And another person "goes galt" and escapes the looters.
Not for long. I hear the Virginia has been considering annexing Singapore since this story broke (taxes on $3.84 billion ain't chump change... and VA needs it for something or other). What sources tell me, is the plan is to use just the VA Air National Guard... but not quite... just one F-22 and a single hypoxic pilot to take out Singapore's entire military (apparently it has a button for that). So looks like Saverin will be paying taxes after all... as well as state and local taxes to the Commonwealth and its soon to be new county of Singapore.
What the fuck are they talking about...? Google pirated a GPLed programming language and used it in Android?!! What damages could Oracle possibly be listing? I wanna know. Show the damages, Oracle.
from Congress that keep the USPS from using it's surpluses to pay off debt, ensuring they'll be constantly underwater, and confiscates that money to pre-pay, in less than a decade, the cost of retirements for the next 75 years. Most of that money will go to the retirements of employees who haven't even been born, and possibly even some of their parents. Of course, that assumes those employees will even exist, since there won't be any employees in 75 years if this onerous burden kills the Postal Service, an objective this legislation seems to be aiming for.
Would you prefer a paradigm like Social Security? (Please excuse my strawman) Its a fantasy that we pay into SS for our retirement... yet we are actually not doing that at all... the money goes in, and right back out to the Baby Boomer retirees, basically supported by Gen X and Y, the two smallest generations supporting the largest. Perhaps 75 years is a bit long, but it is certainly a nice incentive to become a postal employee... guaranteed, rock solid, retirement pay... no adjustments because the money isn't there. And remember, the USPS is one of the few agencies chartered in the US Constitution. Not just a good or bad idea. Its the law of the land.
FWIW Prior to my grandfathers efforts, there was no pension for postal workers... so I'm not sure how we could be talking about different things.... but I'll take your word for it (too lazy to read, but thanks for the links... on behalf of the others that aren't so lazy).
. It seems like this would drive more business away from the already floundering USPS financial situation
....If they were simply required to do business under the same rules as their competitors
The United States Postal Service is not a business, therefore, it is not run like one. The United States Postal Service is the government. Even a bastard knows this.
The USPS is struggling because they've been required by a vindictive right-wing to maintain an absurd 75-year pension plan commitment,
My grandfather, a postmaster for decades and a life-long Democrat, was the Secretary-Treasurer of the National Association of Postmasters (NAPUS) from 1953 to 1971, and set up that pension plan. That is his baby.
basically they are being forced to fully fund pension plans for employees who haven't even been born yet.
That's brilliant, actually. If only Social Security worked this way, everyone under 45 wouldn't be fucked for retirement, and Social Security/Disability wouldn't be broke next year, which it will be.
... we wouldn't have to try and decipher this shit off some half-buried wall. all of it was well preserved on codices but the church figured it would be easier to convert them all if they incinerated their cultural history.
I think its common for people to keep old calendars around... I worked at a woodshop two years back, and the Hooter's calendar they had was from the late '90's. If the calendar is a good one, then it doesn't matter how old it is. Even if the dates are wrong, the pictures may still be quite compelling.
to me android is a completely unique OS that happens to use some linux code.
I agree completely... Android is precisely as distinct an OS as any other linux distro. Slackware isn't Ubuntu, they look totally different! Gentoo isn't Red Hat, and if you can't tell the difference, you're probably a UNIX admin.
Android also has more marketshare so it kinda evens out.
Similarly, gasoline has a much larger market share than Mercedes Diesels. Also, in breakfast cereals, corn has far more marketshare than Super Sugar Crisp. As you can probably tell, I'm making fun of your comment. Android isn't competing for marketshare. (Its the companies using Android.)
The problem is that Nokia has made itself a one trick pony.
That can't be the problem: Apple's one trick pony is mopping the floor with Motorola's 10, HTC's 13, and Samsung's 14. Why is Apple outselling Nokia? Having no idea, I would guess its the quality and usability of the actual product, not the number of them, that matter, in this case. (I do see your point: if you and I compete in the same space for a service, and I have a single number in yellow pages, but you have 20 all forwarded to the one you answer, you're probably going to get most of the business.) Again, without even knowing Nokia's product, I'd have to guess that it sucks.
Jacquard looms have not vanished and they still use punch cards
Nice. Since you brought it up, I'm sure you're aware just how damn important those things are (skip to 6min in), not only to James Burke, but modern computing. And I bet we could just barely squeeze into the Grand Canyon all the tiered support guys, techies, MSCE's, sysadmins, DBA's, CTO's, CIO's, grey breards, webdevs, coders, CE's and honest to God computer scientists that have never heard of it. I kind of like old hw. I'm posting this from one right now!
I first laid my sticky hands on a computer in 1978. Since that time, I've heard of exactly one lightning strike that broke stuff: a friend lost a modem on his Mac LCIII in 1992... his computer was surge protected, his telephone line was not.
Screw surge protection. What you want to aim for is uninterruptable power. The surge protection will be included in that, and it will actually be useful a few times while you're alive.
Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage
Hello. I'm claiming that you pirated that phrase from me and are claiming it as your own. You will be receiving a letter from the Slashdot Commenter's Association of America (SCAA).
But that isn't going to happen as long as we have $600K of Oracle ERP software running in the company.
dooooood.... don't you know it instantly loses the better half of its value the moment you drive it off the lot? Oracle software is like an oversized RV, or a boat, even a really nice expensive boat. It doesn't matter that it cost $2.4 million to build it, the day you bought it for that, it was really only worth half that, and after its been in the water, its often worth negative fortunes.
There will always be transcoding, since you can't fit the 20GB H.264 stream from a Blu-Ray on a phone.
You are thinking about this all wrong. You think you own that movie... but you don't, you own a license. That license entitles you to transcode... if you want to go ahead and do work that, chances are, has already been done, and is constantly being done for you by others that create far better quality transcodes. The obtuse talk about how great their hardware is, and how fast they can rip their movies... but the astute keep all their movies backed up on the Internet in every format and resolution imaginable.
that encoders inexplicably insist on codex and wrappers that predate the Millenium? The problem with transcoding is that it exists at all. Strongarm the holdout encoders into using h264 or mp4v with mp4 wrappers, and transcoding will be like... well, like anything no one does anymore.
Seems like a lad with a gift like this would've amounted to something.
Not as lucky in love as he was at aquiring corpses, his broken heart left him feable-minded, and he fell in with a bad crowd: the smokers who hang out by the fence.
Slashdot is [NOW] dominated by IT types who may be excellent sysadmins or even good software engineers, but have very little idea what computer science is.
FTFY. It wasn't always this way. Something bad happened after that number was made illegal. btw, mod up! Computer science is mathematics and only mathematics; CS is not coding, not SQL querying, not sysadmining... and a computer scientist installing software for a living is akin to a medical doctor working as a licenced practical nurse. Think of the poor LPN that must compete against M.D.s for their jobs! Think of the lowly auto mechanic that must compete against mechanical engineers just find gainful occupation! Computer scientists are worthy of awe... but if you're a legitimate and degreed computer scientist, and you took my desktop support job... fuck you.
The assumption is that an employee who lied on his resume would likely be fired, but a CEO is too important to fire.
Man, is that naive. Show me a resume that isn't a lie. Show me a person that isn't a liar, and I will show you a modern Jonah. I don't mean to defend liars. I hate them, and I hate lies. But it is my experience, in over 20 years in the corporate sector, that groups of people hate the virtuous. The person that gets fired is the one that is honest, does their damn job, and that is secretly ostracized by co-workers who feel entitled to get paid for doing 30-50% of the work they were hired to do... the rest of the time they confabulate, maliciously editorialize and single out their competition (the dutiful). Liars are filth... but a cruel fact of life. Liars run the world, feeding off the labors of the honest, and ultimately, themselves. (This is Sparta!) If you are not prepared to be continuously judged by falsehoods endlessly repeated about yourself, then you are not prepared. A lie will travel the world while the truth is still tying its shoelaces.[citation needed (probably not Mark Twain)]
This would be like Sony releasing the PS4, then a few months later releasing a new model of the PS3. If you treat the products as strict successors, it makes no sense - why continue not just to manufacture obsolete hardware, but continue engineering work on it?
Your point is not lost, but Sony did exactly that with new PS2 models with significant engineering advancements just prior to and long after the November 2006 release of the PS3 :
In 2006, Sony released new hardware revisions (V15, model numbers SCPH-77001a and SCPH-77001b). It was first released in Japan on September 15, 2006, including the Silver edition. After its release in Japan, it was then released in North America, Europe and other parts of the world. The new revision uses [...]
In July 2007, Sony started shipping a revision of the slimline PlayStation 2 (SCPH-79000) featuring a reduced weight of 600 grams compared to 900 grams of the SCPH-77001 (with Expansion Bay), achieved through a reduction in parts. The unit also uses a smaller motherboard as well as a custom ASIC which houses the Emotion Engine, Graphics Synthesizer, and the RDRAM. The AC adaptor's weight was also reduced to 250 grams from the 350 grams in the previous revision.
Another refinement of the slimline PlayStation 2 (SCPH-90000) was released in Japan on November 22, 2007, As well some cosmetic changes, the design of the hardware has been overhauled, incorporating the power supply into the console itself; this also reduces the total weight to 720 grams (25 oz). SCPH-90000 series consoles manufactured after the third quarter of 2008 (indicated by date code 8C) incorporate a revised BIOS, which disables an exploit present in all older models that allowed homebrew applications to be launched from a memory card.
(Wikipedia)
Also... and just IMHO, the things Sony does almost never seem to make any great sense... perhaps Sony is not the best example of what companies do or should do.
After reading the snarky comments in the previous story...
Agreed. There are always biased and completely unfair assessments in any market. I have no doubt that Android, Windows and other smart phones combust just as good as iPhones, if not better, depending on the application or environment. Regarding exploding punctured batteries, I believe it all comes down to individual personal preference.
Slashdot Mirror
And another person "goes galt" and escapes the looters.
Not for long. I hear the Virginia has been considering annexing Singapore since this story broke (taxes on $3.84 billion ain't chump change... and VA needs it for something or other). What sources tell me, is the plan is to use just the VA Air National Guard... but not quite... just one F-22 and a single hypoxic pilot to take out Singapore's entire military (apparently it has a button for that). So looks like Saverin will be paying taxes after all... as well as state and local taxes to the Commonwealth and its soon to be new county of Singapore.
What the fuck are they talking about...? Google pirated a GPLed programming language and used it in Android?!! What damages could Oracle possibly be listing? I wanna know. Show the damages, Oracle.
from Congress that keep the USPS from using it's surpluses to pay off debt, ensuring they'll be constantly underwater, and confiscates that money to pre-pay, in less than a decade, the cost of retirements for the next 75 years. Most of that money will go to the retirements of employees who haven't even been born, and possibly even some of their parents. Of course, that assumes those employees will even exist, since there won't be any employees in 75 years if this onerous burden kills the Postal Service, an objective this legislation seems to be aiming for.
Would you prefer a paradigm like Social Security? (Please excuse my strawman) Its a fantasy that we pay into SS for our retirement... yet we are actually not doing that at all... the money goes in, and right back out to the Baby Boomer retirees, basically supported by Gen X and Y, the two smallest generations supporting the largest. Perhaps 75 years is a bit long, but it is certainly a nice incentive to become a postal employee... guaranteed, rock solid, retirement pay... no adjustments because the money isn't there. And remember, the USPS is one of the few agencies chartered in the US Constitution. Not just a good or bad idea. Its the law of the land.
FWIW Prior to my grandfathers efforts, there was no pension for postal workers... so I'm not sure how we could be talking about different things.... but I'll take your word for it (too lazy to read, but thanks for the links... on behalf of the others that aren't so lazy).
....If they were simply required to do business under the same rules as their competitors
The United States Postal Service is not a business , therefore, it is not run like one. The United States Postal Service is the government. Even a bastard knows this.
The USPS is struggling because they've been required by a vindictive right-wing to maintain an absurd 75-year pension plan commitment,
My grandfather, a postmaster for decades and a life-long Democrat, was the Secretary-Treasurer of the National Association of Postmasters (NAPUS) from 1953 to 1971, and set up that pension plan. That is his baby.
basically they are being forced to fully fund pension plans for employees who haven't even been born yet.
That's brilliant, actually. If only Social Security worked this way, everyone under 45 wouldn't be fucked for retirement, and Social Security/Disability wouldn't be broke next year, which it will be.
Archeaologists Find Oldest Known Mayan Calendar
... we wouldn't have to try and decipher this shit off some half-buried wall. all of it was well preserved on codices but the church figured it would be easier to convert them all if they incinerated their cultural history.
I think its common for people to keep old calendars around... I worked at a woodshop two years back, and the Hooter's calendar they had was from the late '90's. If the calendar is a good one, then it doesn't matter how old it is. Even if the dates are wrong, the pictures may still be quite compelling.
too cool, thx
to me android is a completely unique OS that happens to use some linux code.
I agree completely... Android is precisely as distinct an OS as any other linux distro. Slackware isn't Ubuntu, they look totally different! Gentoo isn't Red Hat, and if you can't tell the difference, you're probably a UNIX admin.
Android also has more marketshare so it kinda evens out.
Similarly, gasoline has a much larger market share than Mercedes Diesels. Also, in breakfast cereals, corn has far more marketshare than Super Sugar Crisp. As you can probably tell, I'm making fun of your comment. Android isn't competing for marketshare. (Its the companies using Android.)
The problem is that Nokia has made itself a one trick pony.
That can't be the problem: Apple's one trick pony is mopping the floor with Motorola's 10, HTC's 13, and Samsung's 14. Why is Apple outselling Nokia? Having no idea, I would guess its the quality and usability of the actual product, not the number of them, that matter, in this case. (I do see your point: if you and I compete in the same space for a service, and I have a single number in yellow pages, but you have 20 all forwarded to the one you answer, you're probably going to get most of the business.) Again, without even knowing Nokia's product, I'd have to guess that it sucks.
might help with the rest of episode 4 (sorry about that, folks!)
Jacquard looms have not vanished and they still use punch cards
Nice. Since you brought it up, I'm sure you're aware just how damn important those things are (skip to 6min in), not only to James Burke, but modern computing. And I bet we could just barely squeeze into the Grand Canyon all the tiered support guys, techies, MSCE's, sysadmins, DBA's, CTO's, CIO's, grey breards, webdevs, coders, CE's and honest to God computer scientists that have never heard of it. I kind of like old hw. I'm posting this from one right now!
I first laid my sticky hands on a computer in 1978. Since that time, I've heard of exactly one lightning strike that broke stuff: a friend lost a modem on his Mac LCIII in 1992... his computer was surge protected, his telephone line was not.
Screw surge protection. What you want to aim for is uninterruptable power. The surge protection will be included in that, and it will actually be useful a few times while you're alive.
I thought this has been known for a while, and is the origin of the myth of the cyclops?
You're thinking of the one eyed fossils of larger variety of pachyderm found there.
Similarly, I'm wondering if these fossils are the origin of the legends of the Minitaur.
Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage
Hello. I'm claiming that you pirated that phrase from me and are claiming it as your own. You will be receiving a letter from the Slashdot Commenter's Association of America (SCAA).
But that isn't going to happen as long as we have $600K of Oracle ERP software running in the company.
dooooood.... don't you know it instantly loses the better half of its value the moment you drive it off the lot? Oracle software is like an oversized RV, or a boat, even a really nice expensive boat. It doesn't matter that it cost $2.4 million to build it, the day you bought it for that, it was really only worth half that, and after its been in the water, its often worth negative fortunes.
Every time I read one of your modded up comments I think, "why can't all slashdot comments be like this one?"
There will always be transcoding, since you can't fit the 20GB H.264 stream from a Blu-Ray on a phone.
You are thinking about this all wrong. You think you own that movie... but you don't, you own a license. That license entitles you to transcode... if you want to go ahead and do work that, chances are, has already been done, and is constantly being done for you by others that create far better quality transcodes. The obtuse talk about how great their hardware is, and how fast they can rip their movies... but the astute keep all their movies backed up on the Internet in every format and resolution imaginable.
that encoders inexplicably insist on codex and wrappers that predate the Millenium? The problem with transcoding is that it exists at all. Strongarm the holdout encoders into using h264 or mp4v with mp4 wrappers, and transcoding will be like... well, like anything no one does anymore.
This is a science story about cancer. It's got nothing to do with Canada except for the fact that the researchers happen to be based there.
It's a Canadian story published in Canada about Canadian researcher.
Well, that explains to me, at least, why I thought there might have been something a little funnier about it.
Seems like a lad with a gift like this would've amounted to something.
Not as lucky in love as he was at aquiring corpses, his broken heart left him feable-minded, and he fell in with a bad crowd: the smokers who hang out by the fence.
Slashdot is [NOW] dominated by IT types who may be excellent sysadmins or even good software engineers, but have very little idea what computer science is.
FTFY. It wasn't always this way. Something bad happened after that number was made illegal. btw, mod up! Computer science is mathematics and only mathematics; CS is not coding, not SQL querying, not sysadmining... and a computer scientist installing software for a living is akin to a medical doctor working as a licenced practical nurse. Think of the poor LPN that must compete against M.D.s for their jobs! Think of the lowly auto mechanic that must compete against mechanical engineers just find gainful occupation! Computer scientists are worthy of awe... but if you're a legitimate and degreed computer scientist, and you took my desktop support job... fuck you.
The assumption is that an employee who lied on his resume would likely be fired, but a CEO is too important to fire.
Man, is that naive. Show me a resume that isn't a lie. Show me a person that isn't a liar, and I will show you a modern Jonah. I don't mean to defend liars. I hate them, and I hate lies. But it is my experience, in over 20 years in the corporate sector, that groups of people hate the virtuous. The person that gets fired is the one that is honest, does their damn job, and that is secretly ostracized by co-workers who feel entitled to get paid for doing 30-50% of the work they were hired to do... the rest of the time they confabulate, maliciously editorialize and single out their competition (the dutiful). Liars are filth... but a cruel fact of life. Liars run the world, feeding off the labors of the honest, and ultimately, themselves. (This is Sparta!) If you are not prepared to be continuously judged by falsehoods endlessly repeated about yourself, then you are not prepared. A lie will travel the world while the truth is still tying its shoelaces.[citation needed (probably not Mark Twain)]
...it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend
Also, I should think, impossible... unless there is some other definition for friend of which I am unaware.
This would be like Sony releasing the PS4, then a few months later releasing a new model of the PS3. If you treat the products as strict successors, it makes no sense - why continue not just to manufacture obsolete hardware, but continue engineering work on it?
Your point is not lost, but Sony did exactly that with new PS2 models with significant engineering advancements just prior to and long after the November 2006 release of the PS3 :
In 2006, Sony released new hardware revisions (V15, model numbers SCPH-77001a and SCPH-77001b). It was first released in Japan on September 15, 2006, including the Silver edition. After its release in Japan, it was then released in North America, Europe and other parts of the world. The new revision uses [...]
In July 2007, Sony started shipping a revision of the slimline PlayStation 2 (SCPH-79000) featuring a reduced weight of 600 grams compared to 900 grams of the SCPH-77001 (with Expansion Bay), achieved through a reduction in parts. The unit also uses a smaller motherboard as well as a custom ASIC which houses the Emotion Engine, Graphics Synthesizer, and the RDRAM. The AC adaptor's weight was also reduced to 250 grams from the 350 grams in the previous revision.
Another refinement of the slimline PlayStation 2 (SCPH-90000) was released in Japan on November 22, 2007, As well some cosmetic changes, the design of the hardware has been overhauled, incorporating the power supply into the console itself; this also reduces the total weight to 720 grams (25 oz). SCPH-90000 series consoles manufactured after the third quarter of 2008 (indicated by date code 8C) incorporate a revised BIOS, which disables an exploit present in all older models that allowed homebrew applications to be launched from a memory card.
(Wikipedia)
Also... and just IMHO, the things Sony does almost never seem to make any great sense... perhaps Sony is not the best example of what companies do or should do.
After reading the snarky comments in the previous story ...
Agreed. There are always biased and completely unfair assessments in any market. I have no doubt that Android, Windows and other smart phones combust just as good as iPhones, if not better, depending on the application or environment. Regarding exploding punctured batteries, I believe it all comes down to individual personal preference.