BTW, compared to the number in the original (640K, or 655360 bytes), 960GB (close to 1030792151040) is more than SQUARE that number
Big deal. I have a 1 GHz processor that is almost a decade old, and a 1.2 GHz processor that is six months younger than the other one. The new one has a number more than the CUBE of the old one! And they're only six months apart!!1one!
I've met a few people who worked for Perot Systems, and I turned down an offer from them in 2005.
My understanding (from this limited exposure to them) is that Perot Systems operates quite differently from EDS, in that offshoring is limited. Apparently (according to the mid-level managers I'm friends with) Perot Systems is leagues ahead of EDS wrt treatment of employees, keeping jobs onshore, etc. It's possible that the people I know just drank the koolaid, but that's what I've heard.
On another note, Perot Systems lost a lot of jobs in the financial industry in the past year or so. I think it's spin that the press release on the acquisition stresses the healthcare industry jobs... Perot Systems' margins have been shrinking, as have their revenues. I wonder if Dell hasn't bought a ship that's starting to take on a lot of water.
That's all well and good, Mr. Quantum Speeding Ticket Avoider Man, but remeber that the same principle applies to your car keys.
And what happens when you get into an accident? You'll be both dead and alive until someone opens the car door! (Is this how the zombie apocalypse starts?)
It appears you've made the error of taking one of my Friday posts seriously. Would you like some help with that? My post, relevant parts in bold:
My question - how do they know the source doe was altered?
I'm so sick of people fawning all over eBay like they did nothing wrong here. EBay gave a dear sum of money to Skype to license the code, but didn't get full rights toit. Their mistake. I bet they try and pass the buck and blame the lawyers and their ilk.
Oh, and totally off-topic, but does anyone know a 24-hour chapel where they do weddings? My grandfather is making my aunt elope.
My question - how do they know the source doe was altered?
I'm so sick of people fawning all over eBay like they did nothing wrong here. EBay gave a dear sum of money to Skype to license the code, but didn't get full rights toit. Their mistake. I bet they try and pass the buck and blame the lawyers and their ilk.
Oh, and totally off-topic, but does anyone know a 24-hour chapel where they do weddings? My grandfather is making my aunt elope.
You know that approximately 1% of Americans have a peanut allergy?
And that a significant portion of those have a life-threatening level of allergy?
Setting up a peanut-free section of a school is an appropriate, easy, and fairly unobtrusive, way of dealing with it.
1% is not "some tiny percentage".
Either you're uninformed of the number of people who peanut allergies affect, or you're a callous bastard for not willing to trade a very minor inconvenience for the lives of tens of thousands of people.
There is no legitimate reason to ever push the cost of licensing off onto the distributor. If the producers want (and dare) to raise the cost of the product to accommodate the license (and they have already) then they should do so.
Yeah, you're totally not getting it.
(A) Producer makes product containing licensed items (B) Producer sells (or licenses) content to distributor (C) Distributor sells (or licenses) content to consumer. (D)Producer makes royalty payments to licensor based on volume of (C), which is assessed via shipping volume and RTV (in the case of DVDs) or via Nielsen or other ratings (for broadcast/cable/etc).
It really doesn't matter who makes the royalty payments, as long as they are only made once. The problem with downloaded items is that the royalty payments are never made, at all. To make everything have a level playing field, the royalties should be paid. It's most efficient for the distributor to pay, eliminating the producer as the middle man.
Here's the bigger picture, if I sell someone a used DVD, according to you I'm liable for a license fee because the DVD had an ASCAP represented soundtrack on it. Absurd!
No. You don't read very well, do you? For DVDs, the royalties are paid by the producer based upon distribution volume. (Discs shipped) - (Returns + destroys) == sales volume; royalties paid based upon sales volume (ignoring advance royalties based on print run, and offset of the advance against royalties due). A DVD sale from me to you has already had its royalty paid. A download sale from me to you has NOT had its royalty paid, so that should have the royalty assessed.
But whatever, man, I know you're carrying your righteous flag, and you can continue to beat that straw man as long as you like. I'm not going to waste any more time arguing with someone who doesn't understand that download sales are currently treated differently wrt royalties than broadcast or physical sales, and that this differing treatment creates a problem for artists, and that the fairest resolution to the problem (assuming that royalties are paid at all) is that all distribution methods are subject to the same royalties.
Are YOU having fun missing the bigger picture, or are you going to continue to harp on the concept that since the producers originally licensed the content for certain means of distribution, no distributor should have to pay royalties?
Here's the thing... producers license the performances for specific distribution. The producers do not always control the end-distribution, so if distribution of the product falls outside the scope of their license and their control, the producers should not be liable for royalties. Whether the producer collects and remits the royalties to ASCAP, or the distributor does, the problem is that there is a means of distribution that escapes royalty payments, and that means of distribution is replacing the means of distribution where royalties are collected.
This can be fixed by either making sure the producers pay for downloaded performances, or it can be fixed by making the distributors pay. It doesn't matter which method is used, except that making the distributors pay is more efficient since it cuts out a middle-man. You are focused on where the royalties are collected, which is not the actual problem.
This is completely ancillary to whether or not you or I believe royalties should be paid. If they ARE paid, then there should be a level playing field for all means of distribution. That level playing field currently does not exist, and that is what I have a problem with. That is my point.
If you sit around in theaters after the movie ends much, you'll notice the songs used end up in the credits, that's because the producer licensed the music for the movie. I.E. they've paid the pound of flesh already. If they haven't, that's on them, not anyone else.
Distributing it over the 'magic internet' doesn't change that fact.
It does change that fact. You are aware that the distribution volume impacts the royalties paid, right? The 'pound of flesh' is not exactly a pound just because song are listed in the credits... that pound is a variable amount depending on sales volume of tickets.
And you are also aware that as distribution on the "magic internet" increases, traditional distribution will decline? And thus the content distributors will pay less in royalties?
And perhaps you're also unaware that the movie theaters (the 3rd-party distributor) pay the ASCAP royalty fees indirectly as part of their payment to the movie studio, which is volume-based?
Seriously, you need to brush up on your knowledge of how the industry works, and drop the condescension ("magic internet"? gimme a break) when making claims that simply don't stand up to how things actually work.
I agree with you re: the 30-second clips. But for other downloads, not so much.
If you distribute a show via broadcast, cable, satellite, or DVD, you pay royalties. Why should video downloads be excepted?
I think there needs to be an even playing field regardless of distribution method. (Just like terrestrial radio should be assessed the same royalty rates as streaming radio).
FWIW, there's no tax break to donating cash. Well, there is, but it's outweighed by the fact that you, well, no longer have the cash.
Donating money is a dumb way to make money, unless the returns you get (PR, market-building, etc) outweigh the lost dollars. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, or a good thing to do -- it's just that the tax writeoff is never more than the amount donated, so net cash impact is never positive.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
That makes sense for items with low demand. But I wonder if traditional distribution is more efficient for items with large demand.
I'd also question the quality control for the small on-demand printing setups... as well as the quality of on-demand burnt software (there's no way they'll last as long as pressed discs).
For software it's kind of moot, anyway... online distribution is where that's heading.
Nobody's made an ODB/Ol' Dirty Bastard joke yet? Someone here's gotta listen to Wu Tang.
This is slashdot, not Digg. If someone here was to make a joke about ODB, it would more likely have something to do with ODBC being originally developed by Microsoft, yet ODB is publishing books with Google and that conundrum is leading to the end of civilization as we know it, or something.
Or, we could keep it like it is now, where you can get emergency services, and the hospital cannot deny you... from there you get a bill.
And those that are insured, or the government (i.e., the general public), end up picking up the tab for those who cannot pay their bills.
This is not a good situation... it drives up the cost of insurance, which increased the number of the uninsured, which means fewer people can pay, which puts a higher burden on the insured... it's a nasty feedback cycle.
Why shouldn't a person be allowed to self-insure? Mandatory health insurance is robbery on the part of government and the health insurance lobby.
I'm all for allowing people to self-insure, provided that either:
1. They maintain liquid capital of $1 million dollars that can only be drawn against to cover medical expenses, or 2. They pay up-front, before service, for any and all medical treatment they receive, including, and especially, expensive emergency treatment.
Those are the only two conditions of "self-insurance" that would satisfy me. Otherwise we'll have all the "self-insured" getting treatment at no cost to them paid for by yours truly, the taxpayer.
Of course, this means that HP and IBM will have to rely on other vendors such as SAP to provide missing parts of the software/services business.
/shudder/
Hopefully they will rely on SAP as much as Oracle relied on Peoplesoft. Which is to say, not much at all, other than as an inroad into a customer list.
I don't have a hard time imagining crooked corporations paying to have their chemical waste disposed under the table like this, but who has nuclear waste that would do this?
I'm not sure they meant "nuclear waste" as in "nuclear reactor waste", or "nuclear waste" as in "radioactive waste". Medical waste can be radioactive... Some of the clinical diagnostic equipment produces radioactive waste.
I guess I also have my doubts that merely SMELLING peanuts is actually dangerous for certain people, and not merely a purely psychological reaction brought on by nutty parents.
You have your doubts, fine. But the medical research shows otherwise.
If you understand the mechanism of severe allergic response, then it's pretty easy to understand how exposure to even trace amounts of an allergen can trigger a cytokine cascade that ends up asphyxiating a kid (or adult).
But besides that... are you really serious? If you are aware that someone you interact with daily can *die* if you do something that is simple to avoid... that's too much an an inconvenience? Seriously?
I disagree. My theory is theres a finite amout of happiness in the world:
So if I feel happy for no reason, there is someone else who has become unhappy?
That makes me sad.
But, I ask you this, my friend: how do you account for drugs? A group of friends smoke pot and get happy... does that cause other people to get unhappy? Or are mood-altering drugs the method by which we can change the total amount of happiness in the world?
And what about population changes? Is happiness spread thinner when there are more people? Where Europeans giddy after the black plague because a third of them died, so there were fewer people to share the happiness?
Medical insurance typically costs ~4-5000/yr for the insured. For the wealthy, this is less than 7.5% of their AGI.
For the poor, this is greater than 7.5% of their AGI.
Quite clearly, this deduction structure benefits the poor, as they get to deduct more than the wealthy (since the standard deduction is the same for both the poor and the wealthy).
For employer provided healthcare, you don't get to deduct it because you don't pay it... but it's a nontaxable benefit. Your employer doesn't pay taxes on it either (as I'm sure you are aware). So what this tax structure does, essentially, is provide an incentive for employers to offer healthcare to their employees (in exchange for additional pay, theoretically).
AIG is a bad example, because we're talking about health insurance, not general insurance.
What got AIG wasn't bad luck, it was improper assessment of risk. Yeah, if the bubble hadn't burst, they'd still be OK, but it wasn't bad luck that caused the bubble to burst.
Health insurers have it a bit easier, since assessment of medical risk is a little easier -- it's not systemic risk, it's individual risk, and there are lots of stats out there to mine for data. As opposed to AIG's problem, which is that it underestimated systemic risk.
It really is a question of probability and size for medical insurance. Oversimplified, but: if you have some N clients @ $1000/yr, and for each client you either spend $1,000,000 or $0 per year (with no other expenses), you'll come out on top if the risk of any client needing treatment is less than 1/1000. But in actuality, that's only true if you get lucky and have only 0 or 1 client needing treatment. What if you have 2? It's quite possible.
In AIG's case, the problem is that it's systemic risk -- if any one client needs a claim paid, chances are much greater that additional clients will need claims paid. So while the risk may be 1/1000 for any one client, as soon as one fails, it's likely several more will. So the adjusted risk factored into capital reserve needs will need to be much higher. Never mind the fact that they grossly underestimated the 1/1000 risk factor (or whatever number they actually used).
Slashdot Mirror
Dear TheMCP,
I use a PET2001. There are no menus. It has no graphical rendering. I can't even get Lynx to run on it.
This letter has as much to do with the discussion as yours does. Please take your fellatious Mac worship elsewhere.
Love,
Red Flayer
Big deal. I have a 1 GHz processor that is almost a decade old, and a 1.2 GHz processor that is six months younger than the other one. The new one has a number more than the CUBE of the old one! And they're only six months apart!!1one!
I've met a few people who worked for Perot Systems, and I turned down an offer from them in 2005.
My understanding (from this limited exposure to them) is that Perot Systems operates quite differently from EDS, in that offshoring is limited. Apparently (according to the mid-level managers I'm friends with) Perot Systems is leagues ahead of EDS wrt treatment of employees, keeping jobs onshore, etc. It's possible that the people I know just drank the koolaid, but that's what I've heard.
On another note, Perot Systems lost a lot of jobs in the financial industry in the past year or so. I think it's spin that the press release on the acquisition stresses the healthcare industry jobs... Perot Systems' margins have been shrinking, as have their revenues. I wonder if Dell hasn't bought a ship that's starting to take on a lot of water.
That's all well and good, Mr. Quantum Speeding Ticket Avoider Man, but remeber that the same principle applies to your car keys.
And what happens when you get into an accident? You'll be both dead and alive until someone opens the car door! (Is this how the zombie apocalypse starts?)
I'm so sick of people fawning all over eBay like they did nothing wrong here. EBay gave a dear sum of money to Skype to license the code, but didn't get full rights toit. Their mistake. I bet they try and pass the buck and blame the lawyers and their ilk.
Oh, and totally off-topic, but does anyone know a 24-hour chapel where they do weddings? My grandfather is making my aunt elope.
No, I didn't miss the point.
You know that approximately 1% of Americans have a peanut allergy?
And that a significant portion of those have a life-threatening level of allergy?
Setting up a peanut-free section of a school is an appropriate, easy, and fairly unobtrusive, way of dealing with it.
1% is not "some tiny percentage".
Either you're uninformed of the number of people who peanut allergies affect, or you're a callous bastard for not willing to trade a very minor inconvenience for the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Yeah, you're totally not getting it.
(A) Producer makes product containing licensed items
(B) Producer sells (or licenses) content to distributor
(C) Distributor sells (or licenses) content to consumer.
(D)Producer makes royalty payments to licensor based on volume of (C), which is assessed via shipping volume and RTV (in the case of DVDs) or via Nielsen or other ratings (for broadcast/cable/etc).
It really doesn't matter who makes the royalty payments, as long as they are only made once. The problem with downloaded items is that the royalty payments are never made, at all. To make everything have a level playing field, the royalties should be paid. It's most efficient for the distributor to pay, eliminating the producer as the middle man.
No. You don't read very well, do you? For DVDs, the royalties are paid by the producer based upon distribution volume. (Discs shipped) - (Returns + destroys) == sales volume; royalties paid based upon sales volume (ignoring advance royalties based on print run, and offset of the advance against royalties due). A DVD sale from me to you has already had its royalty paid. A download sale from me to you has NOT had its royalty paid, so that should have the royalty assessed.
But whatever, man, I know you're carrying your righteous flag, and you can continue to beat that straw man as long as you like. I'm not going to waste any more time arguing with someone who doesn't understand that download sales are currently treated differently wrt royalties than broadcast or physical sales, and that this differing treatment creates a problem for artists, and that the fairest resolution to the problem (assuming that royalties are paid at all) is that all distribution methods are subject to the same royalties.
Are YOU having fun missing the bigger picture, or are you going to continue to harp on the concept that since the producers originally licensed the content for certain means of distribution, no distributor should have to pay royalties?
Here's the thing... producers license the performances for specific distribution. The producers do not always control the end-distribution, so if distribution of the product falls outside the scope of their license and their control, the producers should not be liable for royalties. Whether the producer collects and remits the royalties to ASCAP, or the distributor does, the problem is that there is a means of distribution that escapes royalty payments, and that means of distribution is replacing the means of distribution where royalties are collected.
This can be fixed by either making sure the producers pay for downloaded performances, or it can be fixed by making the distributors pay. It doesn't matter which method is used, except that making the distributors pay is more efficient since it cuts out a middle-man. You are focused on where the royalties are collected, which is not the actual problem.
This is completely ancillary to whether or not you or I believe royalties should be paid. If they ARE paid, then there should be a level playing field for all means of distribution. That level playing field currently does not exist, and that is what I have a problem with. That is my point.
Your condescension and scorn is still misplaced.
It does change that fact. You are aware that the distribution volume impacts the royalties paid, right? The 'pound of flesh' is not exactly a pound just because song are listed in the credits... that pound is a variable amount depending on sales volume of tickets.
And you are also aware that as distribution on the "magic internet" increases, traditional distribution will decline? And thus the content distributors will pay less in royalties?
And perhaps you're also unaware that the movie theaters (the 3rd-party distributor) pay the ASCAP royalty fees indirectly as part of their payment to the movie studio, which is volume-based?
Seriously, you need to brush up on your knowledge of how the industry works, and drop the condescension ("magic internet"? gimme a break) when making claims that simply don't stand up to how things actually work.
I agree with you re: the 30-second clips. But for other downloads, not so much.
If you distribute a show via broadcast, cable, satellite, or DVD, you pay royalties. Why should video downloads be excepted?
I think there needs to be an even playing field regardless of distribution method. (Just like terrestrial radio should be assessed the same royalty rates as streaming radio).
FWIW, there's no tax break to donating cash. Well, there is, but it's outweighed by the fact that you, well, no longer have the cash.
Donating money is a dumb way to make money, unless the returns you get (PR, market-building, etc) outweigh the lost dollars. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, or a good thing to do -- it's just that the tax writeoff is never more than the amount donated, so net cash impact is never positive.
That makes sense for items with low demand. But I wonder if traditional distribution is more efficient for items with large demand.
I'd also question the quality control for the small on-demand printing setups... as well as the quality of on-demand burnt software (there's no way they'll last as long as pressed discs).
For software it's kind of moot, anyway... online distribution is where that's heading.
Sorry, the word "libel" has a specific legal meaning, and using other words just wouldn't work.
It's good you had to look up the word -- otherwise you'd probably misunderstand the article.
Sorry if it's inconvenient, but sometimes clarity is more important that ease-of-use for people whose first language is not English.
This is slashdot, not Digg. If someone here was to make a joke about ODB, it would more likely have something to do with ODBC being originally developed by Microsoft, yet ODB is publishing books with Google and that conundrum is leading to the end of civilization as we know it, or something.
Given your user name, I don't want to imagine anything about you, lest I become a gibbering heap of slag-brained insanity.
And those that are insured, or the government (i.e., the general public), end up picking up the tab for those who cannot pay their bills.
This is not a good situation... it drives up the cost of insurance, which increased the number of the uninsured, which means fewer people can pay, which puts a higher burden on the insured... it's a nasty feedback cycle.
I'm all for allowing people to self-insure, provided that either:
1. They maintain liquid capital of $1 million dollars that can only be drawn against to cover medical expenses, or
2. They pay up-front, before service, for any and all medical treatment they receive, including, and especially, expensive emergency treatment.
Those are the only two conditions of "self-insurance" that would satisfy me. Otherwise we'll have all the "self-insured" getting treatment at no cost to them paid for by yours truly, the taxpayer.
/shudder/
Hopefully they will rely on SAP as much as Oracle relied on Peoplesoft. Which is to say, not much at all, other than as an inroad into a customer list.
I'm not sure they meant "nuclear waste" as in "nuclear reactor waste", or "nuclear waste" as in "radioactive waste". Medical waste can be radioactive... Some of the clinical diagnostic equipment produces radioactive waste.
You have your doubts, fine. But the medical research shows otherwise.
If you understand the mechanism of severe allergic response, then it's pretty easy to understand how exposure to even trace amounts of an allergen can trigger a cytokine cascade that ends up asphyxiating a kid (or adult).
But besides that... are you really serious? If you are aware that someone you interact with daily can *die* if you do something that is simple to avoid... that's too much an an inconvenience? Seriously?
Selfish prick.
So if I feel happy for no reason, there is someone else who has become unhappy?
That makes me sad.
But, I ask you this, my friend: how do you account for drugs? A group of friends smoke pot and get happy... does that cause other people to get unhappy? Or are mood-altering drugs the method by which we can change the total amount of happiness in the world?
And what about population changes? Is happiness spread thinner when there are more people? Where Europeans giddy after the black plague because a third of them died, so there were fewer people to share the happiness?
Since related articles were omitted for this story... For previous discussion on slashdot, please check here.
:)
Please feel free to read that discussion and put your copypasta in this thread so we all know not to mod them up.
Huh?
Medical insurance typically costs ~4-5000/yr for the insured. For the wealthy, this is less than 7.5% of their AGI.
For the poor, this is greater than 7.5% of their AGI.
Quite clearly, this deduction structure benefits the poor, as they get to deduct more than the wealthy (since the standard deduction is the same for both the poor and the wealthy).
For employer provided healthcare, you don't get to deduct it because you don't pay it... but it's a nontaxable benefit. Your employer doesn't pay taxes on it either (as I'm sure you are aware). So what this tax structure does, essentially, is provide an incentive for employers to offer healthcare to their employees (in exchange for additional pay, theoretically).
AIG is a bad example, because we're talking about health insurance, not general insurance.
What got AIG wasn't bad luck, it was improper assessment of risk. Yeah, if the bubble hadn't burst, they'd still be OK, but it wasn't bad luck that caused the bubble to burst.
Health insurers have it a bit easier, since assessment of medical risk is a little easier -- it's not systemic risk, it's individual risk, and there are lots of stats out there to mine for data. As opposed to AIG's problem, which is that it underestimated systemic risk.
It really is a question of probability and size for medical insurance. Oversimplified, but: if you have some N clients @ $1000/yr, and for each client you either spend $1,000,000 or $0 per year (with no other expenses), you'll come out on top if the risk of any client needing treatment is less than 1/1000. But in actuality, that's only true if you get lucky and have only 0 or 1 client needing treatment. What if you have 2? It's quite possible.
In AIG's case, the problem is that it's systemic risk -- if any one client needs a claim paid, chances are much greater that additional clients will need claims paid. So while the risk may be 1/1000 for any one client, as soon as one fails, it's likely several more will. So the adjusted risk factored into capital reserve needs will need to be much higher. Never mind the fact that they grossly underestimated the 1/1000 risk factor (or whatever number they actually used).