I don't know why people always quote things in dollars-per-month. That is meaningless. When I was in Russia in the late 90s, bus fare was less than 5 cents in the city I was in. At the same time it was $2 in the U.S. I took a family of 8 out to dinner with four courses, vodka, champagne, the works - $25. That would have been $200 in the U.S. Of course, the head of household was only making $300/month - but what did his $300 equate to? Hard to say, given the difference in socialization, piracy, etc. Want a new laptop in Russia (then)? Expensive. Want a pound of beef? Very cheap.

You can't compare dollar incomes to living standards like that.

All of history? I think you'll find the first 6,000 years or so of human existence to be a very fast read on this subject, since corporations didn't exist until the Romans and arguably not in an identifiable form comparable to modern corporations until well after the Renaissance.

So as geekoid would say, "um, no."

That 5% is a pure guess. It could be 50% for all you know.

There's also a difference between shutting down and finding the sales prospects - as prices go up, fewer people can buy - make that line of business unattractive to the point where they get out of it. Consolidation, monopoloy...

Economics is fiendishly difficult to control.

There is tremendous irony here. The Chinese threw out the old ruling class for the communists and end up exploited by the capitalists.

Low-tech goods can still be found "made in the USA" (assuming you're in the USA, but probably true elsewhere). A Google, for example, turned up this site for shoes. There are lots of things where, if you're willing to pay more and take a more traditional approach (e.g., leather instead of high-tech fabrics), you can buy local. For example, it is easy to buy all your furniture from a local craftsman/woodworker - but the price will not even be remotely like what you'd find at Wal-mart.

On the other hand, for most if not all high-tech consumer goods, there simply is no other choice.

Seriously - you want to be a disease vector for hideous diseases that are easily preventable. Go live somewhere else.

The sole evidence presented is the statement "I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that!". The second article simply refers to the first.

What is this $40K? Are developers literally getting an invoice for $40K from Microsoft, or is that one of those "that's X number of hours @ so much per developer hour" kind of multiplications? If it's an invoice, is it really a flat fee in that nice round number or is he just pulling this number out of the air?

For a bunch of people who allegedly are alternative non-mainstream revolutionary wannabes, Slashdotters sure take everything they read in blogs at face value.

Legislator uses hyperbole to make his point.

Immediately, 300 posts on Slashdot about McCarthyism, the destruction of civil liberties, dogs and cats living together, etc.

People here are so lame and predictable.

Nice add, too, about parliamentary privilege, which is utterly irrelevant.

This summary reads like it was written by a 14-year-old who went to an ACLU rally and came away foaming at the mouth, pumping his fist in the air, eager to find an evil politician.

You could look at services like ShoeBoxed, where you mail them a stack of documents or receipts and they send you scans back. They're one I happened to hear about - I'm sure there are competitors. Just using them as an example, not an endorsement - I haven't personally tried them.

Or put another way:

The job is probably somewhere between these extremes:

1. As Kenja describes, managing a complex software testing platform, installing the software, licensing it, configuring it, writing the scripts for it, working with the dev team to make sure your testing is in sync with what they're doing, etc. Simply managing a complex product and all of its organizational interconnections could easily be a fulltime job. Besides the product, you'd probably have to know whatever programming language(s) are being used (Java, C#, whatever), plus the app's own scripting language, plus possibly some ancillary languages - perl, SQL, etc.
2. Having a Word doc with a bunch of tests you are supposed to run every time they are ready to release a new version. You manually go through all these tests and send emails or enter a problem in a bug-tracking system once something breaks.

If they didn't say "we're looking for someone with GronkTest 3 experience" it's more likely to be nearer the latter than the former.

Where did you get the idea that the V for Vendatta mask is a 17th century image?

The mask in use is based on a copyrighted comic book image, not a generic Guy Fawkes image.

No, it doesn't.

"What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask."

...and not subject to royalties.

Anonymous, thanks for inflating the profits of one of the big media companies you are protesting against.

For every Fawkes mask sold, Warner gets a cut.

For every cut Warner gets, Moore gets a cut.

Alan is probably the world's biggest fan of Anonymous.