Solar City offers you two options - buy the panels outright or lease them. Most people go for the lease option because of the lower upfront cost. I looked at this about a year ago but decided not to get it once I found out that you can't upgrade the panels when newer/cheaper/better ones come along. Whatever you signed up for you are stuck with. No thanks.
Zuck and Bono - talk about birds of a feather. Sanctimonious pricks the both of them. Zuckerberg is obviously self serving. The more people connected to the internet the more facebook users and more money he makes. Pretty simple equation.
Bono is a bit more sly about it. He is the guy that always shows up at the cause of the day asking for everyone else's money. Of course he never gives any of his own money. Nooooo...he's a big star and just showing up, well, that's his contribution. Never mind that he has 10's of millions of dollars. What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine.
Meanwhile U2 has set up operations in a tax haven in the Netherlands to avoid paying their fare share of taxes. Not that that will stop him from lecturing evil corporations doing exactly the same thing he is. Or laying guilt trips on us about his cause of the day, ignoring for the moment that he made more money last year than I will make in my entire life.
is this guy serious? The car industry is largely a huge steaming pile when it comes to customer service. When you buy a car you have to go to some third party shyster (otherwise known as the local car dealership). Once there they will quote you something they call the "Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price", which nobody in their right mind is going to pay. You are then required to chip away at this price until you get to something reasonable. Each of which requires a trip to "the manager" for approval. Meanwhile you sit and stew and generally waste your time. In the interim they will try every dirty trick in the book to get you to pay more than you should. Eventually, maybe, you reach a deal.
Contrast that to the buying process with just about anything else you can think of. This is why the car companies hate Tesla. Tesla has turned the whole process on its collective ear. Apple is capable of doing the same thing. Apple - love them or hate them - understands their customers and provides outstanding service to them.
This Lutz clown is from the same company (GM) that is responsible for 124 deaths due to faulty ignition switches in some of their vehicles. Faults that the executives of the company (Lutz is a former GM executive by the way) knew full well and tried to cover it up rather than recall the vehicles and get the damn thing fixed. Yeah - great fucking customer service.
I, for one, am cheering for Tesla or Apple or anyone else that will drag this dinosaur of an industry into the 20th century.
From the article..."In 2012, the European Union Commission approved a plan for women to constitute 40% of non-executive board directorships in large listed companies in Europe by 2020". That sure looks like a quota to me.
And this "In 2003, a Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action in higher education (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 US 244 – Supreme Court 2003) permitted educational institutions to consider race as a factor when admitting students.[71] Alternatively, some colleges use financial criteria to attract racial groups that have typically been under-represented and typically have lower living conditions.". This gives preference to people from minority groups with respect to admissions. While it does not spell out a specific percentage I would consider it a "soft quota". In other words, tell your admissions department to make room for minorities.
to not work for one of these giant corporations. These places are up to their collective asses in political correctness and "diversity". Policies that are seriously diluting their talent pool. When you abandon traditional hiring practices of picking the best person for the job and instead pick a certain quota from group A and a certain quota from group B it is bound to happen.
It's no wonder that the real talent is working for small companies or going independent or just starting their own company.
On the other hand, if you are looking to work for an employer with tons of HR drones and enough middle management glut to stuff the Hoover dam then by all means step up to a career in big corporate America.
In 2013 the US gave away $23 billion in foreign aid and another $14 billion on foreign military assistance. So that's $37 billion in 2013 alone and that is only for the United States. Presumably other developed countries provide foreign aid as well although at a much lower level I am sure. Multiply that by however many years the US has been participating in foreign aid and that adds up to a lot of money.
From 2001-2010 immigration into the US was nearly 12 million people. I presume this only counts legal immigration. Current US population is around 350 million and is projected to grow to 440 million by 2050 according to the US Census Bureau. Given that the birth rate is around 2.05 per family almost all of the new growth will come from immigration.
Seems to me that you are the one that is confused.
4 trillion? Is that all? Why not make it 10 trillion? How much have industrialized countries given poor countries in foreign aid? Loan forgiveness? Accepting millions and millions of their citizens into our countries for better lives. Infrastructure, education, the list goes on.
The reason that many of these countries are poor is because they are run by dictators. Dictators that steal nearly every penny of foreign aid and either put it into their own pocket or use it to beef up the military to ensure that they are not thrown out of power.
Now some of the countries are genuinely poor and need our help. But many others (I'm talking about you, nearly every country on the African continent. And some south east asian countries - Indonesia and Philippines come to mind) are rife with corruption. Their people are poor not through their own fault but directly at the hands of dictators and ruling families.
Just suppose that we did cough up the 4 trillion. What do you suppose would happen? Does this guy really think that somehow, magically, all the people in these countries would be driving BMW's with their kids in boarding schools and a summer place in The Hamptons? Not fucking likely. It would all go into the dictator pockets.
"What makes an American student more worthy of education than a foreign one? " - Everyone is "worthy" of an education. But American universities are funded by American tax payers (public ones anyway - private schools is a different matter). We built those schools so it seems to me that we should get preference when it comes to admissions.
"If the universities prefer foreign students because they get more money for them, maybe you should fix *that*." - I agree with you completely. Universities are gaming the system by jacking up tuition 3,4,5 times what a native born student is paying. How is that fair to anyone? Does it cost 3 times as much to educate a foreign student? Of course not.
"Of course, if you eliminate the per-student margins that universities currently enjoy of foreign students, then you are, in effect, just reducing each university's budget; they might no longer have an incentive to bring in foreign students, but they have less money to teach domestic ones with, too." - Or...they could actually have real budgets and spend the money wisely. University tuition has gone up at a rate far higher than inflation over the past 20 years. I have worked for Universities and I can tell you that the amount of waste and abuse is staggering. It continues because the funding keeps flowing in. There is no incentive to cut costs. Remember - people are in positions of leadership at universities because of their academic credentials not because of their ability to run a business. Most of these people are career academics and have never run a for profit business in their entire lives. They have no idea about profit and loss.
I suppose it remains to be seen whether or not it is illegal. There was a very similar situation several years ago when the US government was able to convince Swiss Banks to turn over information pertaining to numbered accounts for American citizens. It seemed to me that Swiss banks ought to be governed by Swiss laws and that if they wanted to keep secret the identities of their customers that should be their right to do so. And yet some amount of political arm twisting convinced the banks to turn over the information.
"I believe that the biggest problem is on administrative overhead " - Bingo! The same problem exists, I believe, in public schools. Not enough money in the classroom, too much money on overhead.
"What happens then is that a university can have a lot of money, some faculty may be very rich, but the "wrong" departments and "wrong" faculty will be woefully poor, stuck in condemned buildings and the like." - Exactly. We see this in government as well. City Hall is full of marble and custom furniture. The welfare office gets the broken chairs and old computers. Again, its not how much money comes in it is how it is spent or allocated that appears to be the issue in my mind.
I see this all the time in my own neighborhood. Every year we see proposals come up for a special tax to fund some school or other. Nobody ever asks what happened to the millions of dollars collected the last time a special tax was enacted? How effectively was it spent? How can we do better next time? What works and what doesn't?
In other words, no follow up and no accountability.
Does anyone really think that Microsoft is coming to the aid of everyday people and championing their right to privacy? MS cares about one thing and one thing only...money. This decision is all about money. If users get the feeling that MS is not standing up for them they will take their business (i.e. money) elsewhere.
Money. It's the same reason that corporations set up business in far off places so they can avoid paying their fare share of taxes. Taxes that support the rule of law that makes the US such a great place to have a business and protect capital.
Money. It's the same reason that corporations not only give large political donations, they give large donations to BOTH PARTIES. No matter who wins they get an IOU.
Money. The same reason that corporations stuff lawyers and HR drones on their payroll. So they don't get sued.
Money. The same reason that corporate layoffs are now a part of life. If you miss the earnings numbers for even one quarter out comes the axe. So what if 10,000 people lose their jobs. Fuck em. It's all about the money.
Exactly right. The only thing I would take issue with is the assertion that Universities are chronically short of money. If that is true then it is not due of lack of funding. Universities get plenty of money. The issue is how it gets spent. I have done a lot of work for Universities and they are run like little governments. Lots of waste and inefficiency, trust me on that.
I'm going a bit off topic here but I think that Universities spent far too much money on sports.
To make room for more foreign students you mean? You're missing the point. We don't need more seats in the classroom and more buildings. We need to take care of American students first and foremost.
Why don't we reduce the number of foreign students attending our Universities and make room for, you know, Americans? I believe that a good part of the reason that so many foreign students are admitted is the huge premium on tuition that the school collects. Foreign students pay WAY more in tuition than American students do so the schools have a vested interest in having as many foreign students as possible.
Classroom seats, like so many other things in life, is a zero sum game. For every foreign student admitted there is one American student that misses the cut. Why not take care of American students first and then, if there are any seats left, admit foreign students? Would this not address the supposed shortage of skilled STEM workers that business is always whining about?
Open Office, while free, doesn't come close to Office in overall functionality. MS Project, although I don't use it that much, does not seem to have anything open source that works well.
SharePoint sucks big time but it seems that every place I go to uses it. If you use Linux or a Mac you are out of luck, unless you want to spin up a VM with Windows. In which case you might as well just use Windows.
NeXT was a flop. They couldn't sell anything. It was vastly overpriced and hardly world class. The only reason that Jobs ended up back at Apple was because the OS that Apple was using at the time was hopelessly outdated and unstable and Scully was running the company into the ground. Obviously they couldn't use Windows so they needed something and the UNIX based system that NeXT was using fit the bill.
Mind you, the first few iterations of OSX were pretty bad as well. Slow, buggy and crash prone but it was a start. Apple stuck with it and got it right. I'll give Jobs credit for switching to Intel based processors. That was probably the smartest thing he did. And I'll give him credit for the whole "vertical stack" thing where Apple builds the hardware and designs the software. That was smart.
But Woz was the hands on guy. He was the guy that got it done and I don't think he gets enough credit for the overall success of the company. I'm not anti Apple or anything. I like their products. I just tend to think that Jobs gets more credit than he deserves.
The only "genius" that ever existed at Apple was and is Steve Wozniak. The Apple I & II were miles ahead of the PC of the day in terms of innovation. Woz designed the circuit boards, wrote the OS, assembled it, tested it. Basically Woz WAS the Apple I & II.
Jobs was nothing more than a scheming, egotistical, slave driver. He took the credit while others did all the real work. Yes, Jobs had some influence over design but he didn't write any code. He couldn't write any code. He was the "idea" guy.
I suspect that Woz got sick of the corporate games that Jobs seemed to excel at.
I thought the USA was the only place having to deal with mass illegal immigration. Now it's Europe's turn. In both cases it is largely economic migration. Don't get me wrong - if I were in their shoes I would do the same thing.
What is interesting to me is the fact that the European migrants seem to be marching towards Germany. Why not stop at Turkey or Greece or Hungary? Well, Germany is the richest country in Europe by a wide margin and they have very generous social programs. Sound familiar?
This is exactly what is wrong with a lot of modern coding. People become too reliant on "black box" functions and libraries where you simply pass in values and the output magically appears. The problem is that there are a lot of poorly written libraries that simply get used over and over again without a care in the world.
Yes, it makes it easier for common tasks but it also takes away a lot of the creativity that drew me to programming in the first place.
People that are attracted to Tech in general are people that like to build stuff. They like to tinker and figure out how stuff works and make things better. So they figure why not make a career out of it and get paid to do things they like.
Then they enter the workforce. Chances are pretty good that your boss not only doesn't have a clue about programming, they probably look down their nose at you. The boss lives in a world of spreadsheets and project plans and deadlines. Their goal is to get it out the door and worry later about the bugs. With any luck it becomes someone else's problem.
This flies in the face of the programmer who wants to do it not on time but do it right. Programming is a creative process and sometimes it's hard to put a specific time frame on that. That's the first problem.
The next problem occurs when you take a look around you and discover that the ones getting the promotions and big raises are not the best programmers. They are the ones that have figured out how to game the system. To move into management you are expected to leave your technical skills behind.
Sure there are some executives that are technically skilled (Gates and Zuckerberg come to mind) but most of them are MBA types.
To go along with the 4K display Sony will be offering an optional 30lb. battery (with an available backpack). A Sony spokesperson, when asked to comment on this, confirmed that the optional battery should allow users an entire day of phone use without the need for a recharge.
"These things are flying off the shelf" according to I.P. Nightly of Sony. "Our customers are demanding 4K screens for their phones and, by gosh, we have delivered in a big, big way!" claims Nightly.
Yes for day to day living taxes would most likely not be an issue if you had as much money as you mentioned. But what if you have children or others that you want to pass the money along to after you die? If you're not careful they could lose half of it in inheritance taxes. It would be wise to put that money into a trust and for that you need professional help, unless you happen to be an accountant or attorney.
Personally, I might think about setting up my principle residence in a place like The Bahamas where they have no taxes. You could still rent places in Paris or NYC or Milan or wherever you like but just keep a home base in a low tax or no tax location. One thing about multiple residences though - you need someone to look after it when you are not there. And if it's a house then you need someone to do the landscaping and take care of the pool, etc. You'll probably need a vehicle in each place as well. I'd probably opt for a nice lock it and leave it condo with security staff. Come and go as you please.
A pretty awesome lifestyle to be sure but not without its own set of problems.
"The problem was that she wanted to travel all over the world at a moments notice and all of her "old" friends were busy going to school, working and doing stuff to make ends meet. She basically had to find new friends that were rich and also had nothing to do so they could pal around the world together."
Exactly. Otherwise you become MC Hammer with a collection of hangers-on that all disappear when the money is gone. OK maybe not all but most of them to be sure. If you decide to become a jet setter and want to bring the old gang along then be prepared to pick up the tab for everyone. Either that or make friends with other jet setters that can pay their own tab.
The more I think about this the more convinced I am that I don't want to be rich. I just want to be comfortable.
Slashdot Mirror
Solar City offers you two options - buy the panels outright or lease them. Most people go for the lease option because of the lower upfront cost. I looked at this about a year ago but decided not to get it once I found out that you can't upgrade the panels when newer/cheaper/better ones come along. Whatever you signed up for you are stuck with. No thanks.
Zuck and Bono - talk about birds of a feather. Sanctimonious pricks the both of them. Zuckerberg is obviously self serving. The more people connected to the internet the more facebook users and more money he makes. Pretty simple equation.
Bono is a bit more sly about it. He is the guy that always shows up at the cause of the day asking for everyone else's money. Of course he never gives any of his own money. Nooooo...he's a big star and just showing up, well, that's his contribution. Never mind that he has 10's of millions of dollars. What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine.
Meanwhile U2 has set up operations in a tax haven in the Netherlands to avoid paying their fare share of taxes. Not that that will stop him from lecturing evil corporations doing exactly the same thing he is. Or laying guilt trips on us about his cause of the day, ignoring for the moment that he made more money last year than I will make in my entire life.
Fuck you Bono.
is this guy serious? The car industry is largely a huge steaming pile when it comes to customer service. When you buy a car you have to go to some third party shyster (otherwise known as the local car dealership). Once there they will quote you something they call the "Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price", which nobody in their right mind is going to pay. You are then required to chip away at this price until you get to something reasonable. Each of which requires a trip to "the manager" for approval. Meanwhile you sit and stew and generally waste your time. In the interim they will try every dirty trick in the book to get you to pay more than you should. Eventually, maybe, you reach a deal.
Contrast that to the buying process with just about anything else you can think of. This is why the car companies hate Tesla. Tesla has turned the whole process on its collective ear. Apple is capable of doing the same thing. Apple - love them or hate them - understands their customers and provides outstanding service to them.
This Lutz clown is from the same company (GM) that is responsible for 124 deaths due to faulty ignition switches in some of their vehicles. Faults that the executives of the company (Lutz is a former GM executive by the way) knew full well and tried to cover it up rather than recall the vehicles and get the damn thing fixed. Yeah - great fucking customer service.
I, for one, am cheering for Tesla or Apple or anyone else that will drag this dinosaur of an industry into the 20th century.
"Ah yes, the great "quota" myth." - Is it? Have a look at this -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From the article..."In 2012, the European Union Commission approved a plan for women to constitute 40% of non-executive board directorships in large listed companies in Europe by 2020". That sure looks like a quota to me.
And this "In 2003, a Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action in higher education (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 US 244 – Supreme Court 2003) permitted educational institutions to consider race as a factor when admitting students.[71] Alternatively, some colleges use financial criteria to attract racial groups that have typically been under-represented and typically have lower living conditions.". This gives preference to people from minority groups with respect to admissions. While it does not spell out a specific percentage I would consider it a "soft quota". In other words, tell your admissions department to make room for minorities.
to not work for one of these giant corporations. These places are up to their collective asses in political correctness and "diversity". Policies that are seriously diluting their talent pool. When you abandon traditional hiring practices of picking the best person for the job and instead pick a certain quota from group A and a certain quota from group B it is bound to happen.
It's no wonder that the real talent is working for small companies or going independent or just starting their own company.
On the other hand, if you are looking to work for an employer with tons of HR drones and enough middle management glut to stuff the Hoover dam then by all means step up to a career in big corporate America.
I was curious so I looked it up -> https://www.nationalpriorities...
In 2013 the US gave away $23 billion in foreign aid and another $14 billion on foreign military assistance. So that's $37 billion in 2013 alone and that is only for the United States. Presumably other developed countries provide foreign aid as well although at a much lower level I am sure. Multiply that by however many years the US has been participating in foreign aid and that adds up to a lot of money.
As for population growth take a look at this -> http://www.immigrationeis.org/...
From 2001-2010 immigration into the US was nearly 12 million people. I presume this only counts legal immigration. Current US population is around 350 million and is projected to grow to 440 million by 2050 according to the US Census Bureau. Given that the birth rate is around 2.05 per family almost all of the new growth will come from immigration.
Seems to me that you are the one that is confused.
4 trillion? Is that all? Why not make it 10 trillion? How much have industrialized countries given poor countries in foreign aid? Loan forgiveness? Accepting millions and millions of their citizens into our countries for better lives. Infrastructure, education, the list goes on.
The reason that many of these countries are poor is because they are run by dictators. Dictators that steal nearly every penny of foreign aid and either put it into their own pocket or use it to beef up the military to ensure that they are not thrown out of power.
Now some of the countries are genuinely poor and need our help. But many others (I'm talking about you, nearly every country on the African continent. And some south east asian countries - Indonesia and Philippines come to mind) are rife with corruption. Their people are poor not through their own fault but directly at the hands of dictators and ruling families.
Just suppose that we did cough up the 4 trillion. What do you suppose would happen? Does this guy really think that somehow, magically, all the people in these countries would be driving BMW's with their kids in boarding schools and a summer place in The Hamptons? Not fucking likely. It would all go into the dictator pockets.
Nice try though.
"What makes an American student more worthy of education than a foreign one? " - Everyone is "worthy" of an education. But American universities are funded by American tax payers (public ones anyway - private schools is a different matter). We built those schools so it seems to me that we should get preference when it comes to admissions.
"If the universities prefer foreign students because they get more money for them, maybe you should fix *that*." - I agree with you completely. Universities are gaming the system by jacking up tuition 3,4,5 times what a native born student is paying. How is that fair to anyone? Does it cost 3 times as much to educate a foreign student? Of course not.
"Of course, if you eliminate the per-student margins that universities currently enjoy of foreign students, then you are, in effect, just reducing each university's budget; they might no longer have an incentive to bring in foreign students, but they have less money to teach domestic ones with, too." - Or...they could actually have real budgets and spend the money wisely. University tuition has gone up at a rate far higher than inflation over the past 20 years. I have worked for Universities and I can tell you that the amount of waste and abuse is staggering. It continues because the funding keeps flowing in. There is no incentive to cut costs. Remember - people are in positions of leadership at universities because of their academic credentials not because of their ability to run a business. Most of these people are career academics and have never run a for profit business in their entire lives. They have no idea about profit and loss.
I suppose it remains to be seen whether or not it is illegal. There was a very similar situation several years ago when the US government was able to convince Swiss Banks to turn over information pertaining to numbered accounts for American citizens. It seemed to me that Swiss banks ought to be governed by Swiss laws and that if they wanted to keep secret the identities of their customers that should be their right to do so. And yet some amount of political arm twisting convinced the banks to turn over the information.
"I believe that the biggest problem is on administrative overhead " - Bingo! The same problem exists, I believe, in public schools. Not enough money in the classroom, too much money on overhead.
"What happens then is that a university can have a lot of money, some faculty may be very rich, but the "wrong" departments and "wrong" faculty will be woefully poor, stuck in condemned buildings and the like." - Exactly. We see this in government as well. City Hall is full of marble and custom furniture. The welfare office gets the broken chairs and old computers. Again, its not how much money comes in it is how it is spent or allocated that appears to be the issue in my mind.
I see this all the time in my own neighborhood. Every year we see proposals come up for a special tax to fund some school or other. Nobody ever asks what happened to the millions of dollars collected the last time a special tax was enacted? How effectively was it spent? How can we do better next time? What works and what doesn't?
In other words, no follow up and no accountability.
Does anyone really think that Microsoft is coming to the aid of everyday people and championing their right to privacy? MS cares about one thing and one thing only...money. This decision is all about money. If users get the feeling that MS is not standing up for them they will take their business (i.e. money) elsewhere.
Money. It's the same reason that corporations set up business in far off places so they can avoid paying their fare share of taxes. Taxes that support the rule of law that makes the US such a great place to have a business and protect capital.
Money. It's the same reason that corporations not only give large political donations, they give large donations to BOTH PARTIES. No matter who wins they get an IOU.
Money. The same reason that corporations stuff lawyers and HR drones on their payroll. So they don't get sued.
Money. The same reason that corporate layoffs are now a part of life. If you miss the earnings numbers for even one quarter out comes the axe. So what if 10,000 people lose their jobs. Fuck em. It's all about the money.
Exactly right. The only thing I would take issue with is the assertion that Universities are chronically short of money. If that is true then it is not due of lack of funding. Universities get plenty of money. The issue is how it gets spent. I have done a lot of work for Universities and they are run like little governments. Lots of waste and inefficiency, trust me on that.
I'm going a bit off topic here but I think that Universities spent far too much money on sports.
To make room for more foreign students you mean? You're missing the point. We don't need more seats in the classroom and more buildings. We need to take care of American students first and foremost.
Why don't we reduce the number of foreign students attending our Universities and make room for, you know, Americans? I believe that a good part of the reason that so many foreign students are admitted is the huge premium on tuition that the school collects. Foreign students pay WAY more in tuition than American students do so the schools have a vested interest in having as many foreign students as possible.
Classroom seats, like so many other things in life, is a zero sum game. For every foreign student admitted there is one American student that misses the cut. Why not take care of American students first and then, if there are any seats left, admit foreign students? Would this not address the supposed shortage of skilled STEM workers that business is always whining about?
Open Office, while free, doesn't come close to Office in overall functionality. MS Project, although I don't use it that much, does not seem to have anything open source that works well.
SharePoint sucks big time but it seems that every place I go to uses it. If you use Linux or a Mac you are out of luck, unless you want to spin up a VM with Windows. In which case you might as well just use Windows.
NeXT was a flop. They couldn't sell anything. It was vastly overpriced and hardly world class. The only reason that Jobs ended up back at Apple was because the OS that Apple was using at the time was hopelessly outdated and unstable and Scully was running the company into the ground. Obviously they couldn't use Windows so they needed something and the UNIX based system that NeXT was using fit the bill.
Mind you, the first few iterations of OSX were pretty bad as well. Slow, buggy and crash prone but it was a start. Apple stuck with it and got it right. I'll give Jobs credit for switching to Intel based processors. That was probably the smartest thing he did. And I'll give him credit for the whole "vertical stack" thing where Apple builds the hardware and designs the software. That was smart.
But Woz was the hands on guy. He was the guy that got it done and I don't think he gets enough credit for the overall success of the company. I'm not anti Apple or anything. I like their products. I just tend to think that Jobs gets more credit than he deserves.
The only "genius" that ever existed at Apple was and is Steve Wozniak. The Apple I & II were miles ahead of the PC of the day in terms of innovation. Woz designed the circuit boards, wrote the OS, assembled it, tested it. Basically Woz WAS the Apple I & II.
Jobs was nothing more than a scheming, egotistical, slave driver. He took the credit while others did all the real work. Yes, Jobs had some influence over design but he didn't write any code. He couldn't write any code. He was the "idea" guy.
I suspect that Woz got sick of the corporate games that Jobs seemed to excel at.
I thought the USA was the only place having to deal with mass illegal immigration. Now it's Europe's turn. In both cases it is largely economic migration. Don't get me wrong - if I were in their shoes I would do the same thing.
What is interesting to me is the fact that the European migrants seem to be marching towards Germany. Why not stop at Turkey or Greece or Hungary? Well, Germany is the richest country in Europe by a wide margin and they have very generous social programs. Sound familiar?
This is exactly what is wrong with a lot of modern coding. People become too reliant on "black box" functions and libraries where you simply pass in values and the output magically appears. The problem is that there are a lot of poorly written libraries that simply get used over and over again without a care in the world.
Yes, it makes it easier for common tasks but it also takes away a lot of the creativity that drew me to programming in the first place.
People that are attracted to Tech in general are people that like to build stuff. They like to tinker and figure out how stuff works and make things better. So they figure why not make a career out of it and get paid to do things they like.
Then they enter the workforce. Chances are pretty good that your boss not only doesn't have a clue about programming, they probably look down their nose at you. The boss lives in a world of spreadsheets and project plans and deadlines. Their goal is to get it out the door and worry later about the bugs. With any luck it becomes someone else's problem.
This flies in the face of the programmer who wants to do it not on time but do it right. Programming is a creative process and sometimes it's hard to put a specific time frame on that. That's the first problem.
The next problem occurs when you take a look around you and discover that the ones getting the promotions and big raises are not the best programmers. They are the ones that have figured out how to game the system. To move into management you are expected to leave your technical skills behind.
Sure there are some executives that are technically skilled (Gates and Zuckerberg come to mind) but most of them are MBA types.
To go along with the 4K display Sony will be offering an optional 30lb. battery (with an available backpack). A Sony spokesperson, when asked to comment on this, confirmed that the optional battery should allow users an entire day of phone use without the need for a recharge.
"These things are flying off the shelf" according to I.P. Nightly of Sony. "Our customers are demanding 4K screens for their phones and, by gosh, we have delivered in a big, big way!" claims Nightly.
Stay tuned for more news as it develops....
Yes for day to day living taxes would most likely not be an issue if you had as much money as you mentioned. But what if you have children or others that you want to pass the money along to after you die? If you're not careful they could lose half of it in inheritance taxes. It would be wise to put that money into a trust and for that you need professional help, unless you happen to be an accountant or attorney.
Personally, I might think about setting up my principle residence in a place like The Bahamas where they have no taxes. You could still rent places in Paris or NYC or Milan or wherever you like but just keep a home base in a low tax or no tax location. One thing about multiple residences though - you need someone to look after it when you are not there. And if it's a house then you need someone to do the landscaping and take care of the pool, etc. You'll probably need a vehicle in each place as well. I'd probably opt for a nice lock it and leave it condo with security staff. Come and go as you please.
A pretty awesome lifestyle to be sure but not without its own set of problems.
"The problem was that she wanted to travel all over the world at a moments notice and all of her "old" friends were busy going to school, working and doing stuff to make ends meet. She basically had to find new friends that were rich and also had nothing to do so they could pal around the world together."
Exactly. Otherwise you become MC Hammer with a collection of hangers-on that all disappear when the money is gone. OK maybe not all but most of them to be sure. If you decide to become a jet setter and want to bring the old gang along then be prepared to pick up the tab for everyone. Either that or make friends with other jet setters that can pay their own tab.
The more I think about this the more convinced I am that I don't want to be rich. I just want to be comfortable.
Nah - the real gold diggers are those tramps that stalk pro athletes and show up at all the parties hoping to get impregnated.
The more shit you have the more flies you attract :-)
Yes - certainly NYC and San Francisco/San Jose/San Diego are notable exceptions. You can toss in Boston, Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago too.
But if you live in Atlanta or Charlotte or Phoenix or Omaha or Kansas City you're probably doing pretty well on 100K.