Ford's profit margin for the past twelve months is 1%; two of the last 4 quarters they've lost money. I think it's simply unrealistic, given that, to ask them to sell a more difficult to produce product for the same price out of altruism.
I've worked in the auto industry for the last 5 years. While, yes, Ford's overall profit margin for the last 12 months is 1%, that's an average. Each unit doesn't have the same margin.
Car companies make high margins on *some* lines, and *lose* money on other lines. Typically, the small car market is a loss leader for the American auto companies. They sell the car for less than it costs them to produce it. The idea is to have something to sell to younger people just starting out (and hence have lower incomes) -- get them hooked on the brand early.
On mid-sized cars, the profit margins vary, some lines can make good profit, while others just barely break even. But in the luxury car and SUV market segments, the margins are typically much higher and that's where almost all of their profit comes from.
This profit model has existed for quite some time. In the 1970s, the car companies were hit especially hard because people stopped buying the luxury and high-end sport models due to the oil embargo of that period.
So it's a much larger problem than you outline here. Sure, the market has *some* bearing on this, but the car companies have screwed themselves by setting up a profit model that never took into account the idea that the costs to produce some segments may end up larger than they realized.
The only way to make hybrid SUVs viable is for the companies to spread their profit margins across lines a bit better, raising prices a bit on all of their lines, but probably not quite as much on the SUV segment.
Of course then all the liberal class-warfarists will be up in arms saying how Ford, GM and Chrysler cater to the rich and bend the working class over.;)
The covered rear-wheel design was actually popular in the 1970s and has experienced flurries of pouplarity in other decades.
Also, as far four wheel steering goes, GM features it some of their GMT-800 based models and will probably add it to other models as the feature is gaining popularity with the public.
No. A vintage VW beetle (or the classic models that they STILL produce in Mexico) are absolutely capable of doing a quarter mile in under 15 seconds.
First off, the old Beetle can beat almost anything, even a Corvette, off the line, due to the fact that the manual transmission, esp. the first gear, is set VERY aggressively.
Second, there are about a gazillion performance mods you can add to a VW to boost the HP.
That being said, he uses a the quarter mile statistic for a reason...VWs are good at sprinting, but over the long haul, no matter how much you mod engine, it just doesn't have THAT much horsepower.
This is the law in many states in the U.S. as well, including Michigan. If you ask a cop to demonstrate (using whatever means necessary) that the gun is calibrated, and the cop refuses (which happens a lot), then you can tell that to the judge who will let you off because the state's evidence may be tainted in that case.
Remember that in cases in speeding (in the U.S., but probably in most countries abroad as well), the cop is the state's witness, and the gun readings are the state's evidence. If either of these are of questionable value, the state has no case against you for speeding.
Yes, there is plenty of evidence for a *flood* that existed, but NOT that the flood was so great that it wiped all the people and animals on the earth and was repopulated by Noah and his wife and the set of animals that he brought with him on a ride. I never said there was no evidence of a flood -- I said it didn't go down like it says in the Bible.
Josephus and Tacitus mentioned Jesus yes, but I'm talking about *records*. The Romans took censuses. Our word 'census' is even a word ripped from Latin -- that's why. Jesus doesn't exist on ANY of the Roman censuses (censii?), yet there are people in Bethlehem and Jerusalem on the Roman censuses, so evidently the census takers DID make it there. There's no record of Joseph either, while I think Mary, in fact *does* show up on a census.
They had birth records. There is NO birth record for a Jesus bin Miriam. At all.
Also note that the historical record shows that the gospels and all the stories about Jesus were written *at least* 50 years after his death. If he was SO important, why did their authors wait so long?
Strange. I would say that I "believe in the Bible", because archaeological and historical evidence bear it out - from fulfilled prophecies, to supernatural events, to plain old facts. Its remarkable insight into human nature could also be considered contributory evidence of its divine nature.
Really? So rabbits chew their cud? There is archaeological and historical evidence of an actual flood that occurred 3000-4000 years ago in which all the people and animals of the earth were populated from the ones on that took a ride on an ark? The earth is only 6,000 years old? The earth is flat and has four corners? Note also that there is NO RECORD of Jesus bin Miriam's birth, life, or death (other than the Bible) despite the fact that the Romans kept meticulous records. Also note that there is no Egyptian record of the Jewish people ever being enslaved by them, and then freed by Moses, despite the fact that Egyptians also kept meticulous records.
There holes in the Bible big enough to drive a Sherman tank through without hitting anything.
I know Tim didn't. Having said that, Tim's a good guy who writes good code. FKDoor or whatever his kit was called... I forgot these days; I must be getting old.:)
He is. Tim's Telegard website seems to imply that he has some sort of permission (without saying it outright). The major issue is that he implies that the 2.5g source was 'released' by one of the two authors. This is not the case. The Telegard 2.5g source was *leaked* onto several BBSes in the Metro Detroit area, and spread from there, mostly via FidoNet. I am somewhat responsible for this leak. (Sorry, Martin and Eric:( it wasn't intentional.) It *may* be that at *that* point, Martin Pollard just kinda said 'screw it' and now that the cat was already out of the bag, but I've never gotten any sort of statement from Martin to confirm this. After about 1992 or so I lost touch with Martin so I really have no idea. Eric Oman would have contested the release if it did occur at all, and at one point hired a lawyer and threatened to sue Martin over his continuing to develop Telegard after Eric quit.
That being said, Tim Strike's a nice guy and I'm only sore because he beat me to it.;)
And yes, I miss those days as well, I yes, I still think of Frodo as FrontDoor and it's odd requirement for requiring my users to hit Esc twice, instead of only once as Bink required. But Frodo was always far better than BinkleyTerm, so the odd requirement never bothered *me*.;) (flames to/dev/null)
However, the burden of proof about whether your rights have been violated or not is on you. OTOH, it's not *that* hard. You can sue the company screwed you, and then gain access to their employment records through discovery, including the ages of their employees.
Any age discrimination against 'older' IT workers will *show* in their hiring patterns, particularly in companies that employ more than a few IT workers. Even in companies that have only 1 or 2, if they have a high enough turnover rate (which they would if they discriminate), you can look at the ages of *past* employees and how old they were when they were terminated.
Of course, you're going to need a lawyer, and this is going to probably cost a good chunk of money. But you can always go to one of the colleges nearby, many offer legal aid programs where you allow a legal intern to set your case up for you, and you only have to hire a lawyer for your day in court.
Ya know, I resent being called 'older'. I mean, sheesh, I'm like 30! I think Malda's somewhere around there. Isn't 30 still young?
Gads! Maybe I really AM an old man...
Re:What's the deal...
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Hell, when I was your age, we didn't HAVE cnn.com. We had 300 baud modems, spewing out text so slow, you could TYPE it faster. And we thought that was FAST compared to 110 baud.
And we didn't have laptops, either! We carried our lunchbox portables to school! Up the hill! Both ways! In the snow in the middle of July! Those things weighed 6 kilos let me tell you....
I used this many years ago when I wanted to modify the source code to VirtualBBS 6.12 (Remember that mess?)
Hmph. I was using Turbo Pascal to modify the Telegard source code. (Don't ask how I got it and I won't tell you who is responsible for the source code leak that allowed the creation of Renegade, Tim Strike's Telegard 3.0, etc.) (No, Tim Strike DID NOT receive permission from the authors to do Telegard 3.0)
The Catholic Church also has a translation, the only difference between it and the Bibles in use by protestant churches is the Catholic Bible includes several books called the "Apocrapha", these books don't disagree with the rest of the Bible.
They don't? That's humorous at best. Why do you think they are called 'The Apocrypha'? What do you think is the origin of the term apocryphal? Of course they contradict the rest of the Bible and specific beliefs held by the Protestants.
And the Catholic Church doesn't call it 'The Apocrypha' any longer, they use the term 'Septuagint' (from the fact that there are *7* books.)
And yet... they still managed to have a full THIRD of all children concieved out of wedlock. And they had sex in front of their kids, often in the same bed. Just goes to show you that the "conservative" mores of one age don't always translate directly into what we think of as the conservative mores of today.
Of course having children conceived out of wedlock and having sex in front of your children is only considered immoral in certain religions and cultures. In many religions and cultures there is absolutely no problem with this, so really your argument is a strawman. If sex and giving birth to children are viewed to be a sacred and special act and are revered as being part of nature, then there is no reason for either of these acts to be considered immoral.
Then there's the problem of radio interference, interference between competing repeaters
Interference wouldn't really be as bad a problem as you make it out to be. As long as everyone on the used frequencies is using the same protocol, you just reduce power (or switch frequencies) when the interference gets too high.
Yeah, but who makes that decision? Who performs the work? What if there were more than one interfering with each other? Who coordinates all of this?
This is yet another service your telco is providing for you already, included in the price of your phone bill even if there isn't a line item for it.
Eh, don't sweat it if you don't think it's funny -- some of my jokes are lame, some are not. They don't affect your karma anymore, unless they get modded down, so it's not like I'm telling them to karma whore.
Oh, just the cost of a repeater, communication device and electricity. That's all right? Nope. You need someone to maintain it and make sure it doesn't go down. Then there's the problem of radio interference, interference between competing repeaters, organizing where these repeaters go, etc.
What do you think you *pay* your telco for? A line? No you pay for all of these services -- and more.
If you accept SCO's version of the facts, the the GPL on the unix-linux mix is rescinded because of a "mutual mistake". SCO then bears the burden of mitigating damage to kernel.org. They are clearly failing to do so when they refuse to simply inform kernel.org of the specifics of which code is infringing.
Ah, but the fact of failure to mitigate damage has yet to be proven in a court of law. You're jumping ahead.;) At this point in time, SCO believes it has a strong case, and maybe it has reason to believe so. But, in all likelihood, probably not. They're looking for a quick settlement, and I think they're hoping IBM will buy them out to shut them up.
They were a minority in the 18th century, yes, but they had a large political and social influence on our society. In 17th century, they comprised the *majority* of immigrants, while, yes, in the 18th century, their role diminished.
Morally speaking, who are we trying to protect? If it's children who can not tell the difference between reality and fantasy, you've only swapped one image with another. Rape, STDs, pregnancy, and abortion are just as serious (if not more so!) as assault, robbery, and murder.
Morally speaking? Who's morals? Morality is based on shared cultural values, with its own set of ethics and taboos. And children? Why must morality always be about children? Do you think there is no nudity on TV in the US because of children? Despite what you may have heard, not everything based on 'morality' is about children. It is ultimately up to parents to decide what their children should and should not see.
I'm pagan, and several of my pagan friends have raised their children to be pagan. In many pagan religions, nudity and sex are not viewed as being sinful. One of the places we hang out is a clothing optional piece of private property out in the middle of nowhere north of Detroit. These friends have brought their children there for YEARS. Are you saying that they are morally corrupt because they've seen a few naked people? Some have grown up to be fine, upstanding citizens who are now in college pursuing degrees in engineering, sciences, and the arts and they are doing quite well.
For one, realize people who have negative associations with sex (for whatever reason) will discourage it, just the same as any person with any negative association. It isn't always about what happened hundreds of years ago.
But WHY do they have negative assocations with sex? In many cases, they claim it is based on *morality* and that morality is part of the cultural norms. And those cultural norms came from *somewhere*. The U.S. is primarily made up of European descendants, yet in Europe there are far fewer sexual taboos. Sociologists often equate this with the Puritanical influence on culture in the U.S.
For another, some of the greatest 'heroes' in our society, arguably, work the least. Consider athletes and movie stars - how often are they working? How much do they make? How long are they expected to work?
Do you think athletes and movie stars don't work? Do you think just ANYONE can throw a baseball 90+ MPH in a straight line? Do you think just ANYONE can give an Oscar-winning peformance? No. These are *skills* and they take *years* of training and, yes, hard work to develop.
I think the poster who mentioned you being resentful believed that your comparison of our society with the Puritans was overly harsh and indicitive of resentment of our current societal views.
Again, I have no such resentment. I simply have a different point of view than most, and I am willing to look at our current societal views with a fair and objective mind, unlike people who accept them as 'just the way it is.'
Slashdot Mirror
Ford's profit margin for the past twelve months is 1%; two of the last 4 quarters they've lost money. I think it's simply unrealistic, given that, to ask them to sell a more difficult to produce product for the same price out of altruism.
;)
I've worked in the auto industry for the last 5 years. While, yes, Ford's overall profit margin for the last 12 months is 1%, that's an average. Each unit doesn't have the same margin.
Car companies make high margins on *some* lines, and *lose* money on other lines. Typically, the small car market is a loss leader for the American auto companies. They sell the car for less than it costs them to produce it. The idea is to have something to sell to younger people just starting out (and hence have lower incomes) -- get them hooked on the brand early.
On mid-sized cars, the profit margins vary, some lines can make good profit, while others just barely break even. But in the luxury car and SUV market segments, the margins are typically much higher and that's where almost all of their profit comes from.
This profit model has existed for quite some time. In the 1970s, the car companies were hit especially hard because people stopped buying the luxury and high-end sport models due to the oil embargo of that period.
So it's a much larger problem than you outline here. Sure, the market has *some* bearing on this, but the car companies have screwed themselves by setting up a profit model that never took into account the idea that the costs to produce some segments may end up larger than they realized.
The only way to make hybrid SUVs viable is for the companies to spread their profit margins across lines a bit better, raising prices a bit on all of their lines, but probably not quite as much on the SUV segment.
Of course then all the liberal class-warfarists will be up in arms saying how Ford, GM and Chrysler cater to the rich and bend the working class over.
The covered rear-wheel design was actually popular in the 1970s and has experienced flurries of pouplarity in other decades.
Also, as far four wheel steering goes, GM features it some of their GMT-800 based models and will probably add it to other models as the feature is gaining popularity with the public.
No. A vintage VW beetle (or the classic models that they STILL produce in Mexico) are absolutely capable of doing a quarter mile in under 15 seconds.
First off, the old Beetle can beat almost anything, even a Corvette, off the line, due to the fact that the manual transmission, esp. the first gear, is set VERY aggressively.
Second, there are about a gazillion performance mods you can add to a VW to boost the HP.
That being said, he uses a the quarter mile statistic for a reason...VWs are good at sprinting, but over the long haul, no matter how much you mod engine, it just doesn't have THAT much horsepower.
This is the law in many states in the U.S. as well, including Michigan. If you ask a cop to demonstrate (using whatever means necessary) that the gun is calibrated, and the cop refuses (which happens a lot), then you can tell that to the judge who will let you off because the state's evidence may be tainted in that case.
Remember that in cases in speeding (in the U.S., but probably in most countries abroad as well), the cop is the state's witness, and the gun readings are the state's evidence. If either of these are of questionable value, the state has no case against you for speeding.
Yes, there is plenty of evidence for a *flood* that existed, but NOT that the flood was so great that it wiped all the people and animals on the earth and was repopulated by Noah and his wife and the set of animals that he brought with him on a ride. I never said there was no evidence of a flood -- I said it didn't go down like it says in the Bible.
Josephus and Tacitus mentioned Jesus yes, but I'm talking about *records*. The Romans took censuses. Our word 'census' is even a word ripped from Latin -- that's why. Jesus doesn't exist on ANY of the Roman censuses (censii?), yet there are people in Bethlehem and Jerusalem on the Roman censuses, so evidently the census takers DID make it there. There's no record of Joseph either, while I think Mary, in fact *does* show up on a census.
They had birth records. There is NO birth record for a Jesus bin Miriam. At all.
Also note that the historical record shows that the gospels and all the stories about Jesus were written *at least* 50 years after his death. If he was SO important, why did their authors wait so long?
Strange. I would say that I "believe in the Bible", because archaeological and historical evidence bear it out - from fulfilled prophecies, to supernatural events, to plain old facts. Its remarkable insight into human nature could also be considered contributory evidence of its divine nature.
Really? So rabbits chew their cud? There is archaeological and historical evidence of an actual flood that occurred 3000-4000 years ago in which all the people and animals of the earth were populated from the ones on that took a ride on an ark? The earth is only 6,000 years old? The earth is flat and has four corners? Note also that there is NO RECORD of Jesus bin Miriam's birth, life, or death (other than the Bible) despite the fact that the Romans kept meticulous records. Also note that there is no Egyptian record of the Jewish people ever being enslaved by them, and then freed by Moses, despite the fact that Egyptians also kept meticulous records.
There holes in the Bible big enough to drive a Sherman tank through without hitting anything.
I know Tim didn't. Having said that, Tim's a good guy who writes good code. FKDoor or whatever his kit was called... I forgot these days; I must be getting old. :)
:( it wasn't intentional.) It *may* be that at *that* point, Martin Pollard just kinda said 'screw it' and now that the cat was already out of the bag, but I've never gotten any sort of statement from Martin to confirm this. After about 1992 or so I lost touch with Martin so I really have no idea. Eric Oman would have contested the release if it did occur at all, and at one point hired a lawyer and threatened to sue Martin over his continuing to develop Telegard after Eric quit.
;)
;) (flames to /dev/null)
He is. Tim's Telegard website seems to imply that he has some sort of permission (without saying it outright). The major issue is that he implies that the 2.5g source was 'released' by one of the two authors. This is not the case. The Telegard 2.5g source was *leaked* onto several BBSes in the Metro Detroit area, and spread from there, mostly via FidoNet. I am somewhat responsible for this leak. (Sorry, Martin and Eric
That being said, Tim Strike's a nice guy and I'm only sore because he beat me to it.
And yes, I miss those days as well, I yes, I still think of Frodo as FrontDoor and it's odd requirement for requiring my users to hit Esc twice, instead of only once as Bink required. But Frodo was always far better than BinkleyTerm, so the odd requirement never bothered *me*.
That's right! We didn't have none of this new-fangled "direct connect" stuff! At least it was an improvement from the carrier pigeons though.
They aren't allowed to ask your age. Age discrimination (in the U.S.) is a violation of your rights under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.
However, the burden of proof about whether your rights have been violated or not is on you. OTOH, it's not *that* hard. You can sue the company screwed you, and then gain access to their employment records through discovery, including the ages of their employees.
Any age discrimination against 'older' IT workers will *show* in their hiring patterns, particularly in companies that employ more than a few IT workers. Even in companies that have only 1 or 2, if they have a high enough turnover rate (which they would if they discriminate), you can look at the ages of *past* employees and how old they were when they were terminated.
Of course, you're going to need a lawyer, and this is going to probably cost a good chunk of money. But you can always go to one of the colleges nearby, many offer legal aid programs where you allow a legal intern to set your case up for you, and you only have to hire a lawyer for your day in court.
Ya know, I resent being called 'older'. I mean, sheesh, I'm like 30! I think Malda's somewhere around there. Isn't 30 still young?
Gads! Maybe I really AM an old man...
Hell, when I was your age, we didn't HAVE cnn.com. We had 300 baud modems, spewing out text so slow, you could TYPE it faster. And we thought that was FAST compared to 110 baud.
And we didn't have laptops, either! We carried our lunchbox portables to school! Up the hill! Both ways! In the snow in the middle of July! Those things weighed 6 kilos let me tell you....
I used this many years ago when I wanted to modify the source code to VirtualBBS 6.12 (Remember that mess?)
Hmph. I was using Turbo Pascal to modify the Telegard source code. (Don't ask how I got it and I won't tell you who is responsible for the source code leak that allowed the creation of Renegade, Tim Strike's Telegard 3.0, etc.) (No, Tim Strike DID NOT receive permission from the authors to do Telegard 3.0)
In addition, of course, line 40 is just a waste of two bytes, it never gets executed.
Chapter 1: That game where the snake eats the numbers.
Chapter 2: That game where the monkeys throw bananas at each other.
Hey, now...those games were MULTIPLAYER!! Almost as good as a deathmatch!
Please enter the account number
you wish to loot money from:
Please enter the amount, and use the
US standard decimal point, and not the
European comma. While you are at it, ignore
the fact the this system is in English
and not in French or German
Hey! Check it out! That's EXACTLY what it's saying RIGHT NOW.
Totally Weird.
The Catholic Church also has a translation, the only difference between it and the Bibles in use by protestant churches is the Catholic Bible includes several books called the "Apocrapha", these books don't disagree with the rest of the Bible.
They don't? That's humorous at best. Why do you think they are called 'The Apocrypha'? What do you think is the origin of the term apocryphal? Of course they contradict the rest of the Bible and specific beliefs held by the Protestants.
And the Catholic Church doesn't call it 'The Apocrypha' any longer, they use the term 'Septuagint' (from the fact that there are *7* books.)
I'm typing this on a Commodore Vic 20, while muttering to myself how stupid this whole sex.com thing really is. Does that count for anything?
And yet... they still managed to have a full THIRD of all children concieved out of wedlock. And they had sex in front of their kids, often in the same bed. Just goes to show you that the "conservative" mores of one age don't always translate directly into what we think of as the conservative mores of today.
Of course having children conceived out of wedlock and having sex in front of your children is only considered immoral in certain religions and cultures. In many religions and cultures there is absolutely no problem with this, so really your argument is a strawman. If sex and giving birth to children are viewed to be a sacred and special act and are revered as being part of nature, then there is no reason for either of these acts to be considered immoral.
Interference wouldn't really be as bad a problem as you make it out to be. As long as everyone on the used frequencies is using the same protocol, you just reduce power (or switch frequencies) when the interference gets too high.
Yeah, but who makes that decision? Who performs the work? What if there were more than one interfering with each other? Who coordinates all of this?
This is yet another service your telco is providing for you already, included in the price of your phone bill even if there isn't a line item for it.
Eh, don't sweat it if you don't think it's funny -- some of my jokes are lame, some are not. They don't affect your karma anymore, unless they get modded down, so it's not like I'm telling them to karma whore.
Oh, just the cost of a repeater, communication device and electricity. That's all right? Nope. You need someone to maintain it and make sure it doesn't go down. Then there's the problem of radio interference, interference between competing repeaters, organizing where these repeaters go, etc.
What do you think you *pay* your telco for? A line? No you pay for all of these services -- and more.
Apparently you haven't read this yet. ;)
If you accept SCO's version of the facts, the the GPL on the unix-linux mix is rescinded because of a "mutual mistake". SCO then bears the burden of mitigating damage to kernel.org. They are clearly failing to do so when they refuse to simply inform kernel.org of the specifics of which code is infringing.
;) At this point in time, SCO believes it has a strong case, and maybe it has reason to believe so. But, in all likelihood, probably not. They're looking for a quick settlement, and I think they're hoping IBM will buy them out to shut them up.
Ah, but the fact of failure to mitigate damage has yet to be proven in a court of law. You're jumping ahead.
They were a minority in the 18th century, yes, but they had a large political and social influence on our society. In 17th century, they comprised the *majority* of immigrants, while, yes, in the 18th century, their role diminished.
Morally speaking, who are we trying to protect? If it's children who can not tell the difference between reality and fantasy, you've only swapped one image with another. Rape, STDs, pregnancy, and abortion are just as serious (if not more so!) as assault, robbery, and murder.
Morally speaking? Who's morals? Morality is based on shared cultural values, with its own set of ethics and taboos. And children? Why must morality always be about children? Do you think there is no nudity on TV in the US because of children? Despite what you may have heard, not everything based on 'morality' is about children. It is ultimately up to parents to decide what their children should and should not see.
I'm pagan, and several of my pagan friends have raised their children to be pagan. In many pagan religions, nudity and sex are not viewed as being sinful. One of the places we hang out is a clothing optional piece of private property out in the middle of nowhere north of Detroit. These friends have brought their children there for YEARS. Are you saying that they are morally corrupt because they've seen a few naked people? Some have grown up to be fine, upstanding citizens who are now in college pursuing degrees in engineering, sciences, and the arts and they are doing quite well.
For one, realize people who have negative associations with sex (for whatever reason) will discourage it, just the same as any person with any negative association. It isn't always about what happened hundreds of years ago.
But WHY do they have negative assocations with sex? In many cases, they claim it is based on *morality* and that morality is part of the cultural norms. And those cultural norms came from *somewhere*. The U.S. is primarily made up of European descendants, yet in Europe there are far fewer sexual taboos. Sociologists often equate this with the Puritanical influence on culture in the U.S.
For another, some of the greatest 'heroes' in our society, arguably, work the least. Consider athletes and movie stars - how often are they working? How much do they make? How long are they expected to work?
Do you think athletes and movie stars don't work? Do you think just ANYONE can throw a baseball 90+ MPH in a straight line? Do you think just ANYONE can give an Oscar-winning peformance? No. These are *skills* and they take *years* of training and, yes, hard work to develop.
I think the poster who mentioned you being resentful believed that your comparison of our society with the Puritans was overly harsh and indicitive of resentment of our current societal views.
Again, I have no such resentment. I simply have a different point of view than most, and I am willing to look at our current societal views with a fair and objective mind, unlike people who accept them as 'just the way it is.'