+2 for the Bruce Campbell reference!

I was sophomore in college when I found Slashdot, it was 1998. I had P2-266 with 128MB of RAM and 8GB hard drive and a dorm room T-1 connection that I saturated nightly because nobody had a computer hooked up to the Internet yet. I don't even remember how I got to Slashdot, but I know that it has been with me ever since. I don't comment as frequently as I once did, but I do come to the site everyday. In essence, Slashdot and the posting I have done here over the past 12 years is a record of how I have grown and changed as person. From starting out as MIS major (don't snicker Comp Sci guy - I can still run rings around your SQL code), to my first job at Enron, to going back to grad school to get my MBA (yea, a geek in suit's clothing) and finally to my current position - Slashdot has been there. Rob, thank you for what you have done, you gave us all a voice.

HT

That just brought a tear to my eye...

Freshman in college when announced...now married 7 years with a kid.

My UID is from late 2007 to early 2008

Fast question:
Its 1993, would you rather have US Dollars or Chinese Yuan for the next 20 years? If you said Yuan, then you owe me money. In October 2003, the Chinese devalued their currency by 50% versus the USD.
http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/
Currency Cross is USD (Currency I have) to CNY (Currencies I want)

In that time, the US had fueled the rise of China because of long-term currency manipulation of the Yuan by China. This has fueled Chinese manufacturing boom but completely screwed Chinese consumers by artificially reducing their buying power. So the Chinese now sit on a a huge chunk of US debt because the best way to continue the yuan's manipulation is buying Treasuries and selling yuan which helps China compete. That 50% has moved to 14% even though China's market grow rate has been multiple of the the US over that time almost 20 years ago.

The Chinese can't stop buying debt without putting themselves at significant risk. Of course, if the US goes down as you say - that would loot the Chinese Treasury. The Chinese have tried to diversify out of US debt see all base metals and other commodities, but every time they have increased that commodity pricing exponentially. USD debt is still the largest and most liquid market there is. You can go buy 3 - 4 billion in debt and not make a hiccup. Do that in Gold, Copper, Aluminum, Silver and you can move that market by 10% and cost you amazing amounts.

So we continue this charade. The Chinese talk about wanting to diversify from USD (they can't because they need the currency advantage still and doing so impacts their own). And the US continues to talk about the Chinese manipulating its currency but we don't care because they have to buy our debt.

Of course now all the near-sourcing that was going to Canada has dried up. I know of personally three companies that scaled back or completely abandoned Canadian projects to move US jobs to Southern Ontario and Calgary because of the exchange rate appreciation. Who knows maybe those jobs that moved to Canada will come back over the border. Now multiply that by 1000x when the Chinese can no longer artificially depress the yuan and you get an idea of what will happen to them. Of course this is why the Chinese can't stop buying US Treasuries.

Yea but you are also choking back $500 a month in property tax too (I lived in Texas). So unless you purchased your 2700 sqft house for 150K - which even for DFW is a stretch unless you live beyond Frisco or in Midlothian - your actual costs are closer to 1800 a month.

Tolkein was/is a public figure, feels like there isn't much to stand on here especially if its fiction and portrayed as such. Seems like this fall well within the fair use realm.

Really good article this past week on Japan's ebook industry.

In Cramped Japan, the iPad Is the Home Library
Families save space by paying startups to digitize their books
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_08/b4216033233882.htm

For $1 a book, I would be digitizing darn near all my books.

Depends on how you to define the market. This is always the problem when dealing with anti-trust issues. How narrow or broad the market is ultimately how a company is determined to be in a monopolistic position and thus the remedy. If you define the market as being the market for smartphones you have a point. IPhone is behind. However, if you define the market as phones and individuals that browse the Internet then IPhone is clearly the leader (cannot find the link at the moment but it was a Slashdot article by an ad network showing something in the neighborhood of 60% followed by RIM, WinMo, Android). If you further segment down to purchased apps then its probably 90% market share. That will be the argument Adobe makes.

With the passage of CARD Act and the accompanying Fed rules related to penalty fees customers are no longer opt-in, but automatically opt-out by default. Unless you specifically opt-in for overdraft protection your debit card will be declined if there are insufficient funds or the in the case of a check it will go NSF. This is the reason you should never have a recurring charge set against your debit card. A debit card has significantly restricted rights when it comes to chargeback. Chargeback is VERY, VERY powerful, instructing the issuer to deny the charge and recoup from the merchants bank who in turn takes it out of the merchants account, merchants then have only a few days to respond. The Acquiring bank can increase the interchange if a merchant is receiving a high number of chargebacks (or drop the merchant altogether) as well as pass along the network fines for chargeback (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, etc.) that in the case of serious offenders can go $100 per transaction.

Hopefully, this shows you how effective a weapon chargeback can be in the cases like this and why if their is any question as to the scruples of the merchant you should always use a credit card for the purchase.

Getting slashdotted. Can someone throw this up on Flickr or something?

From the immortal words of Joe Celko in response to a similar question you discuss and one of the most true statements ever written:

If data has little to no value for you then you do not need a relational database. However, if data is of any importance to you then you have to think beyond a flat file. Flat files, hierarchal databases have been around since the dawn of computing. Relational databases were brought about to solve concurrency and integrity problems inherent in these models not to make your application faster. Like the quote implies jumping out down the elevator shaft is faster then taking the car, but there are trade-offs. I think the better question would be is why does your database design or queries take so much time that flat files are faster when there are just a few users of the system?

"Leave it up to the IRS -- they probably have it figured out that if they pre-fill items on forms, that means less error and less money. Plus, this gives them more opportunity to audit and assess fees. Whee!"

Don't attribute to malice what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence.

You sound like a Microsoft developer I curse everyday. For those who actually have to be productive ie those of us in Finance Excel 2003 works great. Everyone knows where everything is and has modified the menus and buttons to make them more productive. Of course, the Ribbon is not for the power user its for the user who has no idea what they want thus its geared towards the lowest common demoninator ie the secretary or grandma. Anytime I have to drop into 2007 I lose 30 - 40% of my productivity because things that were one or two clicks away you have to first find then you are 4 - 5 clicks. Ribbon is just another word for unproductive mess.

In my former life I was a database programmer so while I was no C or Java wizard I did my best to get the people that understood databases not just someone who would do a SELECT * FROM Table1 and do everything else in the code of their choice.

My favorite question was this

SELECT
FROM
JOIN ON
WHERE
GROUP BY
HAVING

In what steps do you think the database engine would go about the process of solving the SQL statement conceptually and why would the database do it that way? While I would consider the question more technical in nature it does bring out the critical thinking especially those who may not be introduced to it formally through education but understand how a database might react. I could then push the conversation and given difference instances and ask how they might do this and how might the database react. I interviewed and hired folks who got the actual problem wrong but reasonsed and explained enough that I could understand the thinking process they were going through. It was more about how the candidate thinks then what they can regurgitate. As long as any test is exploring the problem-solving nature of the candidate it should fine.