Could you not contract with oracle for extended support of their software on Itanium? I have heard of such things happening. It will cost a buttload, but probably cheaper than porting your code.

A big factor for me was the poor conversation. Most of it was "Hey, I'm on my way down such and such road. How's my signal?" That, and most of the regular users fit into the crusty old "git government out of my life!" category. I'd rather read user comments on my newspaper's website than undergo such torture. Ironic they are so in love with a Federally licensed service.

The only reason I renewed my license last year was because I'm often in the back country where phones don't work. Being able to hit a repeater 30 miles away on a walkie talkie is a big advantage when there is no cell service. Unfortunately, many back country repeaters have few listeners.

The board was changed out when Leo Apotheker became CEO last year. It is not the same board as under Fiorina or Hurd.

Are they replacing desktops or servers in this case? HP is not getting out of the server business, just consumer desktops and mobile devices.

FYI, every major computer company confiscates and destroys any legacy competitor machines when taking over a contract. This is to prevent the machines living on and making money in support and repairs for the competitor.

The CEO who bought Palm was fired last year

No, EDS is HP's Enterprise Services arm. They deal with proving and installing software produced by HP Software. HP Software is an entirely separate division, and is alone one of the largest software businesses in the world. Think of products like Server Automation, NNM, Client Automation, and Operations Orchestration.

Sure ES sells to governments and the same as any other integrator like Raytheon or CA. HP Software actually produces the products that get work done in all the major companies of the world

Arguing that tax deductions (tax expenditures) are not subsidies isn't fair. Even if all businesses get subsidies, clearly it's the *amount* of the subsidy that matters. Certainly you wouldn't argue that an industry receiving 10x the tax deductions of another is on equal footing.

Also, you have not considered that fossil fuel producers receive access to government-owned resources (land and minerals) at special rates. These deals cost the nation money and give fossil fuel producers an advantage not available to renewable energy producers.

True, the myth of lower taxes in Texas is false. I moved from Texas to Colorado (generally assumed to be a less conservative place), bought a more expensive house, and make more money, but my overall taxes somehow went down. The services I receive have improved too.

The text is "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". It's a common mistake to assume this means everyone is required to accept cash for payment. It only means that cash is a legal form of payment. Coins have no such wording, but that doesn't make them any less of an official currency form.

To add to the airline debate, I'd say the only benefit American offers is that they still fly MD-80s. One side of the aircraft only has two seats per row, eliminating a dreaded middle seat which the A319s and 737s have. The drawback is that the AB side has smaller overhead bins.

From TFA:

This advertisement could stand a bit of healthy skepticism. Right now, I can think of an easy way to defeat this weapon: use some kind of overhead cover. That's right, a simple roof covered with sand bags, or a bunker, would be enough.

The spokesperson for this company seems to lack a crucial sense of imagination.

Yes, and subscribing to the wisdom of 200 years ago sets an excellent standard. Slavery, no rights for women, lethal working conditions. I'm glad we're moving back to these core values.

The problem was not figuring out how to count the unique items. It's the part before the pipe that was difficult. The poster needed to combine the results of two different commands and then compute the unique items. The solution would have to be, logically, "command1 + command2 | sort | uniq -c".

Unless you can find a way to pass the output from command1 through command2, you will lose command1's data. The solution he/she found was elegant: (command1):(command2) | someKindOfSort. My syntax is probably wrong. If you were simply pointing out a better way to sort, then please disregard.

I guess we account for time in different ways. I consider commute time as being work time. If I'm commuting I'm not doing something I would choose to do in my free time. Though being salaried does not technically affect how you are paid for the number of hours you put in, the net result is that you're working extra time for no extra money.

That is fine, but if you could do the same comp schedule if you lived in the city then you have still lost time (and essentially money) through the hours you've burned commuting.

That's their loss, but at least you have the option should you decide to use it to better your health. I've lived in Dallas, the Piedmont Triad, and now I live out west in a bike friendly town. I've biked in all these places. Dallas was the worst, but it was doable. Many others I know have regularly biked more hostile routes.

You're still working up to 40 hours per week extra with the commute and getting paid less for it. The weekend is 48 hours long for those of us who live in the city too (don't tell anyone).

There are health drawbacks associated with extra driving. Biking/walking to work becomes out of the question, and you're sitting on a couch for 2 hours extra per day. Don't forget about the increased risk to your health from MVA's.

If you can handle the 12 hour days for 1/3 of the year and this lifestyle suits you, great. I think it would really stress things if you had a family. Would your employer forbid your working 20 hours per week if you lived closer to town?

I'm not knocking the exurb thing -- to each his/her own. Just pointing out it that it has some unique drawbacks that aren't immediately apparent.

Having worked on a project from conception through production, written in JRules, I'd have to agree that the marketing examples for rules engines are way oversimplified.

You're right, they present simple if/then logic as being applicable to every problem. As you demonstrate with the "compute average age" example, this can quickly break down. The problem is that it's hard or impossible to maintain context on an object from rule to rule. BREs expect each rule to be independently applicable to an object. This works in some domains, but many business rule flows require that context be maintained throughout the flow.

Another problem is database access. BREs expect that the object will be pulled completely from the database at the start of execution, and no further database interaction is required until the object is finalized and persisted. Again, this is way too simple for many business requirements.

To extend your insurance example, ask how you would calculate a driver's premium based on a code associated with the object. There can be millions of codes for which the premiums may change at any time, so they must be pulled from a database at execution time.

Extend this to similar db transactions on nearly every decision in the tree, and execution quickly bogs down. Yes, you can cache a certain amount of this data, but with a large enough set, the model breaks. Multithreading and parallel processing will buy some speed, but only so much. If database transactions are dependent on path of execution in the tree, the BRE model will have problems.

Perhaps the reason rules authors are so well paid (if this is true) is perhaps because they're often required to use the wrong tool for the job. If I were required to use a sledgehammer to chop down trees I would expect better pay.