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Comment Plurals of Greek "*is" words (Score 2, Informative) 31

The proper plural of thesis is theses, with a long e sound in the second syllable.
Until reading the blurb for this Slashdot article, I have never seen anyone get this wrong.

Some people mispronounce the plural of basis. It is bases, with a long e sound in the second syllable.

What really bugs me are people who mispronounce "processes." Its singular form does not end in "is." It is not a Greek word at all. The proper pronunciation of the plural is with a short e sound in the last syllable. Too many people try to sound educated by making the long e sound in this word. Currently, it backfires and they sound less educated. As English evolves, maybe this incorrect pronunciation will win out; but it would still bug me.

Comment Will all the cash flows be taken out personally? (Score 2) 293

The incentive to incorporate is lessened if you plan on spending all of the cash generated by the business. For then you would have to report all of the income at graduated personal income tax rates.

If you plan to leave cash in the business and not use it personally right away, then incorporating makes much more sense. Here, the amount of combined personal + corporate taxes in the near term would be smaller. The time value of money in the delay of paying taxes works in your favour. What might the business do with its retained earnings? It could invest in assets to grow its own business. It could invest in other businesses.

Linux

Submission + - RIP Compiz (techrepublic.com)

dweezil-n0xad writes: This is not 100% confirmed, but the news that Fedora is dropping Compiz from release 17 can only mean one thing — Compiz is dead. Gentoo, openSUSE, GNOME, and a list of others had already dropped Compiz, leaving only one distribution holding onto the compositing software — Ubuntu. That’s right, the little desktop that could still uses Compiz as its compositor. There are also plenty of outstanding bug reports whose issues, it seems, will forever be unresolved. This all clangs out a death knell for the compositor that really brought something to the Linux desktop that no other had.

Comment Hooked on Theatre (Score 1) 464

Movie houses hook people into going to theatres The one-price-fits-all strategy tries to keep us from rejecting movies because either the price may be too high from a cost-benefit concern or the price may be too low from a quality concern. Going to a theatre becomes the event and the movie is simply a bonus.

Theatres in my neighbourhood have taken this one step further by offering premium seating, where seats are larger and further apart, as well as being assigned. The premium charged is $2, which, based on a recent interview on the Lang & O'Leary Exchange seems to be working well for them.

This contrasts with concert venues, which charge premiums for the more popular musical acts. Concert venues are less concerned with repeat business as profits are calculated after each show. Movie houses need repeat business in order to pay their enormous fixed costs, with profits calculated each quarter.

Comment Eee PC hardware is Linux friendly (Score 1) 142

I'm on my second Eee PC now. The first was a 701 (7" screen). The second is a 1001P (10" screen).
The hardware has been well supported in the various kernels because the Eee PC's were popular and ASUS was onside.
The hardest part of sourcing a new Linux-flavoured laptop used to be ensuring that all the hardware worked out of the box.
It was often best to install a Linux-flavour on an older laptop to help ensure all the hardware worked.
However, older laptops had used-battery issues and, of course, older hardware.
I welcome these new Linux-friendly laptops.
Hopefully other corporations will join the bandwagon.

Comment Re:Unconventional? (Score 1) 318

With a 12C at work and a 48G at home, the only calculators I use (and I use them daily) use RPN.
Most of the people I work with don't even try to borrow my calculator(s) because they're afraid of a supposedly steep learning curve.

Please note: the learning curve is rather flat for anyone who even half-understands how calculators work.

Comment When computer breaks - like it did today (Score 1) 266

I regularly back up work documents but never my email (prior to today).

I keep all of my email in Evolution on a little netbook running Ubuntu.
Of course I dropped and damaged the netbook today and subsequently scrambled to back up my mail.
I was successful, but it could have turned out badly.

From now on I'll store my email on the local server and simply access it with my laptop-du-jour.

Comment bad energy trade off (Score 1) 12

It used to be that the energy used to make a solar panel exceeded all the energy it would ever generate.
Maybe the technology is better now, but I am biased by my memories.

However, solar powered devices are great for people far from the mains (on the ocean or in the desert or at one of the poles).

Networking

Submission + - If you think you can ignore IPv6, think again. (securityweek.com)

wiredmikey writes: It’s official. The IANA(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) this week allocated the last IP address blocks from the global IPv4 central address pool.

While the last IPv4 addresses have been allocated, it’s expected to take several months for regional registries to consume all their remaining regional IPv4 address pool.

The IPv6 Forum, a group with the mission to educate and promote the new protocol, says that enabling IPv6 in all ICT environment is not the end game, but is now a critical requirement for continuity in all Internet business and services going forward.

Experts believe that the move to IPv6 should be a board-level risk management concern, equivalent to the Y2K problem or Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. During the late 1990s, technology companies worldwide scoured their source code for places where critical algorithms assumed a two-digit date. This seemingly trivial software development issue was of global concern, so many companies made Y2K compliance a strategic initiative. The transition to IPv6 is of similar importance.

If you think you can ignore IPv6, think again.

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