Take a look at the 10-K and you'll find at least one risk factor which applies to Jobs (CEO):
The Company's success depends largely on its ability to attract and retain key personnel. Much of the Company's future success depends on the continued service and availability of skilled personnel,
including its CEO, its executive team and key employees in technical, marketing and staff positions. (p. 21, FY 2008 10-K)
IANASL (securities lawyer) but I find it relevant that the CEO is separated from the term "executive team." To compare, the similar risk factor in Microsoft's 10-K does not even specify specific employees.
When college students and faculty come to my desk and ask how do they save or print their document in Word 2007, that's a pretty clear indication that the Word UI is complex and complicated.
The legal explanation as provided by the U.S. Treasury:
Q: I thought that United States currency was legal tender for all debts. Some businesses or governmental agencies say that they will only accept checks, money orders or credit cards as payment, and others will only accept currency notes in denominations of $20 or smaller. Isn't this illegal?
A: The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," which states: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."
This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.
It's called a "poor man's copyright," it involves only copyright, not patents, and it's a myth. The U.S. Copyright Office has a note on this. Don't waste your money, especially with the cost of Registered Mail these days.
As for the original submitter, he's likely safe as long as a "substantial" amount of University resources aren't used, and if there isn't an existing contract between him and the University (work-study, faculty/TA, or regular employee) covering intellectual property. My school has a similar policy. And what I found on the SUU site turned up this:
In the Southern Utah University Student Handbook, for instance,
you will find the [...] Intellectual Property Policy.
cops in unmarked cars might start targeting areas where newly publicized photo radar cameras have been placed and pulling over speeders and checking their plates
Thus negating the point of putting up said cameras.
Maybe the state legislatures and city councils should consider the novel idea of not figuring traffic fine revenue into their budgets and not hiring private companies to do the police department's work.
It's the same for USPS package services (anything above First-Class Mail). You have to generate a zone chart from your originating ZIP Code before determining shipping rates. Priority is based on zone and weight or, in some cases, zone and size. Parcel Post is based on zone and weight, but some ZIP codes that are major hubs offer cheaper "Intra-BMC" rates.
You laugh, but older contract offices still get their software updates, including price changes, via mail.
On 3.5" floppy.
The terminals still use green-text monitors.
Re:That's what you get... for not using FedEx
on
USPS Server Meltdown
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The zones are clearly marked but determining which zone you are shipping to is not. They are based on distance from the originating ZIP Code so the application must use Postal Explorer to generate the zone chart ahead of time. (For now, it happens to be working.) And in the case of non-flat-rate Priority Mail, there's a huge price difference between zone 4 (zone and weight only) and zone 5 (zone and weight *OR* zone and size).
Real ID makes sense when it comes to standardizing how DMV records need to be entered/stored, and detecting multiple IDs for one person. Searching one database accurately with erroneous data is hard enough; searching multiple databases, each with their own inaccuracies, for data not stored in the same format is even harder. And how many reasons are there for maintaining multiple state IDs?
Frankly, he should have asked them to dismiss it from federal court on Constitutional grounds (you can't sue in federal court for matters of less than $20 per the Constitution
The way I'm reading the 7th amendment, the $20 clause only seems to apply to protection of the right to a jury trial -- i.e. the court must give the option of a trial by jury in common law suits involving more than $20.
Based on that, they should allow sellers and buyers to submit feedback into a private "holding area." Sellers have 14 days to post feedback, and buyers have 30 days to post feedback, leaving enough time for longer payment methods (mailed payment, or waiting for a check to clear) and longer shipping times. If feedback is received from both sides before 14 days, it is released and posted to the accounts immediately; otherwise, any feedback received within the two time frames is released after 30 days. Until one of those two conditions are met, the feedback stays hidden and doesn't appear on a user's account. And to prevent non-paying bidders from having 30 days to hide their status, allow the seller's feedback to post immediately if eBay declares a user is NPB.
You pay this fee and you're "protected" from litigation for copyright infringement through this covenant. A few months later, you get served notice that you're on the receiving end of a DMCA-based infringement. They claim you downloaded 200 songs on a certain day. You have dial-up Internet. The claim itself is technically impossible, assuming an average file size of 4 MB (about average for 192kbps MP3s, which seem to be the common P2P format now) and a constant 56kbps on dial-up (which isn't going to happen in real life); it would take 32.5 hours to download 200 songs. The lawsuit also violates the terms of the covenant.
You may have grounds to fight the lawsuit for both technical (can't download 800MB in one day on 56kbit dial-up) and non-technical (you paid a so-called "license" fee and are protected under the covenant) reasons, but if you can't afford to fight the lawsuit, either because you can't afford to hire an attorney, or because you can't afford to take time off work to read about copyright and contract law, learn how to write motions, file them, and respond to the court, then the covenant is useless and they've screwed you into paying another "license" fee (aka settlement).
That's the problem; who's to say they won't sue you after they cash the check? I doubt that any of us would find that outside the realm of possibility. Would they sue, then offer an additional "fee" to quietly go away until they "catch" you infringing again?
The average time has gotten much better, according to my customers (I work at a contract postal unit in an area with a lot of military personnel). Germany/Europe averages 1-2 weeks for First Class and Priority, and Iraq/Afghanistan averages 2-3 weeks, though actively-moving units take longer. Parcel services run about 2-6 weeks. It slows down for the holidays but he was two weeks ahead of the recommended mailing date for parcel services.
The only time I've ever seen a package take more than two months before being delivered somewhere was when it was sent by international surface mail (deprecated) and when the sender addressed an international parcel like a domestic one (making the last line "Kampala, Uganda 43250" will trick any automated sorting machine -- and apparently the retail clerk, who charged the customer for domestic mail and printed a domestic barcode -- into sending your package to Kentucky) and it bounced between several offices for four months.
That laptop was sent well before the holiday mailing period for APO/FPO parcel service. It's been stolen, IMO, or sitting in a pile of overlooked boxes. I'd be surprised if Dell shipped by parcel services to APO/FPO, because the difference in service is just not worth the cost on something like a new computer. If they shipped by Priority, Dell should've initiated an inquiry with USPS by now, and if they shipped by Parcel Post, then shame on them.
They are running ads on the TV, saying that when the analogue TV signal gets switched off, if they haven't upgraded, then their tv set may not work properly. The key words are "may not". I think they should be saying "will not". There will be no analogue channels left, so unless they buy a STB or get a DVB capable set, then they will not get a signal. It's probably political, don't startle the proles or they may realise we're forcing them to do something that costs them money.
Any commercial that says "may not" is accurate. If you bought a TV within the past few years, chances are (at least in the US) it has a digital tuner built in. They will still work after the analog shutdown without a converter box; whether you can still pull in the same channels, however, is primarily an antenna issue. It's only people with older televisions -- purchased before the FCC practically forced manufacturers and retailers to sell TVs with digital tuners -- that need a converter box *if* they use rabbit ears.
Besides, some low-power stations in the U.S. will be permitted to transmit an analog signal past the shutoff date, so analog isn't truly going away after February.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the "freeze spending" and "cut the budget" statement. (The second option I gave was "cut other government spending.") What I'm saying is that those types of cost-cutting measures are unlikely to raise the hundreds of billions that Treasury has and will continue to give out, i.e. money that has not been "replaced" by attempting to balance it out within the budget. Given the enormous figure, it makes sense that you'd have to raise taxes on the non-wealthy if you've promised to not raise taxes on the wealthy, and the only other revenue option is rein in government spending. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that, but we can't continue to run up the deficit.
"may actually get 60" == must run the table, and in some cases force and win a December runoff. That's a lot of cards that have to fall the Dems' way. They made an impressive push this year, but I don't see them pulling off the ultimate upset.
If you propose to make tax cuts targeting the wealthy permanent, and the government needs to raise lots of money to bail out the financial system, there are two places to get that money:
Raise taxes on those you didn't give tax cuts too, i.e. the lower and middle class
Cut other government spending
Any candidate would say he'd do the second choice, but which do you think is more likely to raise hundreds of billions of dollars quickly?
Nominal if it's a large enough amount. It would cost Knuth $1.05 for the money order plus the $.42 stamp -- a grand total of $1.47, not including the cost of the envelope or the check -- to send $2.56.
On a related note, some local and state government agencies only accept USPS money orders as payment for things like fines or running one of those EZPass toll booths. I've had people come into our office to buy a $3 money order because they realized too late they were in an EZPass lane and got the toll bill a week later. Considering that "business" or "direct" mail (aka junk mail) is on the decline, money orders might be the last revenue refuge for USPS.
Virginia hasn't flipped blue in decades. If Obama wins Virginia it's a clear sign of historic voter turnout, and it could indicate that other states -- North Carolina, for instance -- that McCain should win, based on previous elections, could also fall into the Obama column on election night. Most of the electoral map projections indicate that McCain needs Virginia if he wants a chance at 270.
I tend to scan/. through Google Reader, so I don't get any of the hyperlinks normally found in the summary. I shouldn't have to link to the/. story to link to a Wiki entry on what is clearly an obscure topic.
Political call-spam happens to people who register to vote.
Therefore, to stop getting annoying political call-spam, people should not register to vote.
I think you left out the part about voting being much more important than a flurry of phone calls about why candidate X should not be trusted or that this is your second notice that your car warranty is about to expire, especially if you don't live in a country where you are expected to vote for a single party/person or else. Or do you seriously think that giving up the right to vote is worth the absence of a handful of phone calls in October and November?
Not trying to pick a fight, but where are you getting this 800 point single-day jump from? The biggest single-day point increase on record for the Dow is just under 500 points, and that was right before the bubble in 2000 burst. Here's the list of historical prices for September.
I'm not talking about companies taking out a loan to pay the bills, I'm talking about a company with a line of credit for their inventory. It's done everyday across the retail space, and it allows the retailer to keep more inventory on their shelves than if they had to pay up-front. Ask your local mom-n-pop how important a line of credit with their supplier is, and whether they could reasonably stay in business if they had to pay for inventory up-front.
Gmail, for example, has a terms of service and a privacy policy detailing exactly what they can and cannot do with your information. Most other companies do as well (by law?) and it's usually pretty easy to access.
Terms of service and privacy policies are nice until the company stops playing by their rules. Then it becomes your responsibility to call them out. Calling them out takes time and costs money. I'd bet that not many/.ers would actually pursue legal action against a firm which violated its privacy policy or ToS (as a civil case, claiming breach of contract; violating state or federal privacy laws are a different matter, since the government pursues the case).
So the million-dollar question is: Do you really trust Google to honor its privacy policy?
And the sky didn't fall - think about it - the stock market climbed 800 points on Friday on anticipation of this "sure to pass" bailout^Wsteal-from-the-middle-class bill, then dropped 700 points yesterday in the stunned shock of the citizens standing against it. Yet today, it climbed up almost 500 points. So instead of the economy slamming to a stop, it has risen (800 - 700 + 500) almost 600 points in the last four business days.
Sorry, Dow is 1.5% (171 points) lower from Friday to today's close. Friday +120, Monday -777, today +485. Over the past five days it's flat, off 6% for the month, and off 4.5% for the quarter. For the year it's off 18.2%. The broader index, S&P 500, performed worse over those same intervals, as did the Nasdaq.
And the problem in the economy is not in the stock market, it's in the credit markets. The effective Fed funds rate -- what banks pay to borrow money overnight from the federal government -- had jumped to 7%, when the target rate (what the Fed said it's supposed to be) is 2.5%. If a bank is paying 7% interest on government money, what kind of interest do you think they'll charge you? (That assumes they're willing to give you a loan to begin with.) And for the second time in two weeks, the yield on the 3-month T-bill has gone negative at some point during trading. Yes, people were so scared that they were willing to loan money to the government for a guarantee that they would lose just a little money.
In the heyday of deals, companies could finance a buyout. Not anymore; deals are being done with stock and/or cash because no one, not even corporations, can get a loan on decent terms. Now imagine this problem spreading to retailers, who depend on 30-90 days credit for their inventory. The sky is falling and the economy is slamming to a stop, but since the problem can't be synthesized into a 30-second sound bite for the nightly news, Main Street just doesn't get it. Do I agree with the bill? No. But seeing it defeated wasn't a victory; it's Congressional Russian roulette. They're betting that the markets will "remain calm" until they get a better solution together. Let's hope they're right.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a look at the 10-K and you'll find at least one risk factor which applies to Jobs (CEO):
The Company's success depends largely on its ability to attract and retain key personnel.
Much of the Company's future success depends on the continued service and availability of skilled personnel, including its CEO, its executive team and key employees in technical, marketing and staff positions. (p. 21, FY 2008 10-K)
IANASL (securities lawyer) but I find it relevant that the CEO is separated from the term "executive team." To compare, the similar risk factor in Microsoft's 10-K does not even specify specific employees.
When college students and faculty come to my desk and ask how do they save or print their document in Word 2007, that's a pretty clear indication that the Word UI is complex and complicated.
The legal explanation as provided by the U.S. Treasury:
It's called a "poor man's copyright," it involves only copyright, not patents, and it's a myth. The U.S. Copyright Office has a note on this. Don't waste your money, especially with the cost of Registered Mail these days.
As for the original submitter, he's likely safe as long as a "substantial" amount of University resources aren't used, and if there isn't an existing contract between him and the University (work-study, faculty/TA, or regular employee) covering intellectual property. My school has a similar policy. And what I found on the SUU site turned up this:
Which seems to be listed here.
Thus negating the point of putting up said cameras.
Maybe the state legislatures and city councils should consider the novel idea of not figuring traffic fine revenue into their budgets and not hiring private companies to do the police department's work.
It's the same for USPS package services (anything above First-Class Mail). You have to generate a zone chart from your originating ZIP Code before determining shipping rates. Priority is based on zone and weight or, in some cases, zone and size. Parcel Post is based on zone and weight, but some ZIP codes that are major hubs offer cheaper "Intra-BMC" rates.
You laugh, but older contract offices still get their software updates, including price changes, via mail.
On 3.5" floppy.
The terminals still use green-text monitors.
The zones are clearly marked but determining which zone you are shipping to is not. They are based on distance from the originating ZIP Code so the application must use Postal Explorer to generate the zone chart ahead of time. (For now, it happens to be working.) And in the case of non-flat-rate Priority Mail, there's a huge price difference between zone 4 (zone and weight only) and zone 5 (zone and weight *OR* zone and size).
Real ID makes sense when it comes to standardizing how DMV records need to be entered/stored, and detecting multiple IDs for one person. Searching one database accurately with erroneous data is hard enough; searching multiple databases, each with their own inaccuracies, for data not stored in the same format is even harder. And how many reasons are there for maintaining multiple state IDs?
The way I'm reading the 7th amendment, the $20 clause only seems to apply to protection of the right to a jury trial -- i.e. the court must give the option of a trial by jury in common law suits involving more than $20.
Based on that, they should allow sellers and buyers to submit feedback into a private "holding area." Sellers have 14 days to post feedback, and buyers have 30 days to post feedback, leaving enough time for longer payment methods (mailed payment, or waiting for a check to clear) and longer shipping times. If feedback is received from both sides before 14 days, it is released and posted to the accounts immediately; otherwise, any feedback received within the two time frames is released after 30 days. Until one of those two conditions are met, the feedback stays hidden and doesn't appear on a user's account. And to prevent non-paying bidders from having 30 days to hide their status, allow the seller's feedback to post immediately if eBay declares a user is NPB.
You pay this fee and you're "protected" from litigation for copyright infringement through this covenant. A few months later, you get served notice that you're on the receiving end of a DMCA-based infringement. They claim you downloaded 200 songs on a certain day. You have dial-up Internet. The claim itself is technically impossible, assuming an average file size of 4 MB (about average for 192kbps MP3s, which seem to be the common P2P format now) and a constant 56kbps on dial-up (which isn't going to happen in real life); it would take 32.5 hours to download 200 songs. The lawsuit also violates the terms of the covenant.
You may have grounds to fight the lawsuit for both technical (can't download 800MB in one day on 56kbit dial-up) and non-technical (you paid a so-called "license" fee and are protected under the covenant) reasons, but if you can't afford to fight the lawsuit, either because you can't afford to hire an attorney, or because you can't afford to take time off work to read about copyright and contract law, learn how to write motions, file them, and respond to the court, then the covenant is useless and they've screwed you into paying another "license" fee (aka settlement).
That's the problem; who's to say they won't sue you after they cash the check? I doubt that any of us would find that outside the realm of possibility. Would they sue, then offer an additional "fee" to quietly go away until they "catch" you infringing again?
The average time has gotten much better, according to my customers (I work at a contract postal unit in an area with a lot of military personnel). Germany/Europe averages 1-2 weeks for First Class and Priority, and Iraq/Afghanistan averages 2-3 weeks, though actively-moving units take longer. Parcel services run about 2-6 weeks. It slows down for the holidays but he was two weeks ahead of the recommended mailing date for parcel services.
The only time I've ever seen a package take more than two months before being delivered somewhere was when it was sent by international surface mail (deprecated) and when the sender addressed an international parcel like a domestic one (making the last line "Kampala, Uganda 43250" will trick any automated sorting machine -- and apparently the retail clerk, who charged the customer for domestic mail and printed a domestic barcode -- into sending your package to Kentucky) and it bounced between several offices for four months.
That laptop was sent well before the holiday mailing period for APO/FPO parcel service. It's been stolen, IMO, or sitting in a pile of overlooked boxes. I'd be surprised if Dell shipped by parcel services to APO/FPO, because the difference in service is just not worth the cost on something like a new computer. If they shipped by Priority, Dell should've initiated an inquiry with USPS by now, and if they shipped by Parcel Post, then shame on them.
Any commercial that says "may not" is accurate. If you bought a TV within the past few years, chances are (at least in the US) it has a digital tuner built in. They will still work after the analog shutdown without a converter box; whether you can still pull in the same channels, however, is primarily an antenna issue. It's only people with older televisions -- purchased before the FCC practically forced manufacturers and retailers to sell TVs with digital tuners -- that need a converter box *if* they use rabbit ears.
Besides, some low-power stations in the U.S. will be permitted to transmit an analog signal past the shutoff date, so analog isn't truly going away after February.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the "freeze spending" and "cut the budget" statement. (The second option I gave was "cut other government spending.") What I'm saying is that those types of cost-cutting measures are unlikely to raise the hundreds of billions that Treasury has and will continue to give out, i.e. money that has not been "replaced" by attempting to balance it out within the budget. Given the enormous figure, it makes sense that you'd have to raise taxes on the non-wealthy if you've promised to not raise taxes on the wealthy, and the only other revenue option is rein in government spending. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that, but we can't continue to run up the deficit.
"may actually get 60" == must run the table, and in some cases force and win a December runoff. That's a lot of cards that have to fall the Dems' way. They made an impressive push this year, but I don't see them pulling off the ultimate upset.
If you propose to make tax cuts targeting the wealthy permanent, and the government needs to raise lots of money to bail out the financial system, there are two places to get that money:
Any candidate would say he'd do the second choice, but which do you think is more likely to raise hundreds of billions of dollars quickly?
Nominal if it's a large enough amount. It would cost Knuth $1.05 for the money order plus the $.42 stamp -- a grand total of $1.47, not including the cost of the envelope or the check -- to send $2.56.
On a related note, some local and state government agencies only accept USPS money orders as payment for things like fines or running one of those EZPass toll booths. I've had people come into our office to buy a $3 money order because they realized too late they were in an EZPass lane and got the toll bill a week later. Considering that "business" or "direct" mail (aka junk mail) is on the decline, money orders might be the last revenue refuge for USPS.
Virginia hasn't flipped blue in decades. If Obama wins Virginia it's a clear sign of historic voter turnout, and it could indicate that other states -- North Carolina, for instance -- that McCain should win, based on previous elections, could also fall into the Obama column on election night. Most of the electoral map projections indicate that McCain needs Virginia if he wants a chance at 270.
I tend to scan /. through Google Reader, so I don't get any of the hyperlinks normally found in the summary. I shouldn't have to link to the /. story to link to a Wiki entry on what is clearly an obscure topic.
So you're saying:
I think you left out the part about voting being much more important than a flurry of phone calls about why candidate X should not be trusted or that this is your second notice that your car warranty is about to expire, especially if you don't live in a country where you are expected to vote for a single party/person or else. Or do you seriously think that giving up the right to vote is worth the absence of a handful of phone calls in October and November?
Not trying to pick a fight, but where are you getting this 800 point single-day jump from? The biggest single-day point increase on record for the Dow is just under 500 points, and that was right before the bubble in 2000 burst. Here's the list of historical prices for September.
I'm not talking about companies taking out a loan to pay the bills, I'm talking about a company with a line of credit for their inventory. It's done everyday across the retail space, and it allows the retailer to keep more inventory on their shelves than if they had to pay up-front. Ask your local mom-n-pop how important a line of credit with their supplier is, and whether they could reasonably stay in business if they had to pay for inventory up-front.
Terms of service and privacy policies are nice until the company stops playing by their rules. Then it becomes your responsibility to call them out. Calling them out takes time and costs money. I'd bet that not many /.ers would actually pursue legal action against a firm which violated its privacy policy or ToS (as a civil case, claiming breach of contract; violating state or federal privacy laws are a different matter, since the government pursues the case).
So the million-dollar question is: Do you really trust Google to honor its privacy policy?
Sorry, Dow is 1.5% (171 points) lower from Friday to today's close. Friday +120, Monday -777, today +485. Over the past five days it's flat, off 6% for the month, and off 4.5% for the quarter. For the year it's off 18.2%. The broader index, S&P 500, performed worse over those same intervals, as did the Nasdaq.
And the problem in the economy is not in the stock market, it's in the credit markets. The effective Fed funds rate -- what banks pay to borrow money overnight from the federal government -- had jumped to 7%, when the target rate (what the Fed said it's supposed to be) is 2.5%. If a bank is paying 7% interest on government money, what kind of interest do you think they'll charge you? (That assumes they're willing to give you a loan to begin with.) And for the second time in two weeks, the yield on the 3-month T-bill has gone negative at some point during trading. Yes, people were so scared that they were willing to loan money to the government for a guarantee that they would lose just a little money.
In the heyday of deals, companies could finance a buyout. Not anymore; deals are being done with stock and/or cash because no one, not even corporations, can get a loan on decent terms. Now imagine this problem spreading to retailers, who depend on 30-90 days credit for their inventory. The sky is falling and the economy is slamming to a stop, but since the problem can't be synthesized into a 30-second sound bite for the nightly news, Main Street just doesn't get it. Do I agree with the bill? No. But seeing it defeated wasn't a victory; it's Congressional Russian roulette. They're betting that the markets will "remain calm" until they get a better solution together. Let's hope they're right.