Hmmm, maybe they developed spaceflight, traveled to mars and venus, filled venus up with greenhouse gases and cooked themselves, and the martians nuked the heck out of the planet. Or maybe they left the solar system altogether, realizing that human evolution on earth had reached a high point, and was on it's way downhill...:)
Never, because the telecoms are going to split the internet into two parts, one where the wealthy can enjoy fast, hassle free service, and the other, whatever bandwidth is leftover.
You mean like the Nature Conservancy? . Gotta love folks that get government grants to buy land, then resell it and keep the profits. Free enterprise at work...
Well, I enjoy a good thought experiment now and then, so why not? Besides, a part of me thinks maybe we aren't as brilliant and advanced as we'd like to believe we are. Pretty much every time I meet someone new...
The difficult part might be explaining why people would feel the need to create a T-Rex and it's kin, or some of the other massive, potentially dangerous animals (garbage disposals?!). It also pokes a hole in the ol' bird from dinosaur theory, too. On the upside, maybe they created used Apatosauruses(i?) as eco-friendly cranes or something. Then again, look at the goofy stuff we come up with, just to entertain ourselves.
Heck, run with it, who knows where you end up. Even if the theory falls apart, you might be able to get a good fiction novel out of it.:)
...we'll have to send a number of scientists into the area to catalog all these new finds. Several teams of to catalog plants, birds, insects, mammels, etc. Then we'll need to create research areas for these scientists to work, because they'll need time to do all the research needed. Naturally, they'll need supplies, and flying in supplies to so many scientists will be extremely costly, so we should build a few roads to deliver goods to all the areas they'll be working in. It's a large area, so we should probably build a little infrastructure for refueling and medical needs, as well. That infrastructure will require power, so we should run a number of power lines to each of the various places. Of course, with this much research to be done, it would be a lot to ask for those scientists to have to leave their families behind for long periods of time, so we should build accomodations for their families. Those kids of theirs will need an education, so schools are a must. All work and no play is bad for morale, so we should build a few different types of entertainment for the residents, too. Naturally, with this many people in a newly discovered source of rare and unknown plants and animals, we need to make sure no one takes animals and plants out of the area, so we'll need to make sure we provide a healthy number of resource control officers, and they have needs and families as well. Geez, with this many people, we're bound to have crime and disorganization, so we'll need police and government officials to help maintain the order. Of course, we'll need judges and lawyers, to keep the police and politicians honest and make sure balance is maintained somewhat. We'll need construction workers to help build all this, and they'll need...:)
Same here. I did the earbud thing at first, but they had to be up louder, and some days (usually around the end of the week) they would bug me. After a while, I tried a couple different styles, eventually giving up and settling for a pair of back of the head jogging headphones. Not only do they work better as far as filtering out ambient noise while still letting me hear "important" things, I've found they have the added benefit of being a visual clue to others. I don't get bugged as much with petty "quick questions" that have no value, maybe because I look like I'm concentrating harder when I'm punching away at the keyboard or digging through a file, because the hardware is more visible, and the conversations I don't want tend to be shorter, because instead of removing them entirely, I just pop one ear up an inch. Kind of like the international sign for "You're not that important, I'm busy, go away".
Doesn't always work, but then again, I'm not out $50 bucks for them, either.:)
>>A job is a means to an end, and facilitates the other things in life that you really enjoy.
I couldn't agree more, but it's always amazing to me how many people see their job as a major part of their worth as a human being. If they have a bad day at work, they go home and kick around the family a while, get drunk or drugged up, or otherwise compound the effect of a single bad day. Of course, it's hard not to see things like this, because they're practically drilled into you from a young age. What your dad did for a living tends to set the stage for how you grow up, in the sense that whatever job he had you tend to want to at least meet that level of success for yourself. If you don't, you're a "failure".
Somehow, a few of us manage to break that cycle, and realize a job for what it is, a way of earning enough to create a means of doing the things we really enjoy, whether it's traveling around the world, feeding a hobby, etc. Without having some sort of goal like that you're simply chasing rainbows, because there will always be someone who makes a little more, has a little more interesting job, a little less stress, etc.
Of course, the saddest situation is when you see someone whose job has become their life, and this is common whether you're working at a fortune 500 office complex, or tiny machine shop. We've all worked with that one person who had no life outside of work, whose only hobbies were gossiping about coworkers and trying to stir up fights to entertain themselves. These are the folks that get fired and show up the next day with a shotgun. If you're falling into this category, get the heck out!
You should enjoy work, and find it stimulating on some level, though. Perhaps not your duties (I'd be worried about the janitor that looks forward to cleaning the bathrooms), but some aspect of your job that you deal with on a regular basis, maybe working with your coworkers, customers, or simply (like myself) watching company dynamics (watching how various parts of the company interact, for better or worse) in action. You should also make enough to pay the bills, spend on whatever hobbies you have, and put away for later. Lastly, you should have a position that allows you to spend time with your friends and family, and on your hobbies.
If you can do all three, the dollar amount is kind of like a high score on a video game. Cool to have, but not all that important in the long run.
Obviously, you've never held a management position, because if you had, you'd know that most managers have next to zero influence in salary decisions, especially when it comes to "floor" managers, the ones that you deal with on a daily basis. In addition, as a manager you tend to be very careful about exercising the influence that you do have. Anyone who has managed for a fair amount of time has probably been burned "helping" someone obtain a raise or other benefit, only to have that person leave the company soon after, or otherwise prove to your own superiors that you shouldn't bear much influence in that area. . After that happens a couple times, you simply learn to shrug and hope the skilled employee is smart enough to either work hard/well enough that you can confidently bring them to the attention of your superiors, all but forcing them to offer an increase, or smart enough to move on when the time arrives. Sadly, it's kind of a "once bitten, twice shy" thing, usually brought on by the employees' own actions, or those of former employees. . Eventually you learn what kind of employees you can "trust" with increases, but this generally depends as much on that employee's ability to be discreet as it does the quality of their work. Few things are as disruptive as giving an employee a raise, simply because everyone thinks they deserve more money. This is one of the reasons companies tend to "hire up" from outside the company, giving a new management opening to someone who was skilled worker of the same level as those they will manage at their former employer, especially at higher levels. When you promote someone, there is often (not always) jealousy of various sorts, and usually some dropoff in production because of it. When you hire in someone new, everyone can hate the new manager, but they don't try as hard to undercut them, because they don't see "their hard work" putting more money in the pocket of someone they should have been promoted ahead of. At higher levels, you don't want to lose a strong employee because you only had one opening and had to make a difficult decision, so you avoid it altogether and hire from outside of the company. . I'm sure there are probably managers out there that laugh wickedly at the thought of "scamming you out of what you're worth", but those folks are few and far between. I can't imagine a manager that wouldn't rather pay somewhat whatever it would take to make them work to the level of their ability, or at least enough to get them to quit complaining about whatever percieved wrongs they imagine. . To paraphrase Carlos Mencia, "If your job sucks, there's only one person you have to blame. Maybe you should have tried a little harder in school". . It's harsh, but sadly, very true.
Yep, been there too. On the flipside, in school I had the opposite situation happen. I was 15, and it was the first day of school. We're all settling into our seats as the bell rings, and this one new girl is standing near one of the empty desks, and says "okay everybody, let's get in our seats". Being the brilliant teenage guy that I was, I said to a guy next to me, loud enough that she'd hear, "who's that bitch think she is?" . She proceeded to introduce herself as our new chemistry teacher...:( .
Both, IMHO. I think the increase in noise may have some effect on the number of incidents, in all areas that this might apply to, such as violence, drug use, etc. The increased noise, and perceived increase in numbers may lead certain members of society to see the perceived increase as "the new normal", and transfer that into something like "permission" for their own behavior. The obvious example is Columbine, and the sudden "explosion" of kids knocking off their peers and teachers. Another might be any given riot, where people who might not normally loot or commit arson see others do it on TV, and race out of the house to "join in on the fun". . I think this has always been so, at least during each "jump" in communication, though in earlier times the general population might not have had the ability to perceive it, simply because they didn't have access to the news, while wealthier individuals might have shared the same thoughts, seeing "society's downfall" simply because they had access to a larger view of world events. Who knows, maybe that's the primary driver behind some wealthy individuals, past and present, to see less wealthy members of society as inferior. While they sit in their fine abodes, "the masses" are rampaging the streets, killing and stealing from each other at the drop of a hat. . I wouldn't mind seeing a good comparison between the rise of TV (and worldwide news) over the years, and the a number of measures of violence and other social problems, with pinpoint notations of various widely reported events. From a guess, I think we'd see a rise in "social ills" as news relating to them became more widespread (and hyped), then it reaches a point where it tops out, then lessens, simply due to oversaturation, where it either isn't "news" anymore, or people begin to actively seek out "good news", because the amount of bad news reaches a point where it's too disturbing for most people to accept. At that point, society may even seek to bury bad news, aka the Victorian Age after 100+ years of revolutions around europe and the rest of the world. . These are all just a guess, but sometimes I think I should get paid for this stuff, especially after seeing someone else get paid to figure out that early puberty might lead to problems...:)
Slashdot Mirror
Um, social control? :)
Duh, we're waiting till the beachside resorts are built, so the workers have someplace to rest. :)
Hmmm, maybe they developed spaceflight, traveled to mars and venus, filled venus up with greenhouse gases and cooked themselves, and the martians nuked the heck out of the planet. Or maybe they left the solar system altogether, realizing that human evolution on earth had reached a high point, and was on it's way downhill... :)
Never, because the telecoms are going to split the internet into two parts, one where the wealthy can enjoy fast, hassle free service, and the other, whatever bandwidth is leftover.
You mean like the Nature Conservancy?
.
Gotta love folks that get government grants to buy land, then resell it and keep the profits. Free enterprise at work...
I wonder who's going to win the common sense patent on this, ala "one-click".
.
Not a big amazon fan anymore, in case you wondered.
Dad's joking, he takes us on vacation there every year. :)
Well, I enjoy a good thought experiment now and then, so why not? Besides, a part of me thinks maybe we aren't as brilliant and advanced as we'd like to believe we are. Pretty much every time I meet someone new...
:)
The difficult part might be explaining why people would feel the need to create a T-Rex and it's kin, or some of the other massive, potentially dangerous animals (garbage disposals?!). It also pokes a hole in the ol' bird from dinosaur theory, too. On the upside, maybe they created used Apatosauruses(i?) as eco-friendly cranes or something. Then again, look at the goofy stuff we come up with, just to entertain ourselves.
Heck, run with it, who knows where you end up. Even if the theory falls apart, you might be able to get a good fiction novel out of it.
No, but rumor has it they found a rich vein of copper...right under the surface. :(
Great, now all I have to do is figure out what the "sweet" is in "sweet and cat pork". :)
Speared, not clubbed. The first guy that tried clubbing one probably learned his own lesson about survival of the fittest...
They did, but the darn things kept running/flying away.
"1, 2, 3...1, 2...1, 2, 3..."
How long does it take to translate this article to Japanese? ;)
Rumor has it the giant cassowary has a penchant for Cheetos(TM) flavored human fingertips. Just thought you should know. :)
I'm more interested in the various germs they'll be bringing back to share with the rest of us.
:)
---
Maybe I'm living in a vacuum, but I don't get your sig.
...we'll have to send a number of scientists into the area to catalog all these new finds. Several teams of to catalog plants, birds, insects, mammels, etc. Then we'll need to create research areas for these scientists to work, because they'll need time to do all the research needed. Naturally, they'll need supplies, and flying in supplies to so many scientists will be extremely costly, so we should build a few roads to deliver goods to all the areas they'll be working in. It's a large area, so we should probably build a little infrastructure for refueling and medical needs, as well. That infrastructure will require power, so we should run a number of power lines to each of the various places. Of course, with this much research to be done, it would be a lot to ask for those scientists to have to leave their families behind for long periods of time, so we should build accomodations for their families. Those kids of theirs will need an education, so schools are a must. All work and no play is bad for morale, so we should build a few different types of entertainment for the residents, too. Naturally, with this many people in a newly discovered source of rare and unknown plants and animals, we need to make sure no one takes animals and plants out of the area, so we'll need to make sure we provide a healthy number of resource control officers, and they have needs and families as well. Geez, with this many people, we're bound to have crime and disorganization, so we'll need police and government officials to help maintain the order. Of course, we'll need judges and lawyers, to keep the police and politicians honest and make sure balance is maintained somewhat. We'll need construction workers to help build all this, and they'll need... :)
Same here. I did the earbud thing at first, but they had to be up louder, and some days (usually around the end of the week) they would bug me. After a while, I tried a couple different styles, eventually giving up and settling for a pair of back of the head jogging headphones. Not only do they work better as far as filtering out ambient noise while still letting me hear "important" things, I've found they have the added benefit of being a visual clue to others. I don't get bugged as much with petty "quick questions" that have no value, maybe because I look like I'm concentrating harder when I'm punching away at the keyboard or digging through a file, because the hardware is more visible, and the conversations I don't want tend to be shorter, because instead of removing them entirely, I just pop one ear up an inch. Kind of like the international sign for "You're not that important, I'm busy, go away".
:)
Doesn't always work, but then again, I'm not out $50 bucks for them, either.
Outstanding application of the ol' cluestick, TW. :)
>>A job is a means to an end, and facilitates the other things in life that you really enjoy.
I couldn't agree more, but it's always amazing to me how many people see their job as a major part of their worth as a human being. If they have a bad day at work, they go home and kick around the family a while, get drunk or drugged up, or otherwise compound the effect of a single bad day. Of course, it's hard not to see things like this, because they're practically drilled into you from a young age. What your dad did for a living tends to set the stage for how you grow up, in the sense that whatever job he had you tend to want to at least meet that level of success for yourself. If you don't, you're a "failure".
Somehow, a few of us manage to break that cycle, and realize a job for what it is, a way of earning enough to create a means of doing the things we really enjoy, whether it's traveling around the world, feeding a hobby, etc. Without having some sort of goal like that you're simply chasing rainbows, because there will always be someone who makes a little more, has a little more interesting job, a little less stress, etc.
Of course, the saddest situation is when you see someone whose job has become their life, and this is common whether you're working at a fortune 500 office complex, or tiny machine shop. We've all worked with that one person who had no life outside of work, whose only hobbies were gossiping about coworkers and trying to stir up fights to entertain themselves. These are the folks that get fired and show up the next day with a shotgun. If you're falling into this category, get the heck out!
You should enjoy work, and find it stimulating on some level, though. Perhaps not your duties (I'd be worried about the janitor that looks forward to cleaning the bathrooms), but some aspect of your job that you deal with on a regular basis, maybe working with your coworkers, customers, or simply (like myself) watching company dynamics (watching how various parts of the company interact, for better or worse) in action. You should also make enough to pay the bills, spend on whatever hobbies you have, and put away for later. Lastly, you should have a position that allows you to spend time with your friends and family, and on your hobbies.
If you can do all three, the dollar amount is kind of like a high score on a video game. Cool to have, but not all that important in the long run.
Obviously, you've never held a management position, because if you had, you'd know that most managers have next to zero influence in salary decisions, especially when it comes to "floor" managers, the ones that you deal with on a daily basis. In addition, as a manager you tend to be very careful about exercising the influence that you do have. Anyone who has managed for a fair amount of time has probably been burned "helping" someone obtain a raise or other benefit, only to have that person leave the company soon after, or otherwise prove to your own superiors that you shouldn't bear much influence in that area.
.
After that happens a couple times, you simply learn to shrug and hope the skilled employee is smart enough to either work hard/well enough that you can confidently bring them to the attention of your superiors, all but forcing them to offer an increase, or smart enough to move on when the time arrives. Sadly, it's kind of a "once bitten, twice shy" thing, usually brought on by the employees' own actions, or those of former employees.
.
Eventually you learn what kind of employees you can "trust" with increases, but this generally depends as much on that employee's ability to be discreet as it does the quality of their work. Few things are as disruptive as giving an employee a raise, simply because everyone thinks they deserve more money. This is one of the reasons companies tend to "hire up" from outside the company, giving a new management opening to someone who was skilled worker of the same level as those they will manage at their former employer, especially at higher levels. When you promote someone, there is often (not always) jealousy of various sorts, and usually some dropoff in production because of it. When you hire in someone new, everyone can hate the new manager, but they don't try as hard to undercut them, because they don't see "their hard work" putting more money in the pocket of someone they should have been promoted ahead of. At higher levels, you don't want to lose a strong employee because you only had one opening and had to make a difficult decision, so you avoid it altogether and hire from outside of the company.
.
I'm sure there are probably managers out there that laugh wickedly at the thought of "scamming you out of what you're worth", but those folks are few and far between. I can't imagine a manager that wouldn't rather pay somewhat whatever it would take to make them work to the level of their ability, or at least enough to get them to quit complaining about whatever percieved wrongs they imagine.
.
To paraphrase Carlos Mencia, "If your job sucks, there's only one person you have to blame. Maybe you should have tried a little harder in school".
.
It's harsh, but sadly, very true.
Yep, been there too. On the flipside, in school I had the opposite situation happen. I was 15, and it was the first day of school. We're all settling into our seats as the bell rings, and this one new girl is standing near one of the empty desks, and says "okay everybody, let's get in our seats". Being the brilliant teenage guy that I was, I said to a guy next to me, loud enough that she'd hear, "who's that bitch think she is?" :(
.
She proceeded to introduce herself as our new chemistry teacher...
.
Yeah, but what about the guys? :)
Oh, come on, be nice. That episode probably just brought back memories of his own youth.
:)
Uh, come to think of it, if the chili part did, maybe none of us should tease him...
I don't know the answer to your question, but I'm pretty sure I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing any of what you just wrote. :)
Both, IMHO. I think the increase in noise may have some effect on the number of incidents, in all areas that this might apply to, such as violence, drug use, etc. The increased noise, and perceived increase in numbers may lead certain members of society to see the perceived increase as "the new normal", and transfer that into something like "permission" for their own behavior. The obvious example is Columbine, and the sudden "explosion" of kids knocking off their peers and teachers. Another might be any given riot, where people who might not normally loot or commit arson see others do it on TV, and race out of the house to "join in on the fun". :)
.
I think this has always been so, at least during each "jump" in communication, though in earlier times the general population might not have had the ability to perceive it, simply because they didn't have access to the news, while wealthier individuals might have shared the same thoughts, seeing "society's downfall" simply because they had access to a larger view of world events. Who knows, maybe that's the primary driver behind some wealthy individuals, past and present, to see less wealthy members of society as inferior. While they sit in their fine abodes, "the masses" are rampaging the streets, killing and stealing from each other at the drop of a hat.
.
I wouldn't mind seeing a good comparison between the rise of TV (and worldwide news) over the years, and the a number of measures of violence and other social problems, with pinpoint notations of various widely reported events. From a guess, I think we'd see a rise in "social ills" as news relating to them became more widespread (and hyped), then it reaches a point where it tops out, then lessens, simply due to oversaturation, where it either isn't "news" anymore, or people begin to actively seek out "good news", because the amount of bad news reaches a point where it's too disturbing for most people to accept. At that point, society may even seek to bury bad news, aka the Victorian Age after 100+ years of revolutions around europe and the rest of the world.
.
These are all just a guess, but sometimes I think I should get paid for this stuff, especially after seeing someone else get paid to figure out that early puberty might lead to problems...