My understanding of oil drilling is that an unregulated well will gush at a much higher rate than a regulated one.

We use Salesforce.com (since rebranded as Common Ground), and I can answer most of these queries -- on tech backbone, it's the best you're going to get. It's all done in the cloud, and it's fairly robust commercial grade stuff. Exporting 50,000 records is just a question of downloading the CSV. If it's a really big job, they schedule it and ship it in an hour or so. Given that most NPOs can't or don't want to invest in their own hardware, putting it in the cloud is a really good idea. Likewise with data security concerns -- Salesforce.com is much better than leaving it to the typical NPO tech guy.

J

Of the versions you showed, the US version is for Vista, and the EU version is for Mac. Of course the Mac version is more expensive. It's for Mac (which means people will pay a much higher price for the exact same product even if it doesn't work as well as on competitors hardware; also development costs are spread across a smaller marketbase thus raising price), and its in the EU (which means it has VAT). Meanwhile, the same product comparatively, when both version are for vista, shows http://www.amazon.de/Adobe-Creative-Master-Collection-deutsch/dp/B003FSSL5K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1273780415&sr=1-1

The Vista EU version is 1784 Euro, which is 2230 USD. Its cheaper in Europe for the same product.

This, by the way, is a fairly niche product that hasn't been released yet, and due to its price, will only be purchased by those who have a very real need for it. No one is buying this unless they already have a way to profit from it or they are super rich and spend their money on software instead of cars and vacation houses.

If you don't like European software laws, set up your company in the US (business registrations are along the lines of $250 a year, and if you can't afford that but for some reason need $2500 software packages, you might try another line of business, for example not having one) and set up a European subsidiary that has to follow the software of the parent company in order to gain work. File everything under US GAAP and make sure you have a residence. A US citizen in name owning the company probably wouldn't hurt (keeping you as either an employee or a [non-general] partner. At any rate, keep the liability in the US, and you can use US software no problem. On the other hand, unless you are a fairly large (publicly traded or on the cusp of doing so) company, hiring expats for the sake of saving money on software doesn't really make any sense. While you *can* do this, it definitely won't be worth the time or effort.

And flash is not a standard. It is a moving target completely controlled by one company that makes changes to the "standard" whenever it wants to sell more tools...

Growing from $50m to $1B in five years would mean that the market for open sources increases twentyfold in just five years. OSS has been around since the 80ies, OSS companies have been around since the nineties. So it took 15 years for the market to grow to $50m, why on earth should it increase twentyfold in just five measly years? Like many analysts, he is just making up numbers.

Even ARM, which is significantly smaller than either of those, makes $305 million in revenue. There's nothing impressive about making $1 million in revenue.

Well, the argument goes that an animal isn’t mentally cognizant enough to consent or not to a sexual act. Just like a 15-year-old isn’t considered mentally cognizant enough (in all of the US and many other parts of the world), or a person who is physically of age but who has a mental retardation isn’t considered mentally cognizant enough to make that decision.

However then you’re in a very gray area that I frankly don’t like. Why is statutory rape called statutory rape? Because it isn’t just plain ol’ regular “rape”; it’s only statutory rape. Statutory = “the law says it”. They basically made up a new crime called “the law calls this rape”. Well, the law already called certain things rape, and they are just referred to as plain jane “rape”; isn’t statutory rape by its very name redundant? The very existence of its name implies that it isn’t rape... it’s just legally categorized as a form of rape because it creeps us out and we think it should be made illegal.

No, we have to protect 15-year-old girls from creepy 40-year-old men, because they aren’t smart enough to know that they should never have sex with a 40-year-old man (even if they for some reason want to), and if they did like the guy a whole lot and for some reason decided to have sex with the guy and enjoyed it just fine, it would later end up scarring them for life because it should scar anyone for life – merely a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s the power of suggestion.

Then when she turns 17, or 18, or whatever the magical age may be, she’s suddenly old enough to be treated like dirt by the 21-year-old asshole she’s somehow been attracted to, and when she regrets that abusive relationship five or ten years down the line, it’s her own fault for being such a slut because she should’a known better.

But as I recall it was the liberal bias of all those GreenPeace types that killed it. So, it looks like liberal bias fucked us before and is coming back for seconds!

Except that ignores reality. Not even China, France, India, or Russia finds nuclear power profitable. Nuclear power appeals to state planners not businesses.

Falcon

A right is something which you are in the right for doing - you can do it with impunity.

No a "right" is a legal concession from the state which an individual can positively enforce in a court of law. A right can be negative, --a concession that the state will not do something to you, eg. legislate against your freedom of expression-- or positive, a concession that the state will do something for you, eg provide you or your children with a adequate minimum level of education.

Rights are neither God given, self-evident, universal nor fixed (though they may be entrenched). If you can't enforce it, it's not a right.

I don't really see the growth factor for open source hardware. Yeah, its great if you are a geek, but if you aren't... why bother? Most open source hardware projects are designed for people to program. I see things like Android becoming popular, open enough to do most things you want, but still polished. Yeah, I like being able to program obscure assembly commands to a CPU to make it do odd things, but I like things to work without having to spend hours setting them up. So while I don't think things are going to shrink, I think that the number of geeks really aren't increasing enough to expand the market.

Hell, President Obama just admitted to not knowing how to use an iPod or iPad.

He's not an Apple fan. Move on.
   

No, it won't change in practice. They might outlaw transcoding, but open source transcoding software exists and will continue to exist as long as someone gives a $h*t.

Besides, let them mandate MPEG 7. That gives the pirates a nice, easy, non-moving target. Corporate morons.

Its unfortunate that eating lunch by yourself makes someone appear to be a snobbish loser.
Extroverts (I'm referring to people who get their energy from interacting with other people, and find it draining to be alone - not referring to outgoing people) assume that everyone is an extrovert. Introverts (referring to people who get their energy from being alone, and find it draining to be with other people - not referring to "shy" people) end up getting judged harshly when they just want to use their lunch break to actually just get a break and recharge.

I eat lunch alone nearly every day. When else am I going to read /. ?

A lot of the comments here focus on the professional side of what you should do. I think the social side of work is just as important. Go to lunch with your team, go have a smoke or a coffee break with people, just talk to them and find out what their interests are or discuss some problems you are currently working on. Having to describe your problem to somebody can itself give you new ideas how to solve it or their suggestions could be helpful too.
Get to know the people who are working there, their professional and their personal side.
Also, if the guys there are doing any activities outside of work together then you might want to join in. Or join them when some of them go grab a beer in the evenings!

Don't be afraid to put your foot down if you ever have to but just generally be yourself, be authentic and be a likable, sociable person without sucking up of course. Plus do your job. Then you should be just fine.

But the point is exactly that your society doesn't choose to find ethical leaders; in practice it prefers the "greedy and corrupt"

Don't look at what your society at large claims to prefer; look at actions! And don't kid yourself that it doesn't value "greedy and corrupt"; it is almost a rule everywhere that members of "underclass", even if complaining at the system of governance in their place, start to play along if they have the chance... (and benefits)