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User: jj_johny

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Comments · 108

  1. Re:But... on Hybrid Drivers Provide Real-World Mileage Data · · Score: 1

    That was a great comment - the article is about gas mileage and your comment is about demand causing dealers to ration the cars by raising prices. Here is what the web site can help you do: use real world figures to calculate your real world gas costs based on how far you drive. What it won't help you do is see if a high gas mileage car is really worth it. Nor will it help with your hellish commute or that you want to get a nice green car but make up for it by the way you live. But.... that the way it works here at /.

  2. Why we can't roll out SP2 on Survey Shows Admins Avoiding SP2 · · Score: 1

    I work at a large place with about 6,000 computers. The only reason that XP2 is not installed is that we have no way of deploying it. We have SUS but not SMS or Altaris or the like. Without something to do the distribution its a major pain in the butt. And the management does not understand that their current method of operating is screwed up enough to fix it.

  3. US Capitol blurred on Google Adds Satellite Imagery to Maps · · Score: 1
    Put in 100 Constitution NW, Washington, DC and look at the US Capitol Building. Its blurred as well as all the Senate and House office buildings. And by the way its been done, it looks intentional.

    Google or DigitalGlobe/EarthSat?

    Strange huh?

  4. Guess I can delete it now on Microsoft to Acquire Groove Networks · · Score: 1

    I was exploring and using it to explore colloboration. With MS buying it, I now know that it will never go to other platforms - Mac, Linux. Oh well.....

  5. Re:What's next? on Verizon To Acquire MCI For $6.7 Billion · · Score: 1
    Cable is governed by franchises given out by the different governments. Each city, county gives out the franchise so that they can do their oversight duties. (And they can force a company to cover the complete area not just the lucrative parts of a jurisdiction. This is all do to the large cost of the infrastructure to wire every neighborhood. There will only be two company's competing - one "telephone" company and one "cable" company. And of course, you may also have other providers like satellite, cell phone for various services.

    So in the end you will have two companies that are governed by various regulations not unwritten anything. Put your conspiracy away and use it for your political discussions.

  6. Re:Totally oil free? on Hydrogen Buses In Iceland · · Score: 1

    Yeah you should see their seal skin case mods. And their ICs encased in whale blubber. And everything at the grocery store comes in dried gourds .....

  7. Re:Eh. on The Coming Expensing of Employee Stock Options · · Score: 3, Informative
    I really enjoy the folks out there that talk about the expensing as though its going to change everything. The reality was the stock options were used as employee comp but not counted as such. And I don't know of too many geeks who really understood the value of them when they got them. So when I got a boatload of options for joining a little company that was going to hit it big, I thought about it being a 10% bonus or something like that. It turned out that over the 5 1/2 years that I worked there I was paid (yes it said so on my W-2) 8 times more in exercised stock options than in my salary. (Granted my salary did not keep pace since I was in the money in my options.)

    Anyway, how does it make sense that a company paid me 7 figures for a couple of years when I was making high 5 figures. They had to be expensed, it was a crazy situation where your compensation really revolved around luck, when you got hired, what company you went to work for and how many options they gave you.

  8. Re:Well Moore's Law is not a law... on Where's My 10 Ghz PC? · · Score: 4, Insightful
    No, Moore's law was about price performance not about absolute performance. If you look at the cost of a PC it has consistently gotten better performance while decreasing in price. Nearer to the beginning of the PC revolution it was all performance inprovement and very little price drop. Then in the early 90s it was kind of balanced. Then the 2000 to 2004 was all about the machines getting cheaper with performance nudging along.

    But now even you cheapest PC covers most users needs. So the CPU designers will continue to inovate but they will find that people will be able to keep their PCs and other electronics longer. Fundementally, the CPU business will start loosing steam and slow down. When people don't need to get new machines, they won't. The precieved premium for the high end products is getting less and less.

  9. So how does someone do this? on Laser Painting Could Lead to 25-Year Prison Term · · Score: 1

    Maybe I missed the point. How does someone aim a laser into a cockpit unless they have a laser sight on their rifle with a high powered scope and are using the scope to aim the thing? OK so you may not need the rifle but you do need the scope and laser combo, which I don't really get as a smart thing to do with an airplane or other place where people don't have eye protection.

  10. Re:Tax Implications? on Employee Stock Options Must be Treated as Expenses · · Score: 1
    Here are the tax implications on non-qualified plans. When you exercise them, you pay the taxes on the difference between the exercise price and market price. So any money you get even if the exercise but hold the stock results in a big tax bill - on the order of 50%, state, federal, FICA, etc. Most companies are pretty good about requiring you to pay the taxes right then and there. This is good so that when you exercise the options and the stock tanks, you have already paid the tax bill. A lot of geniuses in Silicon Valley got themselves into hot water by exercising but not paying the taxes right then and there. And remember the IRS does not let you get out of your back taxes through bankruptcy.

    So the question I always had when the companies said that it was not compensation was why am a paying a million dollars in taxes. I clearly got a benefit that the company could have gotten if they had just sold the stock.

    One of the basic rules of accounting is that you can't get to a different result from two different direction. So when I get a million dollars but the company does not show it as compensation or even an expese but if they had given me a contract that said you get X dollars for every dollar that the stock price goes up, they would have to expense that.

  11. Re:Wrong Argument on Open Source on Windows - Boon or Bane for Linux? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, it gets real old hearing from the Linux = OSS crowd. Linux has its own very real problems which is one of the many reasons that people with the complete move to Linux is not for everyone. The real question for the developers is do they have the bandwidth and experience to support a Windows port.

  12. Am I the only one who does not care on Strained Silicon to Perpetuate Moore's Law · · Score: 1
    It used to be interesting to read about advances in fab processes and the like. Maybe it was because the effect of a new process looked to help out all those futuristic stuff that just needed more power. Maybe it was that we were all focused on HW and the screwdriver work that was a big part of any IT job. Well whatever it was, its long passed.

    When you can go out and buy a new computer for $400 that would blow the doors off any 5 year old system and you can't come close to using your computers power except for complete garbage software. (Yeah, and I don't need to here from all you about needing more power. Yada, yada, yada.... just get a better machine. There are so few things that the really powerful machines are used for .... but anyway.)

    So what is this going to do? Shave a few bucks off my computer? Give me even more power I don't use? Allow more bloated code to run?

  13. Re:Badass new Cisco router's (presentation include on Router Wars · · Score: 1
    Yeah its wonderful that Cisco is adding more features into its router line. So now I don't need a VPN device, a VoIP device and maybe some network device in addition to my router - thats great.

    But as for your nice new GUI for PIX and router config, its going to be the death of lots of networks. I keep seeing people who get their CC** and can't understand an end to end service - routing, ACLs and applications. Instead they want to talk to me about their pretty pictures and how they are doing real work. These new routers require someone who understand how to do voice, data and security. Unforetunately, it seems like most engineers can't understand simple routing or simple firewalls and how to setup them up and how to troubleshoot them.

    Oh, well its just more work for me.

  14. Re:This doesn't *stop* anything on Beat Spam Using Hashcash · · Score: 1
    RTFA

    The question is different for each transaction. Duh. Please this idea is dumb on a host of levels and has been covered many times. The biggest issue is that sooooo much infrastructure (mainly software) has to change. So can we just say that this is another one of those CS discussions - interesting in theory - that will go no where anytime soon.

  15. A company trying to manage its products on Bypassing Intel's Overclock Limit Reveals DDR2-667 · · Score: 5, Funny

    To imagine that a company would manage the release of products. Its as if they had a plan. How could they keep new things from us that they have already finished? My goodness what is the world coming to? The next thing you will tell me is that they have products planned that go even faster.

  16. Migration to more expensive hardware on VAX Users See the Writing on the Wall · · Score: 1
    Lets see if it hasn't been rebooted in 6 years, then it hasn't been upgraded in 6 years. But more likely its hardware that is better than 10 years, so its got CPU, memory, disk that all are easily ecplipsed by everything that is sold today.

    So a PC from Best Buy should replace it just fine.

  17. Re:Pretty high cost on Microsoft's Midlife Crisis · · Score: 1
    It's really not that high. Think about all the stuff that is provided, office (furniture, common areas, etc.), communications (PBX, email, etc.), employee benefits (health care, 401K matching, etc.),.... the list really does go on.

    The other issue is that they have a predominantly professional workforce that make 70K to 150K. That is what a lot of the cost drives off of.

  18. Re:Quote misattributed on Akamai: How They Fought Recent DDoS Attacks · · Score: 2

    I noticed this too. Do you have to read the article to get your topic posted on /. or can you just put together random quotes that seem interesting?

  19. Re:It's about as clever as using tcpdump... on Clever Caller ID Tricks With VoIP · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here is a quick tutorial on SS7 - Signaling System 7 - the root of the current phone systems. Just look at the ISUP page to see some of the secret fields.

  20. It's about as clever as using tcpdump... on Clever Caller ID Tricks With VoIP · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not clever...it's 100% obvious. Anyone who knows anything about phone systems knew this was possible and just going to take someone with burning desire to do. The fact that there is "hidden" stuff inside of the signalling messages for phone systems is a real yawner. And the fact that the "reporter" had to have this demonstrated means, he is another tech lightweight. Oh, and didn't phone phreakers do this 20 years ago? Phone switches are after all only specialized computers.

  21. Re:Good for business on Is The 6-Month Product Cycle Upon Us? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is a big downside of such rapid product changes. It takes a fair amount of time to stock the sales channel. This means that before you see the latest digital camera on the shelf at the local camera store, it has to go through a three or four hands. This means that a product that is going to be replaced in six months spends the first month or more not available to people. Also, when a new product is introduced all the existing products that are in stock go down in value. If you are running a retail store, you can easily get stuck with product that is obsolete but can't be sold for cost. This is what caused the big computer retails to have so much of a problem when they were reluctant to mark down old product. This was especially true in the height of video card wars.

  22. Whats next? on Is The 6-Month Product Cycle Upon Us? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can the six month job cycle be far behind?

  23. The implication is what? on Comparing Internet Cafe Rates Worldwide · · Score: 2, Funny
    The assumtption is that Cyber Cafes are not accessible to the general public is a problem. That kind of business (Cyber Cafes)is oriented toward those that people who have some money and need to contact the outside world with something other than mail or telephone. So what am I supposed to do with your map anyways plan my next vacation?

    And as for the relationship between price and government policy, I would be more interested to see what the relationship is between government policy in new areas like the Internet vs the government policy in general.

    In Kazakstan, the capital had a couple of Cafes that went for $1 or 2 / hour. It made life much more bearable there when the only English is the occasional English language video on the TV.

  24. The problem is that you need it on.... on Impoverish a Spammer Today · · Score: 1
    Gosh this is a great idea for .... oh, geeks, but unless the vast majority of ISPs, corporations and users implement THIS system, it is a programming exercise. So when you implement this - your friends get through, the random junk gets dropped and anybody that is new to you gets a very anti-social message about not accepting your mail till you do something wierd. So these folks answer to anti-social behavior on the part of spammers is to be anti-social themselves.

    Thanks, nothing says screw off and leave me alone but random automated demands sent from your server.

  25. Re:Good Place To Search For Alternatives on Bloggers Assail Movable Type's New Pricing Scheme · · Score: 1

    The whole software market place has the same issue. Its awash with too many products, no good comparative info and a high rate of change. Since there is no barrier to entry, the market gets filled with more stuff, most of which is derivative and just soaks up shelf/mind space. Just look at the world of CMSes, there are thousands of them out there, most of which are private label ones only supported by the builders. Too often a developer needing a CMS solution doesn't want to spend the time to get to know a CMS and then contribute to an existing effort. Instead they look around can't find one the fits there needs - not because it does not exist but that it is so time consuming to find a good match. So they go out and start building their own. It gets them to their goal faster but leads to a long term problem where they own the code maintenance forever.

    And as for documentation, its why most software - free or not - stinks so bad. The people who develop most software today look at documentation a nice thing to do after they are finished.