I actually considered this once. I don't pay anything directly because it's a "covered" item in my health plan, but I would pay $25 out of pocket if I got one. So here goes:
When I was younger - in my 20s& 30s I got a flu - or flu-like symptoms requiring I miss work for 3 or more days - four times. I started getting the flu vaccine about 8 years ago, and I haven't had the flu for about 11 or 12 years.
Let's say my typical chance is once every 5 years. (4x in 20 years). If I were only to get the flu once every 10 years (56% effective in my target age group), that means that, on average I will miss 3 days less of work in 10 years. I'm a consultant, so I bill $150/hr, and I get nothing if I don't work. Whether I show up at the office or not, I pay for rent, electricity, licensing, insurance, etc. So...3 days at 6 billable hours in a typical day is $2700 is lost income (note I'm not counting the 3-4 hours of admin time a day, which is all rolled into those billable hours). $2700 a year over ten years is $270 a year, or an 11:1 payback on my "investment" of $25. As a bonus, I don't end up paying for a doctors visit, or for medications, or for the general crappiness I feel, or take the chance that my wife and daughter are then more likely to get it as well. Break even, without medication costs and such, would be around $13.60/hr.
If it were the worst case of 9% if I were over 65 and still working, then we're really talking statistical, but that would mean a theoretical reduction of 18 hrs/5yrs*9% = $49 a year return on a $25 flu shot, plus the above associated effects and medical costs, and the chance of dying from the flu because I'm just old and more likely to get a secondary infection.
No, he was a dick about it. Instead of simply making a notation and signing, he made a big deal about how the agency made an error. It was a dick thing to do, since $1 Canadian is nearly equal to $1 US.
Technical types get wrapped around the axle over stupid shit like this all the time. I used to, too, before I realized how much more you can get accomplished when you stop being a dick and work with people.
No, clearly your point was to whine. Otherwise you wouldn't have been an asshole about the whole thing. Make the correction, initial it, and sign the bottom. Ask to have the paperwork re-done and make an appointment to come back when it's ready. Better yet, hire a real importer and have them process the paperwork for you. Don't go bitch and complain about it.
Last year I convinced my wife and daughter to drop DirecTV. I switched to usenet (sickbeard/couch potato/sabnzbd), but I could have changed to Netflix or Hulu or both instead. I've had all our movies on a central server (unraid, btw) for a few years.
Here's the thing: we don't watch programming on TV much anymore. The TV in the bedroom - almost never, in the kitchen - wife still watches the morning news, no tv in the living room (really), tv in the playroom - on the weekends mostly. By using Plex and tablets, 90+% of what we watch can be streamed directly to personal devices. Yes, I have AppleTV pucks so I can throw tablet/phone content to the TVs, but I'm just as likely to put The Daily Show on the tablet via Plex and prop it up against the wall/fridge instead.
I'd probably go down to a single, big TV in the "TV watching room" (wherever that is for you). A single big server - a single box with a cheap monitor and disc space to spare (8TB isn't a bad starting point, which means 3 - 4TB drives in an unraid/sw raid setup). A workstation area to plug in a laptop with an obscenely large screen (30" if you're getting a laptop which can drive it). Convertables or tablets for everyone. So $1500 TV, $1200 server, $1600 monitor/docking station stuff, $1200 good laptop, $800x n tablets/convertables for everyone else. If you really need a dedicated camera, get one - good ones are $300 (dpreview). A charging station is nice to have, but I would go with a bluetooth wireless sound system if it's really something you use. The audio coming out of portable devices is crap, there's no sense in spending a large wad on good speakers for them (or, in the case of Bose, a large wad on cheap speakers and good marketing).
The extra money? Well, maybe a security system...if it would have actually helped (it may not have). Otherwise it's a great time to investigate cloud backup options, or revel in your forethought if you had a really good off-site backup system.
No, they're selling equipment. After 30 days, it's yours according to the contract - at least it is for the one I signed. I pay for the equipment, and the State agrees that it is a sale at the offered price - charging me sales tax. I have a service agreement which states if I choose not to keep the equipment I have to give it back for a full refund within the first 30 days, after 30 days, I am required to keep the phone.
Nonetheless, you've just made the point that locking/unlocking is unnecessary. I quote, "And early termination fees protect their investment." Which is exactly the point - the contract with my provider states that I will keep in force a minimum level of service for 2 years in return for the reduced purchase price. If I break the contract , I owe them $350 (prorated per the schedule).
Locking is an unnecessary and burdensome business practice which should be illegal, and is instead enforced as a result of a law which was - by it's nature - not intended to apply to physical transactions.
Nope - if you are arrested while carrying your house then they may search it. Unless, of course, it is locked - in which case they have to get a warrant.
It's well known in any frontier location that you own only as much as you can successfully defend against other prospectors. That beacon is only useful if it can successfully repel an antagonistic party.
You seriously don't have a single friend on Teh Facebook? It may be difficult to find a particular person on FB, but to find a reasonable number of acquaintances usually isn't that hard unless you hang out exclusively with FB deniers. It's been so long since I signed up, I can't remember who my first FB "friends" were, but it wasn't hard to find a dozen or so people I knew.
I've had my email address for so long (easily 15+ with the same personal address, almost 10 with my work address) that it's basically public knowledge - if you know my name, you know my email address. It was dicey for a while before spam filters got good. Now, I don't really care who has it. In fact, I keep it on facebook so people I know who might need to really contact me can do so at my "real" email address. (note: they sure as hell don't have my email password)
Don't fret over it...relax, and let people come to you. FB will recommend some (makes for some nice WTF moments at times), some people are obsessed with finding old acquaintances. Turn off all the notifications unless somebody tags or messages you. Check it once every couple of days for 5 minutes. FWIW, I use FB (a) to communicate about hobby stuff (events, coordination, advertising) and (b) to keep in touch with old HS/college buddies and family. All the stupid little stuff that you'd chat about over a beer if you weren't actually separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. It's actually quite useful...as long as you don't pretend that what you post is somehow "secret," you won't get into trouble.
Business is a voluntary act. Google is not a governmental agency which is required to deal with everyone, or even to deal with everyone with an even hand. They don't decide who can be online and do business, and who cannot. Those other sites will still exist and may conduct business as usual, just without a particular business partner.
If you don't like it, don't use them. It will reduce their income. Of course, I presume you're using Google right now, or you wouldn't give a fuck what they do (since, hey, you don't use them anyway).
Right now, there is no particular demand for a the ability to trassmit 3D because there are no 3D displays. On a 2D monitor, all you really get is inefficient navigation and an ability to hide stuff from the user.
More importantly, when the full-OS (or rather the dual/touch aware full-OS) tablets come out, and you no longer have to buy two devices - a tablet for consumption and a laptop for heavier work - the tablets will decline in value. Their advantage is a 1.5lb screen-only device that is quick and easy for small tasks. Now that full intel tablets are going into sub 2lb territory, the only thing left is the App market for full/dual OS (like Metro) and the longer battery life. The former will get fixed with time and maturity (remember the Android market 3 years ago?), the latter is mostly a matter of optimization and better power management. If Intel can dual-pipeline their i series to allow either an on-die Atom which allows the main processor to throttle off, or another method of reducing near-idle compute demand power draw, you can drive down the average draw rate to the screen, active memory, and comm devices. At that point, tablets don't have a power efficiency advantage. Laptops with fixed keyboards will be somewhat rare, in favor of the convertible.
No, $60k isn't a car for everybody. But it's the only car out there in production which has managed to combine all-electric with useful range in something that doesn't look like something out of an Anime cartoon. It's, for lack of a better term, a real car that happens to be all electric - and it something that nobody else has managed to pull off and produce.
This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I keep my "stuff" in my car so I don't have to carry a huge man-purse everywhere. A generic fix-it kit in the trunk, medical kit in the glove box, device-specific holders for my electronics (as well as carefully routed power cords), plus a pen, pencil, utility knife, flashlight, map, and some work-related gear in case I get a call while I'm out. I've seriously considered getting a second, super-fuel-efficient car for longer trips (I drive a full sized truck which gets abyssmal gas milage) but then I realized I'd have to be swapping stuff back and forth - or buy two of everything. I hate having to do that when I have to take my wife's car somewhere...I can't imaging having to do that every time I leave the house.
You mean that you're creating an internet of wireless devices. It's mostly useless, or at least just a curiosity or specialty tool, until it hits critical mass. Then it becomes a parallel internet, but requiring proximity to the network peers. It will even have a functional equivalence, as everybody in the middle of nowhere will still be fucked, but if you're clustered in a population hub, the connectivity will allow high bandwidth applications.
Yeah, but Android? OS of the Droid and Google and the unwashed neckbeards? It just doesn't seem to fit. My bet is that if they could have gotten away with it, they would have used iOS, but the next best thing was Android. I mean, at least on Android there's a decent volume of apps in the app store. And they can probably customize the interface so you don't really know you're using Android.
I think their market would have been fine with a version of iOS that looked all monochromey and twill patterened.
You're supposed to be seen with it. To be honest, I'm surprised they didn't buy an Iphone and re-case it from scratch. The market is clearly brand conscious people who get all hot and bothered about overpaying for mediocre performance. How does that not scream Apple?
Imagine this: you have a notebook of your course content - basically and outline and examples - you've used for years. Each year, you walk into class grab a marker and go to town on the whiteboard. Nobody can get ahead of you, everybody has to concentrate on what you're saying or miss the details, and you can actively let your theories blossom infront of them. By the third or fourth time you've taught the class, you spend almost no time at all preparing. Each class can get a customized window of your knowledge that suits them. If you make an error, you just say "oops" and change the mark on the board by erasing the last one with your sleeve and everybody fixes it with a pencil. Done.
Now, in the name of "connectedness" and "interactivity" you are expected to produce a full picture book of your entire semester's class work and examples, all worked to the nth degree. Everybody is supposed to download them and you just point at the board as your slides go by. There's no way to correct them on the fly, and any corrections you make require everyone to update their local copy. Those that take notes have to insert the new slides and just hope that the pagination doesn't change so they have to redo the whole back half of the presentation. Everybody is working from their laptop or their tablet, so nobody is really "taking notes" - even the good equipment sucks at it - and half are off checking facebook or playing games.
It's not wonder profs are loathe to incorporate stuff into their lectures - more work for them, less interaction from the students. The whole idea of having a professor is getting a customized version of the class. Otherwise you could just go out and buy the (e-)text, take the exam and skip college altogether. It's not a business presentation where nobody gives a shit, and pretty slides makes up for the lack of real content. It's actual learning.
College professors aren't, in general, very high on my list of respected professions, but I've got to side with them in this case. There are lots of things IT can do to help out, but in the classroom the experience should be very human and very hands on./rant
Really - even if they were still in office, this is a dick move. Private emails are private emails. I care less about the hacking than the release, to be honest. If there's some actual funny business (like using personal email to avoid public disclosure statutes), then maybe the relevant text, but just releasing a bunch of personal, day to day emails (and all of the petty squabbling that everyone does) is unnecessary. I don't care what names they called each other or what they said "in private" about anyone.
Actually, I don't think it does. You agree to a price and a recurrence frequency. Prior to the new delivery, I believe you get a message (I got one on an item I'm trying out, but it's because my card expired so they knew they couldn't charge it). You can then delay/skip the delivery at your option or cancel the recurrence altogether. Apparently, I don't go through after shave nearly as fast as the slowest "average" person.
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I actually considered this once. I don't pay anything directly because it's a "covered" item in my health plan, but I would pay $25 out of pocket if I got one. So here goes:
When I was younger - in my 20s& 30s I got a flu - or flu-like symptoms requiring I miss work for 3 or more days - four times. I started getting the flu vaccine about 8 years ago, and I haven't had the flu for about 11 or 12 years.
Let's say my typical chance is once every 5 years. (4x in 20 years). If I were only to get the flu once every 10 years (56% effective in my target age group), that means that, on average I will miss 3 days less of work in 10 years. I'm a consultant, so I bill $150/hr, and I get nothing if I don't work. Whether I show up at the office or not, I pay for rent, electricity, licensing, insurance, etc. So...3 days at 6 billable hours in a typical day is $2700 is lost income (note I'm not counting the 3-4 hours of admin time a day, which is all rolled into those billable hours). $2700 a year over ten years is $270 a year, or an 11:1 payback on my "investment" of $25. As a bonus, I don't end up paying for a doctors visit, or for medications, or for the general crappiness I feel, or take the chance that my wife and daughter are then more likely to get it as well. Break even, without medication costs and such, would be around $13.60/hr.
If it were the worst case of 9% if I were over 65 and still working, then we're really talking statistical, but that would mean a theoretical reduction of 18 hrs/5yrs*9% = $49 a year return on a $25 flu shot, plus the above associated effects and medical costs, and the chance of dying from the flu because I'm just old and more likely to get a secondary infection.
No, he was a dick about it. Instead of simply making a notation and signing, he made a big deal about how the agency made an error. It was a dick thing to do, since $1 Canadian is nearly equal to $1 US.
Technical types get wrapped around the axle over stupid shit like this all the time. I used to, too, before I realized how much more you can get accomplished when you stop being a dick and work with people.
FTFA, "My point in writing this isn’t to whine."
No, clearly your point was to whine. Otherwise you wouldn't have been an asshole about the whole thing. Make the correction, initial it, and sign the bottom. Ask to have the paperwork re-done and make an appointment to come back when it's ready. Better yet, hire a real importer and have them process the paperwork for you. Don't go bitch and complain about it.
Last year I convinced my wife and daughter to drop DirecTV. I switched to usenet (sickbeard/couch potato/sabnzbd), but I could have changed to Netflix or Hulu or both instead. I've had all our movies on a central server (unraid, btw) for a few years.
Here's the thing: we don't watch programming on TV much anymore. The TV in the bedroom - almost never, in the kitchen - wife still watches the morning news, no tv in the living room (really), tv in the playroom - on the weekends mostly. By using Plex and tablets, 90+% of what we watch can be streamed directly to personal devices. Yes, I have AppleTV pucks so I can throw tablet/phone content to the TVs, but I'm just as likely to put The Daily Show on the tablet via Plex and prop it up against the wall/fridge instead.
I'd probably go down to a single, big TV in the "TV watching room" (wherever that is for you). A single big server - a single box with a cheap monitor and disc space to spare (8TB isn't a bad starting point, which means 3 - 4TB drives in an unraid/sw raid setup). A workstation area to plug in a laptop with an obscenely large screen (30" if you're getting a laptop which can drive it). Convertables or tablets for everyone. So $1500 TV, $1200 server, $1600 monitor/docking station stuff, $1200 good laptop, $800x n tablets/convertables for everyone else. If you really need a dedicated camera, get one - good ones are $300 (dpreview). A charging station is nice to have, but I would go with a bluetooth wireless sound system if it's really something you use. The audio coming out of portable devices is crap, there's no sense in spending a large wad on good speakers for them (or, in the case of Bose, a large wad on cheap speakers and good marketing).
The extra money? Well, maybe a security system...if it would have actually helped (it may not have). Otherwise it's a great time to investigate cloud backup options, or revel in your forethought if you had a really good off-site backup system.
No, they're selling equipment. After 30 days, it's yours according to the contract - at least it is for the one I signed. I pay for the equipment, and the State agrees that it is a sale at the offered price - charging me sales tax. I have a service agreement which states if I choose not to keep the equipment I have to give it back for a full refund within the first 30 days, after 30 days, I am required to keep the phone.
Nonetheless, you've just made the point that locking/unlocking is unnecessary. I quote, "And early termination fees protect their investment." Which is exactly the point - the contract with my provider states that I will keep in force a minimum level of service for 2 years in return for the reduced purchase price. If I break the contract , I owe them $350 (prorated per the schedule).
Locking is an unnecessary and burdensome business practice which should be illegal, and is instead enforced as a result of a law which was - by it's nature - not intended to apply to physical transactions.
Nope - if you are arrested while carrying your house then they may search it. Unless, of course, it is locked - in which case they have to get a warrant.
See, it still doesn't make sense as an analogy.
It's well known in any frontier location that you own only as much as you can successfully defend against other prospectors. That beacon is only useful if it can successfully repel an antagonistic party.
Do you use another social networking site, or do you simply not partake in relationships online at all?
You seriously don't have a single friend on Teh Facebook? It may be difficult to find a particular person on FB, but to find a reasonable number of acquaintances usually isn't that hard unless you hang out exclusively with FB deniers. It's been so long since I signed up, I can't remember who my first FB "friends" were, but it wasn't hard to find a dozen or so people I knew.
I've had my email address for so long (easily 15+ with the same personal address, almost 10 with my work address) that it's basically public knowledge - if you know my name, you know my email address. It was dicey for a while before spam filters got good. Now, I don't really care who has it. In fact, I keep it on facebook so people I know who might need to really contact me can do so at my "real" email address. (note: they sure as hell don't have my email password)
Don't fret over it...relax, and let people come to you. FB will recommend some (makes for some nice WTF moments at times), some people are obsessed with finding old acquaintances. Turn off all the notifications unless somebody tags or messages you. Check it once every couple of days for 5 minutes. FWIW, I use FB (a) to communicate about hobby stuff (events, coordination, advertising) and (b) to keep in touch with old HS/college buddies and family. All the stupid little stuff that you'd chat about over a beer if you weren't actually separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. It's actually quite useful...as long as you don't pretend that what you post is somehow "secret," you won't get into trouble.
Business is a voluntary act. Google is not a governmental agency which is required to deal with everyone, or even to deal with everyone with an even hand. They don't decide who can be online and do business, and who cannot. Those other sites will still exist and may conduct business as usual, just without a particular business partner.
If you don't like it, don't use them. It will reduce their income. Of course, I presume you're using Google right now, or you wouldn't give a fuck what they do (since, hey, you don't use them anyway).
Right now, there is no particular demand for a the ability to trassmit 3D because there are no 3D displays. On a 2D monitor, all you really get is inefficient navigation and an ability to hide stuff from the user.
Seriously, if you're eating at a fast food restaurant then whether you are getting genuine honey is likely to be the least of your health worries.
More importantly, when the full-OS (or rather the dual/touch aware full-OS) tablets come out, and you no longer have to buy two devices - a tablet for consumption and a laptop for heavier work - the tablets will decline in value. Their advantage is a 1.5lb screen-only device that is quick and easy for small tasks. Now that full intel tablets are going into sub 2lb territory, the only thing left is the App market for full/dual OS (like Metro) and the longer battery life. The former will get fixed with time and maturity (remember the Android market 3 years ago?), the latter is mostly a matter of optimization and better power management. If Intel can dual-pipeline their i series to allow either an on-die Atom which allows the main processor to throttle off, or another method of reducing near-idle compute demand power draw, you can drive down the average draw rate to the screen, active memory, and comm devices. At that point, tablets don't have a power efficiency advantage. Laptops with fixed keyboards will be somewhat rare, in favor of the convertible.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
No, $60k isn't a car for everybody. But it's the only car out there in production which has managed to combine all-electric with useful range in something that doesn't look like something out of an Anime cartoon. It's, for lack of a better term, a real car that happens to be all electric - and it something that nobody else has managed to pull off and produce.
This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I keep my "stuff" in my car so I don't have to carry a huge man-purse everywhere. A generic fix-it kit in the trunk, medical kit in the glove box, device-specific holders for my electronics (as well as carefully routed power cords), plus a pen, pencil, utility knife, flashlight, map, and some work-related gear in case I get a call while I'm out. I've seriously considered getting a second, super-fuel-efficient car for longer trips (I drive a full sized truck which gets abyssmal gas milage) but then I realized I'd have to be swapping stuff back and forth - or buy two of everything. I hate having to do that when I have to take my wife's car somewhere...I can't imaging having to do that every time I leave the house.
It's not a fail if he gets them for free.
You mean that you're creating an internet of wireless devices. It's mostly useless, or at least just a curiosity or specialty tool, until it hits critical mass. Then it becomes a parallel internet, but requiring proximity to the network peers. It will even have a functional equivalence, as everybody in the middle of nowhere will still be fucked, but if you're clustered in a population hub, the connectivity will allow high bandwidth applications.
Yeah, but Android? OS of the Droid and Google and the unwashed neckbeards? It just doesn't seem to fit. My bet is that if they could have gotten away with it, they would have used iOS, but the next best thing was Android. I mean, at least on Android there's a decent volume of apps in the app store. And they can probably customize the interface so you don't really know you're using Android.
I think their market would have been fine with a version of iOS that looked all monochromey and twill patterened.
You're supposed to be seen with it. To be honest, I'm surprised they didn't buy an Iphone and re-case it from scratch. The market is clearly brand conscious people who get all hot and bothered about overpaying for mediocre performance. How does that not scream Apple?
I'm okay with Styx, but the other one should be named Journey.
Imagine this: you have a notebook of your course content - basically and outline and examples - you've used for years. Each year, you walk into class grab a marker and go to town on the whiteboard. Nobody can get ahead of you, everybody has to concentrate on what you're saying or miss the details, and you can actively let your theories blossom infront of them. By the third or fourth time you've taught the class, you spend almost no time at all preparing. Each class can get a customized window of your knowledge that suits them. If you make an error, you just say "oops" and change the mark on the board by erasing the last one with your sleeve and everybody fixes it with a pencil. Done.
Now, in the name of "connectedness" and "interactivity" you are expected to produce a full picture book of your entire semester's class work and examples, all worked to the nth degree. Everybody is supposed to download them and you just point at the board as your slides go by. There's no way to correct them on the fly, and any corrections you make require everyone to update their local copy. Those that take notes have to insert the new slides and just hope that the pagination doesn't change so they have to redo the whole back half of the presentation. Everybody is working from their laptop or their tablet, so nobody is really "taking notes" - even the good equipment sucks at it - and half are off checking facebook or playing games.
It's not wonder profs are loathe to incorporate stuff into their lectures - more work for them, less interaction from the students. The whole idea of having a professor is getting a customized version of the class. Otherwise you could just go out and buy the (e-)text, take the exam and skip college altogether. It's not a business presentation where nobody gives a shit, and pretty slides makes up for the lack of real content. It's actual learning.
College professors aren't, in general, very high on my list of respected professions, but I've got to side with them in this case. There are lots of things IT can do to help out, but in the classroom the experience should be very human and very hands on. /rant
That is all.
Because if the Pontiff looked good in a bikini, it would have been on the cover of People.
Really - even if they were still in office, this is a dick move. Private emails are private emails. I care less about the hacking than the release, to be honest. If there's some actual funny business (like using personal email to avoid public disclosure statutes), then maybe the relevant text, but just releasing a bunch of personal, day to day emails (and all of the petty squabbling that everyone does) is unnecessary. I don't care what names they called each other or what they said "in private" about anyone.
Actually, I don't think it does. You agree to a price and a recurrence frequency. Prior to the new delivery, I believe you get a message (I got one on an item I'm trying out, but it's because my card expired so they knew they couldn't charge it). You can then delay/skip the delivery at your option or cancel the recurrence altogether. Apparently, I don't go through after shave nearly as fast as the slowest "average" person.