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Comment it's not hard (Score 4, Informative) 222

It can be done. Yahoo has the resources and man power to get there but micro managing was mentioned and that's a key problem right there. I have worked with micro managing managers and I have worked with well informed managers who keep abreast of things and is course I have worked with bad managers. Since I have begun managing myself I have seen great results and I DO NOT micro manage. The best managers I have ever had which have lead me to how I manage now are involved and aware and make key management decisions but they do not micro manage and that was key. I do not micro manage and I have seen steady and excellent growth in our business due to how I operate and how the best managers before me operated has lead me down that path. You take micro managers and they are persistent firm of stress in the workplace. They are invasive and cumbersome. On the other hand I have had managers that are the opposite end of the spectrum where they were not involved enough and/or didn't understand the decisions as best as they should have. They lead to very poor management decisions. A good manager not only knows what is best but knows where to ask and where to trust and speaking of trust you need to know your team well so that you can effectively trust their decisions.

Comment If I conquered the world.... (Score 1) 613

...there would be no DST. There wouldn't be any time zones either. We'd all go Zulu (UTC). 12 hour clocks would earn you time in jail. If someone on the opposite end of the planet says call me at 19:30 then you would call them exactly when they had expected to hear from you. You wouldn't need to worry about what time zone they are in, if they even have DST in that country or whether they meant morning or night. It would be hell to get used to, for our generation, but kids growing up with that wouldn't know anything else and it wouldn't be any more difficult for them to learn. I know my generation would have to get used to their bank being open from 15:00-01:00 which would be normal daylight operations and people would b***h about it as being the worst thing ever for 5 years, maybe 10 (except military folk who are used to keeping 24 hour Zulu time ), but we'd adapt and avoid all sorts of issues with our fragmented and bi-annually adjusted time. I've also heard +/- DST times severely increase depression so there's that to. Vote for me as world leader if you like what you've heard.

Comment Re:The answer is no (Score 1) 298

You can give it a lot of names that all imply the same thing. It is not a GPS unless you have explicit written permission to call it a GPS by the D.O.D. or you are creating a GPS receiver that falls within the scope of the licensing guidelines.

An Intel CPU IS an advanced micro device, in the broad scope of definitions, but we don't walk around calling Intel chips AMD and Intel has no right to do so. I could start a bottled water company that refines water from a mountain but I can't call it Mountain Dew either even if it is made from dew on a mountain.

I see no reference on the GPS Wikipedia page where it states GLONASS is a GPS nor do I see it on the GLONASS Wikipedia page where it states GLONASS is a GPS. Those would both be good places to take a hint.

Comment The answer is no (Score 1) 298

Is It Really GPS If It Doesn't Use Satellites?

The answer is no. No it is not GPS If it doesn't use satellites. In fact, even if it does use satellites, it's not GPS unless it uses the data received by the USA DOD GPS satellite transmitters. GPS is a pronoun, a proper name. GPS refers to, specifically and explicitly, the DOD GPS satellite system and anything not relying on the signals transmitted by those specific satellites IS NOT GPS.

Comment Videos (Score 1) 280

I use a few different messaging apps, more then I'd like to use to but not everyone all uses the same one so I have to be diverse. WhatsApp is the only messaging app I have, outside of text messages (MMS), that allows me to send a video directly to someone. I don't need this feature often but when I do, WhatsApp has it.

if I had to pick a favorite it would either be Hangouts or Facebook Messenger due to the fluid nature that I can roam from my phone to PC to tablet, etc, during an active conversation and still be involved with the conversation without being bound to one device or being explicitly bound to just that app.

Both Hangouts and Facebook Messenger can be used via the Pidgin application on my Linux desktop, as well as other applications and OS's, though I have recently switched to the Hangouts extension for Chrome which auto starts when my window manager launches with a systray icron.

Comment Re:Good thing it's dead (Score 3, Informative) 138

HTML, XML, and really the whole SGML family kind of suck-- ugly syntax, annoying to hand-edit, lots of boilerplate, and the list of faults go on. The idea of writing actual programs in such a language is terrifying.

You cannot write programs in any of those. They are not programming languages. They are markup languages. That's why they all have ML in each acronym. It's short for "Markup Language".

Comment Re:fuck you iceland. (Score 1) 684

Agreed. Pornography is a career choice that these people willingly enter. I have a friend who's a female porn star and she loves her work. I don't understand how porn can be considered a violation of anyones civil rights. Let's pretend it is though through some weird black magic the rest of the world doesn't understand, how does it then become a violation of a female porn stars civil rights but not a violation of a male porn stars civil rights?

I'd like to know what they're smoking in Iceland. Can the "expert on pornography" please provide a list of which actresses they have interviewed who claimed porn was a violation of their civil rights and specifically which civil rights they feel were violated and how?

Comment Try taking the solution from the other end (Score 1) 332

I have and I know many of my co-workers and friends have, over the years, gone from working with the data sets via a programming language and a RDBMS and exported the result sets into a spreadsheet format. I don't know if this applies to your question but think about it, if your problems are the lack of programability in a spread sheet then why not take it from the other end and go straight to programming and export your final set into a spreadsheet. You can create an excel spreadsheet from just about any common language these days whether it be VB, C, Perl, Python, Java, PHP, etc. I'm pretty sure you can import from a Excel spreadsheet from all of those same languages as well if that's where you need to import your original data from.

Comment What about the labels? (Score 1) 665

What label are you with and how much did they make off your streaming? I don't know how this applies specifically to streaming but music sales should be at a peak right now despite what the studios and RIAA tell you. I read a story recently which points out that the studios and the RIAA keep complaining that record sales are at an all time low as their argument for how piracy is ruining the music industry but then goes to highlight that yes, while record sales are at an all time low, music sales are not. The industries are raking in large sums of cash for individual song sales via iTunes, etc and their profits are steadily growing each year as they always have been. I don't know how this affects streaming but the point is if the artist makes x money on y service then the label / studio that the artist is with makes many multiples of x on y service.

If you're an independent musician who has no label then on the streaming service, look at the numbers of subscribers your streaming to and compare these numbers to other artists, both successful and low key. Additionally, I've never heard tell of any artist surviving solely based on the money they make through a streaming service. Streaming music is like the 21st century version of radio air time. No artist I have ever heard of has ever been known to make a living from radio time. What about sales (records, iTunes, etc)? What about concerts? What about merchandising? These have all been staples of the music entertainment industry for many generations.

If streaming media really is the 21st century version of radio air time then what has radio air time been to the music industry? Promotions! Radio play and now streaming is promotions. People don't know you so you play your songs on streaming media and while people are listening to a hodge-podge mix of Avant Cello they hear your work and say "Hey! I like this artists. These songs are great! I want to buy that CD / iTunes song" or whatever it is that you sell.

Sorry but while listening to someone complain that the money they make from streaming media isn't enough to survive on, I find this to be as empty and one sided of a view as the RIAA saying that pirates are ruining the entertainment industry because record sales are down. I believe you that you don't make enough there to survive and I believe record sales are down but it's only a small part of a bigger story or as far as the artist is concerned it's only a small part of a bigger story for most of them and if you want to make money then you should follow suit and sell elsewhere, as I mentioned sales, concerts, merchandise, etc.

This sounds like a guy complaining not enough people buy Pepsi to support his store that only sells Pepsi or not enough people need new alternators for a mechanic that only repairs or replaces alternators or not enough people eat ribs for a restaurant that only sells ribs. Expand!

Oh and one more thing. If you have done everything you can to expand into the other areas of profit in the music industry and you still don't make enough to survive, I hardly see that as being the result of dramatic changes in the evolution of the music entertainment industry but instead I realize that not every musician will be successful. Not everyone makes music that has a large enough fan base to survive. Another story old as the ages but some musicians put out great music that everyone wants and go on to success and some musicians don't and never become successful artists. Some musicians start off not making the right music and their success comes later with different styles that become more widely appreciated. Some musicians start off making great music but sell out or stop trying afterwards and start making poor music which leads to them falling out of popularity. Some musicians just never make it as successful artists and spend their days writing jingles for advertising or whatever. In the end their is so much more to the story then the sliver being complained about. I know of many successful independent and studio artists. I know of successful artists who used to be studio and now work independently (Trent Reznor comes to mind) but ultimately I know of many successful artists now who have succeeded from one way or another and continue to remain popular and when they finally retire they will have left a a big mark in their genre and will go on to a successful retirement from all of the work they've done but these are the exception and for every successful artist their are probably hundreds who tried and didn't make it. Make sure you keep a fall back option in case you're not born to be a successful music artist.

By the way, I'm deaf. Literally :-)

Comment I don't have this problem but... (Score 1) 383

I admin the mail servers for a company with two domains for email. Almost all of the company is under the main domain as first.last@domain.tld and the few in the other domain is mostly for business reasons (marketing). Anyways, we haven't had this problem. There's one common last name that three unrelated employees have now and probably 12 employees total since I started but with different first names so yeah, no conflicts. This is all beside the point, the suggestion I would make to help keep things legible and minimize (but maybe not eliminate) the conflicts is to use a sub domain relative to the user, for example at a company we could use john.smith@sales.company.tld and john.smith@accounting.company.tld. I know most companies probably wouldn't like this but it's better then john.smith5@company.tld. I'm sure for a university it would be more aptly accepted then at a company. Haven't given any thought on how you would segregate the sub domains at a university but I leave that to you. Maybe offer choices like it could be set by their major or user selection of fun sub domain names to add such as @comp-sci.university.edu for majors and choice sub domains like sports.university.edu or poetry.university.edu or whatever. I'd say given them a choice for the sub domain via a web page would be efficient and just don't show the choices for sub domains already used by students with the same first/last name. I'm just brain storming here. It's an idea you could use, or not. Hope it helps.

Comment Sounds like a disability (Score 1) 246

"assistive communication device" sounds like a disability. If so you should speak to the providers yourself as they typically offer better deals for people with a disability. Case and point, I am deaf and with both AT&T and now Sprint I don't pay what a hearing person would pay and get a good deal. I don't know if that is a disability for sure for you since you didn't elaborate and I'm on a plan instead of pay as you go but it's worth it to talk to these companies and ask for the specialists in this area and find out what your options are if she's disabled. If she is disabled, make sure you find the specialist for it and don't take the word of someone in general support. Both Spring and AT&T have departments for just this and general support doesn't know all of the details.

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