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Comment Americans for Common Cents (Score 2) 473

Great! Now that Canada is getting rid of the penny, we in the USA will be stuck with them FOREVER out of principle.

I don't understand these people:
http://pennies.org/
http://www.pennylovers.org/

Just checkout this unassailable logic from pennies.org:

Over three-quarters of Americans (77%) are concerned merchants would raise prices without the penny. And they're probably right. Raymond Lombra, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at Penn State University, told a Congressional committee in 1990 that rounding cash sales up or down to the nearest nickel would cost consumers over $600 million annually.

So that's what, less than $2 for every man, woman and child in the nation each year? I'll gladly pay $2 a year to never have to waste time with pennies. My time is worth that much to me.

Programming

Submission + - Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career (kalzumeus.com)

Ian Lamont writes: "Patrick McKenzie has written about the do's and don't's of working as a software engineer, and some solid (and often amusing) advice on how to get ahead. One of the first pieces of advice:

Don't call yourself a programmer: "Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired.

Although he runs his own company, he is a cold realist about the possibilities for new college grads in the startup world: "The high-percentage outcome is you work really hard for the next couple of years, fail ingloriously, and then be jobless and looking to get into another startup""

Submission + - Internet-spreading American gets 15 years in Cuba (wsj.com)

decora writes: "American social worker Alan Phillip Gross, who has spent years connecting developing countries to the internet, has been sentenced by a "Security Court" in Cuba to 15 years in prison. His crime was “Acts against the Independence and Territorial Integrity of the State." The Guban government also claimed he was trying to "destroy the Revolution through the use of communication systems out of the control of authorities.""
Open Source

Submission + - Richard Stallman: Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream' (networkworld.com)

jbrodkin writes: "Cell phones are "Stalin's dream," says free software pioneer Richard Stallman, who refuses to own one. "Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop." Even the open source Android is dangerous because devices ship with proprietary executables, Stallman says in a wide-ranging interview on the state of the free software movement. Despite some progress, Stallman is still dismayed by "The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem.""

Comment Re:well (Score 1) 939

I also heartily second that! I just spent the last three days wondering what happened to my registry before Google told me about F-Lock. Really, who does Micro$oft think they are, flouting 20+ years of PC design in favor of their application specific nonsense? Oh, nevermind, I guess I do know who they think they are.

Comment Re:Balmer is a used car salesman (Score 1) 261

This stuff is so humorous... Steve's lucky the writer's strike ended before he gave this interview

InformationWeek: One of the concerns I found that people carry over with them from -- certainly the Vista release and their past experiences with those operating systems, is the concern about application compatibility at the beginning. What kind of things is Microsoft doing today that it hasn't done in the past to assure customers that they can start moving fairly soon to Windows Server 2008?
Ballmer: Well, we've done a lot of work, obviously, even in the Vista context.
Well, that you've done a lot of work "in the Vista context" it isn't so obvious to anyone that has tried to use it. You don't even have a computer at your desk, do you Mr. Ballmer?

Ballmer: Take something like SharePoint alone. It's a big deal. The quality of the databases, that's a big deal. The availability of tools, of Visual Studio and .Net and the ability to build bespoke applications, those are all part of the value and the total cost. And I think we've done a good job.
Monkeyboy, you are no developer. It's questionable that you even own a computer. You've never had to use those tools before. Before you tell anybody that you think you've "done a good job", you should try to use some of your company's software.

InformationWeek: Many of those do so because of perceived "bugginess" of an initial release. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has said that this version of Windows Server is among the most rigorously tested products that the company's come out with yet. What are some of your proof points there?
Ballmer: It builds off the Vista code base. So all of that testing plus another year.
So that's what, one year of testing?

InformationWeek: The openness pledge you guys made last week, one thing that I didn't really get a better sense of is, do you feel like Microsoft is moving more toward embracing open standards than you have in the past?
Ballmer: We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. We're going to embrace a lot of standards, we're going to be transparent about how we embrace those standards. If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.
So, you'll tell us how you're going to screw us before you screw us now? That's considerate of you, if not a bit misguided.

Ballmer: Microsoft has always strived to be at the center of where innovative work is happening.
Yet, despite all of that striving, your company hasn't ever really been there. It must be very frustrating. Though I don't think that I'd ever resort to throwing chairs and cursing at innocent bystanders. But, then again, I use Linux, and therefore do not experience much frustration.

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