective students weigh this school versus other alternatives, at a time where the barrier of choice is low. However, I would expect high school students without a facebook account to be more accepting of a policy like this, in effect before they started school, versus those who already have facebook accounts.
An HDTV plus a Netflix subscription gives you plenty of good quality source material. One of the interesting things is that while the SciFi channel is broadcasting in NTSC, they are producing their new content in 16:9 for DVD. This means that those Netflix DVDs look far better than the broacast of teh same show.
Yeah, we just subscribed to Netflix. I'll have to check out some SciFi materials. I've been a member for a week and I already have a three-year queue, but maybe I can slip a few things in somewhere.
The other side of the coin is the lack of HD content available on TV - and this is a biggie. While Billy Bob is impressed by his DVD player, he is dumbfounded by his cable TV - which actually looks worse than it did on his old set (mostly because it's bigger). You see, nobody told Billy Bob that he'd have to get an antenna or subscribe to HD service from his cable/satellite provider. He was also not told that most of his favorite shows (Billy likes sitcoms and the Sci-Fi Channel) aren't yet available in HD, regardless of technology or service provider. As a result, many Americans are underwhelmed or feel like they got burned by HDTV. The last thing they're going to do is rush out and buy the next greatest thing.
I too have an HDTV but no HDTV service. (In my case, I knew regular TV would look "worse" and picked plasma over LCD/DLP because IMO plasmas look better when playing non-HD content.) DVDs do look significantly better - but the high price of HDTV service (extra $20+ a month, plus money to Dish Network for a new receiver, plus loss of ability to archive shows like I can with my old pre-encryption DVR) together with the lack of content (football, Lost, and Law and Order are about it right now for me) makes it far, far too much to pay.
I'm not certain off hand if my TV has the correct plugs (HDMI, whatever) to work with the highest resolution HD-DVD/Blue-Ray players. Be assured, if it doesn't, there is no reason that I would ever consider buying either type of player for many, many years to come. (P$3 is already off the list, so no sneaking one in that way either, Sony.) Even if my TV was supported, I'm not sure yet if entire-seasons-of-TV-shows-on-one-disk is better than ability-to-backup-and-play-from-server, if I were to want to do that. I doubt it.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you're willing to do to $101, then why not put that down as your max? Before you put in your first bid, you should know EXACTLY how much you're willing to pay. And then you NEVER go past that amount.
But then you lose the ability to gauge the market.
Let's say, for example, that there is some old game on eBay that I want to buy. I really want it, and I'd personally pay $500 for one to get my hands on it. But, from the eBay past auction history, I see that they usually sell for about $100. Now I don't know about you, but if I know something usually goes for about $100, I'd rather pay about $100 and use the extra $400 on something else. (See that? I would pay up to $500, if that was what they sold for. But, since they don't, I'd prefer to pay less.) I would hate to be the person who won one for $475 when the ones the week before and the week after went for $100.
So I put my early bid in at the average selling price, about $100. If I see the price go up to $101 and it's less than a few hours before it ends, I might bump it up to $110. That's still well below my maximum, but it's reasonable to me. If it goes up to $115, I might bump it up to $120. Or, maybe by then another one is listed, and I'll move to it. Or, I'll see that I'm bidding against 5-6 others, and so I'll pass this one up and wait for the demand to die down. I can't do any of those things if I start out with a bid of $150 - maybe I'd lose it, or maybe I'd pay $149 when five more were listed during the week - oversupplying the demand - at $100 each.
What you suggest - bidding the absolute bank-breaking max that I might theoretically be willing to pay - would only work if A) people couldn't get friends to bump up their own auctions, and B) eBay let me, at any time, adjust downward the proxy margin I had previously placed on an item, so that I could adjust for market changes, without any penalty like those associated with withdrawing bids.
(Why don't I just snipe? I rarely remember to go back and check the items at the exact time of closing.)
Stop spouting the conservative bullshit that is so prevalent on Slashdot these days/sarcasm
The estate tax has plenty of purposes - nothing is every black and white as you might think. (You seem to think that because it raises money, it can't have any other purpose.) Gas taxes raise money and encourage conservation. Cigarette taxes raise money and discourage use. Charitable donations cut tax income and reduce the burden of charity that must be provided by the government.
Aren't Republicans/conservatives supposed to support charitable donations? If more rich people did what Buffet does, we wouldn't need the federal/state/local goverments to spend as much on social services.
"Federal government AIDS spending is estimated at $19.7 billion in FY2005: 65% is for treatment programs; research receives 15%" (http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/05mar/RL 30731.pdf)
And Buffet's donations could as much as double that, hopefully driving us closer to a cure sooner and saving taxpayers billions in treatment costs each year.
If everyone whose estate was worth more than $10million donated the excess to charity near or at their death, you would find the world a much better place, and a lot of happy Democrats (and Republicans, I bet). Sure, there would still be cranky conservatives who would be upset that they can't hoard their wealth after death, just like there would be a few wacky Democrats upset about the loss of revenue for their favorite pet project.
As for increasing their salaries, already its attracting the wrong kind of people - the "carer politician." Better to get people into politics because they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more.
I see no evil in this. Is it any worse than a "career doctor" or a "career engineer"? Not everyone wants to change professions so dramatically in life - which again leads to only lawyers and business leaders being politicians, because those are the only jobs somewhat close to politics.
Besides, when and if I chose to go into politics, my engineer career would be over. I would no longer remain skilled enough for design positions, and having a political job on my resume would probably be a black mark when interviewing for any technical position. In other words, if I chose to go into politics, and I didn't want to aim for a cushy PR/lobbying job when I left, politics would have to be for life.
According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), excavation for the interstate system has moved enough material to bury the State of Connecticut knee-deep in dirt. The amount of Portland cement could build more than 80 Hoover dams, or lay six sidewalks to the moon.
But how much is that in Libraries of Congress per Nielsen market shares?
Don't think for a second that you have any right to decide what they can and can't do with it.
Oh, I have a right to control it. It's my charitable donation; I can dictate how it is used or not donate at all. However, I can't enforce that choice, and I know it. As a result, I tend to give nothing to the homeless I see, and instead donate to shelters directly. That makes me feel just as good, and then I have no qualms with ignoring the beggars at every street corner in town.
On the other hand, what is the black market street value for a $5 McDonald's gift certificate? Even drug addicts have to eat something, and I could see them live off my gift certificate for a few days, versus maybe $0.50 toward their next hit...
We do plenty of board-level design using microcontrollers, FPGAs, DSPs, and internally-designed ASICs.
But... we don't hire 2-year degrees for design positions. Most university graduates we hire have GPAs of 3.8 or better and still start out with a year or two in applications engineering before they transition to R&D, or sales, or marketing, or manufacturing. (It's a good place to work.)
He means "non-proprietary" in the sense of non-"highly integrated and very expensive dedicated machines on the market". In other words - a PC, not a custom box.
They are hitching the metaphorical wagon of their livelihood to a team of horses that they don't know shit about.
Millions of Americans hitch the physical "wagon" (or SUV, or sedan, or minivan) of their livelihood to a bundle of "horsepower" that they don't know shit about every single day, and then they drive that wagon at 75 MPH.*
In the case of their cars, the consequences for misuse are serious injury or death. In comparison, the consequences for learning next to nothing about their computers seem slight.
* It seems to me that knowing how to redact text in Acrobat is like knowing why you are supposed to turn on your headlights around dusk. Yes, you think you can still see just fine - the headlights are for others to see you. And no, I can't see your dim low-set parking lights if you turn those on alone.
# Politicians salaries capped at the AVERAGE income of their consitituents. This way, its in their best interests to make sure that people have decent jobs, with decent incomes. Also, when a recession hits, they'll also feel some of the pain, instead of being insulated from it.
This won't work - it means they'll bring home more bacon to pad their consituents, or they'll bail to the private sector sooner / for less. Seriously, it isn't easy to be elected if you aren't independently wealthy or in a job you can pick up and drop at your leisure - lawyer, public relations, corporate figurehead. Cutting political salaries will just make this worse.
I'd rather increase congressional salaries dramatically, and even pay them for a few years after they leave office, and then A) ban them from lobbying congress for 10 years after leaving office, and B) prevent them from being hired by any company who benefitted from their legislation for 2 years after leaving office.
# Spending of $0.50/voter maximum for any election.
This one will never work, due to the first amendment.
# No contributions from business.
Other respondents say this won't work due to the first amendment, but I think it can, because the first amendment does not support businesses, because businesses are not people, contrary to the way the judiciary has interpreted it for the last 100 years. If it was fixed so that the speech of a corporation (or those acting on paid behalf of a corporation) were limited to non-fraudulent advertisement, we'd be in a lot better shape. If the first amendment does stand against this, I'd modify the constitution.
# Maximum contribution of $1k/year from any voter, to be split among ALL contributions they make to all politicians.
First amendment violation, and not a good idea, either.
# No more voter registration along party lines. Either you're elligible to vote, or not. Who you vote for, what party you want to be aligned with, etc., are all your own bloody business.
Sure.
# Designate certain bills as "government confidence" votes. If the bill (budgets are good for this) isn't passed, the government falls, and a new election is held.
This would explain why Doom3 had monsters going into closets, closing the door, and patiently waiting for you to open it......and why no one on the development or QA team called this "story line" into question.
... unless they were about to go under, this has to be a bad thing for every Mythic employee that wasn't also the owner. Despite claims that the "175 member development team will remain in Fairfax" or somesuch in the article, I cannot imagine any situation where, five years from now, any of the current employees will still work for "EA Mythic" in Fairfax. Either the corporate slavedriver pressures will push them out, or they'll quit or move when a "corporate realignment" moves the jobs to California.
There's nothing inherently wrong with working for a big company. There's just something inherently wrong with working for EA.
Slashdot Mirror
Currently, commuting between Ketchikan and the airport requires taking one of two ferries, which are limited in capacity. During the summer when all the rich tourists are up catching their salmon, the ferries are somewhat packed.
Ahh.. so to make this somewhat on topic, Alaska simply needs to inact an anti-ferry neutrality bill. Rather than allow anyone to use the limited "pipes" (Ferry bandwidth), more "legitimate" traffic (local commuters) should get priority over junk traffic (rich tourists). Just have a special line for folks with monthly passes, and load them first before you take anyone with a day pass.
Oh wait, you want the tourists, too? How about a $1-3 surcharge on all 1, 2, and 3 day passes, put into a bank account, that will eventually pay for a bridge? That's better than me or anyone else in the rest of the United States paying for a bridge to help your tourism industry.
Guild Wars is not an MMORPG. By it's own developers' explanation, it is a Competitive Online Role-Playing Game, CORPG.
By their own definition they don't qualify for this chart. Moreover, this is in the MMOGChart.com FAQ: "Guild Wars developers say in their own FAQ that they do not consider their game a MMOG"
Also, MMOGChart.com explains that they do have trouble tracking subscription-free games based on their current metrics, so even if the Guild Wars developers called their game an MMORPG, it probably wouldn't be tracked.
why would the police care if you have an open network?
Clearly they do... that's why they're using resources to wardrive. I doubt the training that individual patrol officers got was technical or detailed enough to explain the difference between intentional and unintentional open networks. Most likely, all it said was that "open is bad" and listed many crimes that could take place that would be traced back to the wrong person.
If a cop, when faced with someone who chooses to open his network, starts running through the list of crimes in an attempt to convince the person to close his network, I would consider that "hassling" per my original post.
What do you want to bet that the police will hassle the first person who:
A) has permission from their service provider to offer a Wifi hot spot,
B) wants to leave it open for the public, and
C) tells this to the police officer who tries to give him a brochure?
Fortunately for New Hampshire, the death penalty the approved punishment for violating the state's eavesdropping and wiretap laws by using an electronic device.
Thus, their motto is intact.
HSBC (www.hsbcdirect.com) now offers savings accounts with 4.8% interest rates, FDIC insured, will not lose value - and you get an ATM card.
I have a Paypal account (no money it) and a "Premier Business" Paypal credit card from my days as a seller, but the lack of any banking securities just gives me the heebie-jeebies. If Google agrees to let themselves be regulated as a bank, I'll open an account.
Many things specifically say "blah blah, not for commercial distribution".
Yes, this is so that the CEO of Dish Network can't go down to Best Buy, purchase a copy of a show just released to DVD, and then broadcast it to all his customers. The copyright holder of a DVD copy of a movie is granting you an explicit right to show it for private purposes: you can watch it all you want, you can even invite all your friends over and show it at your birthday party. In other words, the distribution license for the content you purchased allows you to redistribute the content to others as long as admission is not open to the general public, and you do not make a profit.
BUT
You have more rights than those granted to you by this license. US law allows you to sell the DVD and transfer your license. You can even rent the DVD to someone else, and make a profit by renting it often enough to recoup your initial costs. Moreover, you have fair use rights to use portions of the work for parody, commentary, or criticism. A judge will look at the purpose and character of your use, and one such use that has been found to be valid for fair use in some cases is for education.
In other words, the parent's posters argument that "the license only allows for private use, so anything that isn't private isn't allowed" is incomplete. You have other rights. Unfortunately, neither I nor anyone else on Slashdot can tell you if those rights include what you are doing. Go hire a real lawyer. It will be cheaper than getting sued, if you are are within your rights to do what you do.
New London is very small, with a high population for it's size. They had to move some people in order to make this go through, or they'd lose the tax base of having that industry to a neighboring, richer town.
Sorry, but my response to this is "Boo hoo". So New London is a small town that zoned too much land for residential, then got upset when it didn't have space for commercial developments. Yes, too much residential land without a good tax base sucks - but that doesn't mean that you can or should go around the constitution (regardless of what SCOTUS said) to fix it.
The way for the city to fix what it did was simple and legal: rezone properties from residential to commercial. This won't seize the land or evict the residents, but it will keep them from making substantial new investments as residences. Then, the city can set up a separate development corporation, which could make offers to buy properties from residents who wished to sell, and hold the land for commercial deals. This might not get a large, cohesive lot all at once, but it would be a legal method to turn residential properties into commercial ones.
That's insane. No one is going to leave college over this. Like many (commercial) markets where "if you don't like it, leave" is brought up as the free-market response to a problem, there are barriers to any service provider transfer that can make it more trouble that its worth. (Yes, this leads into the debate over service providers whose service just good enough to keep customers from switching, but no better, and whether this is good for society.)
The greater effect could be felt when prospective students weigh this school versus other alternatives, at a time where the barrier of choice is low. However, I would expect high school students without a facebook account to be more accepting of a policy like this, in effect before they started school, versus those who already have facebook accounts.
An HDTV plus a Netflix subscription gives you plenty of good quality source material. One of the interesting things is that while the SciFi channel is broadcasting in NTSC, they are producing their new content in 16:9 for DVD. This means that those Netflix DVDs look far better than the broacast of teh same show.
Yeah, we just subscribed to Netflix. I'll have to check out some SciFi materials. I've been a member for a week and I already have a three-year queue, but maybe I can slip a few things in somewhere.
The other side of the coin is the lack of HD content available on TV - and this is a biggie. While Billy Bob is impressed by his DVD player, he is dumbfounded by his cable TV - which actually looks worse than it did on his old set (mostly because it's bigger). You see, nobody told Billy Bob that he'd have to get an antenna or subscribe to HD service from his cable/satellite provider. He was also not told that most of his favorite shows (Billy likes sitcoms and the Sci-Fi Channel) aren't yet available in HD, regardless of technology or service provider. As a result, many Americans are underwhelmed or feel like they got burned by HDTV. The last thing they're going to do is rush out and buy the next greatest thing.
I too have an HDTV but no HDTV service. (In my case, I knew regular TV would look "worse" and picked plasma over LCD/DLP because IMO plasmas look better when playing non-HD content.) DVDs do look significantly better - but the high price of HDTV service (extra $20+ a month, plus money to Dish Network for a new receiver, plus loss of ability to archive shows like I can with my old pre-encryption DVR) together with the lack of content (football, Lost, and Law and Order are about it right now for me) makes it far, far too much to pay.
I'm not certain off hand if my TV has the correct plugs (HDMI, whatever) to work with the highest resolution HD-DVD/Blue-Ray players. Be assured, if it doesn't, there is no reason that I would ever consider buying either type of player for many, many years to come. (P$3 is already off the list, so no sneaking one in that way either, Sony.) Even if my TV was supported, I'm not sure yet if entire-seasons-of-TV-shows-on-one-disk is better than ability-to-backup-and-play-from-server, if I were to want to do that. I doubt it.
If you're willing to do to $101, then why not put that down as your max?
Before you put in your first bid, you should know EXACTLY how much you're willing to pay. And then you NEVER go past that amount.
But then you lose the ability to gauge the market.
Let's say, for example, that there is some old game on eBay that I want to buy. I really want it, and I'd personally pay $500 for one to get my hands on it. But, from the eBay past auction history, I see that they usually sell for about $100. Now I don't know about you, but if I know something usually goes for about $100, I'd rather pay about $100 and use the extra $400 on something else. (See that? I would pay up to $500, if that was what they sold for. But, since they don't, I'd prefer to pay less.) I would hate to be the person who won one for $475 when the ones the week before and the week after went for $100.
So I put my early bid in at the average selling price, about $100. If I see the price go up to $101 and it's less than a few hours before it ends, I might bump it up to $110. That's still well below my maximum, but it's reasonable to me. If it goes up to $115, I might bump it up to $120. Or, maybe by then another one is listed, and I'll move to it. Or, I'll see that I'm bidding against 5-6 others, and so I'll pass this one up and wait for the demand to die down. I can't do any of those things if I start out with a bid of $150 - maybe I'd lose it, or maybe I'd pay $149 when five more were listed during the week - oversupplying the demand - at $100 each.
What you suggest - bidding the absolute bank-breaking max that I might theoretically be willing to pay - would only work if A) people couldn't get friends to bump up their own auctions, and B) eBay let me, at any time, adjust downward the proxy margin I had previously placed on an item, so that I could adjust for market changes, without any penalty like those associated with withdrawing bids.
(Why don't I just snipe? I rarely remember to go back and check the items at the exact time of closing.)
Stop spouting the conservative bullshit that is so prevalent on Slashdot these days /sarcasm
L 30731.pdf)
The estate tax has plenty of purposes - nothing is every black and white as you might think. (You seem to think that because it raises money, it can't have any other purpose.) Gas taxes raise money and encourage conservation. Cigarette taxes raise money and discourage use. Charitable donations cut tax income and reduce the burden of charity that must be provided by the government.
Aren't Republicans/conservatives supposed to support charitable donations? If more rich people did what Buffet does, we wouldn't need the federal/state/local goverments to spend as much on social services.
"Federal government AIDS spending is estimated at $19.7 billion in FY2005: 65% is for treatment programs; research receives 15%" (http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/05mar/R
And Buffet's donations could as much as double that, hopefully driving us closer to a cure sooner and saving taxpayers billions in treatment costs each year.
If everyone whose estate was worth more than $10million donated the excess to charity near or at their death, you would find the world a much better place, and a lot of happy Democrats (and Republicans, I bet). Sure, there would still be cranky conservatives who would be upset that they can't hoard their wealth after death, just like there would be a few wacky Democrats upset about the loss of revenue for their favorite pet project.
As for increasing their salaries, already its attracting the wrong kind of people - the "carer politician." Better to get people into politics because they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more.
I see no evil in this. Is it any worse than a "career doctor" or a "career engineer"? Not everyone wants to change professions so dramatically in life - which again leads to only lawyers and business leaders being politicians, because those are the only jobs somewhat close to politics.
Besides, when and if I chose to go into politics, my engineer career would be over. I would no longer remain skilled enough for design positions, and having a political job on my resume would probably be a black mark when interviewing for any technical position. In other words, if I chose to go into politics, and I didn't want to aim for a cushy PR/lobbying job when I left, politics would have to be for life.
According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), excavation for the interstate system has moved enough material to bury the State of Connecticut knee-deep in dirt. The amount of Portland cement could build more than 80 Hoover dams, or lay six sidewalks to the moon.
But how much is that in Libraries of Congress per Nielsen market shares?
Don't think for a second that you have any right to decide what they can and can't do with it.
Oh, I have a right to control it. It's my charitable donation; I can dictate how it is used or not donate at all. However, I can't enforce that choice, and I know it. As a result, I tend to give nothing to the homeless I see, and instead donate to shelters directly. That makes me feel just as good, and then I have no qualms with ignoring the beggars at every street corner in town.
On the other hand, what is the black market street value for a $5 McDonald's gift certificate? Even drug addicts have to eat something, and I could see them live off my gift certificate for a few days, versus maybe $0.50 toward their next hit...
One of the purposes of the estate tax is to encourage charitable donations... donations to charity aren't even subjected to the tax at death.
We do plenty of board-level design using microcontrollers, FPGAs, DSPs, and internally-designed ASICs.
But... we don't hire 2-year degrees for design positions. Most university graduates we hire have GPAs of 3.8 or better and still start out with a year or two in applications engineering before they transition to R&D, or sales, or marketing, or manufacturing. (It's a good place to work.)
He means "non-proprietary" in the sense of non-"highly integrated and very expensive dedicated machines on the market". In other words - a PC, not a custom box.
"1, which generally indicates a finished version of a piece of software"
Shouldn't this be modded as Funny?
I think 1.0 generally indicates that the bug severity vs. manager severity ratio has tipped in favor of the manager, and the product ships regardless.
Even in products that actually, you know, work at 1.0, rarely are they finished.
They are hitching the metaphorical wagon of their livelihood to a team of horses that they don't know shit about.
Millions of Americans hitch the physical "wagon" (or SUV, or sedan, or minivan) of their livelihood to a bundle of "horsepower" that they don't know shit about every single day, and then they drive that wagon at 75 MPH.*
In the case of their cars, the consequences for misuse are serious injury or death. In comparison, the consequences for learning next to nothing about their computers seem slight.
* It seems to me that knowing how to redact text in Acrobat is like knowing why you are supposed to turn on your headlights around dusk. Yes, you think you can still see just fine - the headlights are for others to see you. And no, I can't see your dim low-set parking lights if you turn those on alone.
# Politicians salaries capped at the AVERAGE income of their consitituents. This way, its in their best interests to make sure that people have decent jobs, with decent incomes. Also, when a recession hits, they'll also feel some of the pain, instead of being insulated from it.
This won't work - it means they'll bring home more bacon to pad their consituents, or they'll bail to the private sector sooner / for less. Seriously, it isn't easy to be elected if you aren't independently wealthy or in a job you can pick up and drop at your leisure - lawyer, public relations, corporate figurehead. Cutting political salaries will just make this worse.
I'd rather increase congressional salaries dramatically, and even pay them for a few years after they leave office, and then A) ban them from lobbying congress for 10 years after leaving office, and B) prevent them from being hired by any company who benefitted from their legislation for 2 years after leaving office.
# Spending of $0.50/voter maximum for any election.
This one will never work, due to the first amendment.
# No contributions from business.
Other respondents say this won't work due to the first amendment, but I think it can, because the first amendment does not support businesses, because businesses are not people, contrary to the way the judiciary has interpreted it for the last 100 years. If it was fixed so that the speech of a corporation (or those acting on paid behalf of a corporation) were limited to non-fraudulent advertisement, we'd be in a lot better shape. If the first amendment does stand against this, I'd modify the constitution.
# Maximum contribution of $1k/year from any voter, to be split among ALL contributions they make to all politicians.
First amendment violation, and not a good idea, either.
# No more voter registration along party lines. Either you're elligible to vote, or not. Who you vote for, what party you want to be aligned with, etc., are all your own bloody business.
Sure.
# Designate certain bills as "government confidence" votes. If the bill (budgets are good for this) isn't passed, the government falls, and a new election is held.
Sure.
This would explain why Doom3 had monsters going into closets, closing the door, and patiently waiting for you to open it... ...and why no one on the development or QA team called this "story line" into question.
Looks like EA corporate got a pile of mod points this week. Anyone who speaks ill of them and their past evils gets whacked with a "troll" tag.
... unless they were about to go under, this has to be a bad thing for every Mythic employee that wasn't also the owner. Despite claims that the "175 member development team will remain in Fairfax" or somesuch in the article, I cannot imagine any situation where, five years from now, any of the current employees will still work for "EA Mythic" in Fairfax. Either the corporate slavedriver pressures will push them out, or they'll quit or move when a "corporate realignment" moves the jobs to California.
There's nothing inherently wrong with working for a big company. There's just something inherently wrong with working for EA.