Well, I had intended to respond to this royal asshat's baseless assumptions regarding my rationale, but you've done a fine job of covering the major points quite succinctly. Commendable, sir.
The only thing I can think to add is that perhaps OP is the one who has some growing up to do.
Thanks, I just hate it when someone says "Well, if you don't subscribe to my narrow world view, then you aren't doing it right". Just because one person thinks it's important to have enough money to buy gadgets or "sports programs" (what is that? TV pay per view wrestling? Soccer camp?) for their children doesn't mean that someone is a bad parent if he does not.
get buy on 40k, but support? For me support means College, sports programs, and some luxury. Living in an apartment, paycheck to paycheck and your kids needing to work and probably end up in the same rut is not supporting them.
That wasn't a made up example, one of my siblings raised a family of 5 on no more than $40,000/year (combined income, many years it was lower - I know this because I helped them with taxes for years). They lived in a small town, originally in a mobile home, but through an FHA guaranteed loan they were able to purchase a small house (and now own it outright). Their eldest son chose a trade school (which his parents helped him to pay for). He's making a decent living as a carpenter. Their middle child started at a local community college, and then went to a state school (for which she took out loans). She's a IT Manager for a hospital and is doing well. Their youngest child decided to forgo school and spent about a year traveling and doing odd-jobs abroad before coming back closer to home and is now a restaurant night manager. Granted, they didn't have many luxuries in life, they lived in a small house with used furniture from Goodwill, eating out (even just at McDonalds) was a treat, their cars were old (and practically held together with duct tape and a prayer). Now that the kids are out of the house, they have more money to spend on luxuries.
Having money makes having a family easier, but you can still raise a healthy, well adjusted family on comparatively little money.
" how about taking his son to work to help him refurbish a famous physicist's wheel chair?" Cool... not as cool as a good college.
The two are not mutually exclusive - there are plenty of affordable community and even state schools.
" How about exposing his daughter to an extremely accomplished disabled man to show her that she can be anyone she wants to be -" if you have to go to England to do that, then you have failed her.
You don't *have* to go to England to do that, but you *can*. And she ends up with some cool stories to tell at school.
"she doesn't have to relegate herself to being a housewife solely dependent upon her husband as the breadwinner for the family."
yes, with your plan, both people can spend there lives slaving to the man, with the added bonus of someone else raising your kids.
Well, it's not "my" plan, but it's the way millions of people across the country live. In my sibling's case, the mom was a stay-at-home mom until the kids were old enough for school, then she had a part-time job. There were no strangers involved in their child-care (except for occasional babysitting from the grandparents) - when you're living on less than $40K/year, having hired help is often more expensive than staying home to do it yourself. I guess you could say that the husband is slaving to the man, but that describes almost every working class person in the country, it's hardly a unique situation.
In our house, we looked at who was in the profession that is like lt to make the most money. That happened to be me. My spouse does work part time, and the kids school. So she is home when they are. If she chooses, she could got to school, do interesting things, and enjoy life more.
And if I could swap with her, I would.
Then why are you telling the previous poster that it's his job to be the breadwinner? Maybe his kids are in school and his wife is a high-paid attorney and the main breadwinner?
So, here we have a golden opportunity to work for one of the most brilliant humans to ever exist, tinkering with an amazing if poorly documented system, jetsetting around the globe, being paid to attend sold-out physics lectures... and all half the/. community can think to do is bitch about the pay grade.Seems the Green-Eyed Monster (and this global recession) has ruined a lot of folks.
I am the sole earner for my family. When I can pay the bills for their food, clothing, shelter medical, education and transport by saying I work for Steven Hawking (let alone having anything on the side to buy luxury items like gadgets) you can call me greedy. In the mean time grow up and stop calling people greedy when it is clear you don't have much of a grasp on what it might be like to really struggle. This is a job. Unless you're independently wealthy, you do it for the pay. You are not going to be paid to smoke a pipe and discuss the universe with Hawking - you are going to be his servant.
This may come as some surprise to you, but many people manage to support a family on "only" $40K a year - without public assistance. Maybe they don't live in a house as nice as yours or drive a car as nice as yours, but there's no reason why you can't support a 4 person household on $40K/year. But they don't buy many gadgets.
I'm not independently wealthy, but I chose to take a job working for a non-profit for less pay. It's not all about the money for all people. I do get paid (and it's more than $40K/year), but I think the cause of the non-profit is worth taking a lower salary.
I don't think this job is Hawking's servant any more than I am the servant of my current boss.
The way I see it, the fact that Hawking is likely footing the bill for the room, board, and travel expenses of whoever gets the gig (as they would be considered a member of his 'care team'), not to mention getting to hang out with Stephen fucking Hawking, $38,000 per annum seems like a pretty damn good deal.
Now, if only I could get my wife on board... I wonder if he needs an economist, too...
If you're seriously considering perhaps your wife would do better with a counsellor or failing that a divorce lawyer. You are suppose to be the bread winner for your family - travelling and getting free board may appeal to you but you are displaying a non-financial form of greed by not thinking about your family.
What do you mean he is supposed to be the bread winner for his family? Do you live in the 1950's when every wife was destined to stay home, raise the kids, and every day, touch up her makeup and meet the man of the house with his martini every night? A father doesn't have to buy his kids gadgets to show he's thinking of him - how about taking his son to work to help him refurbish a famous physicist's wheel chair? How about exposing his daughter to an extremely accomplished disabled man to show her that she can be anyone she wants to be - she doesn't have to relegate herself to being a housewife solely dependent upon her husband as the breadwinner for the family.
If only I were about 10 years younger (back when I had my hands into more hardware and with no house payment or wife), I'd take that job, work on improving most of his cobbled together hardware with something a little more modern (and software controlled) and open source it so others can benefit from the same thing.
Getting paid £25k/year to hang out with Stephen Hawking sounds like the geek chance of a lifetime.
But 10-12 years for a kidney? Tell that to a kid with kidney problems. Cripes, tell it to a 40 year old man.
That kid with a kidney problem and 40 year old man have already been told the expected lifetime of a transplanted kidney yet they still choose to go through a major surgery and take immunosuppresive drugs for the lifetime of the transplant in the hope that the kidney will save them from the next 10 years of dialysis. I'm sure they all hope that they will be the exception where the kidney lasts longer, but they are well aware of the risks and expected lifetime of the kidney yet they still choose to go through it - at times asking a loved one to go through a similar operation to donate the kidney.
Pacemakers is a better surgery, but still - 7 years is not enough. Short term fixes.
Granted, it would be better if doctors could repair the heart's natural pacemaker, but as a stand-in, the current artificial pacemaker seems like an excellent fix. I'm not even sure that a longer lifetime is desirable - I don't use my 15 year old cell phone (which was the size of a brick), so why would I want to depend on a 15 year old pacemaker to keep me alive? All it takes to double the lifetime of a pacemaker is put a bigger battery in it.
Newer pacemakers are far smaller than older ones, and they have better features like better in-chest programmability, better monitoring of the heart to decide when to give it a jolt (and how much of a jolt to give), etc. I think a minor surgery every 7 - 10 years is not a bad price to pay to get the latest technology for the device that you literally depend on for your life.
Is there room to improve? Sure, but to imply that doctors are not good at what they do because medical science hasn't come up with permanent fixes for every ailment is a little unfair.
Cut into your body, remove things you don't need, without killing you.
That depends on what they need to remove - not all tumors have well defined boundaries and they often have to followup with chemo or radiation therapy to make sure they got it all.
Figure out what is killing you
As long as you have a well recognized disease. My sister spent a year of unnecessary and ineffective treatment for a relatively rare condition that was much better controlled once she was on the right meds.
If you ask them to do much more than that, you get temporary fixes. Kidney transplants, pacemakers, etc. all have a relatively short life expectancy.
A kidney transplant lasts around 10 - 12 years on average. Even if it's not a permanent fix, it sure beats spending 4 hours on a dialysis machine 3 days a week. Over the lifetime of the transplant, it will have saved 6200 hours (260 24 hour days) of sitting on a dialysis machine.
A pacemaker lasts 7 years on average, and the original placement is a relatively minor surgery done under local anesthetic - a replacement is even easier since typically the leads don't need to be reimplanted. My father is on year 14 with a pacemaker, and has had one replacement. He is very happy with the performance of the unit and is thankful to have it.
I'd say that pacemakers are something that doctors do exceptionally well - it's a relatively low-risk surgery that is nearly routine in nature and gives an excellent prognosis. Don't confuse the life expectancy of the treatment with the life expectancy of the patient. A painkiller may last only hours, but when I have a headache, I still take an aspirin.
If you want a keyboard and you want to root it then is a tablet really the best device to serve your needs? Why not just get a netbook? I suppose you can still install Android x86 if you really want to.
I was wondering the same thing - once you add a keyboard, the size/weight advantage of a tablet is reduced while you lose the flexibility of a full operating system on a Netbook.
It's the same question I ask people at work when they tell me how great and productive they are with their iPad (along with case + keyboard that essentially turns it into a netbook). Then they complain when I send them Excel spreadsheets that they can't open on their iPad because the formulas don't work. Why not just use a netbook if you're going to keep the iPad in a case with built-in keyboard?
I was going to say B&N Nook Color. Install Cyanogen 7.1 (very easy to do), connectBot, hacker's keyboard, and Opera. The battery life is great, nice screen, dirt cheap. Tether it to your phone for non-wifi connectivity...but then I clicked your link for the Transformer Prime. Very nice. Yeah, get that one.
Yeah, I would get a Nook Color if I were going to get a nook.
The OP mentioned "video chat" in his wish list, so presumably he wants to use something like Skype for voice over IP.
The Nook Color has no microphone capability (but the new Nook Tablet has a built-in Mic).
The Nook Tablet is kind of a piece of crap... it's getting "useable", but it's still horrendously put together software-wise. But it is speedy and fast.
...
I actually was crying 30 minutes after opening the package, because it was essentially worthless to me. (Thank god for people having their hands on it a month ahead of me, and doing all the work in rooting it.)
You really should get another hobby if your inability to hack a device that makes no claim about openness and hackability makes you cry.
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
A large group of humans all cooperated (with a common language to facilitate) to build a tower several miles tall to reach the heavens, which angered a god so much that with a swipe of his hand he scattered the humans across the world and made them all speak in different languages.
And the reason that story is nonsense is because by the time some large Mesopotamian structures were built, humans were already speaking different languages?
And doesn't require Windows and/or OSX to activate.
Do Windows Phone or iPhone require a desktop computer? That's news to me.
I don't know anything about the Windows Phone, but as far as I know, the iTunes desktop application (and a credit card) is required for activating an iPhone:
Activating and syncing your iPhone is simple. Just download the latest version of iTunes, connect to your computer, and iTunes will guide you through the simple process of syncing content such as music, video, bookmarks, and contacts.
Activation requirements
You need an Internet connection and the current version of iTunes to activate iPhone. You can download iTunes for free for Mac or PC. You also need to create an Apple ID if you don't already have one. An Apple ID account allows you to preview and buy music, TV shows, movies, applications, games, and more so that you can enjoy them on your iPhone. While this account is free, a credit card is required for setup. Your card is not charged by Apple until you make a purchase from the iTunes Store or App Store.
Which email app are you using? I read my Gmail with the Android "Gmail" app, and sync to Exchange with the bundled Email app
If this is what most Android users find acceptable, I no longer think they are even a good potential market for Windows Phone. They must value other things in their phones than using them to do what they want in a convenient way, and getting on with their lives.
Having separate mail clients *is* giving me what I want in a convenient way. I don't want my work and personal mail to be mixed together. And I don't want to have to choose one or the other when I start my mail client, when I click on the Email icon, I want to see my work email. When I click on the Gmail icon, I want to see my personal email. If I wanted work and personal email in the same client, I'd set up Gmail as another account in the Email application.
Another poster below suggested the fix: getting a better email reader from the zillion in the market. Thanks, but I'd rather buy a device that has good integrated email, and use my time for more interesting pursuits than tweaking my "smart"-phone.
Just because *you* want all of your email in one integrated email app doesn't mean that everyone does. I don't want to tweak my phone either, I just want something that works. And doesn't require Windows and/or OSX to activate.
I wish I had a job where: "all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time."
At every SA job I've ever done, the work never ends, there's always more to do - I've never ended up with true downtime to let me pursue other projects.
And what does this mean: "do not believe I should be A) asked to or B) required to, as my job description and employment terms are not based upon this skill set."?
Outside of union work, I've never seen a job where you can say "Hey, that's not in my JD, so I'm not going to do it, instead I'm going to sit on my butt and enjoy my well earned down time". If it's something I could do, I'd do it. Otherwise I'd ask for training (or books), then do it.
But then, I've always worked in the private sector, never in education or government.
Android is a superior user interface, chained to an operating system that operates so much in the cloud that I lose the ability to read my e-mail when the train goes through the tunnel on the way to work.
Which email app are you using? I read my Gmail with the Android "Gmail" app, and sync to Exchange with the bundled Email app, and I can read cached emails on both clients while my phone is in Airplane mode with no data connection.
Granted, I can't search email or browse unsynced email folders, but I can read my new emails uninterrupted while going through a tunnel.
How much does Microsoft pay you? Considered getting a real job?
What is your point? It seems that he made a very good suggestion, it sounds like Kodu is just what he's looking for:
Kodu lets kids create games on the PC and XBox via a simple visual programming language. Kodu can be used to teach creativity, problem solving, storytelling, as well as programming. Anyone can use Kodu to make a game, young children as well as adults with no design or programming skills
And there's a free download. If you have a better suggestion, go ahead and suggest it, but don't claim he's a microsoft shill by pointing out that MS has a product that does exactly what he asked for.
They just need to make eBooks cheap enough to make it not worth a trip to the library to borrow a free eBook (I don't know if you actually do have to go to the library to borrow an eBook, but maybe you should, causing some friction to the process).
If a eBook costs $10, then it might be worth it for me to go to the library to check it out for free.
Lower the price to $3, and then it's not worth the trip for me. Lower it to $1 and I'll likely buy books just to try out an author, rather than staying with my normal safe choices of authors I know or recommendations.
I've bought a lot of content from Smashwords (usually paying between $0.99 and $4.99 for an eBook). I've bought very few eBooks from Amazon - it's hard to justify paying more for an eBook than it costs to have a paper book (often used, sometimes new) mailed to me.
My problem with cloud services is that the departments that use them don't want to manage them and don't even know what "manage" means.
When Accounting buys a cloud based purchasing system, they didn't ask for IT input because they couldn't wait for IT to fit it into our schedule (which is pretty much determined by our budget). So now they implement a cloud based company wide purchasing system that everyone is required to use.
They, however, forgot that someone needs to handle password resets. They don't want to give the Helpdesk administrative access because there's no way in the to let them reset passwords without also letting them alter approval levels and see all purchase orders. So every request for a password reset goes to an accounting clerk... who is always too busy to handle them.
People complain that they have to remember a separate password for the system - Accounting didn't even take into account our request to use a system that can federate with our AD servers to let everyone use their AD password to sign on.
HR asks IT why ex-employee XXX still has access to the system after leaving the company - we say "Accounting automatically gets CC'ed on termination notices, they apparently aren't acting on them".
The CFO asks us how we can feed purchasing data into the BI system, we tell them "Who knows, we've asked for a data API 6 months ago and are still waiting for the beta release"
The purchasing system goes down for unscheduled maintenance during an financial audit, Finance asks us why we don't have a back up of the purchase data so we can run reports. What, they ask, would happen if that company went out of business!? We say "Hey, you sit across from Accounting, they chose the system and ignored our request to have data extracts stored here"
The CFO says "Hey, this system isn't quite working out - we want to move the data to a new service. Figure it out".
So while departments *want* cloud hosted solutions, they really don't want to manage them - they want something that just "works", but they don't often have a clear idea of "works" means. There's a reason why IT does a requirements analysis, RFP, and vendor evaluation before making a purchase instead of buying a system just because "When I worked at Company XYZ, we used this product and it worked pretty well".
This is why I refuse to use my personal phone for work email; we have some software to enable it, but it basically gives my employer full control over the device.
Is it separate software, or do you have to agree to the ActiveSync policy settings when you connect to exchange? If it's the latter, then they don't have full control, but they can do things like require a lockcode, require device encryption, and remotely wipe the device if it's lost or stolen. The lockcode policy is annoying since I lost the ability to use the Android unlock pattern (which I could easily swipe without looking at the phone), now I have to use a unlock code, but I'm fine with letting them remote-wipe the device if I report it lost or stolen.
If it's separate software that you have to install it could have more control, but not "full control" unless your phone is rooted.
If your company has IMAP (or POP) enabled, you can get around the Activesync policy by using IMAP/POP. (though you lose contacts/calendar syncing)
think about the HIPPA law. companies that deal with HIPPA actually do take precautions. why? because the HIPPA law says they can get sued for a ton of money.
there is no HIPPA for credit cards or your purchase history. why? financial companies own congress. they literally own congressmen.
That's not exactly true. While there's no law governing credit cards, the credit card industry themselves have organized a PCI council that sets security standards that all companies that accept credit cards have to follow to protect the credit card data. Fines can be levied by issuing banks for merchants that fail to achieve and maintain compliance.
If you're having such problems with email on your corporate network (presumably the same place you'd use these collaboration tools that make sense in the workplace), maybe you need a better mail admin.
Perhaps reread his post? He is the email admin. The remainder of your post reinforces the parent post, which you apparently disagree with.
I read his post - and if he's an email admin, he's in the wrong job if he fails to see how email is any more useful than a file locker. If you put a file in a file locker, how do you tell anyone that it's there? Call them? Likewise if I want to invite my friends to a party, should I call them individually? Or do I hope that they are watching my Facebook "wall" and see my invitation there? I could send them all a message on Facebook, but that's not really any different than an email, is it?
I didn't feel that I was reinforcing his point - I was pointing out that with proper administration, email doesn't need to be any harder to support than other corporate systems. Our email solution generates far fewer helpdesk support requests than our collaboration platform.
You might eventually figure out how to scale the Israeli model to the US size.... but at what cost? How much do the Israelis pay per passenger? And what would it cost us?
Don't forget the most important question: is it worth it? Does the expenditure match the threat? (the answer is no, btw).
You might eventually figure out how to scale the Israeli model to the US size.... but at what cost? How much do the Israelis pay per passenger? And what would it cost us?
Don't forget the most important question: is it worth it? Does the expenditure match the threat? (the answer is no, btw).
You'll get no argument from me that it's not worth the effort, but if we are going to spend the money anyway, I'd rather that we spend it on something that works. I'd rather that we went back to the old days of metal detectors and random searches to help deter the casual criminal from doing something stupid. It's nearly impossible to deter a determined suicide terrorist, especially if he's willing to hide his explosives in a body cavity.
Even if passenger screening was 100% effective, there are still many many ways to sneak something past security. All you have to do a bribe one security employee at one small commercial airport anywhere in the country and you can bring in anything you want and transport it to any airport. And I'm sure you can find at least one employee willing to accept $10K to smuggle in some "drugs", especially if he's addicted to the drugs he thinks he's smuggling. He doens't need to know that the 2 kg of "cocaine" is really high explosives.
Or you hide it in a truckload of maintenance supplies. Or a caterer tucks it inside of a beverage cart. Or the bomber decides it's not worth the effort to smuggle his explosive on a plane and detonates his suitcased sized bomb in a crowded security checkpoint. Or, who knows how else they will do it - the problem with airport security is the same as computer security - the security is always reactionary and is only effective at stopping yesterday's attack there will always be new and novel ways to execute an attack. (and sometimes the security wastes time and effort to stop an attack that can't work anyway, like the ban on water to stop an improbable binary-explosive that would have to be cooked up in a lab on the airplane)
Although 12 million is certainly a large number, the US has many more travelers than that. In 2009, Atlanta's airport had something like 90M travelers use the airport. That means that one airport has more traffic than all of the airports combined in Israel.
I agree that their airport security model is superior, and maybe it can scale to large airports in the USA, but if we have dozens of airports with more traffic than their busiest airport, scaling is very far from a simple task.
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Well, I had intended to respond to this royal asshat's baseless assumptions regarding my rationale, but you've done a fine job of covering the major points quite succinctly. Commendable, sir.
The only thing I can think to add is that perhaps OP is the one who has some growing up to do.
Thanks, I just hate it when someone says "Well, if you don't subscribe to my narrow world view, then you aren't doing it right". Just because one person thinks it's important to have enough money to buy gadgets or "sports programs" (what is that? TV pay per view wrestling? Soccer camp?) for their children doesn't mean that someone is a bad parent if he does not.
Just to clarify my own post:
That wasn't a made up example, one of my siblings raised a family of 5 on no more than $40,000/year (combined income, many years it was lower
That's a household of 5: 3 children + 2 parents.
get buy on 40k, but support?
For me support means College, sports programs, and some luxury. Living in an apartment, paycheck to paycheck and your kids needing to work and probably end up in the same rut is not supporting them.
That wasn't a made up example, one of my siblings raised a family of 5 on no more than $40,000/year (combined income, many years it was lower - I know this because I helped them with taxes for years). They lived in a small town, originally in a mobile home, but through an FHA guaranteed loan they were able to purchase a small house (and now own it outright). Their eldest son chose a trade school (which his parents helped him to pay for). He's making a decent living as a carpenter. Their middle child started at a local community college, and then went to a state school (for which she took out loans). She's a IT Manager for a hospital and is doing well. Their youngest child decided to forgo school and spent about a year traveling and doing odd-jobs abroad before coming back closer to home and is now a restaurant night manager. Granted, they didn't have many luxuries in life, they lived in a small house with used furniture from Goodwill, eating out (even just at McDonalds) was a treat, their cars were old (and practically held together with duct tape and a prayer). Now that the kids are out of the house, they have more money to spend on luxuries.
Having money makes having a family easier, but you can still raise a healthy, well adjusted family on comparatively little money.
" how about taking his son to work to help him refurbish a famous physicist's wheel chair?"
Cool... not as cool as a good college.
The two are not mutually exclusive - there are plenty of affordable community and even state schools.
" How about exposing his daughter to an extremely accomplished disabled man to show her that she can be anyone she wants to be -"
if you have to go to England to do that, then you have failed her.
You don't *have* to go to England to do that, but you *can*. And she ends up with some cool stories to tell at school.
"she doesn't have to relegate herself to being a housewife solely dependent upon her husband as the breadwinner for the family."
yes, with your plan, both people can spend there lives slaving to the man, with the added bonus of someone else raising your kids.
Well, it's not "my" plan, but it's the way millions of people across the country live. In my sibling's case, the mom was a stay-at-home mom until the kids were old enough for school, then she had a part-time job. There were no strangers involved in their child-care (except for occasional babysitting from the grandparents) - when you're living on less than $40K/year, having hired help is often more expensive than staying home to do it yourself. I guess you could say that the husband is slaving to the man, but that describes almost every working class person in the country, it's hardly a unique situation.
In our house, we looked at who was in the profession that is like lt to make the most money. That happened to be me.
My spouse does work part time, and the kids school. So she is home when they are.
If she chooses, she could got to school, do interesting things, and enjoy life more.
And if I could swap with her, I would.
Then why are you telling the previous poster that it's his job to be the breadwinner? Maybe his kids are in school and his wife is a high-paid attorney and the main breadwinner?
Why food? I don't want to hear people chewing away chicken wings and other crap next to me. Just give me beer!
Where do you live that you can hear people chewing on chicken wings? Do they eat the bones where you come from?
So, here we have a golden opportunity to work for one of the most brilliant humans to ever exist, tinkering with an amazing if poorly documented system, jetsetting around the globe, being paid to attend sold-out physics lectures... and all half the /. community can think to do is bitch about the pay grade.Seems the Green-Eyed Monster (and this global recession) has ruined a lot of folks.
I am the sole earner for my family. When I can pay the bills for their food, clothing, shelter medical, education and transport by saying I work for Steven Hawking (let alone having anything on the side to buy luxury items like gadgets) you can call me greedy. In the mean time grow up and stop calling people greedy when it is clear you don't have much of a grasp on what it might be like to really struggle. This is a job. Unless you're independently wealthy, you do it for the pay. You are not going to be paid to smoke a pipe and discuss the universe with Hawking - you are going to be his servant.
This may come as some surprise to you, but many people manage to support a family on "only" $40K a year - without public assistance. Maybe they don't live in a house as nice as yours or drive a car as nice as yours, but there's no reason why you can't support a 4 person household on $40K/year. But they don't buy many gadgets.
I'm not independently wealthy, but I chose to take a job working for a non-profit for less pay. It's not all about the money for all people. I do get paid (and it's more than $40K/year), but I think the cause of the non-profit is worth taking a lower salary.
I don't think this job is Hawking's servant any more than I am the servant of my current boss.
The way I see it, the fact that Hawking is likely footing the bill for the room, board, and travel expenses of whoever gets the gig (as they would be considered a member of his 'care team'), not to mention getting to hang out with Stephen fucking Hawking, $38,000 per annum seems like a pretty damn good deal.
Now, if only I could get my wife on board... I wonder if he needs an economist, too...
If you're seriously considering perhaps your wife would do better with a counsellor or failing that a divorce lawyer. You are suppose to be the bread winner for your family - travelling and getting free board may appeal to you but you are displaying a non-financial form of greed by not thinking about your family.
What do you mean he is supposed to be the bread winner for his family? Do you live in the 1950's when every wife was destined to stay home, raise the kids, and every day, touch up her makeup and meet the man of the house with his martini every night? A father doesn't have to buy his kids gadgets to show he's thinking of him - how about taking his son to work to help him refurbish a famous physicist's wheel chair? How about exposing his daughter to an extremely accomplished disabled man to show her that she can be anyone she wants to be - she doesn't have to relegate herself to being a housewife solely dependent upon her husband as the breadwinner for the family.
If only I were about 10 years younger (back when I had my hands into more hardware and with no house payment or wife), I'd take that job, work on improving most of his cobbled together hardware with something a little more modern (and software controlled) and open source it so others can benefit from the same thing.
Getting paid £25k/year to hang out with Stephen Hawking sounds like the geek chance of a lifetime.
But 10-12 years for a kidney? Tell that to a kid with kidney problems. Cripes, tell it to a 40 year old man.
That kid with a kidney problem and 40 year old man have already been told the expected lifetime of a transplanted kidney yet they still choose to go through a major surgery and take immunosuppresive drugs for the lifetime of the transplant in the hope that the kidney will save them from the next 10 years of dialysis. I'm sure they all hope that they will be the exception where the kidney lasts longer, but they are well aware of the risks and expected lifetime of the kidney yet they still choose to go through it - at times asking a loved one to go through a similar operation to donate the kidney.
Pacemakers is a better surgery, but still - 7 years is not enough. Short term fixes.
Granted, it would be better if doctors could repair the heart's natural pacemaker, but as a stand-in, the current artificial pacemaker seems like an excellent fix. I'm not even sure that a longer lifetime is desirable - I don't use my 15 year old cell phone (which was the size of a brick), so why would I want to depend on a 15 year old pacemaker to keep me alive? All it takes to double the lifetime of a pacemaker is put a bigger battery in it.
Newer pacemakers are far smaller than older ones, and they have better features like better in-chest programmability, better monitoring of the heart to decide when to give it a jolt (and how much of a jolt to give), etc. I think a minor surgery every 7 - 10 years is not a bad price to pay to get the latest technology for the device that you literally depend on for your life.
Is there room to improve? Sure, but to imply that doctors are not good at what they do because medical science hasn't come up with permanent fixes for every ailment is a little unfair.
Cut into your body, remove things you don't need, without killing you.
That depends on what they need to remove - not all tumors have well defined boundaries and they often have to followup with chemo or radiation therapy to make sure they got it all.
Figure out what is killing you
As long as you have a well recognized disease. My sister spent a year of unnecessary and ineffective treatment for a relatively rare condition that was much better controlled once she was on the right meds.
If you ask them to do much more than that, you get temporary fixes. Kidney transplants, pacemakers, etc. all have a relatively short life expectancy.
A kidney transplant lasts around 10 - 12 years on average. Even if it's not a permanent fix, it sure beats spending 4 hours on a dialysis machine 3 days a week. Over the lifetime of the transplant, it will have saved 6200 hours (260 24 hour days) of sitting on a dialysis machine.
A pacemaker lasts 7 years on average, and the original placement is a relatively minor surgery done under local anesthetic - a replacement is even easier since typically the leads don't need to be reimplanted. My father is on year 14 with a pacemaker, and has had one replacement. He is very happy with the performance of the unit and is thankful to have it.
I'd say that pacemakers are something that doctors do exceptionally well - it's a relatively low-risk surgery that is nearly routine in nature and gives an excellent prognosis. Don't confuse the life expectancy of the treatment with the life expectancy of the patient. A painkiller may last only hours, but when I have a headache, I still take an aspirin.
If you want a keyboard and you want to root it then is a tablet really the best device to serve your needs? Why not just get a netbook? I suppose you can still install Android x86 if you really want to.
I was wondering the same thing - once you add a keyboard, the size/weight advantage of a tablet is reduced while you lose the flexibility of a full operating system on a Netbook.
It's the same question I ask people at work when they tell me how great and productive they are with their iPad (along with case + keyboard that essentially turns it into a netbook). Then they complain when I send them Excel spreadsheets that they can't open on their iPad because the formulas don't work. Why not just use a netbook if you're going to keep the iPad in a case with built-in keyboard?
I was going to say B&N Nook Color. Install Cyanogen 7.1 (very easy to do), connectBot, hacker's keyboard, and Opera. The battery life is great, nice screen, dirt cheap. Tether it to your phone for non-wifi connectivity. ..but then I clicked your link for the Transformer Prime. Very nice. Yeah, get that one.
Yeah, I would get a Nook Color if I were going to get a nook.
The OP mentioned "video chat" in his wish list, so presumably he wants to use something like Skype for voice over IP.
The Nook Color has no microphone capability (but the new Nook Tablet has a built-in Mic).
The Nook Tablet is kind of a piece of crap... it's getting "useable", but it's still horrendously put together software-wise. But it is speedy and fast.
I actually was crying 30 minutes after opening the package, because it was essentially worthless to me. (Thank god for people having their hands on it a month ahead of me, and doing all the work in rooting it.)
You really should get another hobby if your inability to hack a device that makes no claim about openness and hackability makes you cry.
Nook color, cyanogen. Refurb can be found for 120$. You can do all you state from it, and can buy 4 of them for the price of other shiny devices.
The OP mentioned "video chat" in his wish list, so presumably he wants to use something like Skype for voice over IP.
The Nook Color has no microphone capability (but the new Nook Tablet has a built-in Mic).
I'm not sure if this is an attempt to be funny... or your a fucken idiot
Whose the idiot when you don't even know about the 1024th pixel patent!
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
A large group of humans all cooperated (with a common language to facilitate) to build a tower several miles tall to reach the heavens, which angered a god so much that with a swipe of his hand he scattered the humans across the world and made them all speak in different languages.
And the reason that story is nonsense is because by the time some large Mesopotamian structures were built, humans were already speaking different languages?
And doesn't require Windows and/or OSX to activate.
Do Windows Phone or iPhone require a desktop computer? That's news to me.
I don't know anything about the Windows Phone, but as far as I know, the iTunes desktop application (and a credit card) is required for activating an iPhone:
http://store.apple.com/us/help/iphone#carrier_info
Activation
Activating and syncing your iPhone is simple. Just download the latest version of iTunes, connect to your computer, and iTunes will guide you through the simple process of syncing content such as music, video, bookmarks, and contacts.
Activation requirements
You need an Internet connection and the current version of iTunes to activate iPhone. You can download iTunes for free for Mac or PC. You also need to create an Apple ID if you don't already have one. An Apple ID account allows you to preview and buy music, TV shows, movies, applications, games, and more so that you can enjoy them on your iPhone. While this account is free, a credit card is required for setup. Your card is not charged by Apple until you make a purchase from the iTunes Store or App Store.
Which email app are you using? I read my Gmail with the Android "Gmail" app, and sync to Exchange with the bundled Email app
If this is what most Android users find acceptable, I no longer think they are even a good potential market for Windows Phone. They must value other things in their phones than using them to do what they want in a convenient way, and getting on with their lives.
Having separate mail clients *is* giving me what I want in a convenient way. I don't want my work and personal mail to be mixed together. And I don't want to have to choose one or the other when I start my mail client, when I click on the Email icon, I want to see my work email. When I click on the Gmail icon, I want to see my personal email. If I wanted work and personal email in the same client, I'd set up Gmail as another account in the Email application.
Another poster below suggested the fix: getting a better email reader from the zillion in the market. Thanks, but I'd rather buy a device that has good integrated email, and use my time for more interesting pursuits than tweaking my "smart"-phone.
Just because *you* want all of your email in one integrated email app doesn't mean that everyone does. I don't want to tweak my phone either, I just want something that works. And doesn't require Windows and/or OSX to activate.
I wish I had a job where: "all of my goals outlined since my hire date have been met and exceeded, I have a lot of down time."
At every SA job I've ever done, the work never ends, there's always more to do - I've never ended up with true downtime to let me pursue other projects.
And what does this mean: "do not believe I should be A) asked to or B) required to, as my job description and employment terms are not based upon this skill set."?
Outside of union work, I've never seen a job where you can say "Hey, that's not in my JD, so I'm not going to do it, instead I'm going to sit on my butt and enjoy my well earned down time". If it's something I could do, I'd do it. Otherwise I'd ask for training (or books), then do it.
But then, I've always worked in the private sector, never in education or government.
Android is a superior user interface, chained to an operating system that operates so much in the cloud that I lose the ability to read my e-mail when the train goes through the tunnel on the way to work.
Which email app are you using? I read my Gmail with the Android "Gmail" app, and sync to Exchange with the bundled Email app, and I can read cached emails on both clients while my phone is in Airplane mode with no data connection.
Granted, I can't search email or browse unsynced email folders, but I can read my new emails uninterrupted while going through a tunnel.
How much does Microsoft pay you? Considered getting a real job?
What is your point? It seems that he made a very good suggestion, it sounds like Kodu is just what he's looking for:
Kodu lets kids create games on the PC and XBox via a simple visual programming language. Kodu can be used to teach creativity, problem solving, storytelling, as well as programming. Anyone can use Kodu to make a game, young children as well as adults with no design or programming skills
And there's a free download. If you have a better suggestion, go ahead and suggest it, but don't claim he's a microsoft shill by pointing out that MS has a product that does exactly what he asked for.
They just need to make eBooks cheap enough to make it not worth a trip to the library to borrow a free eBook (I don't know if you actually do have to go to the library to borrow an eBook, but maybe you should, causing some friction to the process).
If a eBook costs $10, then it might be worth it for me to go to the library to check it out for free.
Lower the price to $3, and then it's not worth the trip for me. Lower it to $1 and I'll likely buy books just to try out an author, rather than staying with my normal safe choices of authors I know or recommendations.
I've bought a lot of content from Smashwords (usually paying between $0.99 and $4.99 for an eBook). I've bought very few eBooks from Amazon - it's hard to justify paying more for an eBook than it costs to have a paper book (often used, sometimes new) mailed to me.
My problem with cloud services is that the departments that use them don't want to manage them and don't even know what "manage" means.
When Accounting buys a cloud based purchasing system, they didn't ask for IT input because they couldn't wait for IT to fit it into our schedule (which is pretty much determined by our budget). So now they implement a cloud based company wide purchasing system that everyone is required to use.
They, however, forgot that someone needs to handle password resets. They don't want to give the Helpdesk administrative access because there's no way in the to let them reset passwords without also letting them alter approval levels and see all purchase orders. So every request for a password reset goes to an accounting clerk... who is always too busy to handle them.
People complain that they have to remember a separate password for the system - Accounting didn't even take into account our request to use a system that can federate with our AD servers to let everyone use their AD password to sign on.
HR asks IT why ex-employee XXX still has access to the system after leaving the company - we say "Accounting automatically gets CC'ed on termination notices, they apparently aren't acting on them".
The CFO asks us how we can feed purchasing data into the BI system, we tell them "Who knows, we've asked for a data API 6 months ago and are still waiting for the beta release"
The purchasing system goes down for unscheduled maintenance during an financial audit, Finance asks us why we don't have a back up of the purchase data so we can run reports. What, they ask, would happen if that company went out of business!? We say "Hey, you sit across from Accounting, they chose the system and ignored our request to have data extracts stored here"
The CFO says "Hey, this system isn't quite working out - we want to move the data to a new service. Figure it out".
So while departments *want* cloud hosted solutions, they really don't want to manage them - they want something that just "works", but they don't often have a clear idea of "works" means. There's a reason why IT does a requirements analysis, RFP, and vendor evaluation before making a purchase instead of buying a system just because "When I worked at Company XYZ, we used this product and it worked pretty well".
This is why I refuse to use my personal phone for work email; we have some software to enable it, but it basically gives my employer full control over the device.
Is it separate software, or do you have to agree to the ActiveSync policy settings when you connect to exchange? If it's the latter, then they don't have full control, but they can do things like require a lockcode, require device encryption, and remotely wipe the device if it's lost or stolen. The lockcode policy is annoying since I lost the ability to use the Android unlock pattern (which I could easily swipe without looking at the phone), now I have to use a unlock code, but I'm fine with letting them remote-wipe the device if I report it lost or stolen.
If it's separate software that you have to install it could have more control, but not "full control" unless your phone is rooted.
If your company has IMAP (or POP) enabled, you can get around the Activesync policy by using IMAP/POP. (though you lose contacts/calendar syncing)
think about the HIPPA law. companies that deal with HIPPA actually do take precautions. why? because the HIPPA law says they can get sued for a ton of money.
there is no HIPPA for credit cards or your purchase history. why? financial companies own congress. they literally own congressmen.
That's not exactly true. While there's no law governing credit cards, the credit card industry themselves have organized a PCI council that sets security standards that all companies that accept credit cards have to follow to protect the credit card data. Fines can be levied by issuing banks for merchants that fail to achieve and maintain compliance.
Perhaps reread his post? He is the email admin. The remainder of your post reinforces the parent post, which you apparently disagree with.
I read his post - and if he's an email admin, he's in the wrong job if he fails to see how email is any more useful than a file locker. If you put a file in a file locker, how do you tell anyone that it's there? Call them? Likewise if I want to invite my friends to a party, should I call them individually? Or do I hope that they are watching my Facebook "wall" and see my invitation there? I could send them all a message on Facebook, but that's not really any different than an email, is it?
I didn't feel that I was reinforcing his point - I was pointing out that with proper administration, email doesn't need to be any harder to support than other corporate systems. Our email solution generates far fewer helpdesk support requests than our collaboration platform.
You might eventually figure out how to scale the Israeli model to the US size .... but at what cost? How much do the Israelis pay per passenger? And what would it cost us?
Don't forget the most important question: is it worth it? Does the expenditure match the threat? (the answer is no, btw).
You might eventually figure out how to scale the Israeli model to the US size .... but at what cost? How much do the Israelis pay per passenger? And what would it cost us?
Don't forget the most important question: is it worth it? Does the expenditure match the threat? (the answer is no, btw).
You'll get no argument from me that it's not worth the effort, but if we are going to spend the money anyway, I'd rather that we spend it on something that works. I'd rather that we went back to the old days of metal detectors and random searches to help deter the casual criminal from doing something stupid. It's nearly impossible to deter a determined suicide terrorist, especially if he's willing to hide his explosives in a body cavity.
Even if passenger screening was 100% effective, there are still many many ways to sneak something past security. All you have to do a bribe one security employee at one small commercial airport anywhere in the country and you can bring in anything you want and transport it to any airport. And I'm sure you can find at least one employee willing to accept $10K to smuggle in some "drugs", especially if he's addicted to the drugs he thinks he's smuggling. He doens't need to know that the 2 kg of "cocaine" is really high explosives.
Or you hide it in a truckload of maintenance supplies. Or a caterer tucks it inside of a beverage cart. Or the bomber decides it's not worth the effort to smuggle his explosive on a plane and detonates his suitcased sized bomb in a crowded security checkpoint. Or, who knows how else they will do it - the problem with airport security is the same as computer security - the security is always reactionary and is only effective at stopping yesterday's attack there will always be new and novel ways to execute an attack. (and sometimes the security wastes time and effort to stop an attack that can't work anyway, like the ban on water to stop an improbable binary-explosive that would have to be cooked up in a lab on the airplane)
Although 12 million is certainly a large number, the US has many more travelers than that. In 2009, Atlanta's airport had something like 90M travelers use the airport. That means that one airport has more traffic than all of the airports combined in Israel.
I agree that their airport security model is superior, and maybe it can scale to large airports in the USA, but if we have dozens of airports with more traffic than their busiest airport, scaling is very far from a simple task.
Source
It's not as though everyone comes through the same door or goes to the same gate - think horizontal versus vertical scalability.