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Comment NYTimes.com has been going since '96 (Score 5, Interesting) 67

NYT Digital (the website) was a separate but wholly-owned company from 1996 until around 2007, merging with the newspaper as the new building opened. Pageviews in the mid 2000s were half a billion per month, with approximately half that going to the homepage alone.

IIRC, annual revenues for website advertising were $150 million in the late 2000s, damned good for a newspaper site. This was before NYT jumped onto the mobile and paid-digital-subscription bandwagons, which accounts for the $37 million revs. Adverts are still king, even on the website, and that combined with the homepage being half the pageviews is why you see the most expensive placements there.

While the rest of the newspaper biz has been slow to adopt, NYTD were actively educating the old-school news staff about FB, Twitter, RSS and other common or up-and-coming technologies. They have programmers assigned to the news floor, collaborating with reporters, to build topical databases, perform big data analyses, produce dynamic reporting and graphics and so forth. NYT are doing about as well as can be expected -they're a news organization, yes, but they've converted themselves into a technology firm from the inside-out.

NYT offers developers REST APIs for fetching newsfeeds and the aforementioned databases. Semantic Web is an area of research, and they're on a level with Thomson-Reuters, and to a limited extent Bloomberg. NYT's R&D department (originally attached to the newspaper, not NYTD) produces tools for latent semantic analysis of news, comments, etc.

When Twitter hit its initial growth spurt there were many predictions it would eat the newspaper business. It hasn't, in fact the news business relies on Twitter for distributing headlines and links. 140 characters and photo links hasn't eliminated the need for in-depth writing, analysis and professional photography.

Sure, the transition to an all-digital revenue model is their Achilles Heel. Most of the rev comes from the newspaper, and the demographic average is male, 40s and makes > $70K per year. Getting the younger generations to pay for news is the challenge.

I'm a former NYTDer. I still admire what they've done to adapt. I don't know how they'll survive the next decade, honestly. It'll take a revolution in paid subscriptions to get the younger crowd as part of the paid demographic. HuffPo was being eyed as the primary competition, for awhile, as an advert-only web operation.

Comment Re:I donâ(TM)t suppose... (Score 1) 622

The "utter failure" is encryption app developers have failed to see that, after 20+ years, non-technical endusers still cannot understand how PGP/GPG etc. work, for the most part.

Subtracting out your snark, there are two problems:
1) The software is abysmally awful, and
2) Independent journalists need to ally themselves with techies. And probably,
3) Don't rely on Apple or MSFT's encryption.
4) Get TC, and get a friend to help you set it up.

Comment Mice! It was Mice. Misleading title (Score 1) 232

"After a few days, the cultured papillae were transplanted between the dermis and epidermis of human skin that had been grafted onto the backs of mice. In five of the seven tests, the transplants resulted in new hair growth that lasted at least six weeks."

"More work needs to be done before the method can be tested in humans, according to the researchers. “We need to establish the origins of the critical intrinsic properties of the newly induced hairs... blah blah blah."

Did the OP even read the linked article? Still, "Scientists Induce New Hair Growth In Balding Men" did get it onto /.'s homepage. A much-used strategy.

Comment Re:But it has no viewfinder (Score 1) 68

Did you see it has a monitor? Off-body monitors are how digital camera operators view through the lens today, for the most part. Yes, for some handheld or shoulder-mounted work, operators use monocular viewfinders, but on digital rigs they're still built around a miniature lowres LCD panel anyways.

I'm sure it's a future option on this one-off experimental rig- digital camcorders have gone all-modular, from the imager, recorder, processor etc to the monitor, viewfinder, lens, mounting, light shielding and so forth. They're extendible platforms.

Comment Re:Your false dichotomy (Score 1) 239

With OSS the issue may never need to go to court. since they (anyone in the chain) can simply look (or pay someone to look) and it might have been settled right there without any costly suits.

Your optimism is so cute! In this case, the P.O. threw a blue-ribbon panel at the complainers; it's plain they've got a problem, but TFA was so vague, I can't tell if they were open to investigation and negotiated settlement.

OSS will always have the same options as closed source and on occasion more

Agreed; I use FOSSy SW every day, as well as proprietary. I occasionally contribute to OSS projects. I'm down, but just wanted the choices to be clear.

you are aware that plenty of expensive software with serious support is OSS?

I keep hearing this ... have you got some good examples?

nothing in OSS that says it cannot be sold/supported exactly like closed source... with the added bonus of 2nd or 3rd party verification of the code

I know -- financial incentives are like water to a software project.

Comment Your false dichotomy (Score 2) 239

In the context of a court case, judges have discretion to turn over closed source to for-hire special/expert witness review and presentment to the court. So your claim of only two choices for review (OSS wins the day, vs the P.O. can refuse to do anything) is evidently meant to convince the more gullible reader into believing OSS would have made the problems experienced by Ms Hamilton & co. easier to resolve. The sub-post masters would have to sue for satisfaction either way, and hire the special witness either way.

The Postal service (and Horizon by extension) clearly wish avoid liability in this, as do any institutions of its size. Given the soft and squishy language in announcing the report, with total avoidance of addressing specific sub-post masters' claims, they'll continue that way. But as their system is already closed source, your false dichotomy claim is most unhelpful to their plight, making you out as an opportunist.

Comment Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score 1) 564

Where in the law the USPS is required to future pay pensions of 75 years?

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109hr6407enr/pdf/BILLS-109hr6407enr.pdf

Sec 8909a(d)(3)(A) defines the amortization table of advance payments, and the enclosing section defines further payments beyond FY 2017.

PS The 75 years comes from the OPM requirement that government agencies us that number of years for accounting purposes for figuring furture liabilities. It is used by the DoD, Social Security, etc.

You're asserting that the OPM requires all federal services to, essentially, fund in advance the retirement plans for workers that have not yet been born. How about a link to the law defining this, or an article from a credible site?

Comment Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score 3, Interesting) 564

USPS was entirely self-sufficient on postage fees alone, with surplus revenues, up until Congress passed legislation that mandated USPS pay forward *75 years* of retiree health benefits within *ten years*. No other organization, business or government, has such a mandate.

"Taxpayer-funded" kicked in after that point, as you'd expect it would.

Wealthy congresscritters want to kill off USPS so their cronies in the private sector will benefit, IMO.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/20/how-congress-is-killing-the-post-office/
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2011/nov/11/sanford-bishop/bishop-signs-letter-saying-post-office-faces-big-p/

Comment Re:stupid observation... (Score 1) 909

You're talking about the size of the fitting attachment from the ratchet to a socket? "Drive" isn't that common of nomenclature, in my experience anyways. We referred to it as the socket "head size" oddly enough.

I do know that they are ONLY measured in English fractional inches, and that those sizes are used internationally. There are no metric-sized socket fittings.

Comment Mormons got xenophobia. (Score 3, Informative) 540

If you're living in a predominately Mormon area, and you're not one of them, you're a lot less likely to be part of their circle, do business with them, marry their children and so forth.

This as told to me by various Mormon and non-Mormon friends from SLC.

I suppose this isn't a lot different from other religious groups. But it's worth pointing out.

Comment Re:Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers (Score 1) 177

How did you determine it's illegal? Flying aerial surveillance drones over what is very likely public land? It's clear you don't know anything about the law.

In the U.S. and many other countries, public photography is permitted where there's "no expectation of privacy." You have no control over whether others take your picture in public. That goes for drones, CCTV, and photo joes with digital cameras.

I can't imagine that taking pictures of poachers killing rhinos on public land is illegal. And if it is, the government(s) in question would probably look the other way, given this project is helping them solve a very real problem.

Comment Re:Corporations are people (Score 2, Informative) 238

I hate to spoil the fun, but oil companies don't "set" the price of oil. It's ultimately determined by futures contracts for delivery of the various crude oil products.

Plus supply, demand, production rate, and other smaller factors.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled conspiracy theory.

Comment Re:Cap and Trade solves everything! (Score 1) 623

Detroit have dragged their feet on every little government-mandated change over the decades. I don't expect Detroit will change, I just hope it perishes AND IS REPLACED by newer, faster, upstart companies that design emissionless cars from the ground up.

While Fisker and Tesla are interesting startups, they're aimed squarely at the luxury market. There needs to be an everyman emissionless car.

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