False. Their net income [google.com] for 2006 was -$146.19 Million while their net income for 2007 was $222.61 Million. You may have been correct but at least in 2007 it looked like they have turned things around. Not sure where google gets their numbers from but you shouldn't believe everything you read on the interwebs;-) If you go to the source you will see nothing but net losses for FY2007 [PDF] (which ended on June 30, 2007) and FY2008 [PDF] (which somehow ended December 29, 2007!!!). The change in FY dates may have caused the confusion in the totals.
Big chunks will no doubt re-enter the atmosphere relatively quickly, and they should be small enough that they will burn up completely in upon re-entry, which I think was the whole point of this exercise... What about the force of the explosion? With no air resistance isn't just as likely that some pieces (of both the satellite and the missile) will end up in higher orbit thus the concern for collision with other satellites.
Hey everyone,
Just got a comment by a party known as "lucifron" saying: Any modification to "a named party's statement" before publishing it is "a whole lot worse than copyright violation" and something you "certainly _don't_ want to" do.
But I don't see anything wrong with quoting excerpts from a copyrighted text.
-SNPP
What's wrong with not working overtime? Nothing, but don't expect to take home as much pay as someone who does.
My experience has been that in an environment where you may be expected to put in extra hours the exempt employees are usually paid a little more than they normally would. In most cases if you are an exempt employee there is no need to fill out a time-sheet and while you may be expected to put in extra time on occasion the flip side is that no one will be looking for you if you take a long lunch or leave early on the "slow" days.
While non-exempt employees do get paid overtime you usually need to fill out a weekly time-sheet (or even punch a time-clock)-: and sign under penalty of perjury that you did in fact work the hours listed.
Give me exempt status anytime - if I don't like the hours I can always go elsewhere.
Disclaimer: I'm not aware of IBM's work policies having never worked there.
A little more info from OSD's ecodisk PDF:
"Some Matshita Computer Slot-in drives
(used in Apple computers) do not follow
the DVD forum specifications (by
omitting the guide shafts) and thus it
might happen that the EcoDisc will not
be ejected at first trial, or has to be
removed manually" Nothing in the document says that the disk meets any standard. But it does state that "ODS has applied for 4 patents up to
now" so it must be good(TM).
Sit down and read a copy of Federalist #68 sometime--Hamilton makes this point far more eloquently than I can. Man, that is a tedious read, no wonder he published it anonymously at first;-)
Seriously, it is a good read as are, no doubt, the other papers in the series.
This may be redundant, but short of calling a constitutional convention, you can't get rid of the Electoral College, since there are enough "small states" to block any attempt at an amendment removing it. I'm not saying to do away with the system just that we need to monitor it to ensure that it does what it is supposed to do. Does anyone consider the electoral system used in the United States to be perfect?
So, about 7 percent of the time. Well, no - it turns out I was wrong; the 1824 election did not have a nationwide vote. The problem in 1824 had to do with not having a majority of electoral votes for either candidate. So it would be about 5 percent.
In other words, you feel that it should keep being tweaked until the electoral vote is identical to the popular vote. Not exactly but I do believe we should always keep an eye on how the system is working.
Yes there is - it's the total number of individual votes. No. That number has no meaning. It has even less meaning than counting the number of butterflies that you see outside your window each morning. It's like adding up the days of the week (rhis week is 13+14+15+16+17+18+19) and thinking the sum means somehing. Well, I have been lead to believe that it's based on the same numbers that the states use to determine the electors that they use to elect the President and Vice President. Butterflies and days of the week are not used for this.
It's a sham used by losers to complain. No question it can be used that way. Considering the number of times the popular vote didn't match the election I don't see it as a problem. More people use it as an excuse not to vote "my vote doesn't count" which may be more of an issue.
I think this has been done since the first presidential election,
I think not, since the first elections were done while the people who designed the system were still around, and since there is no guarantee that there IS a state election to pick electors. IIRC, Missouri did not vote for electors until 1950 or so, but I can't put my finger on the link that shows it. In any case, the means of selecting electors is not specified by the Constitution, it's up to the states. Not sure about 1950 but you're right about not always holding elections. Quoting the ever popular Wiki page on the 1824 election:
...It is also often said to be the first election in which the president did not win the popular vote, although the popular vote was not measured nationwide. At that time, several states did not conduct a popular vote, allowing their state legislature to choose their electors... You learn something new everyday!
No, it is not a waste of time. Pointing out inconsistencies in the system can help improve the system.
The electoral college and lack of popular vote is not an incosistency of the system, it IS the system. Improving the system takes more than creating a meaningless tally and complaining that it has no meaning. If a candidate wins the popular vote by a landslide but is not elected president then there could be a problem with the system. This is just one of the checks to the system.
So it's not really a rampant problem but maybe there are still a few adjustments to be made.
I think the system works pretty well, even when the candidate I support loses. It is the system we have, and until it is changed, it should be followed. If it is unfair, the time to change it is before the election. Agreed, it's worked for this long so it can't be all bad;-)
Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense about a "popular vote" for US President? There simply IS NO popular vote, at least not on a national level. Yes there is - it's the total number of individual votes. You are correct that the winner of the "popular vote" may not be the winner of the election.
Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. I think this has been done since the first presidential election, so whoever it was is probably already dead.
In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time. No, it is not a waste of time. Pointing out inconsistencies in the system can help improve the system.
According to the Electoral College page on Wikipedia there have only been four times out of fifty five that the candidate with the most popular votes lost the election. So it's not really a rampant problem but maybe there are still a few adjustments to be made.
It has been that way for a long time it is called a cache.
but the cache isn't as big as the drive.
Flash is actually slower for writes and has limited write cycles. True, but flash chips in parallel (the way SSD are made) make that less of an issue. Sort of how certain RAID configurations can speed up disk access times. Samsung quotes maximum write speeds of SSD higher than equivalent magnetic HDD. Even the MTBF numbers are much much better for SSD. Of course the write speed is the maximum-guaranteed-never-to-exceed number the slowest write may very well be slower than the slowest HDD write.
What I was imagining was using a ram drive for reading and writing data and then backing that up to a slow flashdrive when you powered down the drive.
On power up You could pre cache the ram or just use it as a very large cache. I see, that would be a very fast drive (once all of flash has been read into cache) and also expensive - how much does 160G of DRAM cost today? Prices will go down but disk capacity will probably go up even faster.
I'm sure there are enough old hard drives floating around places that accept used computer equipment (Goodwill, Tech museums, collectors) that we should be able to do a quick survey... That would be a good experiment, but it's not exactly the same thing - all those drives would have gone through the whole power cycle, read/write lifetime already. What I'm talking about is a HDD that gets very little use - write once, wait many years (in a controlled environment), read once.
..provided someone can find a working RLL controller. Another good point - not just for HDDs but will today's tape drive read a 30 year old tape? Do tape _drives_ last 30 years?
An LTO tape has a shelf life of 30 years. HDDs don't. You are probably right but are there any numbers on the expected shelf life (powered down) of a HDD? The typical 1-5 year warranty assumes normal usage with a certain number of power on/off cycles and some number of MBs written and read per day. What about the case of write once, power off for a long time, then read? It may turn out that HDDs are more durable than tape.
Or looking at it from the other side - how long would a tape last as your swap media?
I wonder when we might see a hybrid flash-ram drive? A big bunch of ram for high speed and flash for permanent storage. Normal magnetic hard drives already do this to speed up sequential access (read ahead) among other reasons. No reason to believe this feature won't be transfered to SSD media. Although flash is much faster than magnetic media already.
Yes, the CES created two classes: "press" and "blogger", and yes, members of that underclass acted in a juvenile manner, bad enough to cause a stink that will appear in the "press". According to CNET's Rafe Needleman; Gizmodo attended the event -- and pulled their silly stunt -- with full press credentials, not second-class blogger badges.
It violates 5 USC 2302(b), which applies to all employers, government or not (emphasis mine)
No, Title 5 applies only to "Government Organization and Employees".
If your (private) business is in the US federal law does not explicitly block you from discriminating based on political affiliation. Your local (state, county, city) may have restrictions though.
take that homebrew computer club! i'll bet none of those guys ever made their own transistors! Making integrated circuits (ICs) might be a better analogy.
Haven't read it but this book claims to show you how to make your own vacuum tubes AND transistors!
Look out of the window, buy a newspaper, read a book, maybe even talk to people. Actually I usually turn on the radio - I'm just too lazy to pull the coax and dig out an antenna;-)
It's survivable. Until you realize the cable modem is on the same wire.... Ahhhhhhh
i wonder how many people with a basic cable subscription & a analog TV are getting one too that don't really need one, i was discussing this with my mom a few days ago and she was concerned and wanted to get one, i told her since she has a cable connection and not an antenna for picking up broadcasts over the airwaves that she did not need one, and also i talked with the cable tv provider and they said that analog TV will continue over cable... What if the cable goes out for some reason? It usually takes several days for Comcast to even come out and take a look when ever I have had a problem. You could switch to rabbit ears to get local programming for that time.
Not to mention the possibility of dropping cable in the future because of the expense (my rate has never gone down). The cable company may see a government mandated regulation (analog TV support) as an excuse for a rate hike.
I think anyone with an analog TV should have a converter box on hand.
At the very least there has to be some hackable hardware inside the converter box.
The CD player and Minidisc were designed so that I could, with a single click of a remote control button (the button was called 'Sync Record' if memory serves), record the CD onto Minidisc without further intervention. Depending on what country you are in, without knowing it, you paid an extra tax on both the CD player and the blank Minidisk. The tax or levy is just in case you ever use the copying feature to make a copy of copyrighted material.
Almost like paying a fine just in case you might commit a crime.
FTFA
"programs written for Mac OS X or Windows that you can buy online or in a retail store won't work on the Linux-based gPC--it's mainly a Web-based PC."
Amazing concept. Absolutely brilliant. There must be some kind of prize or medal to get this reviewer... Yes as opposed to programs written for Linux that you can get for free online and usually have a port that will work on Mac OS X or Windows as well.
You get just as fat sitting at the computer as you do in front of the TV. There are advertisements on web pages but most of them are not currently food related. On TV there is at least one or two, and usually more, fast food, beer, soft drink, etc. commercials for every half hour of programing. This type of advertisement is by definition made to make you want to eat.
You can exercise all you want, but if you eat a 14" pizza for dinner washed down with ten pints of beer, and have a full fry up every breakfast, combined with KFC for lunch, you'll be obese. Not sure about the ten pints but I have known people who could eat enough food for two to three people and still stay thin with a combination of their own high metabolism and fanatic workouts. But, yeah, for us "normal" people limited calories and moderate exercise is the only way to avoid obesity.
well, we have college radio stations up in canada and up here broadcasters have to pay royalties to composers for play. In the US I think the college/non-profit stations also pay the ASCAP or BMI but at a lower rate than the commercial stations.
I am assuming that SOCAN, ASCAP, and BMI don't have any connection with the RIAA. So now the RIAA wants a cut.
With personal mp3 players and streaming network does broadcast radio even have a future? At one time AM radio was _the_ method of listening to music. Today AM is mostly talk/news with FM being the music provider. I can see FM going to the talk/news format in the near future.
The light powered device might be useful in planes if they could achieve the same degree of intrinsic safety at a lower weight. I think that makes sense, lower weight means higher overall efficiency. But it's the safety aspect that they seem to be pushing, Quote TFA;
...has developed a system that uses a laser to inject power in the form of light into a fiber-optic cable and a photovoltaic (PV) array to convert the light back into electricity for powering devices... I might be wrong but I think large aircraft fuel tanks are part of the wings so there is no choice but to put wires through the cavity that holds the fuel.
The article links to a picture of the 1996 TWA flight 800 reconstruction to drive the point home.
Now, if deodorant makers would simply stop using Aluminum oxide in their products, we could probably cut the number of Alzheimer cases in half, but it's no big surprise that the makers of those products are also the ones making the drugs to treat the disease. Not sure about the conspiracy connection;-) While aluminum can cause memory related problems most researchhas not found any direct link with Alzheimer's.
Aluminum can be found in many other products that come in contact with our bodies, even tap water.
Slashdot Mirror
The change in FY dates may have caused the confusion in the totals.
Disclaimer: I buy high and sell low.
Hey everyone,
Just got a comment by a party known as "lucifron" saying: Any modification to "a named party's statement" before publishing it is "a whole lot worse than copyright violation" and something you "certainly _don't_ want to" do.
But I don't see anything wrong with quoting excerpts from a copyrighted text.
-SNPP
If this guy used the accepted *IAA accounting methods he would realize that he is actually seeing a loss.
Formula:
(CS * B$) - (CG * B$) = Amount of loss
Where:
CS = Copies sold
CG = Copies Given Away
B$ = Book Price
This assumes more copies are given away than sold (a safe bet).
My experience has been that in an environment where you may be expected to put in extra hours the exempt employees are usually paid a little more than they normally would. In most cases if you are an exempt employee there is no need to fill out a time-sheet and while you may be expected to put in extra time on occasion the flip side is that no one will be looking for you if you take a long lunch or leave early on the "slow" days.
While non-exempt employees do get paid overtime you usually need to fill out a weekly time-sheet (or even punch a time-clock)-: and sign under penalty of perjury that you did in fact work the hours listed.
Give me exempt status anytime - if I don't like the hours I can always go elsewhere.
Disclaimer: I'm not aware of IBM's work policies having never worked there.
But it does state that "ODS has applied for 4 patents up to now" so it must be good(TM).
Seriously, it is a good read as are, no doubt, the other papers in the series. This may be redundant, but short of calling a constitutional convention, you can't get rid of the Electoral College, since there are enough "small states" to block any attempt at an amendment removing it. I'm not saying to do away with the system just that we need to monitor it to ensure that it does what it is supposed to do.
Does anyone consider the electoral system used in the United States to be perfect?
So it would be about 5 percent. In other words, you feel that it should keep being tweaked until the electoral vote is identical to the popular vote. Not exactly but I do believe we should always keep an eye on how the system is working.
No. That number has no meaning. It has even less meaning than counting the number of butterflies that you see outside your window each morning. It's like adding up the days of the week (rhis week is 13+14+15+16+17+18+19) and thinking the sum means somehing. Well, I have been lead to believe that it's based on the same numbers that the states use to determine the electors that they use to elect the President and Vice President. Butterflies and days of the week are not used for this. It's a sham used by losers to complain. No question it can be used that way. Considering the number of times the popular vote didn't match the election I don't see it as a problem. More people use it as an excuse not to vote "my vote doesn't count" which may be more of an issue. I think this has been done since the first presidential election,
I think not, since the first elections were done while the people who designed the system were still around, and since there is no guarantee that there IS a state election to pick electors. IIRC, Missouri did not vote for electors until 1950 or so, but I can't put my finger on the link that shows it. In any case, the means of selecting electors is not specified by the Constitution, it's up to the states. Not sure about 1950 but you're right about not always holding elections. Quoting the ever popular Wiki page on the 1824 election:
The electoral college and lack of popular vote is not an incosistency of the system, it IS the system. Improving the system takes more than creating a meaningless tally and complaining that it has no meaning. If a candidate wins the popular vote by a landslide but is not elected president then there could be a problem with the system. This is just one of the checks to the system. So it's not really a rampant problem but maybe there are still a few adjustments to be made.
I think the system works pretty well, even when the candidate I support loses. It is the system we have, and until it is changed, it should be followed. If it is unfair, the time to change it is before the election. Agreed, it's worked for this long so it can't be all bad;-)
According to the Electoral College page on Wikipedia there have only been four times out of fifty five that the candidate with the most popular votes lost the election. So it's not really a rampant problem but maybe there are still a few adjustments to be made.
but the cache isn't as big as the drive.
Flash is actually slower for writes and has limited write cycles. True, but flash chips in parallel (the way SSD are made) make that less of an issue. Sort of how certain RAID configurations can speed up disk access times. Samsung quotes maximum write speeds of SSD higher than equivalent magnetic HDD. Even the MTBF numbers are much much better for SSD. Of course the write speed is the maximum-guaranteed-never-to-exceed number the slowest write may very well be slower than the slowest HDD write. What I was imagining was using a ram drive for reading and writing data and then backing that up to a slow flashdrive when you powered down the drive. On power up You could pre cache the ram or just use it as a very large cache. I see, that would be a very fast drive (once all of flash has been read into cache) and also expensive - how much does 160G of DRAM cost today? Prices will go down but disk capacity will probably go up even faster.
..provided someone can find a working RLL controller. Another good point - not just for HDDs but will today's tape drive read a 30 year old tape? Do tape _drives_ last 30 years?Or looking at it from the other side - how long would a tape last as your swap media?
Gizmodo attended the event -- and pulled their silly stunt -- with full press credentials, not second-class blogger badges.
No, Title 5 applies only to "Government Organization and Employees".
If your (private) business is in the US federal law does not explicitly block you from discriminating based on political affiliation. Your local (state, county, city) may have restrictions though.
More info atFindlaw.
Haven't read it but this book claims to show you how to make your own vacuum tubes AND transistors!
It's survivable. Until you realize the cable modem is on the same wire....
Ahhhhhhh
Not to mention the possibility of dropping cable in the future because of the expense (my rate has never gone down). The cable company may see a government mandated regulation (analog TV support) as an excuse for a rate hike.
I think anyone with an analog TV should have a converter box on hand.
At the very least there has to be some hackable hardware inside the converter box.
Almost like paying a fine just in case you might commit a crime.
"programs written for Mac OS X or Windows that you can buy online or in a retail store won't work on the Linux-based gPC--it's mainly a Web-based PC."
Amazing concept. Absolutely brilliant. There must be some kind of prize or medal to get this reviewer... Yes as opposed to programs written for Linux that you can get for free online and usually have a port that will work on Mac OS X or Windows as well.
You can exercise all you want, but if you eat a 14" pizza for dinner washed down with ten pints of beer, and have a full fry up every breakfast, combined with KFC for lunch, you'll be obese. Not sure about the ten pints but I have known people who could eat enough food for two to three people and still stay thin with a combination of their own high metabolism and fanatic workouts.
But, yeah, for us "normal" people limited calories and moderate exercise is the only way to avoid obesity.
I am assuming that SOCAN, ASCAP, and BMI don't have any connection with the RIAA. So now the RIAA wants a cut.
With personal mp3 players and streaming network does broadcast radio even have a future? At one time AM radio was _the_ method of listening to music. Today AM is mostly talk/news with FM being the music provider. I can see FM going to the talk/news format in the near future.
But it's the safety aspect that they seem to be pushing, Quote TFA;
The article links to a picture of the 1996 TWA flight 800 reconstruction to drive the point home.
Aluminum can be found in many other products that come in contact with our bodies, even tap water.