No, I wan't kidding. When I can't get a head to clean after an entire ink-tank of cleaning cycles, it's time for a new printer. I din't have the time to babysit a $100 piece of equipment which is going to ruin $5 of ink ($30 if you're using OEM) and $3 in paper every time it's been sitting idle for more than a few days.
Luckily, I've had epson replace some of them under warranty, but there have been a couple that just lined the bottom of my trashcan. A cleaning tank is usually $20 or so. In one case, even the cleaning tank couldn't do the job. I've used the alcohol-soaked paper method to clean some, as well, with mixed success. I'd feel worse if I paid full price on a more expensive model (say, a 2200), but the ones I've had are mostly sale acquisitions with net out of pocket costs of less than $100.
The R300 I use for CDs & DVDs (and most of my snapshots, as well) came in around $35 after rebates. It hasn't had the clogging problems of the older epsons (yet).
As for service, I never take in anything for service unless its going to be $300 or more to replace, and the service is going to guarantee the work for quite a while. Paying shippingx2 + handling + parts + labor is often more than a new machine. I was made painfully aware of this fact several years ago when I took a VCR in for service to replace the rewind gear. This was (maybe) a $100 machine at the time. The "preapproved" minimum for service was $89, but I knew it was a simple fix. It was...the part was $2.23, and the labor was 86.50. $88.73 was a fully legal charge, based on their policy. Lesson learned.
Thats quite appropriate. Most people are not dumb (which I usually consider to be incapable of learning), but rather are conditioned not to think before they act. It happens in many small ways. Society vaules inaccuracy and lack of self reliance. Most people would rather be given information, espcially in simple terms, than learn the whole thing themselves. Too much work.
The best example of the inaccuracy/simplistic conditioning is a personal experience from high school. When asked the time, I used to give the time down tot he minute. If it was 1:42pm, I'd tell the person it was "One fourty-two". That was as simple as it got, for me, and accurate. I soon learned from people's reactions that they didn't want accurate information, just enough to get by. Rounding off became a habit of mine, and "one forty-two" became "quarter of two". Sixteeen inches became "About a foot and a half". (That has nothing to do with men always adding two inches, btw)
It bothers me that people are so oblivious to the things which go on around them, and do no research to check facts. The plethora of urban legends is a fine example of this one.
It's not that people CAN'T be "smart", it's that they choose not to be. And, well, that bugs me.
And, yes, I've left "it" out of that sig. Stupid people...they may be closer than you think.
I'm thinking that AT would be smoked, and the Ken/Ben show result would hinge on which categories were selected.
Aside: I've never watched Ken, I'm just guessing by the hype. In fact, I don't think I've ever watched an entire Jeopardy episode. I watched BSM for a season or so until Jimmy Kimmel left. His departure was when the sow jumped the shark, imho. Straight-man/Funny-man=good Straight-man/Chick-with-big-tits=not so good.
Me, too, but I use Opera...and spoof to Mozilla. IE site checks are a bit more careful than the Mozilla checks (or, at least, the Mozilla spoof is more effective).
And my click through rate as waaaaaaay below 0.11%.
It's way too common. I recently designed a log home which was about 8000SF built with 20-30" diameter logs, and a fully vaulted log-supported ceiling with gables out each end. This is an a fairly small town, and the owner is well off but certainly wouldn't make the top 20 in our area. He wanted vast expanses of glass, huge openings, and a massive freestanding stone fireplace which was about 45-50' from the foundation to the top fo the chimney.
This is NOT a log cabin. It required several special details to make sure it would stand up to the wind loads, and even some special work to ensure the fireplace didn't collapse in a seismic event (yes, even in Virginia we have seismicity).
People just don't get it. I like the 200dB alarm story - it goes right to the heart of the matter. 200dB makes no sense from an engineering perspective (log scales and lethal pressures and such), but it's XX% better than "standard" so they want it. Humans are just plain goofy, and it's just a matter of time before someone wants one of these arched/domed residences that's 12000SF and has three wet bars and an indoor swimming pool.
It is a shame that we squandered the opportunity to really take a bite out of the debt during the boom years. We've lost that now, 'cause there's been so little movement in the US stock market to fuel capital gains taxes. Worse yet, the boomers will be retiring, and will start taking their money OUT of the market in order to pay for their retirements. Even if we get a short term run-up in the market, I don't see the stock market rebounding in any meaningful way for quite some time.
7 Trillion dollars is a lot of money, and we've mangage to do it a billion dollars at a time. Sure, there have been some big ticket items, but the bulk has been in "good" programs that are just too rich for our means.
The folks on the hill making $200k with benefits all covered (and most of them were top 1% wealth to begin with) wouldn't know fiscal responsibility if it hit them in the face. I can't remember who, but one member was arguing the need for a particular defense appropriation, comparing the need for this item to the need to keep your family safe: you buy the best (I believe his recommendation was Mercedes-Benz) to protect your family, why wouldn't you buy the best for your troops to protect the country. He suggested that to do any less would jeopardize your family's safety (and the country's) and would be a disservice. My first thought was that most families in the US can't afford a Mercedes-Benz, no matter how much they value their family's safety, and you're clearly out of touch to think that it would even be possible.
Like I said, 7 Trillion dollars is a big debt, but we've got to start somewhere. That works out to about $65,000 per household in the US. The median household income is less than $43,000/yr in the US. This isn't like a mortgage, folks, there's no tangible assest backing this debt. It's just like a huge (albit low interest) credit card balance.
A fellow engineer once remarked, at a small dinner assemblage of international engineers and scientists, that we won the space race because we got all the good German scientists after the allies broke up Germany after WWII. Most at the table were in agreement.
Additionally, most of the higher end HPs have separate print heads. Both the 7110 multi-purpose on my bookshelf and my DesignJet120 (24" 6 color) have separate tanks and heads.
Most of us who own Epsons wished that the heads were replaceable, so we wouldn't have to throw away the whole machine every year or so when the heads get permanently clogged.
Is the UV layer on modern dye-subs really that good (on the dashboard)? I had a print from a dye sub back in the early 90s that lost most of its magenta in less than two years in an office (maybe 2 hrs sunlight through a silvered window each day). I really like the output, but the expense is still at the "early adopter" level for the most part.
I like Epson output, I just hate the printheads. I've lost more good paper to clogged jets. OEM or aftermarket ink, doesn't seem to matter. After a little 875DC went belly up in under 4 months (jets so clogged an entire cartridge wouldn't clean them), I got a replacement and went pure OEM. By the middle of the second color cartridge, I was clogging again. I got a head cleaning cartridge (aftermarket), a box of aftermarket ink, and got it running again. I ended up writing a script to run daily that sent about 3/4" of rainbow output to the printer without a page feed. That worked, and kept the heqads from clogging. Seems that Epsons can't go for more than three or four days without printing or the keep-alive heat in the head will set the inks and clog the works up. (Don't know if that's true, but its the story I got from the second level tech at Epson on the second warranty replacement).
Just about everything works well with gravity loads (blizzards, people), but getting lateral to work is more difficult. Moving from WI to coastal FL will probably increase the lateral loads by a factor of 4 (140mph/90mph windspeed...squared...and an exposure factor increase from b to c or b to d, most likely), and if you end up with a windborne debris problem, even more. You quickly start losing windows, addition special wind/seismic elements, and increase the assembly cost dramatically. Of course, even tripling the cost of ~20% of the house isn't a huge increase, but it's going to put a damper on the budget somewhere.
Testing a full sized building to failure is nearly impossible with (especially) on-site equipment. Not only that, but it qualifies a single design, built under qualified supervision to specific requirements.
Did they happen to test it to greater than three times the ASCE7 load for the location in question...or for the highest load? You're talking (factored) over 3gs of acceleration in some locations (I'm just remmebring the map from memory...I don't do CA stuff under my own seal). (point of note: ICC only requires a 2.5FS on tests, the older codes were 3.0).
How expensive was this testing, and is that cost factored in should I want a bigger window, or an extra door, or need two more feet on the end? You think wood is expensive, try building a test fixture, or having a properly trained engineering try to analyse one of these things. You could import the wood for much less.
You do know that one jurisdiction (county of LA, for example) means squat anywhere else, unless it's adopted into the code or given a specific test report, right? Also, California is under a different building code than most of the rest of the country, and not necessarily more stringent, in some cases, as it is an older iteration for the "current" code.
If we're talking about outside the US, say in third-world coutries with no building code where this is better than what they have, then great. I'm all for the upgrade. Just don't think that a third-world building style is going to make any difference in the industrialized world. Aside from the aesthetic (that's pronounced "market") considerations, the building code just isn't conducive to such a strucutre.
The problem is that the actual process contains a great deal of variability. That, in concert with the gravity stabilized method of lateral resistance makes these houses suspect in high-seismic load areas.
I tend to view these like adobe and log homes. In their traditional forms (small, no or very small windows, small door) they are fairly stable, and with proper siting and a dash of good luck will stand for quite some time. The difficulty comes when you get someone with 500k to spend and liek the look, but wants entire walls of window and huge double entry and veranda doors, and doesn't understand why it's no longer a (insert traditional form) house anymore.
The fact is that, while the simple forms are stable under most conditions, you cannot stray too far without finding out the weaknesses in the method. Worst, the "tested" performance is typically not replicable on paper/computer for a residential-scale engineering budget. Sure, it might be okay for NASA to drop a few million on analysis, but your typical homeowner cries foul if they get a $1500 engineering bill.
FWIW, I am a structural engineer who deals with residential clients that span the spectrum (50k homes up to multi-million). I get calls on stuff (I want to say "crap") like this all the time, and it's not easy telling a client that their design won't with with traditional analysis, and a specialized analysis is going to cost them 5 figures or more, and still may not work when validated against the building codes.
Hmmm...No. I don't suscribe to all that "stay late to look good" crap. If my job is done, or at least on schedule, I'm out of the office.
Now, if I'm underutilized in a small group, I will always ask if I can help out, and will gladly pitch in to get things done. But don't expect to see me reading/. and hitting alt-tab back to an application everytime someone walks by at 9pm just 'cause someone else is on a deadline.
(I should be speaking in past tense, as I work for myself now. When I'm busy, I work late. When I'm not, I go home and play with my kid.
Wait a minute. Your dad is a laywer. Good lawyers provide personal service to clients. It's a one-on-one relationship with clients that gets you more clients. And yet he's advertising on Google. That's a particularly interesting juxtaposition.
I'm a professional engineer. I work on smaller projects with all types of clients. I didn't have any local name recognition when I hung out my shingle, and my website wasn't linked anywhere, soI got AdWords when my business first opened. Now that I'm confident that likely searches will bing up my web page on the first couple of google pages, I got rid of them.
For professional services, AdWords are usually about a) large corporations which need a huge stream of clients or b) somebody trolling for quick cash. In which group should I put your father?
We're not treating ourselves this way, we're treating others this way. Nobody is sking their fellow employees to work extra, management is. It's a fine distinction, but significant. Those who make money by skimming a bit off the top of someone else's work are forcing the issue. The more layers of skimming there are, the more impersonal the request becomes. I'll bet you have to go at least 5 levels down in a company like EA to get to someone who's primary task involves production of code on a daily basis. The four levels above are skimmers. Their functions may be necessary to make the team cohesive, but they're still skimmers, and the more hours the lower levels work, the more skimming can be done.
Geez, I' ve got to get some work done, but this caught my eye and I just can't let this PR piece go uncommented:
The last few weeks of reading blogs and the media about EA culture and work practices have not been easy. I know personally how hard it is when so much of the news seems negative.
Yeah, cause it means that HR has to put in our full 40 hours just to answer all the emails from you and the boss about how we're not keeping a better lid on this stuff.
We have purposefully not responded to web logs and the media because the best way to communicate is directly with you, our team members....through carefully crafted PR "leaks"
As much as I dont like whats been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden. We havent yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process.
Okay, lets stop right here. This is a company with vast resources and development history. They can't get one guy to go back and look at the last few years and tell them how many man-hours it's going to take to develop the next game? I'm not talking down to the minute - they're clearly under-staffed by about 40-70% if the reports are true. You can't get me a WAG within 10% and hire-up? I call bullshit in the biggest way. Only the most incompetent manager would underestimate time this badly when they have a known track record....there are things we just need to fix. And the solutions dont apply to just our studios the people who market, sell, distribute and support the great games that our Studios create, all share a demanding workload.
Classic avoidance of the issue by peer pressure. "Everybody else is working overtime, it's the industry standard...get used to it." It's the standard because nobody is willing stand up and put a stop to the pre-industrial-revolution working conditions.
Three weeks ago we issued our bi-annual Talk Back Survey and more than 80 percent of you participated much higher than the norm for a company our size. That tells me you care and are committed to making EA better.
Human nature predicts that the majority of people will only speak up when they are dissatified, and want change. If things are going well, there's no need to cause a commotion. Looking at the turn out in elections is a prime example of this phenominon.
In the next 30 days well have the survey results and we will share them openly with you by the middle of January.
What, no raw data? Thirty days is a long time to tally the multiple choice - how bout a sneak preview?
Your feedback in the Talk Back Survey will help us make changes in the coming year, but were not waiting some changes are already in the works in the Studios. Here are just a few:...blah blah blah...
Nothing but some techincal changes here. Good, but unless you're going to admit that such a large company is randomly re-developing things so badly as to waste hoards of man-hours, I'm going to say that this is band-aid stuff that'll (maybe) take an hour off the typical workweek if you keep the product the same. In reality, it will just allow more work to be done in the existing time, and expectations of output to rise. With all the productivity software out there, we should be working 12 hour weeks, based on what was done thirty years ago.
We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year.
Sounds good, but this is just consideration...not the actual reclassification. They'll probably decide what they have is good.
We have resisted this in the past, not because we dont want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology
Gosh, I've never really worried about whois protection. That's what good spam filtering is for. I suppose I'm less worried about my "private" information, since my domains are held by the company I run, generally in the name of the corporation - and those records are public in my state. *shrug* I'm just not quite that paranoid.
I'll admit that godaddy is uber-annoying now with all those frakin' adds, but really its just a couple of extra clicks. Plus, it seems that the owner is a decent guy. Same goes for my hosting service. It may not be the best, but its reliable, and when I've had questions in the past, I've gotten answers from good people, including the owner.
The advertisers want to squeeze every last schekel out of the consumers, and they adjust market prices per the tolerance of each individual market.
While this may be the case in very limited cases, it's not the overdriving factor. You're correct that it's drivin by advertising revenue, but it's the local affiliates which are getting the squeeze - they're the ones putting the stranglehold on the consumer. The advertisers don't give a flying F*#k, as long as they only pay for the audience they're getting.
If a third of their market televisions wer watching national feeds, their local-ad eyeball count would go down. Since advertizers pay by the eyeball (in a general sense), fewer viewers = lower value of an ad spot. Locals make their living off of local ad revenue, and they've got the politicians to keep that revenue stream from disappearing. Letting the networks go national would erode the local's financial base.
Don't get too wrapped up in the top end battle though. From a small business, and local consumer, perspective, local ads also make sense. Jim's Pontiac can't afford to run a national ad (nor would it be of much help), but he can run a local ad. You, on the other hand, might be in the market for a Pontiac. If you don't live near Jim's, you don't care about his sale. In fact, knowing that Jim can get you a car for $500 better than you thought, but then you find he's 2200 miles from you house can be quite annoying. There's a good reason for local marketing - for both the marketer and the consumer. Of course, if you don't want ads at all, half that equation just goes down the can. Still, Jim at least want's a chance to sell you that lemon.
[flame suit on...mac mods seem to like smacking me down]
Because it reminds you that MacOS is still a very small part of the desktop computer market. Mac people are convinced that by buying a cool, hip computer, thery should have access to all the cool, hip stuff that comes along for computers. Especially if it involves video or graphics in any way.
Not that I blame you. I'm new to Linux, and it bothers me everytime I want a cool app I've used un XP, only to find there's no linux version. Even worse with hardware. How freakin' had can it be to get a linux driver up for my wireless card?
Anyway, it boils down to the unwashed masses having access to something cool, while you are high and dry.
You have the dates waaaay too accurate (dons tin foil hat).
I was in college from 87 to 92, with practically all my Mac usage during that time. Of course, by 93, I had all my PC software I'd gotten in college (programming tools, cad tools, office apps, and misc apps) on my PS/2, and the division at NASA where I worked was strictly PC on the desktop (we ran VMS on a VAX-somehting, and AIX on a RS/6000 for heavy duty computing). I think one of the guys had a mac in my building (I know there was a group in another division that was mostly macs). I remember thinking "Wow, neat looking interface. But I've got no apps, and no cash to re-buy" Of course, I though the same thing about OS2 when I saw it for the first time.
Oh, and the Atari800 was my dream machine for a while. I go to the store and play with the floor model for hours on end. Real keys and everything. How much cooler could you get.
I learned to program on an apple II+, and I got an ACE1000 (Apple IIe with a bit more memory), and used that to learn assembly on the 6502. Of course, I couldn't afford a complier, so I complied to machine code by hand. Not pretty, or fast, or - for that matter - very fun. But I got a couple of (very) simple programs to run, and learned a heck of a lot about computers.
I'll be honest that I've never had the kind of disposable cash it takes to keep a Mac as a hobby. Heck, it pains me to spend $400 on a Dell PC, and my monitors are last-century 21" Hitachi CRTS that I got for $100 from my old company's surplus sale. My last brand-new laptop, from two years ago, was under a grand, and I only got it 'cause I got a desktop practically for free. I can't walk into and Apple Store without thinking I'm walking into an art gallery, with cool looking items and pricetags which generally qualify them as "too expensive for something I'm not going to display in my living room".
I'm an engineer, and 95% of my clients use AutoCAD. I can't afford to have incompatibilities. Hell, I had to upgrade recently just to read the new @#$!@ 2k4 format. I didn't say I was happy about it. And I have very little malware lying around. Then again, I don't use IE.
But, of course, all the mods surfing on macs thought I was trolling, so just mod me down for pointing out reality, even if it is from a localized viewpoint.
As for another posters comment about "saving up for a mac." Well, that's my second beef. Of course, if I had 5 bills laying around to snatch up the latest iPod and associated accessories, I might care less about the cost as well.
More importantly, when she want's to watch somthing, it's likely that she will want to do it herself. This gives her the opportunity to prove to herself that she can do somthing a grown-up can do, and is important for her self esteem. (And my desire not to argue over who puts a silly disc into a $50 consumer electronics item;-) Sometimes, I think she prefers to just put the disc in, press the button to see the tray slide, then take it out again and try another disc. As long as they're not my originals, she can play all she wants.
My daugter doesn't have a tv/vcr/dvd/computer in her room, and probably won't for a long, long time. She does have a CD player, and she can operate it sufficintly to allow her to listen to music while she reads, sing along (with Peter, Paul, and Mary, btw), and to put on music before she gets into bed for a nap.
I'm not too worried about the TV rotting her brain. We watch maybe an hour a day, tops, and never during meals. The fare is selected by her, but from a fairly narrow swath of what we have. The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House, and (recently) Finding Nemo. Sometimes we'll throw in something from the Evil Empire (aka Disney).
Thinking that this would contribute to identity theft is like arguing that DRM will curb piracy. Sure, it will keep you from getting your own information, but it won't stop the real criminals from getting your information.
Let's face it - practically anyone can get your credit report...for a fee. So can you. You shouldn't be out $35 just to check and make sure this critical document isn't incorrect.
Also, the problem with the unfairness of pulling credit reports for potential employees is that there are certain jobs in which your credit may be a legitimate benchmark. Unfortunately, the vast majority of jobs it is not, but the government is very poor at delineating that. Just look at how well they've dealt with exempt employees. Talk about fsck'd up.
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No, I wan't kidding. When I can't get a head to clean after an entire ink-tank of cleaning cycles, it's time for a new printer. I din't have the time to babysit a $100 piece of equipment which is going to ruin $5 of ink ($30 if you're using OEM) and $3 in paper every time it's been sitting idle for more than a few days.
Luckily, I've had epson replace some of them under warranty, but there have been a couple that just lined the bottom of my trashcan. A cleaning tank is usually $20 or so. In one case, even the cleaning tank couldn't do the job. I've used the alcohol-soaked paper method to clean some, as well, with mixed success. I'd feel worse if I paid full price on a more expensive model (say, a 2200), but the ones I've had are mostly sale acquisitions with net out of pocket costs of less than $100.
The R300 I use for CDs & DVDs (and most of my snapshots, as well) came in around $35 after rebates. It hasn't had the clogging problems of the older epsons (yet).
As for service, I never take in anything for service unless its going to be $300 or more to replace, and the service is going to guarantee the work for quite a while. Paying shippingx2 + handling + parts + labor is often more than a new machine. I was made painfully aware of this fact several years ago when I took a VCR in for service to replace the rewind gear. This was (maybe) a $100 machine at the time. The "preapproved" minimum for service was $89, but I knew it was a simple fix. It was...the part was $2.23, and the labor was 86.50. $88.73 was a fully legal charge, based on their policy. Lesson learned.
Thats quite appropriate. Most people are not dumb (which I usually consider to be incapable of learning), but rather are conditioned not to think before they act. It happens in many small ways. Society vaules inaccuracy and lack of self reliance. Most people would rather be given information, espcially in simple terms, than learn the whole thing themselves. Too much work.
The best example of the inaccuracy/simplistic conditioning is a personal experience from high school. When asked the time, I used to give the time down tot he minute. If it was 1:42pm, I'd tell the person it was "One fourty-two". That was as simple as it got, for me, and accurate. I soon learned from people's reactions that they didn't want accurate information, just enough to get by. Rounding off became a habit of mine, and "one forty-two" became "quarter of two". Sixteeen inches became "About a foot and a half". (That has nothing to do with men always adding two inches, btw)
It bothers me that people are so oblivious to the things which go on around them, and do no research to check facts. The plethora of urban legends is a fine example of this one.
It's not that people CAN'T be "smart", it's that they choose not to be. And, well, that bugs me.
And, yes, I've left "it" out of that sig. Stupid people...they may be closer than you think.
I'm thinking that AT would be smoked, and the Ken/Ben show result would hinge on which categories were selected.
Aside: I've never watched Ken, I'm just guessing by the hype. In fact, I don't think I've ever watched an entire Jeopardy episode. I watched BSM for a season or so until Jimmy Kimmel left. His departure was when the sow jumped the shark, imho. Straight-man/Funny-man=good Straight-man/Chick-with-big-tits=not so good.
Me, too, but I use Opera...and spoof to Mozilla. IE site checks are a bit more careful than the Mozilla checks (or, at least, the Mozilla spoof is more effective).
And my click through rate as waaaaaaay below 0.11%.
Damn, google ads are usually the only advertising worth checking out, as they're usually targetted.
It's way too common. I recently designed a log home which was about 8000SF built with 20-30" diameter logs, and a fully vaulted log-supported ceiling with gables out each end. This is an a fairly small town, and the owner is well off but certainly wouldn't make the top 20 in our area. He wanted vast expanses of glass, huge openings, and a massive freestanding stone fireplace which was about 45-50' from the foundation to the top fo the chimney.
This is NOT a log cabin. It required several special details to make sure it would stand up to the wind loads, and even some special work to ensure the fireplace didn't collapse in a seismic event (yes, even in Virginia we have seismicity).
People just don't get it. I like the 200dB alarm story - it goes right to the heart of the matter. 200dB makes no sense from an engineering perspective (log scales and lethal pressures and such), but it's XX% better than "standard" so they want it. Humans are just plain goofy, and it's just a matter of time before someone wants one of these arched/domed residences that's 12000SF and has three wet bars and an indoor swimming pool.
It is a shame that we squandered the opportunity to really take a bite out of the debt during the boom years. We've lost that now, 'cause there's been so little movement in the US stock market to fuel capital gains taxes. Worse yet, the boomers will be retiring, and will start taking their money OUT of the market in order to pay for their retirements. Even if we get a short term run-up in the market, I don't see the stock market rebounding in any meaningful way for quite some time.
7 Trillion dollars is a lot of money, and we've mangage to do it a billion dollars at a time. Sure, there have been some big ticket items, but the bulk has been in "good" programs that are just too rich for our means.
The folks on the hill making $200k with benefits all covered (and most of them were top 1% wealth to begin with) wouldn't know fiscal responsibility if it hit them in the face. I can't remember who, but one member was arguing the need for a particular defense appropriation, comparing the need for this item to the need to keep your family safe: you buy the best (I believe his recommendation was Mercedes-Benz) to protect your family, why wouldn't you buy the best for your troops to protect the country. He suggested that to do any less would jeopardize your family's safety (and the country's) and would be a disservice. My first thought was that most families in the US can't afford a Mercedes-Benz, no matter how much they value their family's safety, and you're clearly out of touch to think that it would even be possible.
Like I said, 7 Trillion dollars is a big debt, but we've got to start somewhere. That works out to about $65,000 per household in the US. The median household income is less than $43,000/yr in the US. This isn't like a mortgage, folks, there's no tangible assest backing this debt. It's just like a huge (albit low interest) credit card balance.
A fellow engineer once remarked, at a small dinner assemblage of international engineers and scientists, that we won the space race because we got all the good German scientists after the allies broke up Germany after WWII. Most at the table were in agreement.
Additionally, most of the higher end HPs have separate print heads. Both the 7110 multi-purpose on my bookshelf and my DesignJet120 (24" 6 color) have separate tanks and heads.
Most of us who own Epsons wished that the heads were replaceable, so we wouldn't have to throw away the whole machine every year or so when the heads get permanently clogged.
Is the UV layer on modern dye-subs really that good (on the dashboard)? I had a print from a dye sub back in the early 90s that lost most of its magenta in less than two years in an office (maybe 2 hrs sunlight through a silvered window each day). I really like the output, but the expense is still at the "early adopter" level for the most part.
I like Epson output, I just hate the printheads. I've lost more good paper to clogged jets. OEM or aftermarket ink, doesn't seem to matter. After a little 875DC went belly up in under 4 months (jets so clogged an entire cartridge wouldn't clean them), I got a replacement and went pure OEM. By the middle of the second color cartridge, I was clogging again. I got a head cleaning cartridge (aftermarket), a box of aftermarket ink, and got it running again. I ended up writing a script to run daily that sent about 3/4" of rainbow output to the printer without a page feed. That worked, and kept the heqads from clogging. Seems that Epsons can't go for more than three or four days without printing or the keep-alive heat in the head will set the inks and clog the works up. (Don't know if that's true, but its the story I got from the second level tech at Epson on the second warranty replacement).
Just about everything works well with gravity loads (blizzards, people), but getting lateral to work is more difficult. Moving from WI to coastal FL will probably increase the lateral loads by a factor of 4 (140mph/90mph windspeed...squared...and an exposure factor increase from b to c or b to d, most likely), and if you end up with a windborne debris problem, even more. You quickly start losing windows, addition special wind/seismic elements, and increase the assembly cost dramatically. Of course, even tripling the cost of ~20% of the house isn't a huge increase, but it's going to put a damper on the budget somewhere.
Testing a full sized building to failure is nearly impossible with (especially) on-site equipment. Not only that, but it qualifies a single design, built under qualified supervision to specific requirements.
Did they happen to test it to greater than three times the ASCE7 load for the location in question...or for the highest load? You're talking (factored) over 3gs of acceleration in some locations (I'm just remmebring the map from memory...I don't do CA stuff under my own seal). (point of note: ICC only requires a 2.5FS on tests, the older codes were 3.0).
How expensive was this testing, and is that cost factored in should I want a bigger window, or an extra door, or need two more feet on the end? You think wood is expensive, try building a test fixture, or having a properly trained engineering try to analyse one of these things. You could import the wood for much less.
You do know that one jurisdiction (county of LA, for example) means squat anywhere else, unless it's adopted into the code or given a specific test report, right? Also, California is under a different building code than most of the rest of the country, and not necessarily more stringent, in some cases, as it is an older iteration for the "current" code.
If we're talking about outside the US, say in third-world coutries with no building code where this is better than what they have, then great. I'm all for the upgrade. Just don't think that a third-world building style is going to make any difference in the industrialized world. Aside from the aesthetic (that's pronounced "market") considerations, the building code just isn't conducive to such a strucutre.
The problem is that the actual process contains a great deal of variability. That, in concert with the gravity stabilized method of lateral resistance makes these houses suspect in high-seismic load areas.
I tend to view these like adobe and log homes. In their traditional forms (small, no or very small windows, small door) they are fairly stable, and with proper siting and a dash of good luck will stand for quite some time. The difficulty comes when you get someone with 500k to spend and liek the look, but wants entire walls of window and huge double entry and veranda doors, and doesn't understand why it's no longer a (insert traditional form) house anymore.
The fact is that, while the simple forms are stable under most conditions, you cannot stray too far without finding out the weaknesses in the method. Worst, the "tested" performance is typically not replicable on paper/computer for a residential-scale engineering budget. Sure, it might be okay for NASA to drop a few million on analysis, but your typical homeowner cries foul if they get a $1500 engineering bill.
FWIW, I am a structural engineer who deals with residential clients that span the spectrum (50k homes up to multi-million). I get calls on stuff (I want to say "crap") like this all the time, and it's not easy telling a client that their design won't with with traditional analysis, and a specialized analysis is going to cost them 5 figures or more, and still may not work when validated against the building codes.
Hmmm...No. I don't suscribe to all that "stay late to look good" crap. If my job is done, or at least on schedule, I'm out of the office.
/. and hitting alt-tab back to an application everytime someone walks by at 9pm just 'cause someone else is on a deadline.
Now, if I'm underutilized in a small group, I will always ask if I can help out, and will gladly pitch in to get things done. But don't expect to see me reading
(I should be speaking in past tense, as I work for myself now. When I'm busy, I work late. When I'm not, I go home and play with my kid.
Wait a minute. Your dad is a laywer. Good lawyers provide personal service to clients. It's a one-on-one relationship with clients that gets you more clients. And yet he's advertising on Google. That's a particularly interesting juxtaposition.
I'm a professional engineer. I work on smaller projects with all types of clients. I didn't have any local name recognition when I hung out my shingle, and my website wasn't linked anywhere, soI got AdWords when my business first opened. Now that I'm confident that likely searches will bing up my web page on the first couple of google pages, I got rid of them.
For professional services, AdWords are usually about a) large corporations which need a huge stream of clients or b) somebody trolling for quick cash. In which group should I put your father?
We're not treating ourselves this way, we're treating others this way. Nobody is sking their fellow employees to work extra, management is. It's a fine distinction, but significant. Those who make money by skimming a bit off the top of someone else's work are forcing the issue. The more layers of skimming there are, the more impersonal the request becomes. I'll bet you have to go at least 5 levels down in a company like EA to get to someone who's primary task involves production of code on a daily basis. The four levels above are skimmers. Their functions may be necessary to make the team cohesive, but they're still skimmers, and the more hours the lower levels work, the more skimming can be done.
Geez, I' ve got to get some work done, but this caught my eye and I just can't let this PR piece go uncommented:
...through carefully crafted PR "leaks"
...there are things we just need to fix. And the solutions dont apply to just our studios the people who market, sell, distribute and support the great games that our Studios create, all share a demanding workload.
...blah blah blah...
The last few weeks of reading blogs and the media about EA culture and work practices have not been easy. I know personally how hard it is when so much of the news seems negative.
Yeah, cause it means that HR has to put in our full 40 hours just to answer all the emails from you and the boss about how we're not keeping a better lid on this stuff.
We have purposefully not responded to web logs and the media because the best way to communicate is directly with you, our team members.
As much as I dont like whats been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden. We havent yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process.
Okay, lets stop right here. This is a company with vast resources and development history. They can't get one guy to go back and look at the last few years and tell them how many man-hours it's going to take to develop the next game? I'm not talking down to the minute - they're clearly under-staffed by about 40-70% if the reports are true. You can't get me a WAG within 10% and hire-up? I call bullshit in the biggest way. Only the most incompetent manager would underestimate time this badly when they have a known track record.
Classic avoidance of the issue by peer pressure. "Everybody else is working overtime, it's the industry standard...get used to it." It's the standard because nobody is willing stand up and put a stop to the pre-industrial-revolution working conditions.
Three weeks ago we issued our bi-annual Talk Back Survey and more than 80 percent of you participated much higher than the norm for a company our size. That tells me you care and are committed to making EA better.
Human nature predicts that the majority of people will only speak up when they are dissatified, and want change. If things are going well, there's no need to cause a commotion. Looking at the turn out in elections is a prime example of this phenominon.
In the next 30 days well have the survey results and we will share them openly with you by the middle of January.
What, no raw data? Thirty days is a long time to tally the multiple choice - how bout a sneak preview?
Your feedback in the Talk Back Survey will help us make changes in the coming year, but were not waiting some changes are already in the works in the Studios. Here are just a few:
Nothing but some techincal changes here. Good, but unless you're going to admit that such a large company is randomly re-developing things so badly as to waste hoards of man-hours, I'm going to say that this is band-aid stuff that'll (maybe) take an hour off the typical workweek if you keep the product the same. In reality, it will just allow more work to be done in the existing time, and expectations of output to rise. With all the productivity software out there, we should be working 12 hour weeks, based on what was done thirty years ago.
We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year.
Sounds good, but this is just consideration...not the actual reclassification. They'll probably decide what they have is good.
We have resisted this in the past, not because we dont want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology
What?!? A whole page of replies, and not a single person suggests asking Mel Brooks for advice on what it's like to live to be 1000?
Gosh, I've never really worried about whois protection. That's what good spam filtering is for. I suppose I'm less worried about my "private" information, since my domains are held by the company I run, generally in the name of the corporation - and those records are public in my state. *shrug* I'm just not quite that paranoid.
I'll admit that godaddy is uber-annoying now with all those frakin' adds, but really its just a couple of extra clicks. Plus, it seems that the owner is a decent guy. Same goes for my hosting service. It may not be the best, but its reliable, and when I've had questions in the past, I've gotten answers from good people, including the owner.
The advertisers want to squeeze every last schekel out of the consumers, and they adjust market prices per the tolerance of each individual market.
While this may be the case in very limited cases, it's not the overdriving factor. You're correct that it's drivin by advertising revenue, but it's the local affiliates which are getting the squeeze - they're the ones putting the stranglehold on the consumer. The advertisers don't give a flying F*#k, as long as they only pay for the audience they're getting.
If a third of their market televisions wer watching national feeds, their local-ad eyeball count would go down. Since advertizers pay by the eyeball (in a general sense), fewer viewers = lower value of an ad spot. Locals make their living off of local ad revenue, and they've got the politicians to keep that revenue stream from disappearing. Letting the networks go national would erode the local's financial base.
Don't get too wrapped up in the top end battle though. From a small business, and local consumer, perspective, local ads also make sense. Jim's Pontiac can't afford to run a national ad (nor would it be of much help), but he can run a local ad. You, on the other hand, might be in the market for a Pontiac. If you don't live near Jim's, you don't care about his sale. In fact, knowing that Jim can get you a car for $500 better than you thought, but then you find he's 2200 miles from you house can be quite annoying. There's a good reason for local marketing - for both the marketer and the consumer. Of course, if you don't want ads at all, half that equation just goes down the can. Still, Jim at least want's a chance to sell you that lemon.
[flame suit on...mac mods seem to like smacking me down]
Because it reminds you that MacOS is still a very small part of the desktop computer market. Mac people are convinced that by buying a cool, hip computer, thery should have access to all the cool, hip stuff that comes along for computers. Especially if it involves video or graphics in any way.
Not that I blame you. I'm new to Linux, and it bothers me everytime I want a cool app I've used un XP, only to find there's no linux version. Even worse with hardware. How freakin' had can it be to get a linux driver up for my wireless card?
Anyway, it boils down to the unwashed masses having access to something cool, while you are high and dry.
You have the dates waaaay too accurate (dons tin foil hat).
I was in college from 87 to 92, with practically all my Mac usage during that time. Of course, by 93, I had all my PC software I'd gotten in college (programming tools, cad tools, office apps, and misc apps) on my PS/2, and the division at NASA where I worked was strictly PC on the desktop (we ran VMS on a VAX-somehting, and AIX on a RS/6000 for heavy duty computing). I think one of the guys had a mac in my building (I know there was a group in another division that was mostly macs). I remember thinking "Wow, neat looking interface. But I've got no apps, and no cash to re-buy" Of course, I though the same thing about OS2 when I saw it for the first time.
Oh, and the Atari800 was my dream machine for a while. I go to the store and play with the floor model for hours on end. Real keys and everything. How much cooler could you get.
I learned to program on an apple II+, and I got an ACE1000 (Apple IIe with a bit more memory), and used that to learn assembly on the 6502. Of course, I couldn't afford a complier, so I complied to machine code by hand. Not pretty, or fast, or - for that matter - very fun. But I got a couple of (very) simple programs to run, and learned a heck of a lot about computers.
I'll be honest that I've never had the kind of disposable cash it takes to keep a Mac as a hobby. Heck, it pains me to spend $400 on a Dell PC, and my monitors are last-century 21" Hitachi CRTS that I got for $100 from my old company's surplus sale. My last brand-new laptop, from two years ago, was under a grand, and I only got it 'cause I got a desktop practically for free. I can't walk into and Apple Store without thinking I'm walking into an art gallery, with cool looking items and pricetags which generally qualify them as "too expensive for something I'm not going to display in my living room".
I'm an engineer, and 95% of my clients use AutoCAD. I can't afford to have incompatibilities. Hell, I had to upgrade recently just to read the new @#$!@ 2k4 format. I didn't say I was happy about it. And I have very little malware lying around. Then again, I don't use IE.
But, of course, all the mods surfing on macs thought I was trolling, so just mod me down for pointing out reality, even if it is from a localized viewpoint.
As for another posters comment about "saving up for a mac." Well, that's my second beef. Of course, if I had 5 bills laying around to snatch up the latest iPod and associated accessories, I might care less about the cost as well.
More importantly, when she want's to watch somthing, it's likely that she will want to do it herself. This gives her the opportunity to prove to herself that she can do somthing a grown-up can do, and is important for her self esteem. (And my desire not to argue over who puts a silly disc into a $50 consumer electronics item ;-) Sometimes, I think she prefers to just put the disc in, press the button to see the tray slide, then take it out again and try another disc. As long as they're not my originals, she can play all she wants.
My daugter doesn't have a tv/vcr/dvd/computer in her room, and probably won't for a long, long time. She does have a CD player, and she can operate it sufficintly to allow her to listen to music while she reads, sing along (with Peter, Paul, and Mary, btw), and to put on music before she gets into bed for a nap.
I'm not too worried about the TV rotting her brain. We watch maybe an hour a day, tops, and never during meals. The fare is selected by her, but from a fairly narrow swath of what we have. The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House, and (recently) Finding Nemo. Sometimes we'll throw in something from the Evil Empire (aka Disney).
Thinking that this would contribute to identity theft is like arguing that DRM will curb piracy. Sure, it will keep you from getting your own information, but it won't stop the real criminals from getting your information.
Let's face it - practically anyone can get your credit report...for a fee. So can you. You shouldn't be out $35 just to check and make sure this critical document isn't incorrect.
Also, the problem with the unfairness of pulling credit reports for potential employees is that there are certain jobs in which your credit may be a legitimate benchmark. Unfortunately, the vast majority of jobs it is not, but the government is very poor at delineating that. Just look at how well they've dealt with exempt employees. Talk about fsck'd up.