When the US and Italian police have problems with Mafia dons (all the evidence points to them, but it is very difficult to pin anything on them), the IRS has much more success in getting them on tax evasion.
Give the IRS something to do, and maybe enlist the NSA's help with tapping dark matter's communication channels so that the IRS can figure out where the dark matter is hiding!
And if they tell you you're going to be safe, more than once, you're going to die.
Even worse, never, ever, agree to wear a red shirt and beam down to a planet with them. You probably have a better chance of survival by playing Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol...
Ok, so here's what doesn't make sense. If they're saying 25% of the smog came from china, then only 1.3% of the total smog is from goods produced for export to the US. On the other hand, if they're really saying that what they're saying, and 25% of total smog is from US goods, that means 470% of the smog in total is form China.
5. I'm really tired and I missed something. But I don't think I'm that tired.
The article is a bit whiffy when it comes to the figures, but the bit you are missing is that it is not just the smog from goods produced for export to the US that is making its way over to the US. If it was, that would be an interesting irony... I do not think it helps that the article seems to be at the same time trying to discuss the amount of pollution generated by Chinese manufacturing of goods for export to the US, while also discussing the amount of smog "exported" from China to the US. Those things are very easily confused.
So some of the smog generated by China that makes its way over to the US was generated by manufacturing processes for goods not destined for export to the US.
I was wondering how much Linus knows about Conjugated Linoleic Acids.
Quite a bit, it seems. After all, he has been able to analyse the CLAs produced by several other sources and determined that they are broken. So he must know as much or more about them than the FSF and Apache biochemists who produced the Acids for those organisations... although why the FSF and Apache Foundation would need or want such materials is beyond me...
First, you would be surprised how inter-connected a lot of these HR departments and technical team are - people moving from one company to another, or simply talking to each other about "asshat" candidates is very common.
I find that is more of a problem in smaller countries and specialized industries, such as the banking sector in Stockholm or Oslo... less of a problem in London or New York.
However, the rule is, as always, keep it professional in the interview. If you get the feeling that the role or the people or the company are not for you, explain to the interviewer calmly and rationally that you are not getting a good feeling about the situation, thank them for their time and wish them luck in filling the position. Then make your way out of the office and be thankful that you have only wasted an hour or two of your time. Certainly, that is not as satisfying as making a snarky comment, but you will find that all the pre-prepared snarky comments you walked in with are not appropriate for the situation, and all of the appropriate snarky comments you can come up with on the spot are insufficiently snarky to correctly encapsulate your sarcasm.
Plus, if you think the interview questions are stupid, wait until you meet the users. Asking stupid questions in the interview is a good way of weeding out the people who will be incapable of suppressing the urge to strangle the third user who asks a mortifyingly stupid question.
Bah, they'll just wrap the content in JavaScript. Wanna use NoScript? Fine, then you don't get to access the content.
If you take the view that the purpose of the website is to promote the company, and the purpose of the Ad is to, err, advertise (either the company, one of their services, or an affiliate), then the Adblock arms race will probably be ultimately won by that company's competitors:
1. Company puts up an ad-laden web site to try and sell/promote their goods/services, and convert viewers into customers.
2. Viewers of the web site use Adblock to cut out the ads.
3. Company uses tech to make ads indistinguishable from content (using scripts, for example).
4. Viewers of the web site start using NoScript or similar tools.
5. Company's web site is no longer viewable to potential customers, so the site viewers are not not converted into customers.
6. Company loses potential customers to competitors.
7. (Competitors) Profit!!!!
ok, it does not always work out that way, but the fundamental truth is that a company exists to make money for the shareholders of said company. They do that by adding value to goods and services that they provide to customers. Nobody is forced to buy from a specific company (exclusive supply contracts or biased tender processes aside), so it is entirely voluntary for a customer to put their money with a particular company.
While a customer may need or think they need a particular item, in a market where there are several potential sources or variants of that item, an individual company needs the customer more than the customer needs that particular company (because the customer can go elsewhere for that item).
Remember business people... "The customer is always right."
An armed society is a polite society. When you know someone is probably able to kill you (justified or not), you tend to be much more polite to them. Take away people's ability to restrain rude fucks, and the rude fucks run riot through the life you're trying to live.
An armed society (with concealed carry) is a society in which the individuals fear other individuals because they might be carrying a gun. "This person might be carrying a gun so they can kill me, so I need to fear them."
Fear leads to one of two impulses - fight or flight. Flight, and the guy runs out of the theater. Fight, and the guy pulls his own gun because he feels threatened, and you have another Trayvon Martin incident, but with a few more witnesses and the possibility of a stray shot wounding or killing innocent bystanders.
Politeness comes from mutual respect, not from fear. Respect has nothing to do with guns, but with tolerance and empathy. Both needed to show a bit more tolerance and empathy for the wishes of the other, but neither did so one is now dead and the other will almost certainly spend the rest of their life in prison at the taxpayer's expense. Doesn't exactly sound like a win-win for the "Right to bear arms" lobby.
Thanks you for calling, Linda. Please sign me up for the no-filtering-whatsoever service, please. My own filters that I have setup and maintain are more accurate, more unbiased, and less aligned toward corporate group think than the crap you are trying to push on me. As for child pornography and hard core porn, I have already discussed such things with my children and prepared them for what is out there. I trust that they are mentally strong enough and intelligent enough to be able to make basic decisions about "wrong" and "right" more than some faceless and unaccountable political dweeb that I have never met.
Seeing as how the BBC article clearly mentions that the "Passengers" (aka Researchers) on the ship have been rescued, but that the crew members of the ship are staying on board and could be stuck for several weeks, I hope the attention span of the people keeping an eye on the ship is a bit better than that of the
The two scenarios where I see this being a benefit for the surveillance and intelligence-gathering community is that:
(a) Other alphabet soup agencies in the US and abroad will get an even better idea of what the NSA are gathering, and they will then push even harder for similar capabilities within their domestic spheres to give them more trading options with NSA and others, "because if the NSA needs this information, then so do we" and
(b) The scrambling by pro-surveillance lobbyists and lawmakers to say that this is legal, followed by the judicial branch issuing judgements on this "grey area" of the law in conflicting and contradictory rulings, to the point where the lawmakers again need to step in with a new law that "clarifies" the current situation.
Although the fact that I can even call this a "grey area" is frankly laughable. While I am sure the collective efforts of the judiciary ruling on cases which impinge on Constitutional issues of the last 100 years have not been a co-ordinated campaign to weaken and obviate the Consitution, the end result is that the Constitution is no longer a shield for the people protecting them from Federal Government and limiting the reach of those in power. It now has so many holes in it that it is barely a safety net" between the two groups - it stops most of the baseballs thrown at it, but bullets will easily find the holes.
Note: The previous comment is not intended to be a suggestion that the people of the United States of America should round up the politicians, lobbyists, lawyers and judges and shoot them.
Having said that, as bad as the USofA has become, it is still possible to criticize the US Government in this way without being dragged away to re-education classes or prison camps. Mostly... so far.
They call themselves the 'intelligence' community, but even that is a lie.
No, no... the NSA is always on the lookout for intelligence. One of their analysts at one point had some intelligent material in their possession. But given the choice of spit or swallow, it was swallowed, flushed and lost.
...that kind of scale could work.
For a bounty of $150,000 to be "less than two-tenths of 1% of those companies' annual revenue" (I am assuming that is each company's annual revenue calculation, not a global pool), that suggests the model is aimed at companies with >$75M annual revenue.
Newsflash for the paper authors... there are not many software development companies in that ballpark. Granted, the smaller the company, (probably) the smaller the market for their software so the smaller the need for such a bug bounty.
But if companies are going to be "compelled" to buy bug reports, that is going to require federal legislation which is not good at such fine-tuned work, especially after 150 groups of lobbyists have crafted their specific amendments to it, at which point companies will shift development efforts offshore, causing the federal legislation to be retargeted at company head-office location or companies whose software is used within the country, and a legal dance to get around the legislation begins, assuming software dev houses do not simply say their software cannot legally be used within USA.
a) Those 'other shareholders' bought the shares voluntarily. The taxpayer didn't.
Very true, but "the taxpayer" did not choose to invest in GM in the first place, the US Government did. Equally, "the taxpayer" did not choose to sell their shares in GM, at a lower price than those shares were bought for (thus generating the losses), the US Government did.
The US Government had a very compelling reason for buying those shares and shoring up the GM corporate entity and its supply chain. However, there was no contractual obligation for them to sell the shares when they did - as far as I can tell, that decision to sell was made for purely political/PR decisions. Admittedly, those reasons are also compelling - if the US Government introduces and legislation that will have some kind of positive impact for car manufacturers, then there is a conflict-of-interest issue to be addressed, so it is in the Government's interest to avoid holding the shares for an extended period.
However, the Government decided to sell when it did, and the Government is (or should be) responsible for the losses incurred through that decision. After all, if the transaction had yielded a massive profit, the Government would not have been willing to hand that profit over, either back to GM for further investment or to some other organisation that could use it. That profit would go to the treasury to be used.
The company whose shares are being bought and sold has no control over that process, as the shares are freely tradeable on the open market. So without any leverage of control, the company cannot assume the liability for losses. Want to complain about it? Welcome to capitalism. Complaints can be addressed to our Complaints Manager, Helen Waite. Her office is in the basement. Form a queue outside the door, and when someone asks what you are doing, tell them that you were told to go to Helen Waite.
The biggest security hole in any operating system is the same in every operating system - the source of ID-10-T and PEBKAC errors (Idiot, and Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair) - the OS can be totally secure and hardened, but if it allows users to do stupid stuff then it is still going to be vulnerable.
Unless, of course, the system is totally locked down so that it resembles the IT version of a strait jacket, in which case users will spend as much time cursing the fact that the computer stops them working, and trying to get around your restrictions to see their lolcat pictures as they do actually working.
If the physical object itself was a legal form of currency, then I could get behind what the Government are doing... but as the Government has only just started to recognise Bitcoin as a commodity with value, I fail to see the rationale behind this unless either the Government people behind the idea are crazy for power or they actually think that the physical "coin" this guy makes is what carries the value.
As it stands, I would say that the physical object here is closer to being an ornament, perhaps a small piggy bank - for example, he charges $50 for these items, and people send him $100, so he returns an item with a $50 note inside it. He has sold them a container, not a representation of money. Because in the case of the Bitcoins, the representation of money is the cryptographic key which is inside the item he has made, and the value of the item he has made is that of the materials used in its construction plus his time and effort.
What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
