I'm surprised by the lack of curiosity here. The best stuff in the Apple App Store costs some money. What's the point in buying expensive $600 phones if you're going to be too cheap to get out there and see what people are making them do? The highest rated 10-20 apps alone in the App Store would put you over $50 easily. Not all the apps are for everybody, but if you're not using at least a few of them then you aren't getting real value from your iOS device purchase and you probably didn't need one in the first place.

For a site full of people that claim to be geeks, nerds, programmers, admins, etc there's almost nobody out here that's actually PARTICIPATING in the biggest change in the tech industry in the last decade. if you're worried about "privacy" and your credit card information getting taken then you're clearly not paying attention to how the marketplace works, how the various groups interact and developing a sense of safe behavior in this new arena. This is kind of a poor showing of people that claim to have "technical savvy".

realistically for something you use every day for 2-4 years $600 is still pretty cheap. We're just so pinched for pennies between all the other things grabbing for attention we don't see the true value of the money we spend or why we spend it.

LTO DRIVES are super expensive... and the cards to connect them are super expensive. That's why more people don't use them on the lower end they're out of most "hobby" range and even mild professionals that don't have somebody else footing the bill.

the money is that enterprise level setup to do a "Cloud" with backups, redundancy, and all the licenses (or employees that can work at that level) is easily 7 digits... before you're even putting your BUSINESS on it. For a startup that's literally paying bills as they cash checks a few thousand up front for access to a multi-million dollar setup isn't that bad.

only after a mob showed up at his company's door and demanded it.

THAT is the real issue here, not wether or not his contribution anybody agreed with. He was an employee in good standing of the company TWO YEARS AGO when he made these donations and for the two years after. He was promoted to a new position. The Internet got wind of his previous personal donations and basically lynched him for an unpopular opinion.

On one hand, CEOs are "rockstar" employees.... they set the tone, direction, and "opinions" of the company based on their personal experiences. So their private opinions matter significantly more than regular employees. On the other hand, the Mozilla Board of Directors should have hit exactly what this article is pointing out head on, right out of the gate. They should have explained up front, they knew about his personal donation, and due to his business at the company they were deciding to promote him. They could have added something about the Mozilla corporation still being committed to "everybody getting along" or something like that. They should never have entertained the idea in public that they possibly would reconsider their decision just because a mob showed up.

there's nothing wrong with the situation. The company folded, the "chain of evidence" regarding the product safety of the food is broken and damaged beyond repair. It doesn't matter that the food is functionally good, it's not legally salable. There is very tenuous legal standing to sell (or donate) the food. As the proceeds of a bankruptcy the financial risk associated with the food is several orders of magnitude more than the value of the asset.

there is plenty of other peanut butter out there.

I agree with your premise, I think. These agreements are about companies agreeing not to send recruiters INTO THE OFFICES of other companies... that's just crappy business. In fact, at the peak of these booms, companies get into departmental "retaliation" where one person leaves then gets back at their former boss by hiring away co-workers and causing projects to be delayed. That's what was going on at the time and these companies wanted it stopped.

I think that companies were just agreeing to stop accepting recruiters soliciting from other big companies. In my book that's fair. I've been at offices where the same overzealous recruiter calls every damn extension because they got the company phone list... it's really disruptive and only sews distrust between the remaining employees. If companies want to use another channel like referrals or taking non-solicited applications I'm all for that.

the other thing of course is that California doesn't respect even limited non-compete agreements. While the buddies in Seattle DO PUNISH their former employees for "cheating" on them. If California would enforce limited non-competes (as well as say yearly contract terms... like apartment leases) then a lot of these issues would never have been issues in the first place.

correct. Neither are Wireless companies or Cable companies.... the concept of "net neutrality" hinged on that idea that POTS was essentially a "right" to all homes and businesses. The new technologies have no such requirement, in fact the courts keep pushing them back. Imagine that companies want to kill off the only "open" service?

it took until the last 5 years for states to require power backup systems on Cell towers... you know generators or something so they didn't go dead when the power went out in a storm. Those kinds of things were REQUIRED for POTS.

add to that in the typical medieval house and even castle it was very difficult to keep the rats out of the human food supply and tracking their dirty little feet and germs everywhere. That's why cupboards and barrels and pot and other stuff were invented to keep the critters out. all those critters crawling all over had to be spreading germs even when people thought their house was "clean".

I've wanted backups of my stuff for a long time. Hopefully the NSA can commercialize this and allow us to retrieve our conversations whenever we want. This is way better than the never forgetting GoogleMind or FaceBook! Imagine the possibilities.. when you promised your kid ice-cream for good grades last month, they can look it up and call you out for cheating them!

This is more like the US trying to take back Cuba.. Or Texas if they left. Ukraine was never really "free" from Russia considering it a "state"... Russia just didn't want to fight that bate with "mad dog " Bush running around starting wars.

Russia losing Ukraine was about like losing Texas or California... Far to important to economics of Russia to actually let go. Ukraine was leaning toward NATO and that was a MISTAKE. Russia will simply never let that happen after the Eastern Bloc flipped. The new "buffer states" have to at least fake loyalty to Russia.. Just like South American states get "fixed" when they don't toe the USA line.

Putin isn't Stalin, he's not going to "purge" them. The Ukraine crossed the line by courting NATO much like Cuba tried to do.. Russia is striking first and not letting that happen. The USA is too interested in putting missiles there pointed at Moscow... Like they did in Poland.

My company was bought out by Brazilians about 6 years ago to the same thing. Unfortunately, when the company came to the USA they bought the "best lawyers" and totally screwed up their first buyouts. But my company drastically improved conditions and still is. It's heavy manufacturing and it's gone from being "better than average" safety which was passable for American Management to Very Good safety. Again, less focus on firing people and more on managing them so they don't screw up in the first place.

I've seen some of the numbers and our division leads the overall company in the production per man-hour metrics by a wide margin. Of course with wage adjustments and other expenses that comes back down, but "low profit" was more about American managers bleeding red ink out of the "office" end of the business, not the worker's end. Had it not been for their management in the 2008 crash, we'd be closed now and out of a job... our American parents back then had absolutely no "business skill" in running us.

remember this is the same Bill Gates that helped pioneer the 'Perma-Temp" and the two-tiered employee systems.... The ones where the "good" employees have the great perks while the "grunts" don't even get to call themselves "employee" and get passed from shady temp agency to temp agency every 3-5 years.

The problem isn't upgrading skills, it's reducing the hours per week so more people can work full time and making a big culture shift away from the era of "work addiction" and 50+ hour weeks. Companies would rather pay Bill Gates 3/4 of your salary than pay another employee... he's been laughing and rolling in sacks of money for 3 decades because of that tendency.

I truly don't think these guys understand the economics involved. the per capita wages in most of the USA is in the $40k range from low to high depending on region. They are so disconnected from the idea of money as anything except a "score card" they have no concept of what regular people do with it.

speaking of marketplaces, we used to all shop at Sears and Kmart in the 70's and 80's... Thats all my town had for a long time. Now those guys are closing up. First Walmart took them over but now Target and others are beating Walmart for newer more interesting items. People move slowly at first, then faster and faster.

economically, they guy at the top puts so many other people out of business that there are just lots of poor broke people competing with the one big guy. That is the definition of what Apple pulled on Microsoft... Microsoft is still more near a desktop monopoly than in the 1990's.. Poor Apple created an entire business based on being shut out and luring the flock to some other product entirely.