Comment You were not hired to finish the project (Score 5, Informative) 308
You were hired to be the scapegoat.
Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? 308
X10 writes "Suppose you're assigned to a project that someone else has created. It's an app, you'll work on it alone. You think 'how hard can it be,' you don't check out the source code before you accept the assignment. But then, it turns out the code is not robust. You create a small new feature, and the app breaks down in unexpected ways. You fix a bug, and new bugs pop up all over the place. The person who worked on the project before you is well respected in the company, and you are 'just a contractor,' hired a few months ago. The easy way out is to just quit, as there's plenty of jobs you can take. But that doesn't feel right. What else can you do?"
Comment I LOLd (Score 2) 84
But astronomers have ruled that out on the basis that a comet carrying enough carbon-14 must have been over 100 km in diameter and would surely have left other evidence such as an impact crater...
Comment He is a masterful politician (Score 4, Insightful) 179
Let's face it, 90% of people are fucking stupid, and believe everything they see on TV, including "crime dramas" where unbelievable feats of forensic science are achieved in every episode. People eat this shit up, and most of this stupid underclass believes it is necessary to prevent or solve crimes.
This is why the revelations that these ubiquitous, omniscient surveillance systems exists generated nothing more than enthusiastic yawns among the populace.
People... just... don't... care...
Honestly, the people who do care, even being as vocal as they can be, make an almost imperceptible noise against the drums of big tyrannical government - like an annoying mosquito in the ear of the underinformed, low-information majority who just wants to know when the next episode of the Kardashians or Property Brothers or CSI or other mindless drivel will be on.
David Cameron Says Fictional Crime Proves Why Snooper's Charter Is Necessary 179
An anonymous reader sends this story from TechDirt:
"You may recall the stories from the past couple years about the so-called 'snooper's charter' in the UK — a system to further legalize the government's ability to spy on pretty much all communications. It was setting up basically a total surveillance system, even beyond what we've since learned is already being done today. Thankfully, that plan was killed off by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. However, Prime Minister David Cameron is back to pushing for the snooper's charter — and his reasoning is as stupid as it is unbelievable. Apparently, he thinks it's necessary because the fictional crime dramas he watches on TV show why it's necessary. Cameron said, 'I love watching, as I probably should stop telling people, crime dramas on the television. There's hardly a crime drama where a crime is solved without using the data of a mobile communications device. What we have to explain to people is that... if we don't modernise the practice and the law, over time we will have the communications data to solve these horrible crimes on a shrinking proportion of the total use of devices and that is a real problem for keeping people safe.'"
Comment Re:Makes sense from a shareholder PoV (Score 1) 298
Your logic an assumptions are horribly flawed, most notably because you are assuming they can't and won't ever lower the price again if they need more subscribers.
Comment Honking is like a Car Alarm (Score 1) 267
They go off so often that nobody even notices them anymore. It would probably not change the accident rate to simply get rid of horns altogether.
Comment Makes sense from a shareholder PoV (Score 5, Insightful) 298
This makes perfect sense from a shareholder point of view. Raising the price to $119 will decrease the number of Prime members, thereby decreasing the cost of providing the Prime service, but the people who stay with Prime will likely more than pay for those who leave. So, it's a win-win for shareholders and Amazon.
Comment Re:Must be nice.. (Score 1) 430
FCC is chaired by one of Obama's Telecom Lobbyist buddies, remember?
What is so funny is that his broken campaign promise is STILL on the change.gov website:
http://change.gov/agenda/ethic...
"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists â" and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."
-- Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA
November 10, 2007
Price of Amazon Prime May Jump To $119 a Year 298
colinneagle writes "Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak hinted during the company's earnings conference call [Thursday] that we might see an increase to the company's popular Amazon Prime service. As it stands now, Amazon Prime costs $79 per year and offers users free shipping on millions of items, free book borrowing for select Kindle titles, and last but not least, free streaming to the company's video on-demand service. Going forward, Amazon may increase that pricepoint to either $99 or $119. That's a rather significant price increase, but it's important to keep in mind that the price of Amazon Prime has remained the same ever since Amazon first started the program nine years ago." How many products do you use that haven't increased in price for that long?
Comment Re:No Accredited Credential, No Regulatory Authori (Score 2) 374
Ok, I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you there. Would you care to cite any of these "100 cases" for us laypeople?
Comment Re:(Another) Misleading Headline (Score 1) 430
An almost identical bill passed almost unanimously in South Carolina a couple of years ago. The vote was 109-3 with support of both parties.
Do you honestly think it will go any differently in KS?
Comment Following South Carolina's Lead (Score 5, Informative) 430
We had the same thing happen here a couple of years ago. Oconee county got fed up with the broadband players' reluctance to hook up rural parts of the county, so they decided to go in with the Feds to roll out universal fiber to all, because of the economic implications of such..
In response, AT&T objected, said they had planned on universal coverage, and lobbied the State for a "level playing field" law that would prohibit hooking residences up to any publicly funded infrastructure where the same subsidies were not given to AT&T and other private carriers.
The day the bill was signed into Law, the AT&T CEO declared wireline infrastructure dead, and that not one more penny would be sunk into wireline expansion in South Carolina.
Comment I guess it works (Score 1) 79
Now that nobody has jobs anymore, I guess it's not important to know precisely what time it is... Is there a "Vienna Sausage o'clock" so people know to go pick up their welfare checks?
