You get me wrong. I should clarify. He doesn't necessarily hate the people of America, but he's pretty open about considering America a "corrupt regime". As for rich-people hating, it's pretty common in a variety of circles, one way or another. I don't mean to make a moral judgment on it right here, but just to point out there's easily more to it than gaining notoriety for himself.
I suppose I really ought to avoid statements that people can read connotations of that sort into them, but I was tired this morning. Sorry.
I think the whole case is one of "We can't prove it, but honestly, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out." Means, motive, and opportunity: what more are you looking for?
Don't be silly. Being able to wi-fi with your DNA won't save you a penny on your Internet connection, because you'll still need a base station. You can skip the hardware upgrade cycle, though.
I don't know about the money, but the "men are evil" stranger-danger attitude endangers children too. Most strangers are nice people. Most kidnappers and molestors are not strangers.
In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn't stop to help for fear he'd be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.
A large part of the California budget crisis can be squarely blamed on the pension system. For that you can blame Sacramento and the public-employee unions' lobbyists. Here's a snazzy little summary. Emphasis mine.
In 1999 then California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill that represented the largest issuance of non-voter-approved debt in the state's history. The bill SB 400 granted billions of dollars in retroactive pension boosts to state employees, allowing retirements as young as age 50 with lifetime pensions of up to 90% of final year salaries. The California Public Employees' Retirement System sold the pension boost to the state legislature by promising that "no increase over current employer contributions is needed for these benefit improvements" and that Calpers would "remain fully funded." They also claimed that enhanced pensions would not cost taxpayers "a dime" because investment bets would cover the expense.
What Calpers failed to disclose, however, was that (1) the state budget was on the hook for shortfalls should actual investment returns fall short of assumed investment returns, (2) those assumed investment returns implicitly projected the Dow Jones would reach roughly 25,000 by 2009 and 28,000,000 by 2099, unrealistic to say the least (3) shortfalls could turn out to be hundreds of billions of dollars, (4) Calpers's own employees would benefit from the pension increases and (5) members of Calpers's board had received contributions from the public employee unions who would benefit from the legislation. Had such a flagrant case of non-disclosure occurred in the private sector, even a sleepy SEC and US Attorney would have noticed.
Conspiracy theory time! The carriers give them a cut of the profits from the data overages. At $0.50/kb*, it could be substantial.... especially since the phone itself is liable to be a complete flop.
(*The sad thing is how little of an exaggeration that is.)
Well, you could overproduce and make mere pennies, or you could curb production and run the risk that your competitors overproduce (and earn pennies) while you earn even less. Collusion to raise prices is hard.
While it's one thing to charge people more to discourage excessive data use and maintain your network performance and the like, it's quite another thing to make it part of your business plan to charge unsuspecting users hundreds of dollars when they exceed that cap without realizing it. That's just exploiting people.
A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
It's illegal in 26 states, and can sometimes make a nice countersuit.
There aren't too many places in the United States that life without a car is going to be anything short of hellishly impractical. A lifetime ban is a little ridiculous. Back in the day, I hear tell, we had a notion of a "debt to society". The key part was that eventually it could be paid, so if you screwed up in your twenties you might get a second chance before you retire? perhaps? maybe?
All joking aside, monitoring traffic is okay to a point, but can only get you so much; cars still need lanes. Personally, I don't need a fancy computer to tell me about my commute. I already know it will be miserably slow no matter which way I go.
Well, it makes some sort of sense. Why burn fuel just to make heat when you could use some of it to run electrons through some silicon and get some computation done?
(Answer? A lot of technical difficulties making it tricky, expensive, or less efficient... e.g. the fact that to avoid transmission losses you'd probably need to put the power plant and the servers right near the city, but the cheap power is all coal and no one wants that right near the city, and the good dense cities are expensive places for servers, too.)
I don't see why distributed source control is so necessary for a team. I mean, git is neat and all that, but I'm thinking it's a lot more "nice to have" than "need to have".
I'm sorry. We're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being differences between men's and women's capacity for mathematics and intensive abstract logical reasoning. It's taboo, and politically incorrect. In certain quarters, you could probably lose your job for mentioning it.
I should clarify, actually. We (the dev team) are not trying to limit it by language. Our in-house recruiter, however.... well, he's got different ideas about what we're looking for than we do, and let's just say I've heard rumblings from the head of Engineering which don't bode well for his future. Not that I can take any credit; I'm just now taking over hiring for my department; the battle to make our job posting look half-decent for this round of hiring begins when I get back from Christmas vacation. In the meantime, I'm asking around for tips.
My favorite line of Perl code ever was in a validator somewhere. It checked whether something was a valid IPv4 construct (something netmask related, I forget the specifics) by passing it to the library, and seeing whether the library threw up or not.
Oh, believe you me, we're not trying to "limit it by language" at all. The challenge is figuring out how to get those good developers (who I imagine are generally thinking "I suppose I'll look for a position at a cool, hip Web 2.0 startup using Ruby on Rails, it's a decent language") and hold their attention for long enough to pitch the position. After that, it's easy enough; there's just a dearth of interest. Hiring good people is certainly possible, but it goes really slowly, even when you have a decent recruiter to work with.
Also, I was strongly under the impression that Rakudo was still more of a 'useful, usable, "early adopter" distribution of Perl 6' than a mature, production-ready system.
Mind you, I'd be thrilled to see some nice new stuff in the Perl space. But I work on a software appliance and some of the customers pay tens of thousands of dollars (or more) for it and they do expect a modicum of reliability....
Yeah, now try hiring for a good OO software engineer to write Perl. The applicant pool isn't spectacularly broad. Not too surprising, I suppose, since most of the positions out there featuring Perl are either QA automation or something titled "Build Engineer". Ruby has all the mindshare these days.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose I really ought to avoid statements that people can read connotations of that sort into them, but I was tired this morning. Sorry.
The Supreme Court has even ruled that you have neither a legal obligation nor even a patriotic duty to do anything but minimize your tax burden.
I dunno. I'm pretty sure that he genuinely hates both rich people and the United States as well.
Generally speaking, guns almost never kill people.... bullets, on the other hand, are another matter.
I think the whole case is one of "We can't prove it, but honestly, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out." Means, motive, and opportunity: what more are you looking for?
Don't be silly. Being able to wi-fi with your DNA won't save you a penny on your Internet connection, because you'll still need a base station. You can skip the hardware upgrade cycle, though.
-- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073752925629440.html
-- Dow 28,000,000: The Unbelievable Expectations of California's Pension System
Not that this is the only problem with California, but it's a nice $3-4 billion chunk of the current $28 billion hole and is only set to grow bigger.
(*The sad thing is how little of an exaggeration that is.)
Well, you could overproduce and make mere pennies, or you could curb production and run the risk that your competitors overproduce (and earn pennies) while you earn even less. Collusion to raise prices is hard.
See also: international data roaming.
Eat a stake tonight? Naah. Waaay too much fiber. Also, splinters to the tongue? Yowch!
It's illegal in 26 states, and can sometimes make a nice countersuit.
There ain't no justice.
With all due respect to Apple, ask Winston-Salem how their Dell plant deal worked out.
All joking aside, monitoring traffic is okay to a point, but can only get you so much; cars still need lanes. Personally, I don't need a fancy computer to tell me about my commute. I already know it will be miserably slow no matter which way I go.
(Answer? A lot of technical difficulties making it tricky, expensive, or less efficient... e.g. the fact that to avoid transmission losses you'd probably need to put the power plant and the servers right near the city, but the cheap power is all coal and no one wants that right near the city, and the good dense cities are expensive places for servers, too.)
I don't see why distributed source control is so necessary for a team. I mean, git is neat and all that, but I'm thinking it's a lot more "nice to have" than "need to have".
I'm sorry. We're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being differences between men's and women's capacity for mathematics and intensive abstract logical reasoning. It's taboo, and politically incorrect. In certain quarters, you could probably lose your job for mentioning it.
They can sue if they don't like your attitude. Whether they have much of a case is another matter, mind you, but...
I should clarify, actually. We (the dev team) are not trying to limit it by language. Our in-house recruiter, however.... well, he's got different ideas about what we're looking for than we do, and let's just say I've heard rumblings from the head of Engineering which don't bode well for his future. Not that I can take any credit; I'm just now taking over hiring for my department; the battle to make our job posting look half-decent for this round of hiring begins when I get back from Christmas vacation. In the meantime, I'm asking around for tips.
Yes, the last 40% was purely gratuitous.
Oh, believe you me, we're not trying to "limit it by language" at all. The challenge is figuring out how to get those good developers (who I imagine are generally thinking "I suppose I'll look for a position at a cool, hip Web 2.0 startup using Ruby on Rails, it's a decent language") and hold their attention for long enough to pitch the position. After that, it's easy enough; there's just a dearth of interest. Hiring good people is certainly possible, but it goes really slowly, even when you have a decent recruiter to work with.
Mind you, I'd be thrilled to see some nice new stuff in the Perl space. But I work on a software appliance and some of the customers pay tens of thousands of dollars (or more) for it and they do expect a modicum of reliability....
(Hiring ~4 OO software engineers to do Perl. Forgive the inane outsourced hiring-management site. Merry Christmas.)