Comment It's All About the Pentiums (Score 2) 188
Weird Al was way ahead of this one.
Submission + - Incandescent bulbs on their way out (ap.org)
UDChris writes: The Associated Press has a short article on incandescent bulbs being phased out in California starting this year with the 100W bulb, with the rest to follow in 2014. This is slightly ahead of the rest of the United States with federal standards being enacted next year. These days a century is a pretty good run, especially for something that requires electricity.
Submission + - AOL's "Dirty Little Secret": 60% of AOL's Profits (huffingtonpost.com) 4
satuon writes: Ken Auletta's big New Yorker piece on AOL (subscription only) this week revealed an interesting detail about the company's inner workings. According to Auletta, 80% of AOL's profits come from subscribers, and 75% of those subscribers are paying for something they don't actually need.
Auletta lays out how this works:
The company still gets eighty percent of its profits from subscribers, many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don't realize that they need not pay an additional twenty-five dollars a month to get online and check their e-mail. "The dirty little secret," a former AOL executive says, "is that seventy-five percent of the people who subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it."
Auletta lays out how this works:
The company still gets eighty percent of its profits from subscribers, many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don't realize that they need not pay an additional twenty-five dollars a month to get online and check their e-mail. "The dirty little secret," a former AOL executive says, "is that seventy-five percent of the people who subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it."
Comment Re:Not so fast there son (Score 1) 107
Mod parent up. I'd rather have a revolution in home entertainment tech than another "filmed in high-def, compressed to 480i for the masses" such as the one we're currently digging out of. I still have 76 channels of standard def, even though the cable company pretty much requires you to get a box in my area, which allows for digital-to-analog conversion.
I'd rather have a revolution in tech that's so revolutionary you have to adopt, up and down the line, to be able to use it at all. Unfortunately, my pipe dream is interrupted by the economics of incremental adoption, but I can dream.
Comment It depends on a bunch of factors (Score 1) 785
As I read through, a few questions came to mind (for any generic case similar to this):
1. What kind of training does the new hire require? We just recently hired a new guy to my team at work, and he has some skills we needed, but we work in an industry that requires about a year of specialized training to be fully up and running. A hot starter might be able to shave 6 mos off that time if they spent a lot of time studying outside of work. If the new hire needs secondary skills (absent the hot tech) I would say "no."
2. What else does the senior guy bring to the table? Has he been sitting in a hole programming, or has he developed leadership, management, or other broad-scope skills that justify a higher salary (rather than "time served"). If not, a case can be made for the new guy making more.
3. As mentioned higher in this thread, is the senior guy stuck on legacy tech? His best route may be to shop himself out to the "rare and dying skills" customer set. The whole Y2K+COBOL thing comes to mind. If he's content to let his skills atrophy, new guy likely wins on this one.
4. Probably the real deciding factor here: what's the worth of the senior guy's contract vs. the new guy's. Business bottom-line first: if the new guy is able to bring in more money, he's worth more to the company and the new guy should think about moving on.
Personally, I try to be loyal to those who've been loyal to me, but people also have to put some effort in to keeping current and staying valuable to the company. Otherwise the new folks are eventually going to be worth a lot more than a 30% delta.
Journal Journal: Back to the Future, Part II
I was in my home office yesterday, setting up a webcam when I realized that my setup is analogous to the living room from Back to the Future, Part II. I have video teleconferencing, multiple video feeds via ESPN3 at a
Submission + - Windows Phone 7 Marketplace possibly hacked (neowin.net)
broggyr writes: "Seems it didn't take long to hack the Windows Phone 7 marketplace..."
Submission + - China censors 5000 porn sites, 5000 arrested (domaincensorship.com)
lothos writes: China has shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year and arrested 5,000 people as it steps up a campaign against obscene material. Beijing has run a highly publicized drive against lewd online content which it claims is overwhelming the country’s internet and mobile phones and threatening the emotional health of children. Critics have accused the Chinese government of deepening the crackdown, launched last December, and said censorship had blocked many sites with politically sensitive or even user-generated content.
Submission + - Most New Phones in Europe Will Charge with USB
Hugh Pickens writes: "Dvice reports that as of next year, almost every new cellphone in Europe will have to be able to charge via micro-USB as the result of a voluntary plan agreed to by a whole host of cellphone manufacturers back in 2009, including most of the big names like Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm, RIM, LG, Motorola, and Samsung making more than 90% of the smartphones sold in the European Union. "Charger standardization is great for consumers, because we won't have to keep buying new chargers at ridiculous markups, and it's great for the environment, because we won't have to keep throwing those same chargers away whenever we get a new phone," writes Evan Ackerman. It's also worth noting that one of the first companies to agree to this standard was Apple, who has a history of making everything as proprietary as possible so maybe there will be a micro-USB on the iPhone 5."
Submission + - Delphi gets Kinected (lakraven.com)
santakrooz writes: UK developer, Simon Stuart, released a free open source Delphi component over the holiday that makes developing with and for the Kinect "drag-n-drop" easy. IT Security Labs has also posted a demo video that showcases what can quickly be done using Delphi and the TKinect component.
Comment Noise Factor (Score 1) 804
When I was in grad school, I noticed one guy playing FPS while in the lecture, and wondered why the guy bothered showing up to the lecture in the first place. Turns out it was for the free Wi-Fi (it was down in the lounge). He was in front of me, it was distracting, and I moved.
IMHO I can see a certain utility to laptop/tablet/etc use in the classroom. For example, downloading the professor's slides to help take notes while the lecture is being presented.
Putting a slightly different spin on it: what about the noise factor? Some laptops have quieter keys, but in a large lecture hall, if everyone were typing simultaneously, would the noise generated by 1,000 students typing become more of a distraction than a help? If you can't clearly hear the professor, it's hard to get what they are trying to say...
Just my two bits.
Comment Re:What a hacker! (Score 2) 496
The paper notebook, with the password written in it, sitting next to the computer, is also joint property.
Totally with you on that one. To expand on my analogy, what if both spouses have a joint PO box? Both have a key, but do they have the right to open the letters addressed solely to the other spouse? So, I did a little homework.. I think this one is going to come down to whether the judge equates e-mail to postal mail.
Comment Re:What a hacker! (Score 1) 496
Plus, the laptop likely falls under "joint property," so it's legal for him to access the laptop in general. If she knowingly left her password where he could access it, it's highly unlikely that she has a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Still, the case could go to whether it's legal to read mail of ypur spouse in Michigan. He may have access to the mailbox but nott be authorized to read the contents.
Submission + - Is Reading Spouse's e-mail a Crime?
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Detroit Free Press reports that Leon Walker is charged with unlawfully reading the e-mail of Ciara Walker, his wife at that time, which showed she was having an affair with her second husband, who once had been arrested for beating her in front of her son. Walker says he gave the e-mails to her first husband, the child's father, to protect the boy. "I was doing what I had to do," says Walker. "We're talking about putting a child in danger." Now prosecutors, relying on a Michigan statute typically used to prosecute crimes such as identity theft or stealing trade secrets, have charged Leon Walker with a felony for logging onto a laptop in the home he shared with his wife. Prosecutor Jessica Cooper defended her decision to charge Walker. "The guy is a hacker," says Cooper adding that the Gmail account "was password protected, he had wonderful skills, and was highly trained. Then he downloaded [the emails] and used them in a very contentious way.""
Comment Paper (Score 1) 498
Technically, the oldest file I've transferred from one -medium to another- so far was a 35-year old picture, going from Kodak photo paper to
In all seriousness, I used to write translation programs to go from 1980s proprietary formats to, sadly, late 1990s proprietary formats, so probably a 15 year digital to digital format transfer, give or take. These days I aim for searchable
