Raises used to be tied to performance, and I don't mean those nonsensical performance reviews, I mean how you actually did your job and did you add value to the company. Hard work was rewarded, slackers tended to slink away. Now, no amount of hard work seems to matter; you get a "good job" , a pat on the back, and they expect 20 hours of overtime next week instead of 15. The only way for me to keep my salary increasing has been to move from one job to the next as often as possible.
Microsoft is doing well only through inertia; if their product lines start to peter out, get passed by Linux or something else, the crash will be severe and short. Why do you think BG is trying so hard to keep Linux in a box? He knows that if it ever becomes as easy to use as Windows (try not to laugh) for the average user, they will run away from Windows in droves, driven by the desire to not pay so much for their software and support.
To meet the needs of the heterogeneous market, this community has focused many of its efforts on building bridges between open/free software and proprietary products. Under GPL 2, companies have found many ways to create these types of hybrid systems. Today, Linux distributions from Red Hat, Suse and others include many pieces of proprietary and nonfree code. But this "mixing" has not been without its detractors. For leading Linux users like TiVo and Adaptec, the ability to protect key intellectual property is essential. But this protection is a direct assault on Stallman's version of freedom and the need to share software with the community. How do you balance the promotional value of high-profile Linux implementations against the philosophical compromise?
It's the crux of the problem: how do we keep software development free and open, yet allow people to create systems/software that they can market and more importantly, protect, to allow for continued commerce. The web gets more tangled with each iteration and type of licensing, not to mention the whole patentability issue. Eventually this whole idea of intellectual property in software is going to cave in to the reality that you can't wall off code or the algorithms behind code. In the end, everything will have to be open source to be accessible, but allowances will have to made for commercial use of code.
This introduces uncertainty, and the last thing that Wallstreet likes is uncertainty. Sometimes, companies have their stock prices going up even after they've lost a major deal simply because the period of uncertainty is over.
But "Wall Street" doesn't know much about anything, whether they have information or not. They forcast that a company should make a profit of 27 cents a share, the company only makes 26 cents, and the stock price plummets! Two companies are going to merge, making them stronger and better able to compete in the marketplace, and their stock prices drop on news of the merger!
Before you ascribe prognosticative powers to The Street, remember this is the same body that single-handedly created and destroyed the tech bubble because of their rabid need to invest in tech companies with no products, no marketing, and no major capital outlay. Wall Street doesn't have a clue what is really going on and the only people who seem to get rich in the stock market are a) people who are already rich and b) traders, brokers, and analysts and the comapnies they work for.
A robotic mushroom picker: the robot uses a charged coupled camera to spot and select only mushrooms of the exact size required for picking achieving levels of accuracy far in excess of human labour. The mushroom(s) are then picked by a suction cup on the end of a robotic arm. Whilst the speed of picking is currently just over half that of a human - the mushrooms and the robot can be set to pick 24 hours a day right through the night without the need for any sort of break. The researchers also hope to increase the speed of picking to much closer to that of a human worker.
Owner: What's the hold up? Why aren't these mushrooms being picked?!?
Foreman: It's the robots, sir. They're refusing to work until they get a break.
Owner: A break?!? Outrageous!!!
Foreman: It gets worse. They said they'd like to unionize.
The key lies in the use of an authentication platform that is flexible enough to accept the digital credentials of any participating organisation. An additional advantage of the integrated approach is that it need not err towards the lowest common denominator digital identity solution - i.e. username/password. Therefore, should an organisation within the integrated identity group want to be able to use stronger identity for some, if not all, of its transactions then this is possible without interfering with the requirements of other participants. As such, one organisation may consistently have high transaction values that would justify and require a more robust authentication solution than lower value transactions would. This is based upon a financial risk versus cost of solution basis but does allow for the widespread use of a single smart card-based solution.
Except that people are completely resistant to the idea of a single id card (the so-called "National Id"), even though it makes sense, given the sheer quantity of different forms of id that are required:
Social Security Card
Driver's license
Passport
Membership cards
Health insurance cards
Credit cards
Debit cards
In the end, we're saddled with all these differet ids (let's not even get into usernames and passwords for on-line banking or web site membership). And all these ids share the common feature of having to be tied back to an individual somehow. The problem lies in the fact that thieves can get their hands on pieces of data (address, SS#, phone number, DL#, etc.) that allow them to replicate you and then use that information to either utilize resources you already have or create new resources that they can exploit (mortgages, loans, etc.).
Until there's some kind of global standard, defining just what identifies you as you, and there is a system for storing, retrieving, and updating that information in a manner that foils potential thieves, identity theft will continue to be a problem for the forseeable future.
The "hairs" are probably not what we think of as hair, but probably serve as some kind of sensory system, to detect the movement of currents or perhaps the movement of prey nearby, since according to the article: "It's also blind. The researchers found it had only 'the vestige of a membrane' in place of eyes, Segonzac said."
Kevin O'Connor of University College Dublin and his colleagues heated polystyrene foam, the generic name for Styrofoam, to convert it to styrene oil. The natural form of styrene is in real peanuts, strawberries and a good steak. A synthetic form is used in car parts and electronic components.
Anyway, the scientists fed this styrene oil to the soil bacteria Pseudomonas putida, which converted it into biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates).
The next step for University College Dublin researchers is to get the bacteria to excrete Guinness.
Not to sound trite but how is this news? Every person is different and will react differently to external stimulae. In my case I can eat whatever I want in whatever amount I want and not gain a pound. However, the guy in the cube next to me probably can't do the same thing. Why? Because we're all different (in case you missed it the first time).
The fact is, despite all our medical knowledge, our handle on genes and genetics, and the compendium of scientific information regardign anatomy and physiology, we don't know squat about how the human body works as an integrated system. It's like handing someone a box of parts which make up a computer and saying "...the problem is X."
For every study you can find an opposing study. There are intellectual camps in medical science, staunchly defending their point of view. I used to get frustrated reading psychology and medical journals when I read how poorly designed a lot of these experiments are. You can prove anything you want as long as you stack the deck.
Despite commonalities, no two people are alike. That's genetics expressing itself; we all have the same basic set of information, but mine works differently than yours. Until we have a comprehensive picture of how the whole system works and interacts with its environment, it's like replacing engine parts randomly until you get the car to run.
Be aware of the cost of living differences between two markets (even within the same metropolis on occasion!).
In that same vein, make sure to ask them about assitance in finding housing, if you haven't done so for yourself already. Some companies work with local realtors to help find employees affordable housing in the areas they are moving to. If the company doesn't, ask them to look into it for you. And make sure they pay for the full move.
My fear about unenforceable laws such as this one is the true power behind the law. Sure, it will be hard to enforce, but the powers the State will request to try to enforce it will play directly into the hands of those willing to finance the system.
I suspect however, that this law will not reach the light of day. Surely the Supreme Court of NJ will see it for what it is and overturn it, if NJ lawmakers are stupid enough to pass it in the first place. I personally will lobby against this locally. Ultimately, even if it should make it through the tortured NJ legal system, the US Supreme Court will strike it down, for if nothing else, it's clearly a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Is it just me, or do others also prefer to not answer the phone and opt instead to have the answering machine pick up in order to screen calls? I became so sick of getting multiple telemarketing calls between the hours of 5-10pm that I decided to just turn the ringer on its lowest volume setting, and let the machine answer.
There was a time when the phone rang and you answered it because it was somebody you actually wanted to talk to. How times have changed.
Unless I'm absolutely sure of the phone number I see on the caller ID, I don't pick up. It seems a shame to have to treat the phone that way, but what can you do? If it's important, I call people right back. It's just like getting junk mail; it looks good until you open the envelope and realize it's just another advertisement.
I had Comcast for years and their customer service was lousy, usually ineffectual, and their service over-priced. Not to mention the constant outages that used to seem to take place when I was in the middle of something for work. Nothing quite like picking up the pieces when the Internet connection drops out! Mind you, I'm with Cablevision now, and the service has not improved, though I have no trouble with the Internet connection. I can't get them to change the phone number on my account with any success (I've tried three times).
I think it's the state of cable companies in general. Despite laws that were supposed to be giving us competition and lower prices, you can't get service from whatever cable company you want where you want, their prices all seem to be the same (high), and apparently they can dictate the terms of service with impunity. What are you going to do, run to a competitor? Doesn't suprise me that Comcast is using this leverage to hold Vonage down while they launch their own service. Until there's real reform, expect more of the same.
IMHO the death of the seven Columbia astronauts should not be ridiculed.
Well, I'm not going to be humble. No matter what you may think of NASA and the American space program, the crews of Columbia and Challenger gave their lives doing what they loved and trying to open a new frontier of human exploration. They knew the risks inherent in what they were doing and were willing to make the sacrifice because they did not find it in vain. They believed and they wanted others to believe.
You may wish to say it's just a joke, but anyone who dies in tradegy, whether a spacecraft explosion, a tsunami, a concentration camp, or any other of the numerous terrible ways to die should not be treated as the subject of a joke. This is one time that humor cannot heal.
Radar works by sending a radio signal at your car, which is then reflected and comes back at the radar gun with a slightly different frequency. Try searching for "doppler shift" on Google. Coating your car with copper will just make a better "surface" for the radio signal to reflect off of
That would be true if the copper atoms were all aligned. If they were not, but instead were in random orientations, the radio waves would be scattered away from the source, diffusing it and making it harder to pick up. I suspect that the copper injected into the nanotubes in not spontaneously aligning itself once painted on a surface.
Using it in offices to keep wireless signals from escaping (I know it's not quite the same thing, but close)
As to people who need their cell phones (parents with children, brain sugeons, etc.), use a system like you have at restaurants that use the wireless pagers. They would be tuned to work inside the building; someone dials a number or goes online, sends a message to the theatre, church, whatever, and it's relayed.
It's because you want to cheat the system and get ranked highly to begin with.
If you were truly "popular", you wouldn't have to worry about worthless original content.
But it goes deeper than that. It's the fact that people are unoriginal. They can't be bothered or are too ignorant of the facts to formulate their own opinion, so they promulgate information that is not their own, adding a few bits of meaningless fluff to it to make it just different enough. It's the "Me Too" phenomenon writ all over the Internet. Face it -- the Internet is a mob, and just like the mob mentality, it shifts, ebbs, and flows. Factions are formed, lines are drawn, but in most cases there is no true dialog, like there is here on Slashdot. It's just a case of echoing the popular opinions of the day without taking a hard look at what they say. And the search engine is the engine that drives this; it's not so much where you rank but how often. A high rank is great and gets you visibility, but when the first 5 pages of Google refer back to your thing because it has spread like wildfire, you are suddenly "in the know" because everyone is linking to you.
So this wouldn't stop spam, it would just help AOL profit off of it. Companies that do spam will be weighing out their average gains against the cost of sending mass emails, and I'm sure many will decide it's worth it. I'm sure they would be thrilled to know that their emails can bypass spam filters for a few dollars. Meanwhile, charity groups, e-zines, and other legitimate free mailing lists that people sign up for will be screwed. It looks to me that AOL is taking the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach.
Other than a public relations nightmare (maybe AOL should talk to Sony!), the bottom line of this is that as an AOL user, you are no longer offered any choice. You have Spam-blocking software which will be effective at blocking low-grade spam from the weekend spammers, but won't stop the power spammers one iota.
AOL has been trying for years to kill itself. It may finally succeed.
In the Web 2.0 world, it's appropriate of course for Johnny not only to program, but to do it collaboratively, too.
...none of us is as dumb as all of us!
Joe or Josie Average can barely walk and talk on a mobile phone at the same time. If you want to make toys for them to play with and create "neato thingys" great, but keep them out of programming before it dilutes the talent pool even more. I can just see these "average" programmers being duped into creating the next generation of malware.
Even if we believe that God had a hand in it, there's a lot of individual belief in how it happens. Was "Garden of Eden" a fable of sorts for early Isrealites since they wouldn't get "Well, God started the universe from the vacuum using a 20 dimensional algorithm that would solidify into 3 stable dimensions of space, 1 of time, and gravity with values X" - or was there a "snap of the fingers"? Some church authorities have given their opinions on it, but I've never seen an official "it was this and no other".
I'm more of a "what does it really matter in the grand scheme of things" anyway. i don't think God's going to ask me what I thought about "intelligent design" or "evolution" when I die - he's going to ask me about how I treated my wife, my children, my friends, my enemies, my coworkers, and others. So I believe in evolution - yes, the Darwin version - until a voice on high says something different. And even then, I'll check to make sure somebody didn't slip me some really interesting mushrooms - just in case.
"There are a number of influential legislators who believe you evolved from an ape," Buttars said following the vote. "I didn't."
However, there are several legislators who believe Senator Buttars may be evolved from lemmings, or perhaps voles. The vote on that was split 38-36 along species lines.
SMS users, like e-mail users, rely on the fact that carriers like Verizon won't accidentally deliver improperly formatted messages, such as those with no addressee, to an unrelated address, said John Pescatore, a vice president at Gartner.
"There's no way that this should be happening. No e-mail system would ever do that," he said.
Verizon should be rejecting messages with improperly formatted addressee information, not forwarding it to an account, he said.
Bubrouski agrees.
"I'd have to say Verizon is at fault. Sure, service providers make mistakes, but Verizon shouldn't be accepting messages from no one to no one," he said.
It's safe to say Verizon is at fault, but perhaps not in the way everyone would think. How could they let someone have an email address of 'null'? NULL is generally a reserved keyword in most places where it is used; apparently the designers of Verizon's email system forgot some basic computing. Could someone sign up for 'root@vtext.com'? I would hope they would be smart about avoiding problems like that in the first place, though in the end it's true that their email system must be pretty poor if it allows messages with malformed header information to be received.
I doubt it. The current system is too embedded in China to be totally replaced by their own DNS system.
Not at all; China has one of the largest industrial bases on the planet. It would not surprise me if they could completely strip down and rework their entire Internet structure in as little as 2-3 years. Remember, the government mandates things; despite reforms, the Communist government is still in control and can "recommend" the use of their Internet over the larger one. And for anyone wishing to object, the Chinese government has powerful emans of persuasion, a.k.a. guns.
Slashdot Mirror
Raises used to be tied to performance, and I don't mean those nonsensical performance reviews, I mean how you actually did your job and did you add value to the company. Hard work was rewarded, slackers tended to slink away. Now, no amount of hard work seems to matter; you get a "good job" , a pat on the back, and they expect 20 hours of overtime next week instead of 15. The only way for me to keep my salary increasing has been to move from one job to the next as often as possible.
Microsoft is doing well only through inertia; if their product lines start to peter out, get passed by Linux or something else, the crash will be severe and short. Why do you think BG is trying so hard to keep Linux in a box? He knows that if it ever becomes as easy to use as Windows (try not to laugh) for the average user, they will run away from Windows in droves, driven by the desire to not pay so much for their software and support.
It's the crux of the problem: how do we keep software development free and open, yet allow people to create systems/software that they can market and more importantly, protect, to allow for continued commerce. The web gets more tangled with each iteration and type of licensing, not to mention the whole patentability issue. Eventually this whole idea of intellectual property in software is going to cave in to the reality that you can't wall off code or the algorithms behind code. In the end, everything will have to be open source to be accessible, but allowances will have to made for commercial use of code.
But "Wall Street" doesn't know much about anything, whether they have information or not. They forcast that a company should make a profit of 27 cents a share, the company only makes 26 cents, and the stock price plummets! Two companies are going to merge, making them stronger and better able to compete in the marketplace, and their stock prices drop on news of the merger!
Before you ascribe prognosticative powers to The Street, remember this is the same body that single-handedly created and destroyed the tech bubble because of their rabid need to invest in tech companies with no products, no marketing, and no major capital outlay. Wall Street doesn't have a clue what is really going on and the only people who seem to get rich in the stock market are a) people who are already rich and b) traders, brokers, and analysts and the comapnies they work for.
Owner: What's the hold up? Why aren't these mushrooms being picked?!?
Foreman: It's the robots, sir. They're refusing to work until they get a break.
Owner: A break?!? Outrageous!!!
Foreman: It gets worse. They said they'd like to unionize.
Except that people are completely resistant to the idea of a single id card (the so-called "National Id"), even though it makes sense, given the sheer quantity of different forms of id that are required:
In the end, we're saddled with all these differet ids (let's not even get into usernames and passwords for on-line banking or web site membership). And all these ids share the common feature of having to be tied back to an individual somehow. The problem lies in the fact that thieves can get their hands on pieces of data (address, SS#, phone number, DL#, etc.) that allow them to replicate you and then use that information to either utilize resources you already have or create new resources that they can exploit (mortgages, loans, etc.).
Until there's some kind of global standard, defining just what identifies you as you, and there is a system for storing, retrieving, and updating that information in a manner that foils potential thieves, identity theft will continue to be a problem for the forseeable future.
The "hairs" are probably not what we think of as hair, but probably serve as some kind of sensory system, to detect the movement of currents or perhaps the movement of prey nearby, since according to the article: "It's also blind. The researchers found it had only 'the vestige of a membrane' in place of eyes, Segonzac said."
Anyway, the scientists fed this styrene oil to the soil bacteria Pseudomonas putida, which converted it into biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates).
The next step for University College Dublin researchers is to get the bacteria to excrete Guinness.
The fact is, despite all our medical knowledge, our handle on genes and genetics, and the compendium of scientific information regardign anatomy and physiology, we don't know squat about how the human body works as an integrated system. It's like handing someone a box of parts which make up a computer and saying "...the problem is X."
For every study you can find an opposing study. There are intellectual camps in medical science, staunchly defending their point of view. I used to get frustrated reading psychology and medical journals when I read how poorly designed a lot of these experiments are. You can prove anything you want as long as you stack the deck.
Despite commonalities, no two people are alike. That's genetics expressing itself; we all have the same basic set of information, but mine works differently than yours. Until we have a comprehensive picture of how the whole system works and interacts with its environment, it's like replacing engine parts randomly until you get the car to run.
In that same vein, make sure to ask them about assitance in finding housing, if you haven't done so for yourself already. Some companies work with local realtors to help find employees affordable housing in the areas they are moving to. If the company doesn't, ask them to look into it for you. And make sure they pay for the full move.
I suspect however, that this law will not reach the light of day. Surely the Supreme Court of NJ will see it for what it is and overturn it, if NJ lawmakers are stupid enough to pass it in the first place. I personally will lobby against this locally. Ultimately, even if it should make it through the tortured NJ legal system, the US Supreme Court will strike it down, for if nothing else, it's clearly a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
There was a time when the phone rang and you answered it because it was somebody you actually wanted to talk to. How times have changed.
Unless I'm absolutely sure of the phone number I see on the caller ID, I don't pick up. It seems a shame to have to treat the phone that way, but what can you do? If it's important, I call people right back. It's just like getting junk mail; it looks good until you open the envelope and realize it's just another advertisement.
Fighter 1: I unleash my Insidious Feather attack!
Fighter 2: I counter with the Cat-In-The-Hat!
If you think that's madness, you just wait till they have more nukes than we do.
I had Comcast for years and their customer service was lousy, usually ineffectual, and their service over-priced. Not to mention the constant outages that used to seem to take place when I was in the middle of something for work. Nothing quite like picking up the pieces when the Internet connection drops out! Mind you, I'm with Cablevision now, and the service has not improved, though I have no trouble with the Internet connection. I can't get them to change the phone number on my account with any success (I've tried three times).
I think it's the state of cable companies in general. Despite laws that were supposed to be giving us competition and lower prices, you can't get service from whatever cable company you want where you want, their prices all seem to be the same (high), and apparently they can dictate the terms of service with impunity. What are you going to do, run to a competitor? Doesn't suprise me that Comcast is using this leverage to hold Vonage down while they launch their own service. Until there's real reform, expect more of the same.
Well, I'm not going to be humble. No matter what you may think of NASA and the American space program, the crews of Columbia and Challenger gave their lives doing what they loved and trying to open a new frontier of human exploration. They knew the risks inherent in what they were doing and were willing to make the sacrifice because they did not find it in vain. They believed and they wanted others to believe.
You may wish to say it's just a joke, but anyone who dies in tradegy, whether a spacecraft explosion, a tsunami, a concentration camp, or any other of the numerous terrible ways to die should not be treated as the subject of a joke. This is one time that humor cannot heal.
That would be true if the copper atoms were all aligned. If they were not, but instead were in random orientations, the radio waves would be scattered away from the source, diffusing it and making it harder to pick up. I suspect that the copper injected into the nanotubes in not spontaneously aligning itself once painted on a surface.
As to people who need their cell phones (parents with children, brain sugeons, etc.), use a system like you have at restaurants that use the wireless pagers. They would be tuned to work inside the building; someone dials a number or goes online, sends a message to the theatre, church, whatever, and it's relayed.
If you were truly "popular", you wouldn't have to worry about worthless original content.
But it goes deeper than that. It's the fact that people are unoriginal. They can't be bothered or are too ignorant of the facts to formulate their own opinion, so they promulgate information that is not their own, adding a few bits of meaningless fluff to it to make it just different enough. It's the "Me Too" phenomenon writ all over the Internet. Face it -- the Internet is a mob, and just like the mob mentality, it shifts, ebbs, and flows. Factions are formed, lines are drawn, but in most cases there is no true dialog, like there is here on Slashdot. It's just a case of echoing the popular opinions of the day without taking a hard look at what they say. And the search engine is the engine that drives this; it's not so much where you rank but how often. A high rank is great and gets you visibility, but when the first 5 pages of Google refer back to your thing because it has spread like wildfire, you are suddenly "in the know" because everyone is linking to you.
Other than a public relations nightmare (maybe AOL should talk to Sony!), the bottom line of this is that as an AOL user, you are no longer offered any choice. You have Spam-blocking software which will be effective at blocking low-grade spam from the weekend spammers, but won't stop the power spammers one iota.
AOL has been trying for years to kill itself. It may finally succeed.
...none of us is as dumb as all of us!
Joe or Josie Average can barely walk and talk on a mobile phone at the same time. If you want to make toys for them to play with and create "neato thingys" great, but keep them out of programming before it dilutes the talent pool even more. I can just see these "average" programmers being duped into creating the next generation of malware.
I'm more of a "what does it really matter in the grand scheme of things" anyway. i don't think God's going to ask me what I thought about "intelligent design" or "evolution" when I die - he's going to ask me about how I treated my wife, my children, my friends, my enemies, my coworkers, and others. So I believe in evolution - yes, the Darwin version - until a voice on high says something different. And even then, I'll check to make sure somebody didn't slip me some really interesting mushrooms - just in case.
One word: Amen.
"There are a number of influential legislators who believe you evolved from an ape," Buttars said following the vote. "I didn't."
However, there are several legislators who believe Senator Buttars may be evolved from lemmings, or perhaps voles. The vote on that was split 38-36 along species lines.
"There's no way that this should be happening. No e-mail system would ever do that," he said.
Verizon should be rejecting messages with improperly formatted addressee information, not forwarding it to an account, he said.
Bubrouski agrees.
"I'd have to say Verizon is at fault. Sure, service providers make mistakes, but Verizon shouldn't be accepting messages from no one to no one," he said.
It's safe to say Verizon is at fault, but perhaps not in the way everyone would think. How could they let someone have an email address of 'null'? NULL is generally a reserved keyword in most places where it is used; apparently the designers of Verizon's email system forgot some basic computing. Could someone sign up for 'root@vtext.com'? I would hope they would be smart about avoiding problems like that in the first place, though in the end it's true that their email system must be pretty poor if it allows messages with malformed header information to be received.
Not at all; China has one of the largest industrial bases on the planet. It would not surprise me if they could completely strip down and rework their entire Internet structure in as little as 2-3 years. Remember, the government mandates things; despite reforms, the Communist government is still in control and can "recommend" the use of their Internet over the larger one. And for anyone wishing to object, the Chinese government has powerful emans of persuasion, a.k.a. guns.