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Comment Re:I hope so.. (Score 1) 520

After Apple bought NeXT, it's said they kept the Intel version developed behind closed doors for all those years.

If Jobs were a smart man, and I think he is, when they realized they'd block flash on the to-be iOS platform (which was far more ahead of when they announced it), they started work on a graphics app to replace Photoshop. "Just incase" they'd need it.

Comment Re:Details yall are missing (Score 1) 2058

Not only that, but if the city has any health/life insurance on those fire fighters, coverage may specifically only cover those firefighters on site of those houses that have pre-paid.

If that were the case, I would certainly not expect any of the fire fighters to touch that house, at all. If one of them were to be injured, or worse killed, who's looking after the fire fighter's family afterward?

Certainly, imho, not the guy who chose to save the $75. (There was another discussion somewhere I saw yesterday that I can't find a link to) that said the guy had had received letters, phone calls, and had chosen to not pay it at the time of the call, and someone had googled the guy and they had a farm and were seemingly doing quite well enough to shell out $75.

Sad story, regardless.

Comment Re:How do you think it works in the EU ? (Score 3, Informative) 507

And I thought Ohio was the only state that had such fucked up sales tax laws. In Ohio, too, you cannot plainly use a zip code to determine sales tax, because the county lines to not abide by them. So you have to factor address, city, county and zip code.

You can find some information from the state of ohio in pdf's and csv's to try and help you sort through it. However, the same information can change depending on the election cycle ( https://thefinder.tax.ohio.gov/StreamlineSalesTaxWeb/ ).

While a prior poster mentioned that surely Amazon is full of intelligent people who can figure all this out, I do not believe they should have to. I cannot imagine having to put together a system that deals with each and every states archaic tax laws that change at any given time. What a pain in the ass that'd be. And how costly that would be to implement, ugh.

Comment Re:Old geek who looks for a job... (Score 1) 918

What a load of crap you just spouted.

The last two developers we've hired: 1 perl developer (mod_perl) happened to be in his 40's. The other, a .Net developer, too, happened to be in his 40's.

And quite honestly, I don't recall either's educational background. But I can tell you were each has worked, what they di, what their references said about them, and theirs skillsets. I'd also venture to say, IMHO, they were hired for capacity and willingness to learn. Not everyone knows everything. But that you *can* and *want to* learn what you need to learn is key.

Besides, if you are paying someone proper $$, if they are older, generally they are more stable then a young pup who's dating and then gets married and needs to relocate because the spouse got a job somewhere else and they can easily do so without kids. The older hires tend to be married with kids, and they're stuck in town. Especially if they're gearing up trying to save for kids that'll be in college in a few years. Less movement and more stability++.

Comment Re:How many of the Jackasses.. (Score 1) 574

I sincerely hope you are.

However, most IT people I know are getting bent over with the extra work and projects and BS "to keep the higher ups happy so we don't get let go." That leaves very little time for anything other then work, sleep rinse and repeat.

It's amazing once the job market is announced to have slowed down how management will turn up the screws on the non-hourly.

Moon

How NASA Will Bomb the Moon To Find Water 280

mattnyc99 writes "A few weeks ago we got first word of NASA's plan to crash a spacecraft into the moon next February. The new issue of Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its low-cost, lightning-fast mission prep — even if delays have pushed it to late February or early March. Quoting: 'Andrews had no budget for an expensive lander to seek water, and conditions in the eternally dark polar craters would kill rovers, with temperatures close to minus 300 F. Instead, Blue Ice and its partners at Northrop Grumman came up with a concept to bring the lunar floor out in the open.... Since engineering precision hardware would break the budget, the LCROSS team had to make existing components work together.'"
Displays

Submission + - New Yankee Stadium Video and Scoring System (fastsilicon.com)

mrneutron2003 writes: "Daktronics is in-charge of putting together a 19+ million dollar integrated video and scoring system inside the new Yankee Stadium. The project's time table is set for spring 08 through the end of the year. They will be visible beginning the 09 baseball season.

Daktronics will also hold the world's largest led screen record when they complete the Kansas City Royal's 100 feet high by 85 feet wide screen behind center field. Keep in mind that these screens have a 16mm led spacing and have to be assembled from many small led "cubes". Would love to play crysis on one of these screens since they can play HD signals.

Check out the dimensions on these huge displays in Yankee Stadium. The main two displays will have (64 feet diag)438.9 m2 of LEDs each! Outdoor screens have come a long way.
http://www.fastsilicon.com/off-the-wall/new-yankee-stadium-video-and-scoring-system.html"

Graphics

Submission + - Nvidia rolls out 'tri-SLI (reghardware.co.uk)

DeeQ writes: Nvidia has launched its anticipated 'Tri-SLI' technology as "3-way SLI", allowing gamers to connect not one, not two but three graphics cards in co-operative rendering harmony.

They have to be Nvidia GeForce cards, natch, but when connected deliver up to 2.8 times the performance of a single GPU. That, the company claimed, is enough to allow games 60fps frame-rates at a resolution of 2560 x 1600 with 8x anti-aliasing enabled.

As expected, 3-way SLI works on systems build upon Nvidia's nForce 680 SLI chipset, and requires three GeForce 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra cards. A special three-card connector links the three add-in boards.

Oh, and you'll need an 1100W power supply with six six-pin PCIe power connectors... phew

The Internet

Submission + - Digg still affected by year-old controversy

holy_calamity writes: A researcher at UCSD suggests that Digg is still feeling the consequences of annoying its top users back in September 2006. At the time, Kevin Rose responded to accusations that relatively small numbers of users had control of Digg's frontpage by tweaking his algorithm to penalise people that often digg the same stories. Top ranked users got angry and even quit Digg. In a paper in the pre-print Arxiv, the researcher used data scraped from digg to show "a general decline in individual user participation on Digg" that persists today. After the recent Facebook u-turns, proof that annoying your users can have long-lasting effects.
Linux Business

Submission + - Stock exchange embraces Linux

E5Rebel writes: "The New York Stock Exchange is investing heavily in x86-based Linux systems and blade servers as it builds out the NYSE Hybrid Market trading system that it launched last year. Flexibility and lower cost are among the goals. But one of the things that NYSE Euronext CIO Steve Rubinow says he most wants from the new computing architecture is technology independence. Interestingly, while Linux is embraced, virtualisation is rejected because it slows processing speeds.... http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/infrastructure/applications/news/index.cfm?newsid=6673"
Businesses

Submission + - Computer knowledge 'undervalued' (bbc.co.uk)

pthompson writes: "Computer skills are still undervalued in the UK board room, according to Microsoft. In a survey of 500 UK business leaders, knowledge of IT was seen as only the seventh most important workplace skill."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Xbox messing with WLANs? (networkworld.com)

netbuzz writes: That's the suspicion of the IT staff at Morrisville State College in New York, who report that the Xbox 360 emits a strong signal that's doing strange things to other equipment. What's not clear is whether the signal disrupts the college's WLAN access points or students' wireless notebooks. There is some anecdotal evidence, however, that it at least affects other radios in the same 2.4GHz band. Tests are being conducted. Microsoft mum, so far.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/121307-microsoft-xbox-jams-wireless-lans.html

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