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Comment Re:bi weekly salary? (Score 1) 399

exactly. the study indicates a typical subject has 5 non-average months. If 2 months are above-average due to extra paycheques and the regular months aren't skewed lower by those 2 months, then some other factor(s) affects average salary (for better or worse) even more significantly than an "extra" paycheque. that's two of the points they're trying to make: people have hard time budgeting for these variances and those most affected tend to be double-whammied by having fewest options/resources to compensate

Comment Re:bi weekly salary? (Score 1) 399

fair point if that's not accounted for in their calculations, but if those 2 months are high enough to be 25+% above their average income, what about the 3 months (on average) where they are 25+% below their average income? There's more to it than just 2 months of extra paycheck, assuming the extra paycheck is even driving the study's results in the first place.

Comment Re:No fall, no change (Score 1) 895

look again: his approval rating is roughly the same. his disapproval rating is up (worse) 10% in that time. approx half of the undecideds have come off the fence and none in his favour. none of the many real or perceived gaffes caused a spike that could maybe be smoothed over, rather the ongoing cumulative effect of the succession of gaffes is gaining momentum against him. less than a month is a small sample size, but it would appear that he isn't going to get much of a "100 days" post-election honeymoon period with the voters

Comment How about this? (Score 1) 255

1) Pollution is bad mmmkay, kids?

2) Burning fossil fuels creates pollution

3) Don't believe 1) & 2)? breathe deeply off the exhaust pipe of your car long term and see what happens to your health

4) Therefore burning fossil fuels is bad and we don't have to bring climate into the equation

5) Profit?!
Space

Galactic Survey: The Universe Dying as Old Stars Fade Faster Than New Ones Are Born 199

astroengine writes: A study of more than 200,000 galaxies, encompassing wavelengths of light from the far ultraviolet to infrared, shows that the universe is producing half as much energy as it did 2 billion years ago and continues to fade. "Newer galaxies are simply putting out less energy than galaxies did in the past," astronomer Mehmet Alpaslan, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., told Discovery News. In other words, astronomers, for the first time, have gathered observational evidence that our universe is slowly marching toward its eventual heat death (in a few trillion years time).

Comment waaaaahhhhh (Score 1) 368

On the one hand, Apple oughtta just suck up the 3 months as product/service investment and still make the royalty payouts, but the reality is that, given their track record, I'd be cheering for them as an artist as Apple's success would eventually be better for me in the long run anyway.

The *real* reality is that no artists makes any real money off physical album sales, downloads or streaming except the rare mega-acts like Metallica, U2, and presumably TS which the RIAA treat as loss-leaders, so Apple paying or not for first 3 months is moot to almost all signed acts, never mind indies

Submission + - U.S. tech companies expected to lose more than $35 billion due to NSA spying (dailydot.com)

Patrick O'Neill writes: Citing significant sales hits taken by big American firms like Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Qualcomm, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, a new report says losses by U.S. tech companies as a result of NSA spying and Snowden's whistleblowing "will likely far exceed" $35 billion. Previously, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation put the estimate lower when it predicted the losses would be felt mostly in the cloud industry. The consequences are being felt more widely and deeply than previously thought, however, so the number keeps rising.

Comment off site storage (Score 1) 446

bank safe deposit box. $60/yr. Perfect size for 3 NAS drives....so 9-12 TB and improving...back everything up quarterly, monthly, weekly...whatever you need. house burns down, you have your safe deposit box. bank burns down, create new copies from home for new bank. house and bank burn down? probably the apocalypse and you're not that worried about storage anymore
It's funny.  Laugh.

Interviews: Ask SMBC's Creator Zach Weiner a Question 90

Zach Weiner is the author and illustrator of a number of webcomics, most notably Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC). He's been a guest contributor to xkcd and founded the sketch comedy group SMBC Theater. His project Augie and the Green Knight, was the most funded children's book on Kickstarter, and his newest project The Gentleman's Single-Use Monocle offers readers emergency reading protection with a bit of class. Zach has agreed to step away from the comics for a bit and answer any questions you might have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
Earth

Mysterious Siberian Crater Is Just One of Many 88

New submitter Sardaukar86 sends this excerpt from a Washington Post report: In the middle of last summer came news of a bizarre occurrence no one could explain. Seemingly out of nowhere, a massive crater appeared in one of the planet's most inhospitable lands. Early estimates said the crater, nestled in a land called "the ends of the Earth" where temperatures can sink far below zero, yawned nearly 100 feet in diameter. The saga deepened. The Siberian crater wasn't alone. There were two more, ratcheting up the tension in a drama that hit its climax as a probable explanation surfaced. Global warming had thawed the permafrost, which had caused methane trapped inside the icy ground to explode.

Now, however, researchers fear there are more craters than anyone knew — and the repercussions could be huge. Russian scientists have now spotted a total of seven craters, five of which are in the Yamal Peninsula. Two of those holes have since turned into lakes. And one giant crater is rimmed by a ring of at least 20 mini-craters, the Siberian Times reported.

Comment problem may not be Sarbanes-Oxley (Score 1) 251

"tangible goods" may be necessarily broad to limit actual criminals' ability to do an end-run around whatever limits S-O sets. Likewise for RICO, PATRIOT Act, etc. The problem isn't in how you use them to *catch* criminals, the problem is how you can destroy someone's life for committing a petty crime, or worse, punish an innocent because the law is so powerful that the accused can't properly mount a defense or cops a plea to avoid even larger sentence.

Should the captain and/or crew go to jail? Probably; destruction of evidence needs to carry a serious punishment. Is 20 years an appropriate punishment? Certainly not compared to the crimes the 20-yr option was intended to prosecute.

tl;dr

If these laws are necessarily broad, then they need limitations as to when the full weight of punishment is appropriate.

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