How exactly do accountants and marketeers make money for the company? Marketeers arguably have an impact on sales even if they do not make them, and they can be an important differentiating factor in a company. But accountants surely are part of the plumbing, just like IT. And more so than accounting, IT can also be a differentiator even in non-tech firms.

This article is a perfect example of why Slashdot doesnt matter anymore. Its just not serious; its more like a very sophisitcated troll article, from its infantile renaming of Bitcoin to "Coin" to every other fallacious assertion, economic fallacy and Stockholm Syndrome belief in the State. Its an a-historical hysterical piece of fluff; and what is the point? Honest writing and article posting is still needed online, so why not be like Reddit and post stories honestly? Its more useful, makes more money and does a better job of informing. Of course, Reddit now uses Bitcoin tipping for moderation. This is the sort of innovation that is needed, not this tired, ancient model.

The only reason why I came here was I saw a llink on Twitter. Think about that.

Slashdot needs to change radically if it is to become important and useful again, otherwise, its going to continue to fade away into irrelevance.

If you knew anything about how exchanges work John, you'd know that withdrawal limits are typically imposed by the banks themselves and/or AML rules. Not your entirely unfounded theories about them being fractional reserve. Mt Gox has made many references over the years to having to negotiate with banks to up the amount of money they're allowed to transfer per day. Just one more reason why the banking system sucks. There are typically no withdraw limits on the Bitcoin side once AML verification and good security are set up.

The PDP-11 has always been one of those canonical architectures that everybody studies (or should, if they don't), even if they never actually see or use one. Very clean, very orthogonal.

I did an undergrad course in operating systems using XINU on an LSI-11. Great fun. I worked for DEC for a while in the early '90s, but only played with VAXen. It was the beginning of DEC's death spiral, so it wasn't a fun place to be.

I've sometimes thought it would be fun to own a real PDP-11, cool front panel and all. No idea what I'd do with it, but that's another matter. :-)

...laura

Even in prison you are actually allowed to go outside. Presumably he prefers an internet connection to being able to see the sun? What he's got now is hardly better than it he was extradited to the USA and thrown in jail, except he doesn't get to be a martyr or fight a decent trial this way.

"firefighters, cops, doctors, detectives". These work as role models because kids can easily relate to what these people do, even if they don't understand the details. Engineers? Not so much. Same goes for lawyers, managers and similar professions, but those grow more attractive as kids learn about the pay and social status associated with them. The engineering profession probably grows more unattractive with the years, when kids find it's a long and difficult road to a degree with crap pay and poor career opportunities.

Sure, it's better in some countries than others. Here in NL, people say you have to be mad to choose a career as an engineer. The standing joke amongst students in business schools is that it's good that engineering studies are lengthy with a jam-packed curriculum; by the time the engineers graduate, they'll be groomed and ready to be managed by the business school graduates.

It also suffers from the birthday paradox: if you're looking for a lot of people (ie, N terrorists) in a large database (ie, M drivers licences), the probability of a false positive is multiplied by a factor of roughly N factorial, where N is the number of terrorists you're looking for. This caused the German Federal Security folks and Siemens to cancel an effort to use facial recognition in airports.

Well, yes. I'd like to add that while some measure of character development for comic book heroes is nice in movies like these, I hated the recent "super deep and profound and dark" reboots of other formerly beloved cardboard cutout heroes, most notably Batman and James Bond. These rebooted movies made decent movies, but the protagonists weren't "our" Batman or Bond. This Superman at least stays closer to the original.

That's what you get with vertically integrated companies. If you buy into one part of their "stack", they will ensure you will not go to their competitors for the remainder of the stack or try and tax you if you do, if they can get away with it. In the case of ISPs who also sell content, that's why we need net neutrality.

"I'm really not sure if the name "diesel engine" is appropriate for the resulting contraption."

What 'contraption'? The engine itself requires fairly little modification, and the costs are really not so high. All around Europe there are lots of cars - and buses - running on LPG. Also, as others above pointed out, Diesel is just the name, the design itself has proven to be quite versatile.

Not just that: 3rd parties, even very small ones, may still manage to put issues ignored by the ruling party/parties on the agenda. The Dutch Partij voor de Dieren (Party for Animals, a bunch of nutters who won votes on the strength of astoundingly lavish campaign contributions) did just that, doing some good for animal rights despite having only 2 of 150 seats in parliament. Privacy, "digital" rights and civil liberties are similarly undervalued issues; all parties profess to be in favour of those, but proposals in this area are often half-hearted and poorly thought out if they even make it to the table. This is because most politicians do not really give a shit about them. I voted for the Pirate Party in the last elections, in hopes that these issues receive the attention they deserve.

I'm sorry, I'm going to need a car analogy to make sense of this.

To me, this is very important. I've seen a few people around me who so got in the habit of always being busy at work, that they crammed what little free time they had with activities and hobbies as well. And I've been there myself. Of course, hobbies are fine, but I am a lot happier overall after I started "pissing away" (as I used to call it) some of my free time. Just doing whatever I feel like, which includes doing nothing at all except lying on the lawn with a beer, gazing up at the sky. A little down time for the brain, no distractions, calls, or tablets near at hand, helps me perform better at work as well.

Yes: develop hobbies, spend time with family.

I'd do that.

Otherwise, be creative. Start by being creative enough to come up with some ideas to spend that free time creatively.

If all fails, go volunteer.

I see someone has been reading David Brin.