COBOL is basically assembly... very easy to compile to efficient code.


However I disagree that COBOL scales cheaply or efficiently. You could practically build a datacenter for the price of IBM's mainframes.

This is just the government playing to the peanut gallery. If it was easy to change the law without breaching international treaties, pissing off lots of party donors and making the tax code even more labyrinthine than it already is (then watching ninja accountants find brand new loopholes and wheezes) then it would have been done years ago. So, they just wheel in a few high-profile household name firms, give them a public handbagging, maybe shame them into handing over a few bottle caps and bits of knotted string, so it looks as if they're getting tough on the issue, then.... crickets.

Of course, its not worth doing the same to the legion of more obscure companies doing the self-same thing (who, together, must have far more turnover than this handful of big names) because they don't have the same headline-grabbing power.

Meanwhile, they're offering tax breaks to Disney for filming bits of the new Star Wars films in the UK. That's good - I'm sure that there's no way that Disney is going to make a brass farthing out of this obscure little arthouse flick if they don't get government support. Of course, if Disney didn't get the tax breaks, I'm sure they can build a lens flare machine in Canada, New Zealand, Grand Fenwick or somewhere and piss on our childhood heroes from there.

Trouble is, in this globalised world, governments don't have the power they once did.

Not saying I like what Google or Amazon or Starbucks are doing... just that they are the high-profile tip of an iceberg that isn't going to go away any time soon.

For most Security Leak issues, it comes down to a simpler problem.
Most people have crappy computer skills.
You can have a perfect system, but it takes one guy from sales or marketing to take the data, dump it as an excel of csv file and just email it or drop it in a public space because he just doesn't want to be bothered by dealing with IT

XKCD kinda shows this problem. We still don't have a good way to transfer files with people on different network. We have the technology but no clear standard.

Energy isn't cheap, but it is low enough to be absorbed in the price of the software without being losing you competitive edge.
However there is a phrase you need to spend money to make money. Which leads you need to have money to spend money. Which then finally means you need to Have Money to make Money. The sad truth of is the big guys will always have the upper edge just because they are more self reliant on their infrastructure, they can have their own power plants they can cut through regulations, influence governments with the carrot of see how many jobs I can bring to your area if you are willing to ease the rules for me, and if you don't Ill just go to an other area where their government will say yes.

Now these companies are not being green for the sake of being green, they are doing it to cut their costs down, and to get some good PR out of it.

That is an interesting article. But it bothers me that qPCR is the only assay they used. I'd really like to see those microarrays they talked about, it's been over 5 years and they already had the RNA from the qPCR. Either someone didn't think it was worth funding, or they didn't find anything worth publishing. Also, calmodulin is involved. There are techniques to measure and visualize calmodulin activity. Showing that calmodulin-Ca++ binding actually increases in those timeframes would be much stronger evidence for their claim.

So, no I'm not quite going to fuck myself yet. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there's nothing extraordinary here.

I'll happily go fuck myself when this result is repeated by experienced scientists with all proper controls. If this result is unreproducible, you can go fuck yourself instead.

Providing the funds is the most important part of the transaction.

No, doing the work is the most important part of the transaction. Only in the perverted mind of a capitalist is working less important than not working. The difficulty in finding funds to pay those who work is an artifact of captialism where resources are hoarded for the benefit of a few instead of distributed for the benefit of the many.

These investments are what raise someone's worth, not hard work by itself.

And that's exactly what's wrong with capitalism. It's not what you are able to do that matters, it's how much you own.

10% more, while productivity has doubled and executive pay has increased by orders of magnitude.

I wasn't really talking about countries. I was talking about individual human psychology. When people choose to engage in behavior that harms themselves, they love to ignore the fact that they are responsible for that choice, and their lives could be better if they made different choices.

And? So? Responsible people who want good policy take human stupidity in to account. It's not their fault that they are stupid, it's human nature. It's the bankers who knowingly take advantage of that stupidity who are at fault. They know enough to know better.

She is more productive because her boss invested in better CRM software.

Notice how the boss didn't write the software. He didn't do anything of value besides provide the funds. The people actually responsible for the increase in productivity are the workers who created the tools that cause the increase in productivity. Deciding to use the tools that are availble is not such a difficult task that it should win you the lions share of what is produced with those tools. It's the design and production of those tools that is valuable, and that's done by ordinary workers.

because they were too stupid

Stupid? Or just misinformed by the financial professionals they trusted? People aren't born understanding mortgages, bankers are the ones who have the training to make responsible choices. When the FBI sent warning letters to banks that 90% of stated income loans were fraudulent, do you know how the banks responded? The *increased* the number of stated income loans they issued. Are you really going to blame the average person for that?

Taxing wealth amounts to punishment for not spending

In an economy that depends on the velocity of money, you should be punished for not spending. Especially if you have already saved enough to live on for thousands of years.

Money is a resource. Do something with it, or let someone else use that resource. Hoarding isn't good for anyone.

I can't believe that I have to explain to people here on ./ that putting more energy into a non-linear dynamic system will cause more extreme behavior of all types. We are experiencing more record highs AND record lows, more record droughts and more record rainfalls, which is exactly what you'd expect from a warming Earth.

if wages have stayed constant over the past 40 years, total compensation for the median worker has actually risen by about 9%.

Over the same period, worker productivity doubled and CEO compensation increased 700 times.