Comment New Technology? (Score 0) 82
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tracy
1946 called, on their technology.
Employers Switching From Payroll Checks To Prepaid Cards With Fees 1103
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports a growing number of American workers are being paid by prepaid payroll card. The cards often have fees attached to basic services like making a cash withdrawal or for inactivity. Some employees report that the employers pay by card by default, with paperwork barriers to opting out, and some report that their employers refuse to pay them by check or direct deposit. The issuing banks pitch the cards to employers as a cost-cutting payroll alternative, and sometimes even offer a financial reward for each employee they sign up."
Apple Files Trademark For "iWatch" In Japan 82
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has filed a trademark application for 'iwatch' in Japan. 'The maker of iPhones is seeking protection for the name which is categorized as being for products including a handheld computer or watch device, according to a June 3 filing with the Japan Patent Office that was made public last week. Takashi Takebayashi, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Apple, didn’t respond to a message left at his office seeking comment on the application.' Rumors suggest that the new iWatch is expected to sport a 1.5-inch OLED screen."
Immigration Bill Passes the Senate, Includes More H-1B Visas 274
An anonymous reader writes "While the landmark immigration bill (full text PDF), which recently passed the U.S. Senate, is being hailed as bringing crucial reforms that will vastly improve the state of immigration in this country, there is a provision in it that is seeing relatively little discussion: section 4101, a 'market-based' increase in the amount of H-1B visas for skilled workers. 'The pitched arguments of both sides, which are likely to resurface in the House when it takes up its version of an immigration overhaul, cloud a complicated reality. There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole. If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers — more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs — but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers.'"
Google's Blogger To Delete All 'Adult' Blogs That Have Ads 192
DougDot sends this excerpt from ZDNet:
"In three days, Google's Blogger will begin to delete scores of blogs that have existed since 1999 on Monday under its vague new anti-sex-ad policy purge. On Wednesday night at around 7pm PST, all Blogger blogs marked as 'adult' were sent an email from Google's Blogger team. The email told users with 'adult' blogs that after Sunday, June 30, 2013, all adult blogs will be deleted if they are found to be 'displaying advertisements to adult websites' — while the current Content Policy does not define what constitutes 'adult' content. To say that Twitter ignited with outrage would be an understatement. Blogger users are panicked and mad as hell at Google."
Comment Re:network ignorance (Score 1) 331
How else do you have thought-crime if you don't allow the maintained "classified" nature of information that's public?
</orwell>
Comment Re:network ignorance (Score 2) 331
And now if you ban the freedom of the press, only former employees can have freedom of the press.
Comment Re:Really (Score 4, Interesting) 229
The solution is to purchase music videos of Prince and have them playing clearly visible by the police monitoring. It's illegal for them to make copies, and it's not illegal for you to display the content within your home... for now.
Comment Re:Misread negotiating position (Score 1) 528
Actually, if we now have a control group of the management without the union, we can now observe whether it's management's fault if/when there's another round of borrowing too much followed by another bankruptcy.
Comment Re:Yes, that'll work (Score 1) 259
But then the magical incoherence of TFA kicks in and deciphers any attempts at crypto on the fly.
Comment Re: Cease and Desist letter (Score 1) 144
I think this is the ideal case to reply using "mille sabords".
Comment Re:How about a friggin' HATE button? (Score 1) 114
After seeing that "like" crimes happen in the absence of a "hate" option, I'm left unconvinced.
Comment Re:factoid (Score 2) 442
The maintainers of Upton Sinclair's estate would like to have a few words with you.
Comment Re:Obligatory Quote (Score 1) 583
Which is why humans went extinct before the invention of arms.
Comment My two cents (Score 1) 438
The impending end of support for XP has done quite a bit for the small business I work for already. For most residential customers that still have a working XP era system, Linux Mint has been an easy transition. The difficulties have been few (support for older Brother and Lexmark printers, out of box suspend not working with some hardware configurations, multi-monitor support although improved still needs more work, lack of easy options for iTunes pruchasing/updates, and Netflix subscription). Things have looked better in each of the standard releases, but we're sticking with the Mint 13 (Maya) long-term service release for ease of support. I have introduced customers to some of the other options (Redhat, Ubuntu, and in a few cases ArtistX) but most customers have opted for Mint.
With the nature of driver support, older, pre-Vista era, systems have required fewer tweaks (Broadcom firmware for wireless for one example, although searching in synaptic for b43 makes that easy enough to fix). Even learning when to use nomodeset or the various ACPI options for finicky hardware has been easy compared hunting for drivers when they either aren't present (I'm looking at you Lenovo and Toshiba) or haven't been updated since the machine stopped being under extended warranty (*cough* Dell *cough*), or the driver is listed under the wrong operating system more than a few times (HP/Compaq and Dell again).
Reinstalling XP on 10 to 20 machines a month, I've gotten a glimpse of why the companies wouldn't want to put the time and effort propping it up any more. Much like Vista, XP still works fine until something requires you to reinstall (such as hard disk failure) or to move on (oh, you wanted to transfer your existing licensed software onto that brand new system? *snicker*). Transitioning from one version of a software program voluntarily makes for happier customers than if they find out there's a looming need to switch.
I think XP will probably be fondly remembered as one of the better operating systems overall, but enough technology has continued to happen since it was released that it's time for some other contenders to enter the ring.
