For a technology company like 37Signals I suppose it is possible to reach the same level of infrastructure specialization in-house as a dedicated cloud provider, but I doubt it - especially since they had once already gotten out of the business. More likely, some of the true costs and risks of operating its own infrastructure will just be hidden in support areas like finance, legal, facilities, help desk, etc. There is also the company-wide opportunity costs of getting distracted with this exercise. Better to just buy compute in the cloud, get clean invoices, price shop from time to time, but otherwise move on with your core business.

If you want one central shipping hub for your online retail operation, Columbus is the cheapest point in the country to locate it based on carrier shipping rates to rest of country and average demand from each region.

Self-fulfilling beliefs? Sure, psychology plays some role in timing economic swings, but there are real fundamentals at play -- businesses, households and governments over-extend themselves. Then, interest rates rise in response, followed by widespread insolvency. These are real economic imbalances, in the real, physical world and they have to be worked through legally to get the resources out from under bankrupt management and reallocated to financially healthy owners. Yellen's remark is purely a political one, not economic.

Another piece of the puzzle of how Bill Gates plans to reduce world population to 500,000,000.

I got the vaccine but I strongly oppose mandates. Vaccination should be a personal medical decision made between individuals and doctors.

Look, there are numerous authoritarian schemes we could dream up that might increase the life expectancy a year or two. But that doesn't mean we should do them. There is more to life than postponing death at all costs. There are other values, and you may be surprised to learn that striving for the longest life possible for the greatest number of people possible is not the value at the top of everyone's list. There are other value systems besides utilitarianism which you might want to consider before you allow yourself to be stirred to such hatred of your fellow citizens who are choosing not to be vaccinated.

Getting a shot in the arm and feeling lousy for a day or two is not a "sacrifice" for the greater good. We did it at least as much - and probably more so - for our own damn good. But boldly accepting some personal risk in order to preserve medical privacy for all and the right of free citizens to make their own medical choices - THAT is an actual sacrifice for the greater good.

Cords suck. They snag, they fray, they tangle, they slack, they break. They take up space in your pocket, your bag, your shelf. Some are too short, some are too long. Wireless headsets are mediocre at best, it is true. They have a whole bunch of their own problems and many on this thread feel those problems are worse than cord problems. But this is exactly the point. I'm sick of slow advances in wireless and so is Apple. Its time to kick the wireless headset market into high gear and get lots of models from lots of competitors getting iterated multiple times a year and getting cheaper all the time. How do we do that? Simple. Eliminate the 3.5mm jack.

I think this poll might be mixing up a couple issues. Strictly speaking, video vs no video is actually probably not that big a debate. For people who don't want videos it is easy enough to ignore them; and perhaps even a user preference or cookie could allow them to always be hidden. I suspect much of the overwhelming negative reaction to videos reflected in this poll has more to do with the history of video on Slashdot being completely 'tainted' with things that were obviously ads trying to be passed off as something else, which really damaged the trust and culture of the community. While I am not one to watch video news and commentary (I am with the majority that prefer to just READ) I do not think we should just rule out doing video podcast-like content from authentic sources.

Yes, this technology is called Fiber-to-the-Press-Release

I believe Network Neutrality legislation will do more harm than good. Quality of service and IP transit costs are governed by complex market forces today. It is easy for individuals and organizations connecting to Internet edge networks (most of us) to take these forces for granted and get swept up in language about fairness and capitalism and equality. In reality, as you move to the core of the Internet, there already is no such thing as network neutrality and to try and 'preserve it' is meaningless. ISPs, Tier 1s, and major content providers already enter into peering arrangements, both paid and unpaid, that improve end user experience and help drive down IP transit costs. Depending on the ISP you use, you obtain the benefits of their peering arrangements, which are as strong as the number of eyeballs they have and their negotiating skills. Some ISPs have better peering than others and so in reality there is no such thing as a 'neutral ISP'. The concept of an ISP 'holding their users hostage' as they try to obtain concessions from content providers is not unique to Comcast. Everyone in the space is playing the same game of leveraging the strength of their numbers and their negotiation and personal networks to get any advantage they can. The decisions about 'who should peer with who' are and should continue to be governed by organizations freely entering into paid or unpaid agreements with one-another. As soon as the emotional/idealistic notion of 'neutrality' is stipulated, then the technical reality of peering and the unplanned forces governing the core of the Internet will begin to centralize and calcify. What will be unfortunate is when this slows or even reverses the dramatic deflation in IP transit costs we have seen over the last 15 years, going from well over $1200 per megabit to under $1 in some regions. I highly recommend 'The 2014 Internet Peering Playbook' by William B. Norton.

What was the supply and demand for IT labor like 10 years ago? What is it like now? Therein lies the answer.

If employer believes candidate A will do more work for less pay than candidate B, then hiring candidate A is a perfectly legitimate hiring decision and is hardly age "discrimination" just because candidate A is younger. If employer believes candidate A will do LESS work and require MORE pay than candidate B, but STILL hires candidate A because he is younger and the employer does not like old people, THAT is age discrimination.

It's gotta be tough always coming up with new ideas for Slashdot polls every couple days. These days, it is not unusual to see polls with rather contrived topics. But every once in a while you get a poll like this and can not believe it was not one of the first ten published in 1997.

There's much discussion of coverage and speed. Where I live, near Chicago, Verizon can't be beat. But the bigger thing for me is that their Customer Service is very good. I could not believe when I got my iPhone 5 a couple of days ago and had trouble activating it, I called Verizon and was speaking with a good english speaker in less than a minute. This was with millions of people getting the iPhone 5 (probably a good portion of them on Verizon.) My wife just had to call their tech support because her 4S wasn't getting on 3G. Again, she was speaking to someone within less than a minute who was knowledgable. Ironically, as I write this, it turns out the 3G network is down. But Verizon outages like this are very rare and in this day in age of complete crap support and idiot agents, I'd almost rather have a day of outage every year supported by decent people than only an hour supported by morons.

I studied Philosophy but have been in IT for 10 years plus all the years I was in college working side jobs and projects. I do a lot of tech interviews -- I am a consultant in a very rapidly growing cloud services field. I specifically look for people who have learned from their own side projects and hands-on experience. Find me on LinkedIn by going to my Slashdot profile page and checking my Journal.