Exactly. More DHS scaremongering in yet another lame attempt to justify their existence. Started nine years ago it is now one of the largest departments in the entire federal government with 260,000 employees. Under the guise of combating "terrorism" - a very broad term that can mean whatever they want it to - and bolstered by the Patriot Act, this agency violates the rights of American citizens on a daily basis. And just like every other federal agency, it's never going away. It will only get larger.
This comes on the heels of Ballmer saying that Microsoft will no longer allow Apple to out innovate them? A mail client that doesn't even support IMAP? Apple's Mail application isn't the best but at least you can connect to Exchange servers and connect to Gmail over SSL. So do any number of Linux based mail systems. I like having a desktop client to cobble together my gmail, yahoo and corporate mail all in the one box. I suspect that a lot of others do too. They have to get this fixed. I want MS to succeed, I really do, but it's gaffes like this that have Windows ME and Vista written all over it. Although we should all know better by now. MS has a history of unfulfilled promises when it comes to operating systems so it should come as no surprise. I think Metro can work on a tablet. I've seen it on phones and it looks pretty cool. But for the desktop? I've got grave reservations and without even a proper email client it's dead in the water as far as I'm concerned.
1) Stick with Snow Leopard. AFAICT, Lion and Mountain Lion updates are mostly fluff.
2) Install Linux on it. I dual booted my iMac (2008 vintage) and Linux is noticeably faster than OSX. There are even desktop themes you can download that will make it look a lot like OSX if that is your preference. Plus, everything worked flawlessly - wireless, bluetooth, webcam, sound...everything.
3) Turn it into a Hackintosh (other posts have detailed that).
4) Load Windows 7 on it (ohhh...the humanity!!!). Don't laugh....W7 runs great on a Macbook.
5) If you've absolutely, positively got to have Mountain Lion then sell your machine on eBay and take the cash and put it towards a new Macbook. Or even one that's just a year or two old.
I've got a 2008 iMac and the two real limitations to it are memory (4GB max, well 6GB actually but I can't find a 4GB DDR2 stick anywhere) and upgrading the hard drive. I wanted to put in an SSD but trying to do that on an iMac is a nightmare. Having said that it works fine for day to day work. Most of the time I'm firing up Remote Desktop to a Windows server and doing my dev work there. The Windows box is doing all the heavy lifting. The screen is still fantastic and it's never been in for repair.
Go ahead....take your crappy programming off of DirecTV. See if I care. Your channel lineup sucks. Now a days about the only thing I watch live on tv is the evening news and sporting events. Everything else gets DVR'd and I catch up on it when I'm bored. Or maybe I just delete it without ever watching it...whatever. My wife likes watching international programming that DirectTV has so I keep it connected for her. Otherwise I'd give the dish back and go to Netflicks....or maybe just find better things to do with my time.
There was a time, a very long time ago, when it was considered a perk to have a computer on your desk. Today, everyone has one on their desk. And they are so locked down that it's impossible to do anything but "work" on them without someone knowing it. Between group policies and key logging software, Big Brother is watching your every move on that PC. So the office PC has basically just become a PITA with zero cool factor. The corporate PC is now just an appliance. Sure, you're there to work and it's their equipment and they can't have you surfing porn all day - I get that. But if you want to do what YOU want to do you have to get your own PC/laptop/tablet/phone. That's where Apple and Android are just killing it. For me, the last thing I want to do after getting out of the office is look at yet another Windows box. I want something different and cool and innovative. The combination of Mac, Android and Linux satisfies my every technology need and there's no way I'm ever going back to a Windows box. Ever. Sure, there are a few occasions where I still have to use Windows at work (SharePoint, Visio and MS Project are three common examples) in which case I just blow the dust off the Windows VM on my Mac and get it done. What Apple has done, which is brilliant, it to do an end run around IT and generate demand at the consumer level. This bottom up approach, vs the traditional top down approach, puts the devices everywhere. This is why, as others here have observed, you see lots of Macs in coffee shops and airports and people's homes. It's what people WANT to use, not what IT tells them to use.
Wrong. Lots of qualified Americans apply for the jobs. The problem is that management games the system so that a) it's not possible for any of the applicants to meet all of the requirements (ex. 5 years of Windows 8 development experience) or b) the salary is below market value for the skills desired. Management then moves to the stack of resumes from H1-B workers (largely from India). Workers that usually lack the proper experience but will work for peanuts. I have been in many meetings where this exact scenario has played out and I roll my eyes knowing exactly what is coming down the pipe - sub-standard work and communication nightmares. But the bean counters are happy so there you go.
I suspect that a lot of that 15% are corporate users that are told they must use IE for their internal applications. Keep in mind that a lot of companies are still using IE 6 and IE 7 because of vendor lock in on browser standards. Also, ASAIK SharePoint won't run on anything other that IE. Perhaps Firefox with the appropriate plug-ins but not Chrome or Safari. The other group to consider are the newbies whose PC came with IE installed. For many people, they think the only way to get on the internet is to use IE. As far as sophisticated users go, I know hardly anyone that uses IE by choice. My preference is Chrome. I haven't used IE in a non-corporate setting in years and I use computers every day.
It's failing for a few simple reasons...reason one is the refusal to offer competitive prices matches (as mentioned in previous posts). Reason two is the HDMI cable rip off pricing. Study after study has shown that there is no discernible difference between an HDMI cable priced at $50 and one at $5 in terms of audio/video quality. Reason three is the outrageously priced warranties that they try to push on you. And push aggressively. Warranties are fine - but not at 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the item I am buying. Case in point...I bought a Kindle there for $79 and the sales guy tried to sell me a warranty for it for $39. I resisted the temptation to laugh in his face and merely toyed with him for a minute or two before leaving the store - without the warranty. Reason four is the clueless sales staff.
The only way BB can survive, in my view, is for them to completely revamp their business model. Aggressively match prices from any vendor, online or brick and mortar. Stop trying to rip off your customers by selling them $50 HDMI cables. Sell the cables for $10 and watch them leap off the showroom floor. Bring the warranty prices back down to earth. Invest in some training for your sales staff. Revamp the atmosphere so that going there is a hip and fun experience (like the Apple store) and not a place where you feel like you got fleeced. Sell quality products at fair prices and don't treat your customer like they are an idiot. Simple really.
Nice try AC. I have conducted tons of interviews over the years. H1-B is just being used as an extension of "off-shoring". Management will fix the job descriptions such that anyone here in the US that possesses the qualifications won't go anywhere near the salary being offered. That opens the door to bring in the H1-B working who will do anything to get in. It's a way to get low cost workers that cannot easily leave the company. It's also unpatriotic bullshit. Isn't it bad enough that we have given up on manufacturing? Now we're slowly killing higher skilled jobs as well.
A lot of that depends on the implementer. If your company is unfortunate enough to have Accenture, Deloitte or IBM there then I can guarantee you that at least half the team is right out of college with little or no SAP experience. You will find them tucked away in the back somewhere. The client will probably have no interaction with them. The few experienced people will get all the face time with the client. Meanwhile, the youngsters will be training on SAP on your nickel. At $200/hr or more. This sort of thing happens all the time with big ERP implementations that these companies are involved in and it's one of the reasons that costs overruns are so common in large projects. It's also completely unethical in my view. It is the main reason that, despite numerous inquiries from them, I refuse to work for places like that.
But I do agree with his assertion that you have to change the curriculum and the teacher. This centuries old model of "teacher standing at the front of the class lecturing" needs to change. I think that what we're seeing at Khan Academy is the way to go. Instead of sitting and listening to some windbag lecture in class and then have homework to do, Khan advocates doing the lecture portion at home and doing the exercises in class where the teacher and other students can help out. It's more collaborative and it allows the teacher to better gauge the progress of each student. Kids these days have generally a really short attention span - partly due to the sorts of gadgets that Gates points out. How can we expect kids to do homework if they are bored out of their minds in the classroom? People change and teaching methods should change as well. I don't know that tablets will replace PC's but they are better for some tasks.
So last night, after the SB1070 supreme court decision was announced, the local Phoenix news is carrying coverage of various people protesting the outcome. They decide to interview some guy that is willing to admit that he's here illegally. Looked hispanic...must have been some sort of strange coincidence...but I digress. So "Mr. X" goes on to say how upset he is with the ruling. Him and his family have been here illegally for 12 years he says. He goes on to say that he works hard, stays out of trouble, drives safely. Wait a minute...drives safely??? How does this guy get a drivers licence without a SSN or proper immigration papers? Or for that matter insurance? The answer of course is that he doesn't. He drives without a license (breaking the law...again), and without insurance (breaking the law...yet again). What happens if Mr. X rear ends someone and puts them in the hospital with serious injuries? Who pays the hospital bill? Not Mr. X, he has no insurance and probably little else in the way of assets. So the family of the victim gets stuck with the hospital bill, which could potentially bankrupt them. This is one of the things that gets lost in the highly emotional immigration debates. There are real consequences to people being here illegally.
People that are in this country without proper documentation (i.e. Green Card, H1B, TN visa, etc.) ARE criminals. Now the vast majority of them probably don't break any OTHER laws but entering the country illegally means they have broken the law. Breaking the law makes you a criminal. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the assertion that immigrants improve the country. Heck, unless you are a native Indian then everyone is an immigrant if you go back far enough. The difference of course is that that people that came through Ellis Island did it legally. I'm a naturalized citizen and I can tell you that it takes a long time and a lot of money to get there. It's not fair to have other people cut the line. Look - I understand their plight in Mexico. I understand that many of them are desperate and if I were in their shoes I might try the same thing. But that doesn't make it right.
I live in AZ and I can tell you that property owners are having no trouble renting houses. Not only have a good portion of the foreclosed homes been bought up but new houses are being built. Why? Because non-investors that just want a place to live don't want to pick over the scraps of foreclosed homes that are left, often competing against investors with all cash offers. They would rather buy a new home that doesn't need all kinds of repairs and is not next door to some other home that needs all kinds of repairs. Plus, they can pick their colors etc. So builders are building. In my view, part of the reason that led to over speculation in the Phoenix market (along with Florida) is that in both those states the bank cannot sue you if you walk away from your mortgage. You simply give the bank the paper and leave. In other states a mortgage is considered more of an actual contract. If you welch on the deal they can come after you. Many of the real estate investors here bought multiple homes with little or nothing down. When things went sour they just said "screw it" and left the bank, and ultimately their neighbors, to pick up the pieces. Change that law and investors can no longer walk away so easily from investments that haven't turned out the way they wanted. It would also prevent individuals from doing the same thing. A lot of people that have done short sales here are perfectly able to pay their mortgages - they just don't feel like it. As always, market forces have begun to correct things. A series of government sponsored programs have proven to be worthless, as I expected.
I haven't used SAP but I have implemented other enterprise software systems. Any enterprise system can fall out of compliance for various reasons. If even one component is unpatched (server OS, database, web server, etc.) then the whole system becomes potentially vulnerable. Sometimes customers delay apply patches. The complexity of these systems require a massive amount of regression testing whenever you change something. Many customers make the mistake of thinking that the work is done once the system goes live. Between regulatory updates, tax updates (for payroll systems) and new functionality it's more or less a constant cycle of upgrade, test and roll out. It's nearly impossible to describe how complex these systems are unless you have used them. There is literally millions of lines of code. If you're going to put in SAP, or any other enterprise software system, you will need a dedicated staff to support it. It is surprising to me that more systems are not out of compliance.
Exactly. Retail, restaurants and hotels pay lousy wages. I know this because I washed dishes in a hotel for $3/hr back in the day when I was in high school. I understood then that it wasn't a career choice, it was a way to put a few bucks in my pocket while I was working my way towards a real career. In our society, retail jobs and customer service jobs are not considered high skill. Therefore, the pay will be commensurate to it. It might seem unfair but that's the way it is. The solution is to get skills that allow you to move up the ladder so to speak.
The pull-it-out-of-my-hat 200 mile range was based on current battery technology with current charge times. Sorry, should have been more specific about that. Now if we can fast forward to having charging stations in the places we recommended along with 5 minute charge times...well, now you've got a winner. I think that the government is taking a good first step towards mass adoption of electric cars by providing generous subsidies towards the purchase of the car. The next step is to extend those subsidies to companies willing to build charging stations. Prices will come down as capacity goes up.
According to http://green.autoblog.com/2011/03/11/nissan-leaf-sales-3657-four-times-more-chevy-volt/ the Leaf has sold 3,657 units - worldwide. 173 in the USA. Perhaps that meets with Nissan's very, very modest sales projections but it's not exactly setting the world on fire, is it? According to http://www.usrecallnews.com/2011/11/chevy-volt-fires.html the batteries in the Volt have a fire risk and the car could be facing a massive recall. That can't be good for sales.
I like your ideas of where to put chargers though. Having them at movie theaters, public parks, park-and-rides, etc. would be a great idea. Anywhere that people tend to leave their cars for more than an hour would be a good candidate for a charger I think. Perhaps the single biggest barrier to mass adoption of full on electric cars is psychological. People need to know that there is a charging station somewhere other than home. Not all car trips are planned in advance. People might forget to plug the thing in at night. Then what? I think the magic number is 200 - 200 miles on a single charge that is. Maybe some batteries can already do that, I'm not sure. But at that kind of efficiency you don't even have to plug it in every day in many cases, depending on your driving habits of course. I wonder about the feasibility of integrating some sort of solar charging panels on the roof of the car to provide a trickle charge of sorts as your drive?
The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt have not been selling well. Ok, technically the Volt also has a gas engine but most people perceive it as an "electric" car. It seems to me that the Tesla will have a very limited audience. Sure, a lot of celebrities will snap them up. Everyday families? I doubt it. Battery technology continues to improve but until we have charging stations along the freeways and parking lots it's going to be tough to market it as an every day car. Americans don't like to be told that you can drive a certain distance and then the fun stops. We want to just fill it up and go. I want these cars to succeed, I really do. But until the Federal Government (yes they can be useful for some things) steps up and starts investing in charging stations and other technologies that all electric cars need to flourish, it's going to difficult to replace gasoline. Hybrids have caught on because the range is unlimited. They provide better economy while still having gasoline as a backup when needed. It's a good compromise between electric propulsion and conventional gasoline driven propulsion. Having said all that I'd love to take the new Tesla for a spin. I bet it's fun to drive.
I remember when he was a dominant pitcher with the Blue Jays, back when they won two world series. He was the ace of the staff. Had a great career but had a reputation for being somewhat prickly with the press. Real good player though. It's the first time I've seen his name in a while.
Why is it that I feel a lot better about Richard Branson buying an island or David Copperfield buying an island than I do this jackass? When PeopleSoft was still an independent company I used to work there. Best job I ever had. Then Ellison decides to buy it and the whole culture changes. People, including me, are leaving in droves. Couldn't work there. Wouldn't work there. Ellison is the biggest douchbag on the face of the earth.
Maybe now he's found something large enough to hold his massive ego. Somehow I doubt it though, given his past transgressions. He's hoping that a volcano erupts and takes his sorry ass down.
The internet, for better or worse, has turned the entire entertainment business on it's head. Personally I don't think it's a bad thing. $25-30 for a Blu-Ray disk? Give me a break. For some movie that I'm going to watch once and may or may not even enjoy? Maybe if those greedy Hollywood execs would start pricing the things at a reasonable level there would be a little less piracy. Have you ever seen the homes that these people live in (the Spelling mansion as an example)? As far as music goes I'm fine with buying it but don't ass-rape me at the checkout counter. $20 for a CD is way too much - and it's not the artist's fault. I read somewhere that Metallica gets a grand total of 89 cents from a $20 CD. Where does all the rest of the money go? Greedy middlemen. Take them out of the game and the artist gets to keep most of the money - as it should be.
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Exactly. More DHS scaremongering in yet another lame attempt to justify their existence. Started nine years ago it is now one of the largest departments in the entire federal government with 260,000 employees. Under the guise of combating "terrorism" - a very broad term that can mean whatever they want it to - and bolstered by the Patriot Act, this agency violates the rights of American citizens on a daily basis. And just like every other federal agency, it's never going away. It will only get larger.
This comes on the heels of Ballmer saying that Microsoft will no longer allow Apple to out innovate them? A mail client that doesn't even support IMAP? Apple's Mail application isn't the best but at least you can connect to Exchange servers and connect to Gmail over SSL. So do any number of Linux based mail systems. I like having a desktop client to cobble together my gmail, yahoo and corporate mail all in the one box. I suspect that a lot of others do too. They have to get this fixed. I want MS to succeed, I really do, but it's gaffes like this that have Windows ME and Vista written all over it. Although we should all know better by now. MS has a history of unfulfilled promises when it comes to operating systems so it should come as no surprise. I think Metro can work on a tablet. I've seen it on phones and it looks pretty cool. But for the desktop? I've got grave reservations and without even a proper email client it's dead in the water as far as I'm concerned.
1) Stick with Snow Leopard. AFAICT, Lion and Mountain Lion updates are mostly fluff. 2) Install Linux on it. I dual booted my iMac (2008 vintage) and Linux is noticeably faster than OSX. There are even desktop themes you can download that will make it look a lot like OSX if that is your preference. Plus, everything worked flawlessly - wireless, bluetooth, webcam, sound...everything. 3) Turn it into a Hackintosh (other posts have detailed that). 4) Load Windows 7 on it (ohhh...the humanity!!!). Don't laugh....W7 runs great on a Macbook. 5) If you've absolutely, positively got to have Mountain Lion then sell your machine on eBay and take the cash and put it towards a new Macbook. Or even one that's just a year or two old. I've got a 2008 iMac and the two real limitations to it are memory (4GB max, well 6GB actually but I can't find a 4GB DDR2 stick anywhere) and upgrading the hard drive. I wanted to put in an SSD but trying to do that on an iMac is a nightmare. Having said that it works fine for day to day work. Most of the time I'm firing up Remote Desktop to a Windows server and doing my dev work there. The Windows box is doing all the heavy lifting. The screen is still fantastic and it's never been in for repair.
Go ahead....take your crappy programming off of DirecTV. See if I care. Your channel lineup sucks. Now a days about the only thing I watch live on tv is the evening news and sporting events. Everything else gets DVR'd and I catch up on it when I'm bored. Or maybe I just delete it without ever watching it...whatever. My wife likes watching international programming that DirectTV has so I keep it connected for her. Otherwise I'd give the dish back and go to Netflicks....or maybe just find better things to do with my time.
There was a time, a very long time ago, when it was considered a perk to have a computer on your desk. Today, everyone has one on their desk. And they are so locked down that it's impossible to do anything but "work" on them without someone knowing it. Between group policies and key logging software, Big Brother is watching your every move on that PC. So the office PC has basically just become a PITA with zero cool factor. The corporate PC is now just an appliance. Sure, you're there to work and it's their equipment and they can't have you surfing porn all day - I get that. But if you want to do what YOU want to do you have to get your own PC/laptop/tablet/phone. That's where Apple and Android are just killing it. For me, the last thing I want to do after getting out of the office is look at yet another Windows box. I want something different and cool and innovative. The combination of Mac, Android and Linux satisfies my every technology need and there's no way I'm ever going back to a Windows box. Ever. Sure, there are a few occasions where I still have to use Windows at work (SharePoint, Visio and MS Project are three common examples) in which case I just blow the dust off the Windows VM on my Mac and get it done. What Apple has done, which is brilliant, it to do an end run around IT and generate demand at the consumer level. This bottom up approach, vs the traditional top down approach, puts the devices everywhere. This is why, as others here have observed, you see lots of Macs in coffee shops and airports and people's homes. It's what people WANT to use, not what IT tells them to use.
Wrong. Lots of qualified Americans apply for the jobs. The problem is that management games the system so that a) it's not possible for any of the applicants to meet all of the requirements (ex. 5 years of Windows 8 development experience) or b) the salary is below market value for the skills desired. Management then moves to the stack of resumes from H1-B workers (largely from India). Workers that usually lack the proper experience but will work for peanuts. I have been in many meetings where this exact scenario has played out and I roll my eyes knowing exactly what is coming down the pipe - sub-standard work and communication nightmares. But the bean counters are happy so there you go.
I suspect that a lot of that 15% are corporate users that are told they must use IE for their internal applications. Keep in mind that a lot of companies are still using IE 6 and IE 7 because of vendor lock in on browser standards. Also, ASAIK SharePoint won't run on anything other that IE. Perhaps Firefox with the appropriate plug-ins but not Chrome or Safari. The other group to consider are the newbies whose PC came with IE installed. For many people, they think the only way to get on the internet is to use IE. As far as sophisticated users go, I know hardly anyone that uses IE by choice. My preference is Chrome. I haven't used IE in a non-corporate setting in years and I use computers every day.
It's failing for a few simple reasons...reason one is the refusal to offer competitive prices matches (as mentioned in previous posts). Reason two is the HDMI cable rip off pricing. Study after study has shown that there is no discernible difference between an HDMI cable priced at $50 and one at $5 in terms of audio/video quality. Reason three is the outrageously priced warranties that they try to push on you. And push aggressively. Warranties are fine - but not at 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the item I am buying. Case in point...I bought a Kindle there for $79 and the sales guy tried to sell me a warranty for it for $39. I resisted the temptation to laugh in his face and merely toyed with him for a minute or two before leaving the store - without the warranty. Reason four is the clueless sales staff. The only way BB can survive, in my view, is for them to completely revamp their business model. Aggressively match prices from any vendor, online or brick and mortar. Stop trying to rip off your customers by selling them $50 HDMI cables. Sell the cables for $10 and watch them leap off the showroom floor. Bring the warranty prices back down to earth. Invest in some training for your sales staff. Revamp the atmosphere so that going there is a hip and fun experience (like the Apple store) and not a place where you feel like you got fleeced. Sell quality products at fair prices and don't treat your customer like they are an idiot. Simple really.
Hahahaha...best post I've read in months!
Nice try AC. I have conducted tons of interviews over the years. H1-B is just being used as an extension of "off-shoring". Management will fix the job descriptions such that anyone here in the US that possesses the qualifications won't go anywhere near the salary being offered. That opens the door to bring in the H1-B working who will do anything to get in. It's a way to get low cost workers that cannot easily leave the company. It's also unpatriotic bullshit. Isn't it bad enough that we have given up on manufacturing? Now we're slowly killing higher skilled jobs as well.
A lot of that depends on the implementer. If your company is unfortunate enough to have Accenture, Deloitte or IBM there then I can guarantee you that at least half the team is right out of college with little or no SAP experience. You will find them tucked away in the back somewhere. The client will probably have no interaction with them. The few experienced people will get all the face time with the client. Meanwhile, the youngsters will be training on SAP on your nickel. At $200/hr or more. This sort of thing happens all the time with big ERP implementations that these companies are involved in and it's one of the reasons that costs overruns are so common in large projects. It's also completely unethical in my view. It is the main reason that, despite numerous inquiries from them, I refuse to work for places like that.
But I do agree with his assertion that you have to change the curriculum and the teacher. This centuries old model of "teacher standing at the front of the class lecturing" needs to change. I think that what we're seeing at Khan Academy is the way to go. Instead of sitting and listening to some windbag lecture in class and then have homework to do, Khan advocates doing the lecture portion at home and doing the exercises in class where the teacher and other students can help out. It's more collaborative and it allows the teacher to better gauge the progress of each student. Kids these days have generally a really short attention span - partly due to the sorts of gadgets that Gates points out. How can we expect kids to do homework if they are bored out of their minds in the classroom? People change and teaching methods should change as well. I don't know that tablets will replace PC's but they are better for some tasks.
So last night, after the SB1070 supreme court decision was announced, the local Phoenix news is carrying coverage of various people protesting the outcome. They decide to interview some guy that is willing to admit that he's here illegally. Looked hispanic...must have been some sort of strange coincidence...but I digress. So "Mr. X" goes on to say how upset he is with the ruling. Him and his family have been here illegally for 12 years he says. He goes on to say that he works hard, stays out of trouble, drives safely. Wait a minute...drives safely??? How does this guy get a drivers licence without a SSN or proper immigration papers? Or for that matter insurance? The answer of course is that he doesn't. He drives without a license (breaking the law...again), and without insurance (breaking the law...yet again). What happens if Mr. X rear ends someone and puts them in the hospital with serious injuries? Who pays the hospital bill? Not Mr. X, he has no insurance and probably little else in the way of assets. So the family of the victim gets stuck with the hospital bill, which could potentially bankrupt them. This is one of the things that gets lost in the highly emotional immigration debates. There are real consequences to people being here illegally.
People that are in this country without proper documentation (i.e. Green Card, H1B, TN visa, etc.) ARE criminals. Now the vast majority of them probably don't break any OTHER laws but entering the country illegally means they have broken the law. Breaking the law makes you a criminal. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the assertion that immigrants improve the country. Heck, unless you are a native Indian then everyone is an immigrant if you go back far enough. The difference of course is that that people that came through Ellis Island did it legally. I'm a naturalized citizen and I can tell you that it takes a long time and a lot of money to get there. It's not fair to have other people cut the line. Look - I understand their plight in Mexico. I understand that many of them are desperate and if I were in their shoes I might try the same thing. But that doesn't make it right.
I live in AZ and I can tell you that property owners are having no trouble renting houses. Not only have a good portion of the foreclosed homes been bought up but new houses are being built. Why? Because non-investors that just want a place to live don't want to pick over the scraps of foreclosed homes that are left, often competing against investors with all cash offers. They would rather buy a new home that doesn't need all kinds of repairs and is not next door to some other home that needs all kinds of repairs. Plus, they can pick their colors etc. So builders are building. In my view, part of the reason that led to over speculation in the Phoenix market (along with Florida) is that in both those states the bank cannot sue you if you walk away from your mortgage. You simply give the bank the paper and leave. In other states a mortgage is considered more of an actual contract. If you welch on the deal they can come after you. Many of the real estate investors here bought multiple homes with little or nothing down. When things went sour they just said "screw it" and left the bank, and ultimately their neighbors, to pick up the pieces. Change that law and investors can no longer walk away so easily from investments that haven't turned out the way they wanted. It would also prevent individuals from doing the same thing. A lot of people that have done short sales here are perfectly able to pay their mortgages - they just don't feel like it. As always, market forces have begun to correct things. A series of government sponsored programs have proven to be worthless, as I expected.
I haven't used SAP but I have implemented other enterprise software systems. Any enterprise system can fall out of compliance for various reasons. If even one component is unpatched (server OS, database, web server, etc.) then the whole system becomes potentially vulnerable. Sometimes customers delay apply patches. The complexity of these systems require a massive amount of regression testing whenever you change something. Many customers make the mistake of thinking that the work is done once the system goes live. Between regulatory updates, tax updates (for payroll systems) and new functionality it's more or less a constant cycle of upgrade, test and roll out. It's nearly impossible to describe how complex these systems are unless you have used them. There is literally millions of lines of code. If you're going to put in SAP, or any other enterprise software system, you will need a dedicated staff to support it. It is surprising to me that more systems are not out of compliance.
Exactly. Retail, restaurants and hotels pay lousy wages. I know this because I washed dishes in a hotel for $3/hr back in the day when I was in high school. I understood then that it wasn't a career choice, it was a way to put a few bucks in my pocket while I was working my way towards a real career. In our society, retail jobs and customer service jobs are not considered high skill. Therefore, the pay will be commensurate to it. It might seem unfair but that's the way it is. The solution is to get skills that allow you to move up the ladder so to speak.
The pull-it-out-of-my-hat 200 mile range was based on current battery technology with current charge times. Sorry, should have been more specific about that. Now if we can fast forward to having charging stations in the places we recommended along with 5 minute charge times...well, now you've got a winner. I think that the government is taking a good first step towards mass adoption of electric cars by providing generous subsidies towards the purchase of the car. The next step is to extend those subsidies to companies willing to build charging stations. Prices will come down as capacity goes up.
I wish I had mod points here. Excellent point on the gas stations.
According to http://green.autoblog.com/2011/03/11/nissan-leaf-sales-3657-four-times-more-chevy-volt/ the Leaf has sold 3,657 units - worldwide. 173 in the USA. Perhaps that meets with Nissan's very, very modest sales projections but it's not exactly setting the world on fire, is it? According to http://www.usrecallnews.com/2011/11/chevy-volt-fires.html the batteries in the Volt have a fire risk and the car could be facing a massive recall. That can't be good for sales. I like your ideas of where to put chargers though. Having them at movie theaters, public parks, park-and-rides, etc. would be a great idea. Anywhere that people tend to leave their cars for more than an hour would be a good candidate for a charger I think. Perhaps the single biggest barrier to mass adoption of full on electric cars is psychological. People need to know that there is a charging station somewhere other than home. Not all car trips are planned in advance. People might forget to plug the thing in at night. Then what? I think the magic number is 200 - 200 miles on a single charge that is. Maybe some batteries can already do that, I'm not sure. But at that kind of efficiency you don't even have to plug it in every day in many cases, depending on your driving habits of course. I wonder about the feasibility of integrating some sort of solar charging panels on the roof of the car to provide a trickle charge of sorts as your drive?
The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt have not been selling well. Ok, technically the Volt also has a gas engine but most people perceive it as an "electric" car. It seems to me that the Tesla will have a very limited audience. Sure, a lot of celebrities will snap them up. Everyday families? I doubt it. Battery technology continues to improve but until we have charging stations along the freeways and parking lots it's going to be tough to market it as an every day car. Americans don't like to be told that you can drive a certain distance and then the fun stops. We want to just fill it up and go. I want these cars to succeed, I really do. But until the Federal Government (yes they can be useful for some things) steps up and starts investing in charging stations and other technologies that all electric cars need to flourish, it's going to difficult to replace gasoline. Hybrids have caught on because the range is unlimited. They provide better economy while still having gasoline as a backup when needed. It's a good compromise between electric propulsion and conventional gasoline driven propulsion. Having said all that I'd love to take the new Tesla for a spin. I bet it's fun to drive.
I remember when he was a dominant pitcher with the Blue Jays, back when they won two world series. He was the ace of the staff. Had a great career but had a reputation for being somewhat prickly with the press. Real good player though. It's the first time I've seen his name in a while.
Why is it that I feel a lot better about Richard Branson buying an island or David Copperfield buying an island than I do this jackass? When PeopleSoft was still an independent company I used to work there. Best job I ever had. Then Ellison decides to buy it and the whole culture changes. People, including me, are leaving in droves. Couldn't work there. Wouldn't work there. Ellison is the biggest douchbag on the face of the earth.
Maybe now he's found something large enough to hold his massive ego. Somehow I doubt it though, given his past transgressions. He's hoping that a volcano erupts and takes his sorry ass down.
The internet, for better or worse, has turned the entire entertainment business on it's head. Personally I don't think it's a bad thing. $25-30 for a Blu-Ray disk? Give me a break. For some movie that I'm going to watch once and may or may not even enjoy? Maybe if those greedy Hollywood execs would start pricing the things at a reasonable level there would be a little less piracy. Have you ever seen the homes that these people live in (the Spelling mansion as an example)? As far as music goes I'm fine with buying it but don't ass-rape me at the checkout counter. $20 for a CD is way too much - and it's not the artist's fault. I read somewhere that Metallica gets a grand total of 89 cents from a $20 CD. Where does all the rest of the money go? Greedy middlemen. Take them out of the game and the artist gets to keep most of the money - as it should be.