No, they (Trabants) were absolute crap, unreliable and very expensive. The only people that bought them did so because it was marginally better than public transportation or walking.
A car that requires a full tank to be driven up an incline is crap, plain and simple.
What? Have you noticed that almost every consumer container is labeled in both imperial and metric? The cola can sitting next to me is a 12 oz. soda can, with "(355 mL) printed right underneath it. I fail to see the problem that is holding back American manufacturers.
Do you know how American companies "export" most products sold in "metric" countries? They ship in bulk and package the goods locally - bulk shipment is cheaper, and even if we used the same container sizes in America as our metric-based neighbors they would still ship most goods in bulk to save money.
Do you have a specific example that illustrates the competitive disadvantage Imperial-based American manufacturers find themselves in?
A switch to the metric system will confuse a lot of americans who have used the imperial system of measurements for their entire lives.
Is there really a problem with "unstandardized" container sizes? How exactly do these problems manifest themselves?
How will a different unit of measure "save a lot of money"?
Thinking the key to building a successful death star relies on using metric bolts and nuts is silly. Trabants were built using the metric system, and they were crap.
Or unless you're thinking of starting a company, working in a startup, or otherwise deal with startups, which actually covers a lot of people on Slashdot.
What if you actually start a company or work for a startup?
The network even canned an interview with Bin Laden conducted in October 2001, the month after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, because it did not consider it to be in al-Jazeera's style.
I bet many would have liked to have seen that interview one month after the September 11 terror attacks...
I suspect other providers (cable companies and satellite companies) will soon follow, for the same reasons they choose not to carry Al Jazeera before they bought Current - whatever those reasons were...
It has been reported that Current couldn't garner more than 22,000 viewers during prime time... The sale of current gives these providers a chance to dump this complete waste of spectrum Current/Al Jazeera. (That was 22,000 viewers out of a potential 40 Million - that is one half of one-tenth of one percent of their potential viewers.)
He might do himself more good by studying business/management, he apparently has the chops/ability to handle technical issues, his progression for Sr. Software Engineer will very quickly morph into a management position I suspect, and having a class in compiler construction under his belt may be ov very little use going forward.
Employee development is a stated goal of most major companies, I myself have a large oil company to thank for paying for the final year of my BA in Humanities as I worked as a mainframe operator in the late 1980's.
Well-run companies want current employees to grow into more senior positions (keeping their knowledge in-house), and offering to subsidise post-secondary education is a common way of doing it.
The typical requirements are that you need to be a full-time employee for the duration of the course, achieve a certain level of academic performance, and the annual benefit is capped at a certain dollar amount.
If career advancement is truely a concern, by first suggestion would be to review job descriptions for higher positions in your projected career path - do the require college degrees? As I recall, MS (if that is where you work) had a couple of very senior executives without college degrees, they most likely included wiggle-room in their job descriptions to allow for alternative education paths.
Finally, you are already inside - typically the folks that care about technical issues like college degrees are in HR, and their main "contribution" is weeding out applicants - you've avoided that threat, and apparently the line managers appreciate your proven talents.
I would have a plan to complete a college degree, but only invoke it if you find that a degree is really *required* for advancement.
Knowing that someone else paid less for a seat than the airline is offering the same seat to you for does what, exactly?
I'm not sure if you know this or not, but every seat on the plane is dynamically priced, based in part on how full the plane is at the time you buy the ticket, how early you buy the ticket, what service you use to book the ticket, etc.
Knowing what someone else paid for a ticket is an almost useless datapoint - do you imagine airlines will want to haggle with you to help you pay them less for your seat on their plane?
So let me get this straight, airlines will offer discounts to customers it knows more about, and (potentially) no discounts to customers it knows nothing about? And the problem is...
They have put a value to your personal information and are giving consumers a choice - share your personal info, save some money OR keep your personal info private and don't.
What's wrong with allowing customers to 'opt in' for savings at the cost of their annonymity? If they didn't allow you to 'opt in' but forced you to share personal data I could understand the issue, but that isn't the case here.
The Tyranny of "block-by-number" kits... That Lego fans choose to buy more often than not because they want to build the deathstar, Millenium Falcon, whatever as shown on the box.
If they wanted the "big box of blocks" experience they can still buy them, and now there are Lego stores that sell bulk Legos - something unheard of when I was a kid (early 70's/late 60's).
Some people want the end-product (the item on the cover of the box), some want the process (the frustration the one researcher noted), and some want to raw material to build what is in their imagination (the big box of blocks) - none is the only "true" reason for Lego.
Why do you want to add tech into fairly diverse offering? Is the camp trying to get more campers? Are you wanting to experiment? Why?
If you want to get more campers, why not teach programming on the 100 computers you already have?
If you want to experiment, I'd say speak to the other counselers and see where tech could help them (playwriting for drama, notation tools for music, etc.) and if you really want to get adventurous, pick up some Aurdinos and copies of one of the intro books and have the various existing disciplines adopt tech into their offerings.
Maybe a micro controller that runs the lights for a play, maybe they create an instrument in music lass, maybe they construct an interactive ate installation in art class.
Tech is not a destination, it is a tool to solve problems - find out what problems/opportunities the programs have and address them.
Robotics camps lready exist, why turn your camp into another one?
He's not lying about his profits - he's availing himself of the tax code as written.
Eric Schmidt/Google are not responsible for the tax code.
Did it ever occur to you that by highlighting the way the current tax code is written Eric Schmidt is working to bring about reform of the tax code? If he quietly exploited the tax code, how would the average citizen know what was going on?
You have to actually pay taxes to benefit from tax loopholes, and by and large, poor people don't pay income taxes.
(Yes, they pay taxes on their fuel, etc. but those are not INCOME taxes)
51% of tax filers pay no NET income taxes, meaning after their tax liability is calculated their either receive every penny they paid in income taxes back in the form of a refund, OR they actually receive more than they paid in.
The tax code is designed to fund the operation of the government, not to "fairly" tax all.
"Fair Taxes" tend to extract an equal amount from each individual (a head tax), but that is seen as "unfair" to lower-income workers.
Our current tax code is the result of over 100 years of special "incentives" that were implemented to encourage certain behaviors and special "penalties" to discourage others. Those incentives evolve into "loopholes" once people have forgotten the original purpose for the incentive.
Home Schooling & Private schools are, apparently, unheard of by you.
Very few hospitals are run by municipalities, most are run by either non-profits or charities, with a some being for-profit.
The public roads argument is interesting - do employers pay for roads so employees can get to work and so that they can ship and receive goods, or do employees pay for roads so they can get to work and buy the goods others have manufactured/raised/offer? The answer is both.
The original poster's point, which apparently escaped you, is that no one goes out of their way to OVERPAY their taxes, and someone who pays all their taxes as defined by the law (as Google does) is doing nothing wrong. It may not comport to a simplistic view that "they should pay more" but in reality, they are simply availing themselves of the incentives our lawmakers provided them.
Don't be angry with Google for following laws that allow them to pay less in taxes than you think they should, be angry at the lawmakers that craft the laws that allow them to do so.
The technology is being used to allow trading firms to locate their servers in the midwest, rather than closer to NYC... Can they really save that much money to justify the microwave link compared with simply locating their servers closer to the exchange?
One new hot market for microwave providers is between New York and Chicago, both cities with many financial services firms
If transmission speed from Chicago to NYC is an issue, why not move the servers closer to NYC? Can a microwave link to Chicago really be quicker than a fiber link from Secaucus?
Is it really the case that zero-tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands are 'stealing' from countries like the US or UK? They are providing an alternative to double-digit corporate taxes in other countries, but can they really be accused of stealing if they are charging 'zero' in taxes?
Was Microsoft 'stealing' from Netscape when MS bundled a browser with the OS for free?
Do food pantrys 'steal' from grocery stores by giving away what the grocery store sells?
Slashdot Mirror
No, they (Trabants) were absolute crap, unreliable and very expensive. The only people that bought them did so because it was marginally better than public transportation or walking.
A car that requires a full tank to be driven up an incline is crap, plain and simple.
Here, watch how they built them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBsPFI--muo
What? Have you noticed that almost every consumer container is labeled in both imperial and metric? The cola can sitting next to me is a 12 oz. soda can, with "(355 mL) printed right underneath it. I fail to see the problem that is holding back American manufacturers.
Do you know how American companies "export" most products sold in "metric" countries? They ship in bulk and package the goods locally - bulk shipment is cheaper, and even if we used the same container sizes in America as our metric-based neighbors they would still ship most goods in bulk to save money.
Do you have a specific example that illustrates the competitive disadvantage Imperial-based American manufacturers find themselves in?
How?
A switch to the metric system will confuse a lot of americans who have used the imperial system of measurements for their entire lives.
Is there really a problem with "unstandardized" container sizes? How exactly do these problems manifest themselves?
How will a different unit of measure "save a lot of money"?
Thinking the key to building a successful death star relies on using metric bolts and nuts is silly. Trabants were built using the metric system, and they were crap.
What if you actually start a company or work for a startup?
Is slashdot home for the Walter Mitty's among us?
No, they are pissed because they supressed some of the tapes, edited or delayed the release of others.
From the linked-to article:
I bet many would have liked to have seen that interview one month after the September 11 terror attacks...
Time-Warner Cable has dropped Current/Al Jazeera's network post-haste.
I suspect other providers (cable companies and satellite companies) will soon follow, for the same reasons they choose not to carry Al Jazeera before they bought Current - whatever those reasons were...
It has been reported that Current couldn't garner more than 22,000 viewers during prime time... The sale of current gives these providers a chance to dump this complete waste of spectrum Current/Al Jazeera. (That was 22,000 viewers out of a potential 40 Million - that is one half of one-tenth of one percent of their potential viewers.)
He might do himself more good by studying business/management, he apparently has the chops/ability to handle technical issues, his progression for Sr. Software Engineer will very quickly morph into a management position I suspect, and having a class in compiler construction under his belt may be ov very little use going forward.
Employee development is a stated goal of most major companies, I myself have a large oil company to thank for paying for the final year of my BA in Humanities as I worked as a mainframe operator in the late 1980's.
Well-run companies want current employees to grow into more senior positions (keeping their knowledge in-house), and offering to subsidise post-secondary education is a common way of doing it.
The typical requirements are that you need to be a full-time employee for the duration of the course, achieve a certain level of academic performance, and the annual benefit is capped at a certain dollar amount.
Software development company with 50K employees?
If career advancement is truely a concern, by first suggestion would be to review job descriptions for higher positions in your projected career path - do the require college degrees? As I recall, MS (if that is where you work) had a couple of very senior executives without college degrees, they most likely included wiggle-room in their job descriptions to allow for alternative education paths.
Finally, you are already inside - typically the folks that care about technical issues like college degrees are in HR, and their main "contribution" is weeding out applicants - you've avoided that threat, and apparently the line managers appreciate your proven talents.
I would have a plan to complete a college degree, but only invoke it if you find that a degree is really *required* for advancement.
Knowing that someone else paid less for a seat than the airline is offering the same seat to you for does what, exactly?
I'm not sure if you know this or not, but every seat on the plane is dynamically priced, based in part on how full the plane is at the time you buy the ticket, how early you buy the ticket, what service you use to book the ticket, etc.
Knowing what someone else paid for a ticket is an almost useless datapoint - do you imagine airlines will want to haggle with you to help you pay them less for your seat on their plane?
So let me get this straight, airlines will offer discounts to customers it knows more about, and (potentially) no discounts to customers it knows nothing about? And the problem is...
They have put a value to your personal information and are giving consumers a choice - share your personal info, save some money OR keep your personal info private and don't.
What's wrong with allowing customers to 'opt in' for savings at the cost of their annonymity? If they didn't allow you to 'opt in' but forced you to share personal data I could understand the issue, but that isn't the case here.
The Tyranny of "block-by-number" kits... That Lego fans choose to buy more often than not because they want to build the deathstar, Millenium Falcon, whatever as shown on the box.
If they wanted the "big box of blocks" experience they can still buy them, and now there are Lego stores that sell bulk Legos - something unheard of when I was a kid (early 70's/late 60's).
Some people want the end-product (the item on the cover of the box), some want the process (the frustration the one researcher noted), and some want to raw material to build what is in their imagination (the big box of blocks) - none is the only "true" reason for Lego.
Why would someone that has firearms for self-protection "advertise" that fact?
How does a system that tracks student attendance help keep illegal aliens out of classes? Answer - it doesn't, an admittance system does.
This system is really designed to admit ONLY registered students into lectures, the attendance taking part is a by-product.
The school doesn't care if paying students attend classes, they care about those that aren't paying filling up the classroom.
Why do you want to add tech into fairly diverse offering? Is the camp trying to get more campers? Are you wanting to experiment? Why?
If you want to get more campers, why not teach programming on the 100 computers you already have?
If you want to experiment, I'd say speak to the other counselers and see where tech could help them (playwriting for drama, notation tools for music, etc.) and if you really want to get adventurous, pick up some Aurdinos and copies of one of the intro books and have the various existing disciplines adopt tech into their offerings.
Maybe a micro controller that runs the lights for a play, maybe they create an instrument in music lass, maybe they construct an interactive ate installation in art class.
Tech is not a destination, it is a tool to solve problems - find out what problems/opportunities the programs have and address them.
Robotics camps lready exist, why turn your camp into another one?
He's not lying about his profits - he's availing himself of the tax code as written.
Eric Schmidt/Google are not responsible for the tax code.
Did it ever occur to you that by highlighting the way the current tax code is written Eric Schmidt is working to bring about reform of the tax code? If he quietly exploited the tax code, how would the average citizen know what was going on?
You have to actually pay taxes to benefit from tax loopholes, and by and large, poor people don't pay income taxes.
(Yes, they pay taxes on their fuel, etc. but those are not INCOME taxes)
51% of tax filers pay no NET income taxes, meaning after their tax liability is calculated their either receive every penny they paid in income taxes back in the form of a refund, OR they actually receive more than they paid in.
And anti-slavery, pro-Civil Rights.
So am I to understand that Democrats are thus "Anti-Business"? That would explain a lot of their actions...
The tax code is designed to fund the operation of the government, not to "fairly" tax all.
"Fair Taxes" tend to extract an equal amount from each individual (a head tax), but that is seen as "unfair" to lower-income workers.
Our current tax code is the result of over 100 years of special "incentives" that were implemented to encourage certain behaviors and special "penalties" to discourage others. Those incentives evolve into "loopholes" once people have forgotten the original purpose for the incentive.
Home Schooling & Private schools are, apparently, unheard of by you.
Very few hospitals are run by municipalities, most are run by either non-profits or charities, with a some being for-profit.
The public roads argument is interesting - do employers pay for roads so employees can get to work and so that they can ship and receive goods, or do employees pay for roads so they can get to work and buy the goods others have manufactured/raised/offer? The answer is both.
The original poster's point, which apparently escaped you, is that no one goes out of their way to OVERPAY their taxes, and someone who pays all their taxes as defined by the law (as Google does) is doing nothing wrong. It may not comport to a simplistic view that "they should pay more" but in reality, they are simply availing themselves of the incentives our lawmakers provided them.
Don't be angry with Google for following laws that allow them to pay less in taxes than you think they should, be angry at the lawmakers that craft the laws that allow them to do so.
Microwave links are currently in use to carry phone calls across the country - this is hardly "old" technology, it is very current technology.
The technology is being used to allow trading firms to locate their servers in the midwest, rather than closer to NYC... Can they really save that much money to justify the microwave link compared with simply locating their servers closer to the exchange?
From the story:
If transmission speed from Chicago to NYC is an issue, why not move the servers closer to NYC? Can a microwave link to Chicago really be quicker than a fiber link from Secaucus?
Wireless providers do not guarantee inside phone service.
Is it really the case that zero-tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands are 'stealing' from countries like the US or UK? They are providing an alternative to double-digit corporate taxes in other countries, but can they really be accused of stealing if they are charging 'zero' in taxes?
Was Microsoft 'stealing' from Netscape when MS bundled a browser with the OS for free?
Do food pantrys 'steal' from grocery stores by giving away what the grocery store sells?