Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment New coach, same game (Score 1) 75

They're still playing the "Try to get IBM to pay us to go away." game. It didn't work the first time around. This one's even more futile because this particular argument was dealt with during the original case and IBM proved that the code they contributed to Linux wasn't code belonging to Project Monterrey at all but completely different code IBM wrote themselves for a different product. But I suppose, given the people behind this, lack of pattern recognition skills is a given.

Comment That's not the worst part (Score 4, Insightful) 61

The worst part isn't that now anyone who can get a few pictures of your face off the Internet can log in on your account. The worst part is that you can't recover from it. You can't change your face so once they've got it all you can do is disable this feature completely, and hope Google doesn't re-enable it.

Comment "Is recycleable" vs. "is recycled". (Score 2) 118

The manufacturers may win by arguing that "is recycleable" in the law doesn't mean "is recycled" which is what the state wants to enforce. And they'd be right. If you read "is recycleable" as "made from material that can be recycled", which is the right reading at the manufacturing level, then the label is accurate: the containers are made of recycleable material. The counter-argument is that the law isn't requiring truth about what the material itself is but requiring truth about the container as finally delivered to the consumer. Yogurt containers, for example, may be made of recycleable materials but, as delivered to the consumer, are not recycleable because they're contaminated with food product and will not be accepted by recycling programs. Most consumers assumed that if the container is marked with the "chasing arrows" symbol, that means they can put it in the recycling bin and it'll be recycled. The manufacturers, the plaintiffs here, deliberately contribute to that misunderstanding by their advertising and promotional material about recycleables, and they know what their products are going to be used for so they know it's going to result in the containers not being recycleable.

It's going to come down to how the CA lawyers argue the case. As usual, if they let the plaintiffs frame the case they're going to lose.

Comment Hopefully Google won't hamstring this (Score 2) 41

Hopefully Google won't hamstring this by forcing you to enable "install apps from any source" setting to use non-Google app stores. If I use an alternate app store I don't want to let apps from just anywhere be installed, I only want apps from that app store to be installed. Apps from anywhere else I want to continue to block.

Comment Re: Leaving. Billionaires or billionaires' money? (Score 2) 105

That's actual stock, not options. Incentive stock options (the kind executives receive) don't count as income until you sell the stock after exercising the options. Take out a loan against that stock and you've got dollars in your bank account you can spend but no income to report. Now, suppose the loan's structured so that, as long as the stock is worth enough to cover the principal plus accumulated interest, you don't have to make payments on the loan. Do this through a trust so your heirs don't have to worry about repayment either. Every year now you get the full dollar value of your stock awards in cash without having to declare any income. Possibly even without having to exercise the options, depending on how friendly you are with the lender.

Comment SNMP? (Score 2) 76

Any router running SNMP or a web interface configured to listen on the external (WAN) port should be considered defective and replaced (or reflashed to sane non-braindead firmware). Home networks don't need SNMP at all, and business networks not using enterprise-grade equipment probably don't need it with write enabled. The only access to the router from the WAN side should be SSH using public-key authentication, and that only if you absolutely need it (you probably don't). That solves the vast majority of problems.

Comment Shortages? Yeah, no. (Score 3, Insightful) 251

If businesses were having problems hiring people in these fields, you'd think that they'd be a) offering higher pay and better benefits to make themselves more attractive to workers, and b) scrupulously avoiding filtering out qualified candidates for no good reason. Yet we don't see them doing either one. Tells me they want to use "shortage" as an excuse to move work overseas or bring in cheap labor from elsewhere.

We pay nurses, doctors, pharmacists, teachers and such crap wages, overwork them, force them to deal with idiotic gig-app scheduling, is it any wonder nobody wants to go into those fields? You have ICE showing up at construction sites arresting or scaring off half or more of the crew, pay them crap wages, and wonder why you can't get construction laborers? You outsource aircraft maintenance to the cheapest firm around and wonder why nobody wants to be an aircraft mechanic? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Comment Re: Leaving. Billionaires or billionaires' money? (Score 4, Interesting) 105

That works short-term, but then they become a non-resident with CA-based income which means they have to file CA taxes under non-resident rules. Much less favorable, and leaves them open to CA doing any number of things to tax rules. One would be considering loans secured by stock options (not actual shares) to be income.

Comment Leaving. Billionaires or billionaires' money? (Score 5, Insightful) 105

Sure the billionaires can leave CA. No loss there, because their money will stay there. That's where the businesses they want to fund are. That's where the talent they want to attract is. And billionaires themselves pay jack shit in taxes, it's the businesses that the money's in that matter. And for that matter, where are the billionaires going to move? Manhattan, Kansas?

Slashdot Top Deals

Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.

Working...