Comment Re:But that's not the real problem. (Score 1) 1651
Comment Compare the same exchange with other media (Score 1) 460
An avid football fan calls their equally fanatic friend after their team scores the winning goal and yells, "GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!" The friend yells the same thing back, everyone is excited, and both they shout about how much they love their country. After no more than fifteen seconds of conversation, they both hang up.
Sure, some people might not be able to understand why these two people are so football crazy, but everyone can identify that something rich and emotional just happened. But when the exact same thing happens on twitter, it gets denounced it as 'useless observation.' Why?
Comment Re:A Very Shortsighted Article (Score 4, Informative) 487
We don't pay premiums because we're stupid. We pay premiums so we can relax and concentrate on what we need to concentrate on.
They actually do talk about that in the article. The difference in cost for one of the homegrown petabyte pods from the cheapest suppliers (Dell) is about $700,000. The difference between their pods and cloud services is over $2.7 million per petabyte. And they have many, many petabytes. Even if you do add "a few hundred thousand a year for the people who need to maintain this hardware" - and Dell isn't going to come down in the middle of the night when your power goes out - they are still way, way on top.
I know you don't pay premiums because you're stupid. But think about how much those premiums are actually costing you, what you are getting in return, and if it is worth it.
Comment Re:Miracle language. (Score 1) 299
Eh, different tools for different jobs.
Comment Re:Don't like it? Too bad (Score 3, Insightful) 582
The laws in place to protect against such things are way too mild and useless. Someone can fire you for being maimed in their own machinery or assaulted by their own managers... you can even get fired for refusing to have sex with your manager... and then get fired for getting pregnant if you do! Sure it isn't legal, but the trouble you have to go through to fight it, then what you get in return for doing so is horribly skewed.
The only solution, my dear child worker, is to find another job. Don't bother forming a union with others - strikes have never worked and never will. Don't bother protesting, or trying to raise awareness by getting your story out. Don't try the courts - they are just a horrific waste of time stacked against you. And especially don't bother voting - except with your feet to another employer. What? You can't leave because nobody will hire a child who has already run away from a factory? You can't leave because you don't have the money to go looking for another job because you're employed 17 hours a day just to eat? Well child, the best you can do is be resigned to your life of virtual slavery, complaining to yourself that the system just doesn't work for you. It may not be right. It may not be fair. That IS how it is.
Comment Re:Get Clear First (Score 2, Insightful) 582
If the company is big enough and you don't have to make a decision on an offer instantly, the best thing you can do is ask for a copy of their employee regulations. If they have a formalized policy on a specific aspect, like overtime pay or on-call hours, then you can have some security in your decision. But if all you have is a pat on the shoulder, a warm smile, and an empty promise, I wouldn't feel too secure.
Comment Re:Overturned? (Score 5, Informative) 384
60% of her decisions that were appealed to the Supreme court were overturned. Was this one of them?
The Supreme Court overturned 68% of all cases it decided to hear last year (and 74% the year before that!), so she actually is below average in terms of reversals. But you're confusing appealed with heard - every decision gets appealed to the Supreme Court, if the client still has money to pay for the lawyer. She only had 1.2% of her decisions overturned, which is a far lower figure.
Source: Newsweek http://www.newsweek.com/id/199955
Comment Different from wearing a mask? (Score 4, Insightful) 366
Now replace mask with proxy.
Comment Pre-empting the inevitable cries of abuse (Score 4, Insightful) 95
Comment Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score 1) 410
Apparently they could not figure out that "9999" was probably not the actual last 4 digits of anyone's SSN.
To be fair, there is a 1 in 9,999 chance that 9999 are the last 4 digits of someone's SSN. Statistically speaking, it is no less and no more common than 8425, 1234, or 0001. However, there are no valid social security numbers ending in 0000 - they should use that as the default.
Comment Re:Whatever happened to research? (Score 2, Informative) 513
Comment Re:That would imply that non spam tweets were usef (Score 1) 301
And no, I am not so important that everyone is interested in what I am doing, but the twenty-five or so people who follow me on Twitter do. If not, they wouldn't be following me. And I actually am interested in what all the people I am following are doing. If not, I wouldn't be following them - and I have dropped people who I don't care about or those update every thirty minutes. Twitter lets me stay connected to my friends without all the bloat of something like Facebook. If you don't want to know when I'm going shopping, then don't follow me on Twitter and shut up.
Comment Re:*I* stopped contributing to Wikipedia, (Score 3, Insightful) 412
People talk about their experiences with Wikipedia and treat it as if it were somehow different from every other institution on the planet. They expect some utopian harmony where people are calmly and coolly working together for a common goal. And most of the time, it is like that. Yet like everything else, it isn't perfect, people break rules, there are jerks, bad things happen to good people, and so on. What gets me is that for some reason, people just give up on Wikipedia when they would normally defend any their involvement in other civic, non-profit, for-profit, governmental, or educational organization.