Plus, the Steam Sale aspect adds some urgency. If I knew that game X was always $2.99, I might never buy it. But If I think I might like to play it, and I know that after this weekend it will be $20 (the price where I would really think about if I wanted the game) but it's on sale for $4.50 this weekend, I'll buy it now *just in case* I might want to play it later.

This is really good for the seller I imagine - they just need a hook on the store that makes me think I might ever want to play the game. So it's also the sale aspect (as I think JC Penny found out with their attempt at "Always low prices").

That's hard to guess, but I've read free fan fiction that rivaled the best published novels. I've read paid novels that were as bad as some slashdot posts (I imagine they must have been self-published). And I've read plenty of mediocre works on both the hobby and professional sides.

I doubt doing something part time means that is is by definition worse, I'd more likely guess it's slower. So we might get less books each year.

Is that a problem though?

I've been seeing this Cis a lot in these bash all men posts recently - and it's still not clear to me from your description what that means - when I went to college CIS was Computer Information Systems - a degree path.

As far as I can tell, unless you have a copyright assignment from the person who wrote the copyrighted material, there is no reason to think you would have ownership of the copyrighted material. This is why many companies that operate in such a model make you go through a process to become a contributer.

Just e-mailing something to someone doesn't assign them copyright, and I think that sort of thing was decided long ago with mailing manuscripts.

The web interface still is the same. In no case has anyone been able to argue they didn't infringe copyright (of a song etc) based on *the method they received the copyrighted material* - otherwise it would seem to me that bittorrent of a version of a song would not infringe as you didn't have a contract or license appended to the CD (if the CD is old enough)...

Remember, you don't need a copyright notice to get copyright protection now (though you used to, in which case your argument probably would be correct, unless the poster added a copyright notice).

In the case of an ambiguous web interface, I think you need to consider the logic like this:

1) I have received copyrighted content, and no explicit license or assignment.
2) What can I do with this? I personally can view it, but I can't make copies, nor can I distribute it. So I can't put it up on a website I own. This is standard basic copyright law. I don't think anyone disagrees about this.
3) However, my website is providing hosting with the results licensed CC-BY-SA, which is a license that does allow me to share and distribute the copyrighted material. It seems likely that the copyrighted material was posted on my site utilizing that license, especially as much of it is derivative of the existing CC-BY-SA license.

I don't see any way to get to copyright assignment that would hold up in court. I have my doubts that #3 really holds up - the content should be explicitly licensed by the contributor. For it to actually work, it should be, as you say, part of the site contract entered into for edit access - like Slashdot has comments owned by the poster.

Amazon no longer saves me money. I now shop there because of convenience - I live in a rural area and getting to a store is a big part of a day. Amazon stuff just shows up. I guess I break even on the increased price vs gas money to get to stores, and if you count my free time (which is pretty nebulous for me to value) I save money. But it's no longer generally cheaper than other stores.

4k and 8k have objective benefits

Mind telling us what those are? I imagine ever bigger screens perhaps, but I feel like many of the computer tech (not mobile yet) has reached "good enough" for the mass market (non-niche) that very few people are going to be motivated to replace already working devices for "better resolution" at this point. Certainly not at the price points on offer.

Also, as is constantly pointed out, in the United States anyway, the infrastructure costs kill many higher bandwidth options. Even TV via satellite or cable is compressed, to the extent that HD doesn't look HD in many reports. Netflix probably isn't going to be able to stream 8K anytime soon, either due to unsustainable "agreement" costs to even try and pass that over the last mile networks, or the fact that unless Netflix is building their own FTTH - the network bandwidth just physically isn't there, and in many cases it seems like it will never be (in any reasonable time frame).

Beyond that, most connectors I'm aware of (though better must exist given MBP retina displays) seem to max out at 2650 x 1600.

Anyway, all that aside, it seems like much of the entertainment market and non-mobile computing market, and heck, mobile too is about bringing prices down, not increasing resolution or functionality. At least, that's what people I talk to talk about - making stuff cheaper. They already do everything they want and then some.

I've only lightly played around with nmap, but tell me, does it get me CPU used from my Procurve switch? What about interface use on my Blade Networks switch? Temp readings from my minigoose environmental monitor? Memory use on my Windows Server?

Cause I can't see how with the man page of nmap. These devices don't expose that data via SSH as far as I can tell - sure, some of them you can get a terminal on them, but that's just for configuration.

Now, I could, I suppose, have a different proprietary or custom written monitoring tool for each set of devices, or, you know, one that speaks SNMP. I know which I chose.

Well, the benefit to XM is it works where my smartphone doesn't get any data, oh and it doesn't massively drain my data allotment. FM around here is staticy or switching between HD and not, plus has more ads than music. That's why I never used to listen to the radio. But XM has many ad free channels, comparable quality to much of the streaming apps on my phone at 3G, costs far less, and doesn't limit me to whatever I remembered to load on my flash drive before leaving.

You're in a car, you have lots of road noise - most people probably aren't experiencing awesome audio quality however you slice it.

Hell, which Linux company is going to maintain a version of their OS (for free) for 3 years?
Red Hat maintains RHEL for 10 years. As CENTOS is now part of RHEL, I expect Red Hat is maintaining it for the same time. Scientific Linux is a third party rebuild of RHEL that also has a 10 year support cycle.

water, an incompressible fluid, is literally "as hard as concrete" when struck at high speed.

While I have absolutely no training that would be relevant to this, there was a Mythbusters episode where they tested exactly this, and found that while for all intents and purposes of a human landing on them, both were fatal - there was about 1/4 the G force from water than on concrete on landing.

Then again, I'm not sure G forces sustained on impact really measures how hard something is...

The problem is if you're not a good Linux (I haven't met any Unix admins) Admin, you can't really fake it at all. You have to make so many choices just to get started, and understand the implication of those choices that if you get it working, you're likely moderately competent.

Just about any Windows User can install Windows Server (it works just like the client OSs) and a perusal of the "Roles" and "Features" followed by checking a couple boxes (which happily check the pre-reqs for you) and clicking next, next, go, finish, and boom you have Active Directory running. You might not be doing it well (only one Domain Controller is an obvious rookie mistake), but it seems "good enough" to non-techies.

t's really sad when a worker getting a decent salary literally starts whining that they don't know how to do something and are unable to learn how on their own.
I agree whining is unprofessional, but I don't see why in IT it's assumed you should be able to pick up anything on short notice with no training.

Our CAD drafters get training on new releases of the software as it can be pretty different, and they can use having new features explained or pointed out.

I don't know why when it comes to general computer use people are expected to get it by osmosis.

And when you're talking about an entirely new environment, sure they probably could wing it enough to get it going, but how likely is it they won't make some boneheaded mistake that might have been avoided if they got basic training on a new platform or design.

A personal example: I come from AD and Group Policy. We started doing Puppet for other platforms. My first inclination was to say, this is probably like a slightly different implementation of GPOs, so I will install an ENC, The Foreman. Then I'll have hostgroups mirror my AD OUs. It turns out that helps, and hurts. Trying to apply manifests to hostgoups like GPOs on OUs can work, but in the way you end up writing manifests, it's often easier or better to do filtering in the manifest (or I'm finding that right now anyway, maybe it'll be different after a few more years). I generally shy away from filtering inside a GPO - both because it's kind of weird (WMI filters, deny apply permissions, GPP with Item Level Targetting) and because it's non-discoverable. In Puppet, a particular manifest pretty much lays it out, so you're not wondering about which of 3 different methods might be making something not apply...

Now, I think I'm doing OK, but maybe having training on Puppet would have had me make a better choice in the beginning, or point out some fundamental thing I'm still getting wrong, but don't see because I'm learning enough to do my current task as I go.

: "IT people are bad at problem solving".

I don't know that that is any better. You can solve problems in all sorts of ways that wouldn't need Critical Thinking (as I understand it and as it seems to be being used here).

I.e. Database is slow? Buy a bigger server. Windows computer acting weird? Wipe and re-image. Car suddenly seems to have no power? Buy new car. Door won't open? Use a battering ram. Need food for 2 people for $8? Go to McDonalds.

Those examples all solve the existing problems. You could argue that they are inefficient. You could point out that, yes, your immediate problem has gone away but will come back. But I don't think you can effectively argue that from a high level, the current problem is not solved by each action.

No critical thinking required. There may be some problems that you cannot solve by what is basically brute force, either for economic, time, or technical reasons. Or you may want to get more efficient or more targeted solutions. This is where what I would consider critical thinking comes into play. And many people use the term in this sense, so I see no reason to invent a different term...

Yes, and they suck compared to a smartphone because they aren't integrated with anything. I have some left over from the Old Days.

I suppose many factors depend but my Garmin beats my Galaxy Note II for navigation every day of the week.
1) It comes with a great mount. I have yet to find a workable mount for my phone. One I literally put the phone near, it snaps into place magnetically, and is already powered by the mount so I'm not also plugging in power.

2) I can leave it in my car and it's always ready to go. I always want my phone with me for obvious reasons.

3) No complications from other apps / lock screen / notifications or whatever that can interfere or distract me from directions. This is mostly on me - any notifications make me almost compulsively check, deal with, and clear. But why not just avoid that problem if I can?

4) Familiarity - I've been using Garmin since 2007 or so with a Street Pilot and I know how it's instructions go. I find that it's harder to hear and the voice is harder to understand on google maps, and WAZE doesn't seem to have functional nav half the time (one time it said nothing till telling me I'd arrived, thanks to my garmin).

5) Garmin junction view and lane guidance are amazing. It's the difference between 2007 era "turn left in .25 miles" and "Be in either of the two right lanes and turn right at the end of the street, then bear left" with a overview of the lanes and a purple line showing the lane changes needed.

Oh, and the recent Garmin's can bluetooth to an app on your phone for sending addresses or subscribing to live traffic, weather etc. Though the one thing I thin WAZE does do amazingly is traffic, hazard, and police reporting. If that could be integrated into the garmin display it would be amazing I think.

I always thought the issue was that damages usually don't deter or even stop a corporation from doing bad thing X - including potentially killing people.

How would you "imprison" a corporation? Dissolve and sell off the assets and not allow anyone who worked there from working in the field for the term of the prison sentence?

Nationalize the corporation with the goal of keeping it barely afloat for the term of the prison sentence?

Get rid of limited liability (the entire point of a corporation)?