One of the (few) things that I still am glad about in working in the software field is the absence of retards brandishing some kind of government-issued license and feeling this entitles them to some kind of respect. You're judged on your skills and knowledge *as demonstrated* in this business. If this offends you, you're definitely in the wrong place, since I'd bet 95% of the people on /. have no form of professional licensure.

The frickin' laser is on the frickin' shark's head, of course.

This.

Why anyone would listen to any of the ratings companies that whitewashed the mortgage debt disaster that got us into this mess is beyond me. It's astounding that they are even in business, and that people would pay them money to rate anything. There should be Federal indictments coming down for the executives of every one of these guys, not news stories on their "ratings" of the Federal debt.

How about actually reading the article?

Kissmetrics has a single identifier that is used and tracked across all sites that use it for an identifiable visitor. It would be stupidly easy to aggregate this data and get a complete profile of a person, esp. considering the sites using it - what shows they watch, when they watch them, what music they listen to and when, combined with geolocation data, where they do these things, and for sites with subscriptions, they will have credit card information and home location and contact information. The researchers have no way of knowing if such information is sold between sites, but if there was no "tracking" application to it, why is the identifier not unique between sites?

The new hardware will come with Lion, obviously.

It's really more than "a bit silly" it's Apple's move to make the computer a consumer device like the iPod. Apple's vision is that the non-mobile devices become, essentially, static iPhone/iPad with large screens and storage, with Apple getting its 30% cut of every revenue stream that transits the device.

However, I didn't sign up with Apple computers 25 years ago because it was "Computers for Dummies". Windows is the corporate computer, and Linux is and always will be for guys with lots of free time and a burning desire to swear like a sailor any time you need to attach hardware. Where have you gone, Computer for the Rest of Us??

FF5 also uses twice the memory and more over time thanks to persistent memory leaks on OS X. Chrome is an even bigger memory hog but at least it's stable and also noticeably the fastest overall browsing experience on OS X. I left my laptop on FF 3.6 because it can't handle the memory consumption of FF4/4.1 and I find it amazing that Mozilla seems intent on *forcing* its userbase onto its new leaky and buggy platform...which is, in effect, forcing them onto Chrome. Mozilla has 1/10th the resources on this that Google does, and trying to go toe-to-toe with them on release speed will swiftly reduce Firefox to an unusable mess.

I do wonder why FF hasn't been forked yet, though...

You'll find the same situation at any others, because now that this clever strategem is well-publicized, every other self-respecting titan of finance is going to attach such a standard clause in any of their deals. Do you think anybody wants to be at a gallery opening in San Francisco with a bunch of Sand Hill guys and have to admit they let $70K slip into the pockets of some technical dork like Yee Lee? Did that guy even *go* to Stanford?

You see the issue.

Yeah, unless you've got a founder's stake and good lawyers, equity participation in a new business is very probably a waste of time. Also, as noted, since a pure IPO is pretty rare these days, the days of big upside are now merely legends of the bubble. You are much better off getting an additional $10K in salary and then investing that in real companies if so inclined.

I negotiate salary and benefits and pretty much ignore any option offers unless they think I'm stupid enough to take them in lieu of additional cash compensation. I view options strictly as a lotto ticket, with about the same probability of winning but a much smaller payout. In fact, I probably should just negotiate a lotto ticket package instead of options next time...

Dunno, my high school required basic Econ to graduate, This was back in the 80's.