It seems that these days safety is all important. When I see the announcement these days they are 'Have a safe holiday'. No mention of having fun during the holidays. Even in the elementary school that my kids go to, it's all about safety in the playground. Whereas for many years all grades were allowed in both playgrounds, suddenly with a new principle one of the playgrounds was deemed too dangerous for kids. I'm fine if one of my kids gets hurt in a game, that's just part of growing up. Sometimes teachers lose track that the goal of an education is to prepare someone for real life.
I grew up in Holland and never wore a helmet. Currently I live in Canada and it's mandatory to wear a helmet. A couple of years ago I was involved in an accident (not my fault, but in the end who cares about that) that caused me to fly off my bike and land on my head. I was seriously injured and my helmet was cracked. However, I survived this accident thanks to the helmet. Cycling in Holland is safer because the infrastructure is made for it and the drivers are aware of cyclists. In Canada, the infrastructure for cycling is poor compared to Holland and the drivers are less aware of cyclists, thus it's more dangerous to cycle, so wearing a helmet makes more sense.
Well, past experience has shown that eventually these things affect politicians. They see variations on the same thing proclaimed by multiple groups and think they have to do something. That something is usually increasing the levy/fee/tax on blank DVDs and CDs, coupled with proclamations that you are championing Canadian home-grown talent. The difference between levy and tax? You can put GST (5%) on a levy, but you can't put GST on a tax.
Aside from the taxes, import duties. lack of competition and modifications to the software, labour is also more expensive in Europe. In some countries it is virtually impossible to get rid of people, even though they are not performing. Cutting labour is much easier in the U.S.A. There is also the factor of the fluctuating currencies. Prices of software (or other goods) are not floating against the U.S. dollar. Typically prices are not adjusted every day, but maybe once a year (depends on the company). So if a currency rises or drops X% during a year, you will not see price adjustments there. Plus, the actual price of the software that a manufacturer charges are only part of the price. There's always a local component to the price as well.
to know when to use its or it's. I find spelling errors very distracting when I read something. It distracts from the message. So please learn some fairly simple rules (it's not hard) or/and use a spelling checker. Then on to 'How to write'.
Most people leave their boss, not their company
on
How to Survive a Bad Boss
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
When people quit a company, I think that in about 80% of the cases people leave their boss. In how far the boss is a product of the company remains open to question.
Kind of, but easier, I think. It works on Windows and Mac. I use the Windows version and you select a bunch of files you want to send in Explorer. Right click and select e-mail token. The files are zipped and stored on your local hard drive. When someone redeems the token, it tries to contact the computer. If it can't reach it, it will go through a server that will act as a broker to get the file. Since the sending computer stays in touch with the broker, you can get the files that were referenced by the token through a firewall.
I use Tokens to exchange any size files with my family and friends. So, I can e-mail a Token that contains a reference to some videos and pictures (the size of which easily exceeds the size of an e-mail attachment). The receiver can redeem the Token. No more fiddling with sending CDs through the mail with the latest pictures and videos of the kids. For more information or to try it out: http://www.creo.com/tokens
Nope, it's not Microsoft bugs trashing the net. It's some asshole somewhere who thought it would be really cool to have lots of computers rebooting all the time (or whatever crap the latest virus does to your machine). Someone has to exploit bugs in Microsoft to 'trash the net'. And yes, I hope the bounty that Microsoft puts on virus writers' heads works.
'but have no guarantees of good jobs when they graduate'.
And what's wrong with that? Nothing in life is guaranteed. Nobody has a right to a 'good job' (whatever your definition of it is), but everybody has the right to try and get/create a good job.
It doesn't matter at all if the design of the keyboard is over 100 years old. The wheel is way older than that and we're still happily using it. What I'm saying is that comparing keyboard design with the speed of a processor is not a valid comparison.
Science is not democracy. You can't get to the best decision if you let voters decide. The people at NASA are being paid to be experts, so my vote goes to letting them chart the course. Some mistakes will be made, but I'd rather that they make the decision rather than me and my neighbour, who both have been watching to much Star Trek and Star Wars.
Well, we already have something like that in Canada. Whenever you buy blanks CDs, you pay more in tax than the actual cost of the CD. One of the taxes is supposed to be compensate artists for revenue lost to people who copy their CDs. For those of us who have never illegally copied a music CD in their lives (they do exist, I'm one of them), this is hardly fair. On the other hand, one could argue that you have paid the tax for it already, so now you can copy as much as you want! (as you may have guessed, I'm not a lawyer)
September 11th provided an extra excuse
on
Add-Ons Add Up
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For the friendly folks in the Canadian government, September 11th 2001 was a good excuse to come up with another add-on: a security fee of $24 on a round trip. A lot more than it is in the U.S.A. Note that this was not called a tax. Why not? you may wonder. Simple: you can't charge GST @7% on a tax, but you can charge GST on a fee/levy. I feel so much safer now!! Not...
Mark
Re:Vancouver Airport
on
Add-Ons Add Up
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
As much as I despise fees and levies, there's another aspect of the Airport Improvement Fee. If for some reason you can't make your flight (e.g. cancel your ticket) you don't have to pay the fee. Compare this to places where an airport tax/fee/levy is included in the price. Try getting the money back from the government on this one if you decide not to fly. You will probably conclude it's not worth the trouble.
Kaboom! was one of those games that you could always play again. A friend of mine had bought Pitfall and Megamania when they came out. I remember getting to 114,000 on Pitfall after weeks of effort, taking a picture of the screen and sending it in to Activision to get some kind of badge. Naively I was hoping to get at least something special, but I just got the normal badge, no special mention or anything like that. Hey, I even made my mother find two of my friends in the street, so they could see that I really did it. I think the memory of reaching 114,000 and playing Megamania until the game froze at a score of all 9's are some of my best memories of the Atari 2600. Thanks David Crane and Activision!
OK, so technically it all works. The difficult thing about these systems are always the exceptional cases, such as having to rush someone to hospital. Fixable of course, have a manual override that automatically sends a signal to a government office that will mail you some forms to explain why you engaged the manual override.
Speeding (in addition to breaking) can be a way to get out of a dangerous situation. No problem, we can allow people to speed for a consecutive number of seconds (how many though?). And before we know it the 'Ministry of Speed' is born. To replace the lost revenue from speeders, a tax will be levied on the system. New application for the GPS-equipped car will spring up, e.g. the ministry can tell exactly where you were, when and for how long. Imagine what one could do with data like that. Why did you spend one hour at Tesco's to just get the newspaper.
In general, England's motorways are wonderful and well suited to go over 70mph. I always enjoyed driving there and never had the feeling that speeding by a reasonable margin was dangerous. On some of the motorways going at 80 to 90 mph is going with the traffic.
I recently worked 2 1/2 years in England and Holland.
You have several options for going to Europe. I list them in order of preference (easy & money):
1. Get a U.S. employer to send you there. They should take care of the visa's and you might get a good relo package
2. Go as a contractor. Set up your own company in the U.S. Since you are being sent over by a U.S. employer (you!), you can make your own relo package, e.g. get a per diem, get a living allowance (tax-free). Free-lance rates are a lot more attractive than permanent salaries.
3. Get a permit and find a job. Most difficult, least money.
Holland has a 35% rule. If you are a foreign computer programmer, you get back 35% of your taxes paid, e.g. their highest rate is 60%, which with the 35% rule is reduced to 39%.
Above all, have fun, learn the language, enjoy the food, travel and don't believe Europeans if they tell you something is far away. Sometimes it seemed that driving for more than 2 hours to get somewhere is a major undertaking for Europeans.
Mark
Slashdot Mirror
I sometimes wonder how justified the 'Social' is in 'Social Media'.
The rank on boardgamegeek of Monopoly is 10464. According to quite a large community it is quite easy to beat Monopoly.
Why is that I only ever see 'delicate' attached to eco-system and never 'robust'?
It seems that these days safety is all important. When I see the announcement these days they are 'Have a safe holiday'. No mention of having fun during the holidays. Even in the elementary school that my kids go to, it's all about safety in the playground. Whereas for many years all grades were allowed in both playgrounds, suddenly with a new principle one of the playgrounds was deemed too dangerous for kids.
I'm fine if one of my kids gets hurt in a game, that's just part of growing up. Sometimes teachers lose track that the goal of an education is to prepare someone for real life.
I grew up in Holland and never wore a helmet. Currently I live in Canada and it's mandatory to wear a helmet. A couple of years ago I was involved in an accident (not my fault, but in the end who cares about that) that caused me to fly off my bike and land on my head. I was seriously injured and my helmet was cracked. However, I survived this accident thanks to the helmet. Cycling in Holland is safer because the infrastructure is made for it and the drivers are aware of cyclists. In Canada, the infrastructure for cycling is poor compared to Holland and the drivers are less aware of cyclists, thus it's more dangerous to cycle, so wearing a helmet makes more sense.
Well, past experience has shown that eventually these things affect politicians. They see variations on the same thing proclaimed by multiple groups and think they have to do something. That something is usually increasing the levy/fee/tax on blank DVDs and CDs, coupled with proclamations that you are championing Canadian home-grown talent. The difference between levy and tax? You can put GST (5%) on a levy, but you can't put GST on a tax.
Aside from the taxes, import duties. lack of competition and modifications to the software,
labour is also more expensive in Europe. In some countries it is virtually impossible to get rid of people, even though they are not performing.
Cutting labour is much easier in the U.S.A.
There is also the factor of the fluctuating currencies. Prices of software (or other goods) are not floating against the U.S. dollar. Typically prices are not adjusted every day, but maybe once a year (depends on the company). So if a currency rises or drops X% during a year, you will not see price adjustments there. Plus, the actual price of the software that a manufacturer charges are only part of the price. There's always a local component to the price as well.
to know when to use its or it's.
I find spelling errors very distracting when I read something. It distracts from the message. So please learn some fairly simple rules (it's not hard) or/and use a spelling checker. Then on to 'How to write'.
When people quit a company, I think that in about 80% of the cases people leave their boss. In how far the boss is a product of the company remains open to question.
Kind of, but easier, I think. It works on Windows and Mac. I use the Windows version and you select a bunch of files you want to send in Explorer. Right click and select e-mail token. The files are zipped and stored on your local hard drive. When someone redeems the token, it tries to contact the computer. If it can't reach it, it will go through a server that will act as a broker to get the file. Since the sending computer stays in touch with the broker, you can get the files that were referenced by the token through a firewall.
I use Tokens to exchange any size files with my family and friends. So, I can e-mail a Token that contains a reference to some videos and pictures (the size of which easily exceeds the size of an e-mail attachment). The receiver can redeem the Token. No more fiddling with sending CDs through the mail with the latest pictures and videos of the kids. For more information or to try it out:
http://www.creo.com/tokens
I bet you they won't lay off any lawyers...
Nope, it's not Microsoft bugs trashing the net. It's some asshole somewhere who thought it would be really cool to have lots of computers rebooting all the time (or whatever crap the latest virus does to your machine).
Someone has to exploit bugs in Microsoft to 'trash the net'. And yes, I hope the bounty that Microsoft puts on virus writers' heads works.
'but have no guarantees of good jobs when they graduate'.
And what's wrong with that? Nothing in life is guaranteed. Nobody has a right to a 'good job' (whatever your definition of it is), but everybody has the right to try and get/create a good job.
Surely a pound of this stuff must perform better than some of my past tech stock investments...
It doesn't matter at all if the design of the keyboard is over 100 years old. The wheel is way older than that and we're still happily using it. What I'm saying is that comparing keyboard design with the speed of a processor is not a valid comparison.
Science is not democracy. You can't get to the best decision if you let voters decide. The people at NASA are being paid to be experts, so my vote goes to letting them chart the course. Some mistakes will be made, but I'd rather that they make the decision rather than me and my neighbour, who both have been watching to much Star Trek and Star Wars.
Well, we already have something like that in Canada. Whenever you buy blanks CDs, you pay more in tax than the actual cost of the CD. One of the taxes is supposed to be compensate artists for revenue lost to people who copy their CDs. For those of us who have never illegally copied a music CD in their lives (they do exist, I'm one of them), this is hardly fair.
On the other hand, one could argue that you have paid the tax for it already, so now you can copy as much as you want! (as you may have guessed, I'm not a lawyer)
For the friendly folks in the Canadian government, September 11th 2001 was a good excuse to come up with another add-on: a security fee of $24 on a round trip. A lot more than it is in the U.S.A. Note that this was not called a tax. Why not? you may wonder. Simple: you can't charge GST @7% on a tax, but you can charge GST on a fee/levy. I feel so much safer now!! Not...
Mark
As much as I despise fees and levies, there's another aspect of the Airport Improvement Fee.
If for some reason you can't make your flight (e.g. cancel your ticket) you don't have to pay the fee. Compare this to places where an airport tax/fee/levy is included in the price. Try getting the money back from the government on this one if you decide not to fly. You will probably conclude it's not worth the trouble.
Mark
Kaboom! was one of those games that you could always play again.
A friend of mine had bought Pitfall and Megamania when they came out. I remember getting to 114,000 on Pitfall after weeks of effort, taking a picture of the screen and sending it in to Activision to get some kind of badge. Naively I was hoping to get at least something special, but I just got the normal badge, no special mention or anything like that. Hey, I even made my mother find two of my friends in the street, so they could see that I really did it.
I think the memory of reaching 114,000 and playing Megamania until the game froze at a score of all 9's are some of my best memories of the Atari 2600. Thanks David Crane and Activision!
OK, so technically it all works. The difficult thing about these systems are always the exceptional cases, such as having to rush someone to hospital. Fixable of course, have a manual override that automatically sends a signal to a government office that will mail you some forms to explain why you engaged the manual override. Speeding (in addition to breaking) can be a way to get out of a dangerous situation. No problem, we can allow people to speed for a consecutive number of seconds (how many though?). And before we know it the 'Ministry of Speed' is born. To replace the lost revenue from speeders, a tax will be levied on the system. New application for the GPS-equipped car will spring up, e.g. the ministry can tell exactly where you were, when and for how long. Imagine what one could do with data like that. Why did you spend one hour at Tesco's to just get the newspaper. In general, England's motorways are wonderful and well suited to go over 70mph. I always enjoyed driving there and never had the feeling that speeding by a reasonable margin was dangerous. On some of the motorways going at 80 to 90 mph is going with the traffic.
I recently worked 2 1/2 years in England and Holland. You have several options for going to Europe. I list them in order of preference (easy & money): 1. Get a U.S. employer to send you there. They should take care of the visa's and you might get a good relo package 2. Go as a contractor. Set up your own company in the U.S. Since you are being sent over by a U.S. employer (you!), you can make your own relo package, e.g. get a per diem, get a living allowance (tax-free). Free-lance rates are a lot more attractive than permanent salaries. 3. Get a permit and find a job. Most difficult, least money. Holland has a 35% rule. If you are a foreign computer programmer, you get back 35% of your taxes paid, e.g. their highest rate is 60%, which with the 35% rule is reduced to 39%. Above all, have fun, learn the language, enjoy the food, travel and don't believe Europeans if they tell you something is far away. Sometimes it seemed that driving for more than 2 hours to get somewhere is a major undertaking for Europeans. Mark