I don't recall anyone patting me on the back for carrying a coworker's old code through several years of releases. And the politics would have been more favorable to me if I would have turned this into a big "refactor" project where I rewrite it every 18 months. After a few failed releases I could save the day by "discovering" Test Driven Development methodologies.
My parents share an email address, so I'd argue that email addresses aren't a great way to identify people either. (or that my parents have a weird policy)
And why release a Linux version? Either people will complain it's not open source, and send annoying petitions about it. Or the Linux version will be used for reverse engineering the protocol because the debug tools on Linux are so much better than on Windows.
That proposal means you have to pay for VM software and for Windows and deal with Linux. Doesn't sound like it solves any problems, but it does create new problems and added cost.
I suspect it would take less than 2 weeks for employees to learn how to use Ubuntu. Microsoft's customers might have to reevaluate the sunk cost fallacy and retrain and buy new software. And these days there isn't quite so much software to buy since everyone wants to sell your business some Cloud(tm) Software-as-a-Service(tm).
I'd really like some vanilla version of Windows. Much of the attempts at innovation turned into cruft. All I needed is a minimal environment, enough to run a browser, mail/outlook, etc. I totally understand there are some extra things necessary to be ADA compliant, but the rest of the madness should be an optional add-on or perhaps dropped completely.
None of my last 11 jobs lasted more than 2 years. My current job has lasted me 7 years. The reason is the pay is good and the work is agreeable. And I would never had gotten to this point without non-competes.
Canada spends around $6K per capita on healthcare, the US nearly $9K. We very likely can spend more efficiently than we do, but the costs can't be driven down quite as much as you seem to imply. (of course the cost of living in Canada is lower than the US. Rent in the US is 29% more than Canada for example)
One thing we could do is not offer advanced services to most people, these would be considered life saving procedures today but wouldn't have been available 40 years ago. Is it wrong to provide 20th century healthcare to the masses in the 21st century? I think that if cost were of a primary concern, then we would have to consider it. Better to have appendectomy freely available to anyone who needs it than not have any healthcare because the money isn't there for equal access to open heart surgery. While I don't think we have a money problem to degree, the argument of money keeps coming up so it's fair to offer alternatives.
With chipped cards some of the liability for fraud is shifted onto the card holder and the businesses rather than the credit card company. It's non-zero now that the credit card company will refuse to pay you for the fraudulent transactions. I don't know anyone personally that has had to eat the cost yet, but a I think it's now a bigger concern under the new agreements.
Credit card fraud, skimming, etc is quite common. Having the assets seized for an otherwise legitimate business is pretty rare. Of course small town politics plays into that. If you're an unpopular LGBT business owner in a small town you can experience such police harassment. But I believe it's still relatively rare.
Now you never mentioned the real threat that essentially every small business has experienced. Counterfeit currency. If you primarily do small transactions, you might be out $20-$100 per incident, it really sucks, but them are the breaks. You call the police, they shrug their shoulders, and you buy some gizmos and train your staff to avoid a repeat. If you're selling used cars, and accepting cash, you have a serious problem if you can't identify which transaction involved the counterfeit cash. It's not unusual to buy a used car for cash from a business like an auto mechanic, especially in the rural US. Putting the cash and paperwork in an envelope and sticking that in the lockbox is a good way to organize this. (used car in that example might only be $500, but $3000 is perhaps typical)
Yeah, I get that's how it's supposed to be. It just doesn't appeal to me. It was lots of little stories that did not seem to affect any of the characters. Television operates in a weird fantasy world that I do not wish to escape to.
It was up to $10k/month in cash deposits for a business account that cost $8/month. It was very cheap. I certainly wished we hit the $10k limit more often, it was only if we managed to sell antique furniture rather than the usual knick-knacks. And some of the cash was kept on hand to spend on purchasing more items to replace the ones we sold in the store. Many of the banks have it so if you move your personal account to the same bank they will use the money in both business and personal when calculating minimum deposit, which usually nets you a few things like a few free wire transfers a month or no free for cashier's checks.
This was in a rural part of the US. Everything needed could be done at a retail bank office. Bring in bills, pick up smaller bills and coins. Of course the banks could do a bunch of things like payroll and retirement accounts for various fees, but if you're small that isn't necessary either. The bank certainly has fees, but they were pretty reasonably, probably because they spammed us with offers to buy more costly business packages. Also, I can't really recall any situation where electronic payments would have to be done, the business wrote checks every month to pay bills and taxes.
Overall I think electronic payment should be the most efficient way, but they take a cut straight from revenue. Where as bank services tend to be a fixed amount that you pay, just like insurance or utility service. If you have a good month, you seem to have to pay the credit card service a lot more.
I think the system of electronic transactions would be more fair if it were something you paid for unlimited use, like with an ISP. Or at least tiered use based on the number of transactions. And not something that is per transactions below a certain amount and a percentage above a certain amounts. And the per amount charge is so big that it really small transactions are sometimes not worth doing. It's better than it used to be, and there are other options like Square. They make it easier but take a bigger cut than what a huge retailer might have to put up with.
For a huge department store, absolutely the overhead for handling cash is significant.
For the small shops I've worked in, where the entire day can fit into a locked purse, the overhead is no more significant than sweeping up the shop at the end of the day. Certainly scale matters, and it's why I pointed out small businesses. (also because I have experience in small business, but I do not have experiences in running a large retail chain or anything of that scale)
Yeah no kidding. I few months ago I received an updated credit agreement in the mail, over 20% APR. I have a very good credit rating, but really I no longer can reasonably justify holding a balance on my card. If I were to max out a card at that interest rate I would be screwed as they also increased my limits every year for the last 15 years. Also shark is a good metaphor as it is a cold blooded predator. At least a traditional loan shark is a human being that might have difficulty sleeping after breaking enough kneecaps. I can't even be satisfied with potential psychological trauma when it comes to a faceless (and mindless) corporation.
Right now the bets are being placed that this comes true for Detroit ranging from 5 to 10 years. Even suggesting that it is 15 or 20 years out now seems unreasonably optimistic. And I wonder if 5 years is even too far out, that would place it into Trump's second term and this really seems like something that has to happen during his first term.
The arrogance of creative people is usually their downfall because they assume they are irreplaceable. I've had artists passionately explain to me why I couldn't possibly do the things that they do, and that they could easily do the things that I do. (sure I agree that most anyone could do kernel and microcode development with the appropriate education, but most people would hate that my job and wouldn't have the drive to excel at it.)
Sure, if you believe you can make the argument that healthcare is unnecessary while at the same time explaining that wars in the middle east are necessary, sure. In my example, I'm only taking the money out of our war budget, not the normal federal budget. Military still gets ~600B/year to maintain forces with my suggestion.
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Some guy's anecdotal evidence more convincing than peer reviewed research.
I don't recall anyone patting me on the back for carrying a coworker's old code through several years of releases. And the politics would have been more favorable to me if I would have turned this into a big "refactor" project where I rewrite it every 18 months. After a few failed releases I could save the day by "discovering" Test Driven Development methodologies.
Lunch is free, because you can walk away without paying for it.
My parents share an email address, so I'd argue that email addresses aren't a great way to identify people either. (or that my parents have a weird policy)
And for the 99% of people that don't use TOR?
They can go to prison for copyright violation or thought crimes.
And why release a Linux version? Either people will complain it's not open source, and send annoying petitions about it. Or the Linux version will be used for reverse engineering the protocol because the debug tools on Linux are so much better than on Windows.
I rather like Telegram's use of phone numbers to help add people to your contacts list.
That proposal means you have to pay for VM software and for Windows and deal with Linux. Doesn't sound like it solves any problems, but it does create new problems and added cost.
I suspect it would take less than 2 weeks for employees to learn how to use Ubuntu. Microsoft's customers might have to reevaluate the sunk cost fallacy and retrain and buy new software. And these days there isn't quite so much software to buy since everyone wants to sell your business some Cloud(tm) Software-as-a-Service(tm).
I'd really like some vanilla version of Windows. Much of the attempts at innovation turned into cruft. All I needed is a minimal environment, enough to run a browser, mail/outlook, etc. I totally understand there are some extra things necessary to be ADA compliant, but the rest of the madness should be an optional add-on or perhaps dropped completely.
None of my last 11 jobs lasted more than 2 years. My current job has lasted me 7 years. The reason is the pay is good and the work is agreeable. And I would never had gotten to this point without non-competes.
Canada spends around $6K per capita on healthcare, the US nearly $9K. We very likely can spend more efficiently than we do, but the costs can't be driven down quite as much as you seem to imply. (of course the cost of living in Canada is lower than the US. Rent in the US is 29% more than Canada for example)
One thing we could do is not offer advanced services to most people, these would be considered life saving procedures today but wouldn't have been available 40 years ago. Is it wrong to provide 20th century healthcare to the masses in the 21st century? I think that if cost were of a primary concern, then we would have to consider it. Better to have appendectomy freely available to anyone who needs it than not have any healthcare because the money isn't there for equal access to open heart surgery. While I don't think we have a money problem to degree, the argument of money keeps coming up so it's fair to offer alternatives.
With chipped cards some of the liability for fraud is shifted onto the card holder and the businesses rather than the credit card company. It's non-zero now that the credit card company will refuse to pay you for the fraudulent transactions. I don't know anyone personally that has had to eat the cost yet, but a I think it's now a bigger concern under the new agreements.
Credit card fraud, skimming, etc is quite common. Having the assets seized for an otherwise legitimate business is pretty rare. Of course small town politics plays into that. If you're an unpopular LGBT business owner in a small town you can experience such police harassment. But I believe it's still relatively rare.
Now you never mentioned the real threat that essentially every small business has experienced. Counterfeit currency. If you primarily do small transactions, you might be out $20-$100 per incident, it really sucks, but them are the breaks. You call the police, they shrug their shoulders, and you buy some gizmos and train your staff to avoid a repeat. If you're selling used cars, and accepting cash, you have a serious problem if you can't identify which transaction involved the counterfeit cash. It's not unusual to buy a used car for cash from a business like an auto mechanic, especially in the rural US. Putting the cash and paperwork in an envelope and sticking that in the lockbox is a good way to organize this. (used car in that example might only be $500, but $3000 is perhaps typical)
It's all fun and games until some powerful nation forces extradition and takes you from your home country.
Yeah, I get that's how it's supposed to be. It just doesn't appeal to me. It was lots of little stories that did not seem to affect any of the characters. Television operates in a weird fantasy world that I do not wish to escape to.
It was up to $10k/month in cash deposits for a business account that cost $8/month. It was very cheap. I certainly wished we hit the $10k limit more often, it was only if we managed to sell antique furniture rather than the usual knick-knacks. And some of the cash was kept on hand to spend on purchasing more items to replace the ones we sold in the store. Many of the banks have it so if you move your personal account to the same bank they will use the money in both business and personal when calculating minimum deposit, which usually nets you a few things like a few free wire transfers a month or no free for cashier's checks.
This was in a rural part of the US. Everything needed could be done at a retail bank office. Bring in bills, pick up smaller bills and coins. Of course the banks could do a bunch of things like payroll and retirement accounts for various fees, but if you're small that isn't necessary either. The bank certainly has fees, but they were pretty reasonably, probably because they spammed us with offers to buy more costly business packages. Also, I can't really recall any situation where electronic payments would have to be done, the business wrote checks every month to pay bills and taxes.
Overall I think electronic payment should be the most efficient way, but they take a cut straight from revenue. Where as bank services tend to be a fixed amount that you pay, just like insurance or utility service. If you have a good month, you seem to have to pay the credit card service a lot more.
I think the system of electronic transactions would be more fair if it were something you paid for unlimited use, like with an ISP. Or at least tiered use based on the number of transactions. And not something that is per transactions below a certain amount and a percentage above a certain amounts. And the per amount charge is so big that it really small transactions are sometimes not worth doing. It's better than it used to be, and there are other options like Square. They make it easier but take a bigger cut than what a huge retailer might have to put up with.
For a huge department store, absolutely the overhead for handling cash is significant.
For the small shops I've worked in, where the entire day can fit into a locked purse, the overhead is no more significant than sweeping up the shop at the end of the day. Certainly scale matters, and it's why I pointed out small businesses. (also because I have experience in small business, but I do not have experiences in running a large retail chain or anything of that scale)
Local grocery stores are certainly free to offer home delivery. Like they used to 50 years ago.
Yeah no kidding. I few months ago I received an updated credit agreement in the mail, over 20% APR. I have a very good credit rating, but really I no longer can reasonably justify holding a balance on my card. If I were to max out a card at that interest rate I would be screwed as they also increased my limits every year for the last 15 years. Also shark is a good metaphor as it is a cold blooded predator. At least a traditional loan shark is a human being that might have difficulty sleeping after breaking enough kneecaps. I can't even be satisfied with potential psychological trauma when it comes to a faceless (and mindless) corporation.
Yeah, I quit watching Law & Order in the late 1990's after seeing several years of it going now where.
It's a free country, people are absolutely allowed to watch trash. And critics, who are also free people, are allowed to claim that trash is high art.
Unless you like sending a cut of every sale to credit card processing firms.
What if a low-budget science fiction film successfully predicts 30 years into the future? We may be only 3 years away from finding out for certain.
Right now the bets are being placed that this comes true for Detroit ranging from 5 to 10 years. Even suggesting that it is 15 or 20 years out now seems unreasonably optimistic. And I wonder if 5 years is even too far out, that would place it into Trump's second term and this really seems like something that has to happen during his first term.
The arrogance of creative people is usually their downfall because they assume they are irreplaceable. I've had artists passionately explain to me why I couldn't possibly do the things that they do, and that they could easily do the things that I do. (sure I agree that most anyone could do kernel and microcode development with the appropriate education, but most people would hate that my job and wouldn't have the drive to excel at it.)
Sure, if you believe you can make the argument that healthcare is unnecessary while at the same time explaining that wars in the middle east are necessary, sure.
In my example, I'm only taking the money out of our war budget, not the normal federal budget. Military still gets ~600B/year to maintain forces with my suggestion.