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Comment: This is tax avoidance (Score 2) 217

by braeldiil (#42803187) Attached to: Dell Going Private In $24.4 Billion Agreement
The primary purpose of the deal is to repatriate a bunch of cash without having to pay corporate taxes on it. A lot of the money originally started in the US, but was hidden overseas. This brings it back. The shareholders all get a premium on the share price, giving them their cut. Dell borrows a bunch of money to pay the shareholders, then uses their offshore accounts to pay the banks back, because loan payments are tax-free. And since it's all capital gains, the shareholders are all paying less on it than you pay on your wages. It's how the 1% rolls - good for them, not so much for you.

Comment: Re:Software liberation not necessary for open sour (Score 2) 476

by braeldiil (#42381157) Attached to: GNU Grep and Sed Maintainer Quits: RMS and FSF Harming GNU Project
The "printer thing" is actually a red herring. The act that started RMS on his path was a lot simpler - all his coworkers at the MIT AI lab left. Stallman had finally found a place where he was comfortable, then thay all left to try and make a little money. RMS threw a hissy fit and set about taking all their original ideas and releasing them as free software. His stated goal was to drive them out of business - either to punish them for leaving or maybe to force them back to the lab. The printer story developed later, in an effort to make it seem not nearly so petty.

Comment: Re:Oh dear... (Score 5, Insightful) 474

You're only a sceptic if you can be convinced (by reasonable evidence) that the original claim is true. Otherwise, you're a denier, and discussing the issue with you is a waste of everyone's time. There are some classic signs that indicate you are a denier, not merely a skeptic. A general pattern is someone from completely outside the field making extraordinary claims that everyone else is doing it wrong. There's usually a conspiracy from the "experts" to shut them out. It's a constantly evolving theory, where the conclusions never change, but the reasoning always does. And, of course, there's usually a lot of funding from an organization with a vested interest in opposing the the original science. Watt is really no different from the Intellegent Design folks or Jenny Macarthy and the vaccine-autism folks, and he's only a short step from the Time-cube guy.

Comment: Re:The unfortunate state of gaming (Score 1) 247

WoW was never a "hard" game. It took over the market because it was the easy, casual-friendly alternative. That's always been Blizzard's mo - take a solid concept, polish out all the pain points and then take over a market. They make good products, but "genuinely hard" almost never applies.

Comment: Re:Pot, meet kettle (Score 2) 289

Actually, the NLRB was very specific. The entire point of the meme was to inform companies that their overly broad scial media policies would make a reasonable person believe they could not discuss their salary or working conditions. That's specifically against the law - a law he repeatedly sites in the memo. The easy way around the issue is to include repeated disclaimers that no part of this policy will in any way restrict the employee's rights to discuss their salary or work conditions. But they don't want to point out those rights, for fear their employees would use them. So they whine that the NLRB didn't give them a template for exactly how far they can push the rule and obscure their employee's legal rights.

Comment: Re:Would someone please explain to me... (Score 2) 809

by braeldiil (#40171591) Attached to: Red Hat Will Pay Microsoft To Get Past UEFI Restrictions
Because there were several other paths they could have chosen to work with secure boot, but this was the most efficient? Because Microsoft is making a whole $99 to handle verification and signing for them? Seriously, this is sad. Microsoft will sign a boot loader for them for basically no money. This isn't a "Microsoft tax" situation - Microsoft will undoubtedly lose money on the arrangement, even if it's $99 every time Red Hat wants to update their "pre-grub" bootloader, and not the one-time registration fee the article implies that it is.

Comment: Re:Failed experiment? (Score 3, Insightful) 124

by braeldiil (#39838111) Attached to: Navy To Auction Stealth Ship
Actually, she was quite the success. While we're not building ships exactly like her, radar stealth has been a significant concern of the Navy, and current ships are designed to minimize their radar cross section. Reduced crew manning has also been a really big push, as had improved roll stability. About the only major design feature not in use is the catamaran hull. and really, figuring out something is a bad idea is still a successful experiment.

Comment: Re:Other disposal options... (Score 1) 124

by braeldiil (#39837587) Attached to: Navy To Auction Stealth Ship
It's a 30 year old ship that was never really designed for extended operations. It has a max crew of 12, and they're roughing it. It's slow, with no weapons. Please describe exactly how you think this ship would be useful to the border patrol. Not "worth the cost to maintain an old, one-of-a-kind vessel", just useful.

Comment: Re:Failed experiment? (Score 5, Insightful) 124

by braeldiil (#39837449) Attached to: Navy To Auction Stealth Ship
It wasn't developed in competition with anything. It wasn't a warship, or really a working ship at all. It was a test platform for a bunch of different technologies. And, since the technologies being tested have since been incorporated into actual navy ships, I'd say it was a successful test ship. Calling it a failure is nearly as stupid as calling the Norton Sound a failure. After all, they didn't build any more of her, either.

Comment: Re:Godspeed! (Score 5, Insightful) 162

by braeldiil (#39469753) Attached to: James Cameron Begins His Deep-Sea Dive
The reason we didn't send a manned mission back is that there's really no point - a realization they came to on the first trip. The people in the sub can't directly interact with the environment in any way. They have to look at the world through cameras, and all work is carried out by robotic arms. Essentially, all you've done is take the control room for a remote vehicle and send it down with the robot. It's a lot of engineering work and no small danger for basically zero gain.

Comment: Re:Name and party affiliation (Score 5, Informative) 237

by braeldiil (#38658240) Attached to: US Research Open Access In Peril
Why am I not suprised that you managed not to mention the actual sponsor, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). Rep Maloney is the other sponsor, but the bill was introduced by Rep. Issa. For reference, this is Rep. Issa's third bite at this particular apple - he was a cosponser on a similar bill in 2008 and 2009. Rep Maloney was also a cosponser in 2009.

Comment: Tempest in a teapot (Score 3, Insightful) 1167

by braeldiil (#38237330) Attached to: US Senator Proposes Bill To Eliminate Overtime For IT Workers
This is all much ado about nothing. There are no real changes to current law here - the computer professional exemption has been a part of the FLSA for years at least - probably decades. See the Department of Labor fact sheet - http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm The proposed amendment has 2 purposes. 1) It provides a more detailed definition of computer professional. 2) It cleans up the weekly salary requirement by linking it to the standard salary requirements, instead of existing seperately. The hourly number is the same in both versions. So there's essentially nothing new here. This is a cleanup/clarification of existing law, with almost nonexistant changes.

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

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