After all, remember all of those car building jobs we 'lost' two decades ago? Well, they're coming back in droves."
The ones I see "coming back" are in Mexico where the parts are assembled and shipped up to the US.
Making a car is not the same as assembling a car.
The US does not make many cars anymore.
"The Japanese auto makers are now turning to American labor to build those same cars, as the Japanese workers salary has now surpassed the American auto workers salary.. factor in the cost of shipping those cars across the ocean and American labor makes a ton of sense for that field."
It's cheaper to hire someone to assemble a car in Mexico (NAFTA) and ship it up to the US than to assemble the car in Japan and ship it to the US.
Wrong! I work for a Japanese car manufacturer here in the US. At a single plant they employ over 6000 americans directly to build these cars. However, the same cannot be said for American car manufacturers who do send their cars to Mexico to manufacture. I find it interesting that my employer is showing more sales and more customer loyalty than the "American" manufacturer.
The problem with this is the daylight robbery that ISP's engage in to provide these addresses to us. Unless prices come down significantly, my entire house will still be sitting behind a router with a single IP going off to my ISP.
For the absurd price differences I will live with the inconvenience.
Repeat after me: government interference in markets, other than to address market failures or personal safety, is bad for the market, and bad for those who buy and sell in it in the long run.
A couple of problems with that: China doesn't adhead to your creed and they're beating the pants off of American manufacturers.
Also, in the long run we're all dead.
It is because China doesn't adhere to the standard, but the US does, thereby placing itself at a disadvantage due to government intervention.
3) Although companies are free to move work overseas the workers themselves are not free to follow the jobs. I can't go to canada and take advantage of free health care or cheaper drugs but my boss can go there and outsource my job.
Finally! Somebody else realises that this whole "global economy" is a crock - unless individuals were allowed to make use of it as well. Thank you!
It seems the straw that broke the camel's back was the corner adverts that come on when a program comes back on after a commercial break.
I recently spent some time at home and watched some TV again. (Normally I just watch DVD's from Netflix) I also noticed this annoying "feature". What makes it even more annoying are the new adverts which have sound as well thereby not only obscuring parts of the screen, but parts of the dialogue as well. This is more than annoying - they are now in fact stealing parts of the movie from me that they agreed to show me.
However, talking of Netflix, I noticed another nasty trend there lately. When you press play to start the movie (after all the adverts are finished) then they stuff another ad in there directly before the movie starts. I have come across 2 like this so far and if I encounter another 1 like that then Netflix is getting a letter from me about it.
All of these technologies have a way of being turned off and queueing messages for you. Use it.
At my last contact, management forced us to keep IM on all the time so that they could blurb us during the day with useless trivia. No amount of telling them they were killing our productivity made any difference.
In the end we were proved correct when the whole project folded.
In those kinds of situations you are unfortunately hosed as management would insist that the proposed control panel would not allow them to be put "on hold" or filter their messages out. Sadly, it's exactly their drivel and droning that I want removed from my desktop.
The rest of the people on the team have enough respect for each others time not to intrude unless it is really required, and if they overstep the mark you can usually have a quiet chat with them and it doesn't happen again.
This has had some other really positive side effects. For example, people are aware that I'm in my office, even if I'm not responding to IM. That means that if something's really important, they'll often just drop by, replacing the thirty back-and-forth email with a simple 5 minute conversation.
This is great if you are in a position to do so. On my last project we had 3 management types who "communicated" with us continuously on such useful topics such as "File time sheets by 4pm". Yeah, like that was worth breaking my concentration! However, I tried to combat this problem first by talking to them about it and then later by simply not logging onto the company IM system anymore when I needed to concentrate. This was rewarded with a public reprimand branding me as combatitive and I was told I had to be logged into the IM and be available to management at all times otherwise they would refuse to sign off on my billing.
Needless to say the useless twits "managed" themselves and us out of jobs when their constant nitpicking eventually killed the project. 3 years working with a 45+ team in four countries and not a thing to show for it today. Go you wonderful corporate giant!
I must have watched a different movie with the same title, because everybody keeps raving about this movie and I thought it was the most inane drivel I had seen in years.
I saw in software developer magazine that the MBA is growing as a choice of graduate degree for developers.
Unfortunately the only problem with this so far appears to be the current crop. I have thus far met 9 developers who went and got themselves MBA's. Unfortunately every single one of them was not only pretty pathetic at coding, they were even more useless around a boardroom table.
This has led to a quite widely held perception in our corporation that developers who try to "break" into management are the useless types who should be shunned at all costs.
This is very sad, as I have conversely seen a lot of developers who are natural leaders (note - not managers) who were perfectly capable of running projects but were never given the opportunity because they didn't have the "credentials".
This points to another fine service that/. could offer. I would happily pay some other geek to get a box together with some software like freevo and have him Fedex it to my house. I like fiddling with some stuff but other things, like this, I just couldn't be bothered with. I just want to sit down and the TV + Recorder must work for me.
For example mandate that ISPs charge 1 cent per e-mail sent from user, and see users to make very sure their computers are secure and not spam relays. Of course this also needs a cap on mails/day, or more like cap on $ spent on sending mail per day so users don't get burned too bad...
Here's an idea. Why don't we charge those pesky idiots that keep filling my physical mailbox with junk I don't want 37c for every item they send me? That will stop them dead in their tracks for sure.
Oh wait - my Netflix DVD's (which I am paying for and want delivered to my mailbox) are now being held at the post office for collection because after the frikken advertising there isn't enough room in my mailbox for the DVD's to go in without getting damaged. (No kidding this actually happened to me.)
Couldn't have said it better myself. Keeping a trail of what was said is in my opinion the single most important feature that email brings to a project.
What I would like to see if some kind of urgency feature. I.e. I would like to send an email and tag it with something which says "keep bugging this person till I get a reply".
To make sure that nincompoops like my manager don't abuse this when they send me an "urgent" email which says; "Please file timesheets by the 28th of this month." (Frikkin idiot - everything is "urgent"), we have the following;
Only a certain percentages of the emails from each person in your inbox is allowed to have these kind of priority ratings.
Thus, if you are an idiot like my manager then you quickly consume your quota of urgent emails and after that everything drops down into the unwashed masses section. If you are like me - I only sent out 3 urgent emails on my last project - then the email will get the attention it deserves.
I.e. I would like to be able to stop the abuse in my inbox from clueless dolts but still be able to get really important mails brought to my attention quickly.
Just a thought, but for some right-to-left localizations do they move the start button to the right of the screen with the clock and all that stuff on the left?
When mass transit is implemented without the politics [almost impossible, unfortunately], then you can have an extremely efficient system. We had a lot of politics go into ours, but it's not too bad.
When mass transit can quickly take people from lots of different places to lots of different other places then we can have an extremely efficient system.
Basically, the problem with mass transit is getting a mass of people all going from the same place to a the same destination. For most commutes, e.g. to and from the office, this simply is not the case. Unless you want to force everybody who works in a certain office building to all live in a certain suburb.
I am with you on this one. Comcast has sucked me dry with their latest increase to $42 after being with them for 2+ years now. I am moving in March and have already investigated DirectTV / DSL. It looks like my future.
As a side note - I have not been able to switch to DirecTV till now because my apartment complex prohibits dishes on the roof (ok on the porch, but I am facing the wrong direction). Shouldn't this kind of nonsense be illegal? They are effectively enforing a cable monopoly in this area.
By the way - I am not just griping on/. about this. I have told them about my feelings on this already and will put it in my letter when I leave here as 1 of the reasons for moving.
What would have been a much better solution would have been to say to the new customer "You want to keep your existing number? That will be a once-off $25 charge."
Much better than this pay every month for a thing you might use once or twice in your life deal.
If we are not going to rely on perfect code but expect firewalls to catch the problems, then what do we do if the code in the firewalls aren't perfect?
Do we string together a series of firewalls in the hope that the code problems don't overlap?
Try 6 months or so of unemployment yourself. Talk to me at the end of that time with no job in sight yet. We'll see if you don't feel a little bitter at the prospect of losing everything you have built up yourself due to the decisions of others.
Err, if you want a really cool screensaver, look out a window -- wind effects, sky, clouds -- all in real-time. Amazing, and not $17m!
Now imagine a window large enough to see the entire USA. All without breaking or distorting and a chair in the right position to see it all - Priceless!
I couldn't agree with you more on the lawsuits issue. I thought about it but completely forgot to include it in my original post. The $14500 is a "bare minimum" situation as I paid cash for it and scrutinized each bill very carefully.
That doesn't mean to say that I didn't get ripped off. E.g. I had to pay an "overtime" rate for the theater because it was after hours. why? Do they rent the room out to a fast food joint at night or something? Note that this does not include overtime pay for the actual people as most of them were willing to forgo that once they realised I was paying cash.
Why do you think every foreigner who can afford to...
How much have you actually sampled the health industried in other countries? I have had the misfortune to sample it in 4 countries. Sad to say but the US was not at the top of my list. A third world country was able to give the broadest base of its citizens a reasonable level of health care that I have not seen in the USA.
However, the interesting thing to note is that the bulk of that care was not given via the government, but via private care.
So, what is the difference you ask? Here in the US, the doctors don't seem to care about you. They would rather pack the next patient in rather than spend an additional 10 minutes talking to you - higher profits you see. This means they rely on lab tests too much and don't build up any decent history of the patient. This third world country's doctors by and large appeared to have the primary aim of actually wanting to help their patients rather than becoming rich overnight.
My summary: The health system in the USA is the most expensive system that I have come across and on average does not deliver what you pay for. (Compare: 1 child born outside USA $3200, 1 child born in USA $14500. Oh and my wife got to spend more time in hospital with the 1st child.)
Sure, capilitalism is good, but as with most things it has been taken to the extreme here in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong! I work for a Japanese car manufacturer here in the US. At a single plant they employ over 6000 americans directly to build these cars. However, the same cannot be said for American car manufacturers who do send their cars to Mexico to manufacture. I find it interesting that my employer is showing more sales and more customer loyalty than the "American" manufacturer.
The problem with this is the daylight robbery that ISP's engage in to provide these addresses to us. Unless prices come down significantly, my entire house will still be sitting behind a router with a single IP going off to my ISP.
For the absurd price differences I will live with the inconvenience.
When they launched their Image service I suggested they call it Go Ogle.
Nothing ever came of it. sigh.
Repeat after me: government interference in markets, other than to address market failures or personal safety, is bad for the market, and bad for those who buy and sell in it in the long run.
A couple of problems with that: China doesn't adhead to your creed and they're beating the pants off of American manufacturers.
Also, in the long run we're all dead.
It is because China doesn't adhere to the standard, but the US does, thereby placing itself at a disadvantage due to government intervention.
3) Although companies are free to move work overseas the workers themselves are not free to follow the jobs. I can't go to canada and take advantage of free health care or cheaper drugs but my boss can go there and outsource my job.
Finally! Somebody else realises that this whole "global economy" is a crock - unless individuals were allowed to make use of it as well. Thank you!
It seems the straw that broke the camel's back was the corner adverts that come on when a program comes back on after a commercial break.
I recently spent some time at home and watched some TV again. (Normally I just watch DVD's from Netflix) I also noticed this annoying "feature". What makes it even more annoying are the new adverts which have sound as well thereby not only obscuring parts of the screen, but parts of the dialogue as well. This is more than annoying - they are now in fact stealing parts of the movie from me that they agreed to show me.
However, talking of Netflix, I noticed another nasty trend there lately. When you press play to start the movie (after all the adverts are finished) then they stuff another ad in there directly before the movie starts. I have come across 2 like this so far and if I encounter another 1 like that then Netflix is getting a letter from me about it.
All of these technologies have a way of being turned off and queueing messages for you. Use it.
At my last contact, management forced us to keep IM on all the time so that they could blurb us during the day with useless trivia. No amount of telling them they were killing our productivity made any difference.
In the end we were proved correct when the whole project folded.
In those kinds of situations you are unfortunately hosed as management would insist that the proposed control panel would not allow them to be put "on hold" or filter their messages out. Sadly, it's exactly their drivel and droning that I want removed from my desktop.
The rest of the people on the team have enough respect for each others time not to intrude unless it is really required, and if they overstep the mark you can usually have a quiet chat with them and it doesn't happen again.
This has had some other really positive side effects. For example, people are aware that I'm in my office, even if I'm not responding to IM. That means that if something's really important, they'll often just drop by, replacing the thirty back-and-forth email with a simple 5 minute conversation.
This is great if you are in a position to do so. On my last project we had 3 management types who "communicated" with us continuously on such useful topics such as "File time sheets by 4pm". Yeah, like that was worth breaking my concentration! However, I tried to combat this problem first by talking to them about it and then later by simply not logging onto the company IM system anymore when I needed to concentrate. This was rewarded with a public reprimand branding me as combatitive and I was told I had to be logged into the IM and be available to management at all times otherwise they would refuse to sign off on my billing.
Needless to say the useless twits "managed" themselves and us out of jobs when their constant nitpicking eventually killed the project. 3 years working with a 45+ team in four countries and not a thing to show for it today. Go you wonderful corporate giant!
Take a peek at Wavecrest. They have the same idea which they have built into a car and a motorbike already.
Lost in Translation, however, was brilliant.
I must have watched a different movie with the same title, because everybody keeps raving about this movie and I thought it was the most inane drivel I had seen in years.
I saw in software developer magazine that the MBA is growing as a choice of graduate degree for developers.
Unfortunately the only problem with this so far appears to be the current crop. I have thus far met 9 developers who went and got themselves MBA's. Unfortunately every single one of them was not only pretty pathetic at coding, they were even more useless around a boardroom table.
This has led to a quite widely held perception in our corporation that developers who try to "break" into management are the useless types who should be shunned at all costs.
This is very sad, as I have conversely seen a lot of developers who are natural leaders (note - not managers) who were perfectly capable of running projects but were never given the opportunity because they didn't have the "credentials".
This points to another fine service that /. could offer. I would happily pay some other geek to get a box together with some software like freevo and have him Fedex it to my house. I like fiddling with some stuff but other things, like this, I just couldn't be bothered with. I just want to sit down and the TV + Recorder must work for me.
/. ?
How about classifieds
For example mandate that ISPs charge 1 cent per e-mail sent from user, and see users to make very sure their computers are secure and not spam relays. Of course this also needs a cap on mails/day, or more like cap on $ spent on sending mail per day so users don't get burned too bad...
Here's an idea. Why don't we charge those pesky idiots that keep filling my physical mailbox with junk I don't want 37c for every item they send me? That will stop them dead in their tracks for sure.
Oh wait - my Netflix DVD's (which I am paying for and want delivered to my mailbox) are now being held at the post office for collection because after the frikken advertising there isn't enough room in my mailbox for the DVD's to go in without getting damaged. (No kidding this actually happened to me.)
Couldn't have said it better myself. Keeping a trail of what was said is in my opinion the single most important feature that email brings to a project.
What I would like to see if some kind of urgency feature. I.e. I would like to send an email and tag it with something which says "keep bugging this person till I get a reply".
To make sure that nincompoops like my manager don't abuse this when they send me an "urgent" email which says; "Please file timesheets by the 28th of this month." (Frikkin idiot - everything is "urgent"), we have the following;
Only a certain percentages of the emails from each person in your inbox is allowed to have these kind of priority ratings.
Thus, if you are an idiot like my manager then you quickly consume your quota of urgent emails and after that everything drops down into the unwashed masses section. If you are like me - I only sent out 3 urgent emails on my last project - then the email will get the attention it deserves.
I.e. I would like to be able to stop the abuse in my inbox from clueless dolts but still be able to get really important mails brought to my attention quickly.
Just a thought, but for some right-to-left localizations do they move the start button to the right of the screen with the clock and all that stuff on the left?
Hey, this sounds like a brilliant scheme. Keep us posted.
When mass transit is implemented without the politics [almost impossible, unfortunately], then you can have an extremely efficient system. We had a lot of politics go into ours, but it's not too bad.
When mass transit can quickly take people from lots of different places to lots of different other places then we can have an extremely efficient system.
Basically, the problem with mass transit is getting a mass of people all going from the same place to a the same destination. For most commutes, e.g. to and from the office, this simply is not the case. Unless you want to force everybody who works in a certain office building to all live in a certain suburb.
I am with you on this one. Comcast has sucked me dry with their latest increase to $42 after being with them for 2+ years now. I am moving in March and have already investigated DirectTV / DSL. It looks like my future.
/. about this. I have told them about my feelings on this already and will put it in my letter when I leave here as 1 of the reasons for moving.
As a side note - I have not been able to switch to DirecTV till now because my apartment complex prohibits dishes on the roof (ok on the porch, but I am facing the wrong direction). Shouldn't this kind of nonsense be illegal? They are effectively enforing a cable monopoly in this area.
By the way - I am not just griping on
What would have been a much better solution would have been to say to the new customer "You want to keep your existing number? That will be a once-off $25 charge."
Much better than this pay every month for a thing you might use once or twice in your life deal.
If we are not going to rely on perfect code but expect firewalls to catch the problems, then what do we do if the code in the firewalls aren't perfect?
Do we string together a series of firewalls in the hope that the code problems don't overlap?
Try 6 months or so of unemployment yourself. Talk to me at the end of that time with no job in sight yet. We'll see if you don't feel a little bitter at the prospect of losing everything you have built up yourself due to the decisions of others.
Err, if you want a really cool screensaver, look out a window -- wind effects, sky, clouds -- all in real-time. Amazing, and not $17m!
Now imagine a window large enough to see the entire USA. All without breaking or distorting and a chair in the right position to see it all - Priceless!
I couldn't agree with you more on the lawsuits issue. I thought about it but completely forgot to include it in my original post. The $14500 is a "bare minimum" situation as I paid cash for it and scrutinized each bill very carefully.
That doesn't mean to say that I didn't get ripped off. E.g. I had to pay an "overtime" rate for the theater because it was after hours. why? Do they rent the room out to a fast food joint at night or something? Note that this does not include overtime pay for the actual people as most of them were willing to forgo that once they realised I was paying cash.
Why do you think every foreigner who can afford to...
How much have you actually sampled the health industried in other countries? I have had the misfortune to sample it in 4 countries. Sad to say but the US was not at the top of my list. A third world country was able to give the broadest base of its citizens a reasonable level of health care that I have not seen in the USA.
However, the interesting thing to note is that the bulk of that care was not given via the government, but via private care.
So, what is the difference you ask? Here in the US, the doctors don't seem to care about you. They would rather pack the next patient in rather than spend an additional 10 minutes talking to you - higher profits you see. This means they rely on lab tests too much and don't build up any decent history of the patient. This third world country's doctors by and large appeared to have the primary aim of actually wanting to help their patients rather than becoming rich overnight.
My summary: The health system in the USA is the most expensive system that I have come across and on average does not deliver what you pay for. (Compare: 1 child born outside USA $3200, 1 child born in USA $14500. Oh and my wife got to spend more time in hospital with the 1st child.)
Sure, capilitalism is good, but as with most things it has been taken to the extreme here in the US.