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Microsoft

Submission + - Apple was only months from the abyss in 1996 (pcauthority.com.au)

An anonymous reader writes: Jobs has revealed the company was a mere 90 days from bankruptcy in 1996 when the board asked him to retake the reins. This was after Jobs joined the elite, and possibly single-member-club, of people to have been fired and then rehired by their own company. At the time Microsoft famously threw Apple a US$150 million lifeline, a gesture which was thrown into almost comical relief last week when a spike in Apple's share price saw it surge past Microsoft to become the world's biggest technology company — and second overall — by market capitalisation. Asked at the D: All Things Digital conference how he felt about that, Jobs replied "surreal". Other revelations included the fact that the wildly popular iPad was ready for release as far back as 2007 when it was mothballed to make way for the iPhone.
NASA

Shuttle Atlantis Lands Safely After Final Official Mission 125

saintory writes "Shuttle Atlantis landed this morning after flying its final official mission. In its 25-year service, the shuttle Atlantis has logged over 120 million miles." After a successful mission to deliver a research module to the International Space Station, the craft landed at Kennedy Space Center, and will "go through the normal flow of prelaunch preparations in order to serve as the 'launch-on-need' vehicle for Endeavour's STS-134 mission, the last scheduled flight of the Space Shuttle Program." Congratulations to the people aboard and on the ground who engineered the shuttle's successful return.
Piracy

Submission + - BSA: Hardware Without Software Not Tax Deductible (abclinuxu.cz) 3

tykev writes: The Czech Ministry of Finance along with the BSA threaten to disallow deducting hardware from base tax if purchased without software. This idea stems from their joint proclamation that for software to be used legally, it must be bought – thus completely ignoring the existence of free and open source software which can be obtained legally without any purchase whatsoever. The Ministry and the BSA have issued a press release which basically labels all users of 'free software' pirates. Many public organizations and companies have expressed their dismay.

Comment Chose Linux support over PSN (Score 3, Insightful) 171

Too bad I no longer have access to PSN since I refused to install the update that would have removed Linux support from my console, so I won't be able to use this premium subscription. Maybe I'm cynical, but I read "nothing planned will impact the service’s current free aspects" as "of course, any NEW multiplayer games you buy will be subject to the new 'premium' requirement to play online"... Sony does have a documented history of promising one thing and then doing exactly the opposite.

Comment Re:I switched to legal downloads (Score 1) 264

> If every song made was available for $0.50 with a good client,
> guaranteed results and all that, there would be very little song piracy.

Even the full $1 that iTunes charges would be perfectly fine... if it was split only between Apple (for providing the service) and the artist (for producing the work). Over the last ten years or so the RIAA/metallica have shown beyond all doubt that they are contemptible, loathsome, and evil beyond redemption. I want to see them ruined.

Comment Re:Biodiversity Is Priceless (Score 1) 129

The thing is, we are not facing any extreme temperature-like metaphor. We are sacrificing them for our own comfort, not for our survival.

I don't perceive any true elements to that statement. Are middle Americans driving over exotic flora and fauna in their SUV's by shortcutting through the 'glades to get their groceries quicker? Or are acres of rain forest being burned and cut down every day by subsistence farmers in financial straits where they have no other options?

Only a small portion of the world can really argue from the position of having comfort to sacrifice things over, and those are in virtually all cases not the portions of the population on the front lines of our encroachment against nature.

I am not trying to tell you that reversing this trend is impossible, but we should not kid ourselves what socially deep roots would need to be cut or rearranged in order to affect change. So why don't you start by illustrating what comfort you could conceivably give up that would give Brazilian farmers an alternative to deforestation? Hint: it's not buying a hybrid.

Comment Beautiful? Not really, No. (Score 1) 259

His Beaming is terrible; his augmentation dots are on the barline; his slurs are too thick; his accidentals too small. His note spacing sdoesn't look too hot either.

Donald Byrd, the leading exponent of notational algorithms, has shown that fully automated music notation is not possible without human-level artificial intelligence.

....still, I applaud his efforts as an early start.

Comment Re:and? (Score 1) 411

Worrying about NASA's budget is like complaining an employee dropped a penny when someone walked off with a laptop, NASA's budget almost inconsequential. The three big entitlement/pork programs are Social Security, Medicare, and military, each roughly $600 billion a year. NASA? $17 Billion. You can axe NASA and sell it off clean and the needle on US deficit won't even twitch.

As it is, it looks like we're spending $1.8 trillion dollars this year solving (or maybe even causing) social problems in one form or another and the return on the money just isn't there compared to infrastructure and research. The problem is, people that advocate fiscal competence generally aren't elected. Maybe things will change after this year's elections, certain primaries have had surprising results lately.

Comment Re:Slavery in America Today (Score 1) 249

And yet if prisoners were denied opportunities to work, you and your kind would be up front and center decrying the waste of manpower in prison, as well as the lack of job retraining skills for otherwise idle hands.

I don't know about the GP poster and "his kind", but the waste of manpower prison is a good thing: it provides an economic incentive to not lock people up. When locking me up means that you lose the tax dollars I pay, and have to provide me with room and board, you're only going to lock me up if I'm a threat. If by locking me up you get my skills for pennies on the dollar, there's a perverse incentive.

Job training does not imply selling the trainee's labor.

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