1) Schools are far too focused on athletics instead of academics. Most would think that the University President is the highest paid staff member. Nope - it's the football coach. Sometimes by a huge margin. I would submit that the football coach contributes nothing towards the academic advancement of the students. Worse than that, he only contributes directly to members of the football team. But he does help to bring in lots of money for the school so that sort of tells you where the priorities lie.
2) You cannot use bankruptcy to get out from under crushing student loans. Unlike almost any other kind of debt. You can walk away from a $1,000,000 mortgage but you can't walk away from $100,000 of student loans. Further, you have little to no leverage to negotiate payments. The lenders and schools know this, of course, which helps to explain the obscene profits made off the backs of students.
3) HR drones. Sadly they continue to be the gatekeepers to jobs. Most of them know nothing about the jobs they are screening for and simply follow a script and screen resumes for key words. I think that department managers should do the screening (with help from experts on their teams) to determine who gets interviewed and hired. HRs one and only role should be to prevent the company from being sued for harassment and misconduct. Roll out the yearly sexual harassment videos and put up posters when its time to sign up for benefits. Otherwise stay the fuck out of the way.
4) Degree requirements. Apart from occupations like Doctor, Lawyer, Architect, Structural Engineer, etc. I fail to see how a 4 year degree is necessary. All that matters in most cases is attitude and aptitude. Having a degree does not guarantee either of those qualities. I have worked with people with masters degrees that were as dumb as a bag of rocks. I have met really smart people, with and without degrees. Some companies are beginning to realize this by adding "in lieu of" clauses in the job description where they accept relevant experience in place of a degree so there is hope yet.
I remember a few years back some study was released saying that drinking alcohol was good for you. Problem is that it was funded by someone in the wine industry. Clearly biased and I suspect this might be the same deal. Maybe I'm wrong but it just seems that everyone has an angle.
and really the truth - not one sided political noise - you've got to examine multiple news sources. If all you listen to is MSNBC or FOX then you're only going to get opposite ends of the spectrum. The exact same news story will be reported through a political lens, skewed this way or that to advance a given agenda.
Me? I listen to NPR and I watch FOX and I browse various news sites on the interweb. Somewhere in all that lies the truth. When I hear news I am skeptical. I ask myself what agenda are they trying to sell. And EVERYONE has an agenda. Everyone.
So the trick is to recognize where the news reporting ends and the editorial begins. In the old days, Walter Cronkite would announce "and now for tonight's editorial..." so you knew that what you were about to hear was opinion. Today it is all interspersed so it can be difficult to tell where the reporting ends and the opinion begins.
Let's face it, as bright and influential as Torvalds has been, and continues to be, most people would not rate him highly on the warm and fuzzy scale. He is not a man that seeks approval. He is not a man that wants to be in the spotlight.
In some ways I think he is like Steve Wozniak. Just a shy, quiet but brilliant engineer that would rather just be left alone than doing the cocktail party circuit.
History tends to reward the Musks and Jobs of this world who are very smart in their own right but also very adept at self promotion.
I tend to have more respect for Linus and Woz. They are the men behind the curtain doing all the heavy lifting.
Before I moved to my new house I was paying $240/month for internet, tv and a landline phone. First thing to go was the phone.
Now I pay $80/month for internet, nothing for landline phone and nothing for tv. T-Mobile is my cell provider and they throw in a base Netflix subscription for free. I oped to pay $2/month more for 4K streaming and multiple screens. Amazon, which I had before at the old place, I use for tv and movies that comes with the Prime subscription. If you want to count that it's about $8/month. I bought an OTA antenna for $17 and that brings in local channels including a lot of NFL games and some other sports - for free. I set up a PLEX media server that has add on channels so I can watch shows like SWAT and Hawaii-5-0 for free and some of the channels strip out all the commercials to boot.
So by my estimation I went from paying $240/month to about $90/month. At first it was a bit of an adjustment but now I have found that I have much better selection of programming and I can watch it when I want. I'm never going back to cable.
High unemployment that is. Particularly in the Maritime provinces (far east coast of Canada) where most people work in the fishing industry. in the winter, everything is frozen and there is basically no tourism. So most of them go on unemployment benefits - year after year after year. Work 6 months, 6 months on the dole.
When I lived in Ontario I knew this guy that cut grass on golf courses in the summer and collected UI all winter. Lived in his parents basement. Sold a little dope on the side to supplement his "income". In fact, I knew lots of people like that. It was almost as if you were considered a sucker if you worked all year.
This, from what I observed, was the problem with having lots and lots of social programs. Some people need it, some are just lazy. How do you determine who should get it and who should not?
Having a UBI seems like a logical concept. The problem is how do you decide who gets it? How much should it be? Once you're on it how long do you stay on it? Forever? Will people on UBI be allowed to work part time or will that be de-incentivised like it is for current unemployment and welfare programs?
Without some sort of exit strategy this will end up becoming another perpetual "poverty alleviation" program paved with good intentions but littered with poor results.
I recall that after that horrible mass shooting in Las Vegas (where the guy was holed up in a hotel room for several days prior to the shooting) there was this big push for the hotels to be able to enter your room without your consent. The thinking was that the hotel staff should be able to enter the room for some vague set of reasons. And they were going to do away with the "Do not Disturb" signs that you can hang on your door. After all, it's "their" hotel so they should be able to enter whenever they like. It raised a whole host of privacy issues.
Back in the day, when I was traveling a lot and staying in hotels, I always hung the DND sign on my door. Why? Because I wanted privacy. The last thing I would want is this Alexa thing, with the always on microphone, spying on me. If I go to a hotel and see one of these things the first action will be to pull the plug on it. Then I'll speak to it, just to make sure there isn't some battery backup.
Paranoid? Maybe, but my privacy is important to me. Maybe the hotels should have an opt-out option for their guests that don't want an Alexa in their room and have that taken care of prior to check in. Marriott has a profile you can build where you put things like extra pillows or high floor or even a microwave. Why not add an Alexa/No Alexa option for frequent guests?
The University of Chicago just announced last week that going forward, SAT scores will be "optional" when determining admission standards. Others, no doubt, will follow suit.
Guess who tends to do better on SAT tests? That's right - whites and asians. Blacks and Hispanics, on average, do far less well on SAT tests. Notice I said "on average". Obviously there are some Black and Hispanic students that do exceptionally well on the SAT tests but overall, as a group, they don't do as well as whites and asians do as a group. It's just a fact.
I suspect that at least one of the reasons that the University of Chicago chose to take this path is to "right" a supposed "wrong". Google has a very low percentage of black and Hispanic employees and Facebook and Microsoft are probably about the same. I don't know this for a fact but I would be willing to bet it is the case.
So the U of C has now "leveled" (i.e. tilted) the playing field in favor of two groups that traditionally don't do well on standardized tests. What could possibly go wrong?
Back in the day, before electronic bill payment, we would get all of our bills via mail carrier and sit down and write paper checks to pay them. We would check the mailbox every day because there might be something important in there.
Electronic bill payment has replaced all of those paper bills so what are we left with? My mailbox is filled almost entirely with junk mail. Outside of Christmas cards I get almost nothing of value. So I don't feel the need to check the mailbox every day like I used to.
Phone calls are becoming like that too. The vast majority are from people I don't know trying to sell me something I don't need. Unless I recognize the number I simply ignore it. I wish we could have the equivalent of a junk mail filter for unwanted phone calls. Unless the incoming call is from someone in my contact list then don't even ring the phone. And then have it send a fingernails-on-blackboard screech back into the ear of the caller. And jam the callers line so they can't make any other calls from that phone for at least an hour.
I read with some amusement, and some sadness, about something called the Debt Retirement Charge. There is a government run utility called Ontario Hydro that supplies the vast majority of electricity for the province of Ontario. It has Niagara Falls, one of the largest free energy sources on the planet, to supply the juice to power their generators. Yet somehow Ontario Hydro managed to run up a debt of 38.1 billion dollars. All of it via corruption, mismanagement and stupidity. The taxpayers of Ontario then became responsible for this debt - known as the Debt Retirement Charge. A surcharge that gets tacked on to your monthly electric bill.
For many homeowners saddled with huge mortgage payments for a house that is vastly overvalued (think San Francisco prices), electricity has become affordable.
I left Toronto in 1996 and it was the best move I ever made. The people I left behind constantly complain to me about unaffordable housing, nightmarish traffic, high taxes, inefficient and corrupt government, and wages that don't come close to keeping up with the spiraling cost of living there. Everything south of Front St. is built on a landfill.
Toronto is despised by nearly every Canadian that does not live in Toronto. It has a reputation of being smug, arrogant, and "too American". Toronto has a long history of these kinds of grandiose projects - CN Tower, Domed Stadium, Canada's Wonderland - and the Google City will be yet another vain attempt to cement itself as a "world class city". I weep for the taxpayers of this once beautiful and proud city.
I recall being on an implementation one time where Microsoft had given the client a sweetheart deal on SQL Server. Basically gave it to them for free. So right in the middle of the project they decide that we are switching from Oracle database to SQL Server database. In the Enterprise Software game this is a big deal.
Since Oracle also owns the application software, as well as the database, the SQL is written optimally for Oracle. While they support other DBs like SQL Server and DB2, the bug fixes arrive earlier for Oracle. We had to tune every line of SQL, every query, every report. Reports that took 30 seconds to run in Oracle were taking 5 minutes to run in SQL Server. We got it done in the end but it was basically a nightmare.
I see others on this thread saying just switch to Postgre SQL. If it's not tied to back end applications that are also from Oracle then sure, it might be a viable option. When you are running Enterprise software that is essentially running your entire business (HR, Payroll, Financials, Inventory, Logistics, etc.) then it is going to be a very tough sell trying to convince your CIO or CEO to switch to a different database platform. The risk is simply too great. Most likely you are going to be told to suck it up and make it work.
Oracle, of course, knows this and that is what allows them to get away with these strong arm tactics. I suspect this is a large part of the reason they got into the Enterprise software business in the first place. It gets their hooks further into the client and makes it all that much more difficult to exit. It is also part of the reason that they are taking the threats from Workday and other cloud vendors so seriously. It is one of the few ways that companies can escape the clutches of Oracle and still run their business without undue risk. Now, cloud software presents risks of its own but that's another discussion for another day:-)
The rule changes have had a big effect on the modern NBA game. Hand checking is no longer allowed. Same for zone defenses. Travelling, at least for star players, is almost never called anymore. The fans want to see dunks, not plays halted by travelling calls.
The modern game is a lot more about isolation plays and 3 point shots.
Better shoes, better training and nutrition certainly help. With expansion, the talent is more watered down so the star players can exploit that.
If Wilt Chamberlain were playing today he would destroy these guys.
Solar panels sound great but the fact of the matter is that currently even the best ones only operate at about a 22% efficiency rating. Most other panels - and likely the panels that fall in the 10K estimate - operate at only about 15-17% efficiency. Battery technology, while improving, still has a long way to go. When someone comes up with a 50% or better efficiency rating I'm all ears. Until then the economics just don't add up.
Making the panels mandatory will introduce a whole host of problems, not the least of which is the cost. The process of making solar panels introduces something called Nitrogen Trifluoride, a common byproduct of electronics manufacture including those used in solar cells, and it is a greenhouse gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In most places panels can only collect energy about 12 hours a day. After that the batteries kick in and the batteries used with solar panels contain some nasty chemicals including heavy metals. With the rapid charge/recharge cycles those batteries will eventually give out. What then? Same goes for older and future obsolete panels. How do we get rid of them responsibly?
Now I'm not suggesting that fossil fuels are necessarily the long term answer but before we make them mandatory let's at least let the technology mature and come up with some answers on how to dispose of them.
Why do I get the feeling that the big Hollywood studios are behind this? Having to release the movie in theaters seems like an obvious swipe at streaming services. Cannes - and the Oscars and Emmys for that matter - could disappear tomorrow and I could care less. The ratings on these shows are plummeting. Does anyone outside of the coastal cities even watch this shit anymore?
Back in the day when everyone had land lines, once upon a time you actually had to RENT a telephone from the phone company. So you paid for not only the line but the phone too. Just like the cable box. Then someone came up with the bright idea of selling you a phone instead of renting one every month. They tried to challenge it in court and lost.
Cable industry is going the way of the Dodo bird. Technology is obsolete. Service stinks. Content for the most part sucks. They have lost me as a customer and I'm never going back.
They make good products and slap on about a 25% markup and people just eat it up. Their fans at least, and judging my their revenues they have a hell of a lot of fans.
People that say Apple products are overpriced are right. They are. But the people that love their stuff don't seem to think so. I bet these headphones retail for $500 a pair and they will fly off the shelves. I have given up trying to figure out why. Sometimes you just have to tip you hat and say well done.
I spent years living in an HOA and now, thankfully, am free of their clutches.
My observations:
1) In theory they have benefits - keep the common areas clean, no rusty cars on the front lawn, etc. In practice, the HOA's are just a pain in the ass. 2) When you buy a home in an HOA community you think you "own" the home - but you don't. You sign over the right to have the HOA levy fines and sanctions against you if you fail to follow one of their many rules and regulations. If you choose to challenge the ruling you have to take them to court, at your expense. The HOA court fees will be paid for from HOA dues. 3) You give them the right to tell you what kind of trees you can plant, what color you can paint your house, what you can keep in your driveway and in some cases what you store in your backyard. 4) Unlike mortgage interest, HOA dues are not tax deductable. 5) Unlike mortgage interest, HOA dues never go down. They always go up. 6) If someone lodges a complain against you the HOA will not tell you who made the complaint. This immediately pits you against everyone that lives there. Any one of them could have made the anonymous call.
I think you might have misinterpreted my post. I'm well aware of Windows driver issues. The point i was trying to make - unsuccessfully:-) - is that the driver issues with Linux are well behind them. In fact, the version of Linux I am running right now installed without a hitch and everything works fabulously.
To be perfectly honest, I am sick of Windows. For years I used it at work because I had to. About 8 years ago I switched over to Macs and enjoyed them for a time but grew weary of the walled garden and, as you pointed out, hardware incompatibilities. All the while, I have dabbled in Linux. Each iteration got better and better and now it's my full time OS. Linux does everything I need and does it well.
More and more, applications are being rewritten to run in a browser. The browser doesn't care what the underlying OS is and operates in basically the same way whether it is on Windows, Mac or Linux. Yes, it has a ways to go and some apps work better than others in a browser. But once that happens the operating systems war is over.
For a long time Linux had difficulties with video cards, network cards, and wireless adaptors. Now that linux is dominating the server space vendors are writing drivers to work with just about any card you can throw at it. The last frontier is full app compatibility. For most everyday users linux is just fine, given that there is less reliance on the command line than ever before.
If you are a gamer, or you want to run MS Project or Visio or Quicken then it's a different story. But hope springs eternal....
I have a couple of older Macs at home - a MacBook Pro and an iMac. Both of which I was able to upgrade to some degree. But the newer ones seem to have taken vendor lockdown to the extreme. I guess I just like to tinker - be it computers or cars - and buying a locked down machine does not appeal to me.
Actually in the Philippines it is. At the place I work we have people in Manila and work with consultants from Tata. The folks from the Philippines are far, far easier to communicate with than those mumblers from India. After asking one of them to repeat themselves for the third time I usually just give up and move on.
Complaining to upper managements does no good. I'm pretty sure that Tata is greasing all of them.
Well yeah, and something I neglected to mention that you alluded to is blue tooth on the phone. Whenever I turn that on it seems to drain my battery big time. So not only is the smart watch useless, the phone now has less utility because I now have to charge it more often...to connect to the watch...which gives me little to no benefit. Sure sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me.
I've got enough distractions without another one on my wrist. One that I have to charge up every day. One that doesn't do much without the phone that it is paired with. I like watches - real watches with automatic movements. Little mechanical works of art. Not some stupid little redundant blue tooth toy.
Before you say anything to your employer make sure you have enough money put away that you can walk out the door if they decide not to retain you. I would also put out some feelers to other places about part time contract work. Your current employer might give you that option but they might not. If they don't you have something to fall back on.
As others have noted, going from 40 hours a week to 0 hours a week is a big change. It's not just about money it's about having a routine, workplace friendships, having goals and accomplishments, etc. Maybe you can find all of those things outside the workplace and if you can then God bless you. But for some there might be an empty feeling. Tapering down to 15-20 hours a week might be good. Or even taking full time contract positions for 3 months and then take 3 months off. Lots of options.
I'm kind of in the camp where if your employer treated you right then you should give them some notice when you retire. It doesn't have to be a whole year but maybe 3-6 months would feel right. If it where me I would give them enough notice to train a replacement. If they decide not to retain you to train your replacement then big deal. You can move on to a contract gig or just ride off into the sunset. Either way you have a clear conscience.
It is blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention that cable subscriptions are way, way down. The gig is up for these bandits. It took me a while to figure it out but I went from paying about $140 a month for 200 channels of crap to:
1) An $18 Mohu Leaf OTA antenna. One time cost and picks up about 35 channels, many of them in fantastic resolution. Monthly cost: $0 2) Plex media server. Free to install and use. Lots of channels with zero commercials. Monthly cost: $0 3) Pluto. Another free media app with lots of free content, albeit with commercials. Monthly cost: $0 4) Netflix. Comes free with my T-Mobile family plan, which I already had before the promotion was introduced. I decided to bump up to the 4K plan and extra screens. Monthly cost: $2. 5) Amazon Prime. I got Prime just for the free shipping. I consider the TV shows and movies an added bonus. If you want to include the yearly membership then Monthly cost: $8.
So I went from about $140 a month to about $10 a month. Along the way I mostly ditched all commercials and I get to watch what I want when I want.
The people that have yet to figure this out (this means you, cable subscribers) are left to pick up the pieces as the cable companies try to figure out how to stem the bleeding. ESPN is laying people off left right and center. Viewership is down across the board. Once the advertisers figure this out they will demand lower rates, thus the profits plunge even further. Meanwhile, the cable companies predictably are in scramble mode. This password cracking down is just another pointless maneuver. It's not going to work and I think deep down they know it.
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1) Schools are far too focused on athletics instead of academics. Most would think that the University President is the highest paid staff member. Nope - it's the football coach. Sometimes by a huge margin. I would submit that the football coach contributes nothing towards the academic advancement of the students. Worse than that, he only contributes directly to members of the football team. But he does help to bring in lots of money for the school so that sort of tells you where the priorities lie.
2) You cannot use bankruptcy to get out from under crushing student loans. Unlike almost any other kind of debt. You can walk away from a $1,000,000 mortgage but you can't walk away from $100,000 of student loans. Further, you have little to no leverage to negotiate payments. The lenders and schools know this, of course, which helps to explain the obscene profits made off the backs of students.
3) HR drones. Sadly they continue to be the gatekeepers to jobs. Most of them know nothing about the jobs they are screening for and simply follow a script and screen resumes for key words. I think that department managers should do the screening (with help from experts on their teams) to determine who gets interviewed and hired. HRs one and only role should be to prevent the company from being sued for harassment and misconduct. Roll out the yearly sexual harassment videos and put up posters when its time to sign up for benefits. Otherwise stay the fuck out of the way.
4) Degree requirements. Apart from occupations like Doctor, Lawyer, Architect, Structural Engineer, etc. I fail to see how a 4 year degree is necessary. All that matters in most cases is attitude and aptitude. Having a degree does not guarantee either of those qualities. I have worked with people with masters degrees that were as dumb as a bag of rocks. I have met really smart people, with and without degrees. Some companies are beginning to realize this by adding "in lieu of" clauses in the job description where they accept relevant experience in place of a degree so there is hope yet.
Feel free to add to the list :-)
I remember a few years back some study was released saying that drinking alcohol was good for you. Problem is that it was funded by someone in the wine industry. Clearly biased and I suspect this might be the same deal. Maybe I'm wrong but it just seems that everyone has an angle.
and really the truth - not one sided political noise - you've got to examine multiple news sources. If all you listen to is MSNBC or FOX then you're only going to get opposite ends of the spectrum. The exact same news story will be reported through a political lens, skewed this way or that to advance a given agenda.
Me? I listen to NPR and I watch FOX and I browse various news sites on the interweb. Somewhere in all that lies the truth. When I hear news I am skeptical. I ask myself what agenda are they trying to sell. And EVERYONE has an agenda. Everyone.
So the trick is to recognize where the news reporting ends and the editorial begins. In the old days, Walter Cronkite would announce "and now for tonight's editorial..." so you knew that what you were about to hear was opinion. Today it is all interspersed so it can be difficult to tell where the reporting ends and the opinion begins.
Let's face it, as bright and influential as Torvalds has been, and continues to be, most people would not rate him highly on the warm and fuzzy scale. He is not a man that seeks approval. He is not a man that wants to be in the spotlight.
In some ways I think he is like Steve Wozniak. Just a shy, quiet but brilliant engineer that would rather just be left alone than doing the cocktail party circuit.
History tends to reward the Musks and Jobs of this world who are very smart in their own right but also very adept at self promotion.
I tend to have more respect for Linus and Woz. They are the men behind the curtain doing all the heavy lifting.
Well.... :)
Before I moved to my new house I was paying $240/month for internet, tv and a landline phone. First thing to go was the phone.
Now I pay $80/month for internet, nothing for landline phone and nothing for tv. T-Mobile is my cell provider and they throw in a base Netflix subscription for free. I oped to pay $2/month more for 4K streaming and multiple screens. Amazon, which I had before at the old place, I use for tv and movies that comes with the Prime subscription. If you want to count that it's about $8/month. I bought an OTA antenna for $17 and that brings in local channels including a lot of NFL games and some other sports - for free. I set up a PLEX media server that has add on channels so I can watch shows like SWAT and Hawaii-5-0 for free and some of the channels strip out all the commercials to boot.
So by my estimation I went from paying $240/month to about $90/month. At first it was a bit of an adjustment but now I have found that I have much better selection of programming and I can watch it when I want. I'm never going back to cable.
High unemployment that is. Particularly in the Maritime provinces (far east coast of Canada) where most people work in the fishing industry. in the winter, everything is frozen and there is basically no tourism. So most of them go on unemployment benefits - year after year after year. Work 6 months, 6 months on the dole.
When I lived in Ontario I knew this guy that cut grass on golf courses in the summer and collected UI all winter. Lived in his parents basement. Sold a little dope on the side to supplement his "income". In fact, I knew lots of people like that. It was almost as if you were considered a sucker if you worked all year.
This, from what I observed, was the problem with having lots and lots of social programs. Some people need it, some are just lazy. How do you determine who should get it and who should not?
Having a UBI seems like a logical concept. The problem is how do you decide who gets it? How much should it be? Once you're on it how long do you stay on it? Forever? Will people on UBI be allowed to work part time or will that be de-incentivised like it is for current unemployment and welfare programs?
Without some sort of exit strategy this will end up becoming another perpetual "poverty alleviation" program paved with good intentions but littered with poor results.
I recall that after that horrible mass shooting in Las Vegas (where the guy was holed up in a hotel room for several days prior to the shooting) there was this big push for the hotels to be able to enter your room without your consent. The thinking was that the hotel staff should be able to enter the room for some vague set of reasons. And they were going to do away with the "Do not Disturb" signs that you can hang on your door. After all, it's "their" hotel so they should be able to enter whenever they like. It raised a whole host of privacy issues.
Back in the day, when I was traveling a lot and staying in hotels, I always hung the DND sign on my door. Why? Because I wanted privacy. The last thing I would want is this Alexa thing, with the always on microphone, spying on me. If I go to a hotel and see one of these things the first action will be to pull the plug on it. Then I'll speak to it, just to make sure there isn't some battery backup.
Paranoid? Maybe, but my privacy is important to me. Maybe the hotels should have an opt-out option for their guests that don't want an Alexa in their room and have that taken care of prior to check in. Marriott has a profile you can build where you put things like extra pillows or high floor or even a microwave. Why not add an Alexa/No Alexa option for frequent guests?
The University of Chicago just announced last week that going forward, SAT scores will be "optional" when determining admission standards. Others, no doubt, will follow suit.
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
Guess who tends to do better on SAT tests? That's right - whites and asians. Blacks and Hispanics, on average, do far less well on SAT tests. Notice I said "on average". Obviously there are some Black and Hispanic students that do exceptionally well on the SAT tests but overall, as a group, they don't do as well as whites and asians do as a group. It's just a fact.
I suspect that at least one of the reasons that the University of Chicago chose to take this path is to "right" a supposed "wrong". Google has a very low percentage of black and Hispanic employees and Facebook and Microsoft are probably about the same. I don't know this for a fact but I would be willing to bet it is the case.
So the U of C has now "leveled" (i.e. tilted) the playing field in favor of two groups that traditionally don't do well on standardized tests. What could possibly go wrong?
Back in the day, before electronic bill payment, we would get all of our bills via mail carrier and sit down and write paper checks to pay them. We would check the mailbox every day because there might be something important in there.
Electronic bill payment has replaced all of those paper bills so what are we left with? My mailbox is filled almost entirely with junk mail. Outside of Christmas cards I get almost nothing of value. So I don't feel the need to check the mailbox every day like I used to.
Phone calls are becoming like that too. The vast majority are from people I don't know trying to sell me something I don't need. Unless I recognize the number I simply ignore it. I wish we could have the equivalent of a junk mail filter for unwanted phone calls. Unless the incoming call is from someone in my contact list then don't even ring the phone. And then have it send a fingernails-on-blackboard screech back into the ear of the caller. And jam the callers line so they can't make any other calls from that phone for at least an hour.
I read with some amusement, and some sadness, about something called the Debt Retirement Charge. There is a government run utility called Ontario Hydro that supplies the vast majority of electricity for the province of Ontario. It has Niagara Falls, one of the largest free energy sources on the planet, to supply the juice to power their generators. Yet somehow Ontario Hydro managed to run up a debt of 38.1 billion dollars. All of it via corruption, mismanagement and stupidity. The taxpayers of Ontario then became responsible for this debt - known as the Debt Retirement Charge. A surcharge that gets tacked on to your monthly electric bill.
For many homeowners saddled with huge mortgage payments for a house that is vastly overvalued (think San Francisco prices), electricity has become affordable.
I left Toronto in 1996 and it was the best move I ever made. The people I left behind constantly complain to me about unaffordable housing, nightmarish traffic, high taxes, inefficient and corrupt government, and wages that don't come close to keeping up with the spiraling cost of living there. Everything south of Front St. is built on a landfill.
Toronto is despised by nearly every Canadian that does not live in Toronto. It has a reputation of being smug, arrogant, and "too American". Toronto has a long history of these kinds of grandiose projects - CN Tower, Domed Stadium, Canada's Wonderland - and the Google City will be yet another vain attempt to cement itself as a "world class city". I weep for the taxpayers of this once beautiful and proud city.
I recall being on an implementation one time where Microsoft had given the client a sweetheart deal on SQL Server. Basically gave it to them for free. So right in the middle of the project they decide that we are switching from Oracle database to SQL Server database. In the Enterprise Software game this is a big deal.
Since Oracle also owns the application software, as well as the database, the SQL is written optimally for Oracle. While they support other DBs like SQL Server and DB2, the bug fixes arrive earlier for Oracle. We had to tune every line of SQL, every query, every report. Reports that took 30 seconds to run in Oracle were taking 5 minutes to run in SQL Server. We got it done in the end but it was basically a nightmare.
I see others on this thread saying just switch to Postgre SQL. If it's not tied to back end applications that are also from Oracle then sure, it might be a viable option. When you are running Enterprise software that is essentially running your entire business (HR, Payroll, Financials, Inventory, Logistics, etc.) then it is going to be a very tough sell trying to convince your CIO or CEO to switch to a different database platform. The risk is simply too great. Most likely you are going to be told to suck it up and make it work.
Oracle, of course, knows this and that is what allows them to get away with these strong arm tactics. I suspect this is a large part of the reason they got into the Enterprise software business in the first place. It gets their hooks further into the client and makes it all that much more difficult to exit. It is also part of the reason that they are taking the threats from Workday and other cloud vendors so seriously. It is one of the few ways that companies can escape the clutches of Oracle and still run their business without undue risk. Now, cloud software presents risks of its own but that's another discussion for another day :-)
The rule changes have had a big effect on the modern NBA game. Hand checking is no longer allowed. Same for zone defenses. Travelling, at least for star players, is almost never called anymore. The fans want to see dunks, not plays halted by travelling calls.
The modern game is a lot more about isolation plays and 3 point shots.
Better shoes, better training and nutrition certainly help. With expansion, the talent is more watered down so the star players can exploit that.
If Wilt Chamberlain were playing today he would destroy these guys.
Solar panels sound great but the fact of the matter is that currently even the best ones only operate at about a 22% efficiency rating. Most other panels - and likely the panels that fall in the 10K estimate - operate at only about 15-17% efficiency. Battery technology, while improving, still has a long way to go. When someone comes up with a 50% or better efficiency rating I'm all ears. Until then the economics just don't add up.
Making the panels mandatory will introduce a whole host of problems, not the least of which is the cost. The process of making solar panels introduces something called Nitrogen Trifluoride, a common byproduct of electronics manufacture including those used in solar cells, and it is a greenhouse gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In most places panels can only collect energy about 12 hours a day. After that the batteries kick in and the batteries used with solar panels contain some nasty chemicals including heavy metals. With the rapid charge/recharge cycles those batteries will eventually give out. What then? Same goes for older and future obsolete panels. How do we get rid of them responsibly?
Now I'm not suggesting that fossil fuels are necessarily the long term answer but before we make them mandatory let's at least let the technology mature and come up with some answers on how to dispose of them.
Why do I get the feeling that the big Hollywood studios are behind this? Having to release the movie in theaters seems like an obvious swipe at streaming services. Cannes - and the Oscars and Emmys for that matter - could disappear tomorrow and I could care less. The ratings on these shows are plummeting. Does anyone outside of the coastal cities even watch this shit anymore?
Back in the day when everyone had land lines, once upon a time you actually had to RENT a telephone from the phone company. So you paid for not only the line but the phone too. Just like the cable box. Then someone came up with the bright idea of selling you a phone instead of renting one every month. They tried to challenge it in court and lost.
Cable industry is going the way of the Dodo bird. Technology is obsolete. Service stinks. Content for the most part sucks. They have lost me as a customer and I'm never going back.
They make good products and slap on about a 25% markup and people just eat it up. Their fans at least, and judging my their revenues they have a hell of a lot of fans.
People that say Apple products are overpriced are right. They are. But the people that love their stuff don't seem to think so. I bet these headphones retail for $500 a pair and they will fly off the shelves. I have given up trying to figure out why. Sometimes you just have to tip you hat and say well done.
I spent years living in an HOA and now, thankfully, am free of their clutches.
My observations:
1) In theory they have benefits - keep the common areas clean, no rusty cars on the front lawn, etc. In practice, the HOA's are just a pain in the ass.
2) When you buy a home in an HOA community you think you "own" the home - but you don't. You sign over the right to have the HOA levy fines and sanctions against you if you fail to follow one of their many rules and regulations. If you choose to challenge the ruling you have to take them to court, at your expense. The HOA court fees will be paid for from HOA dues.
3) You give them the right to tell you what kind of trees you can plant, what color you can paint your house, what you can keep in your driveway and in some cases what you store in your backyard.
4) Unlike mortgage interest, HOA dues are not tax deductable.
5) Unlike mortgage interest, HOA dues never go down. They always go up.
6) If someone lodges a complain against you the HOA will not tell you who made the complaint. This immediately pits you against everyone that lives there. Any one of them could have made the anonymous call.
Oh - just go with MS Project :-)
I think you might have misinterpreted my post. I'm well aware of Windows driver issues. The point i was trying to make - unsuccessfully :-) - is that the driver issues with Linux are well behind them. In fact, the version of Linux I am running right now installed without a hitch and everything works fabulously.
To be perfectly honest, I am sick of Windows. For years I used it at work because I had to. About 8 years ago I switched over to Macs and enjoyed them for a time but grew weary of the walled garden and, as you pointed out, hardware incompatibilities. All the while, I have dabbled in Linux. Each iteration got better and better and now it's my full time OS. Linux does everything I need and does it well.
More and more, applications are being rewritten to run in a browser. The browser doesn't care what the underlying OS is and operates in basically the same way whether it is on Windows, Mac or Linux. Yes, it has a ways to go and some apps work better than others in a browser. But once that happens the operating systems war is over.
For a long time Linux had difficulties with video cards, network cards, and wireless adaptors. Now that linux is dominating the server space vendors are writing drivers to work with just about any card you can throw at it. The last frontier is full app compatibility. For most everyday users linux is just fine, given that there is less reliance on the command line than ever before.
If you are a gamer, or you want to run MS Project or Visio or Quicken then it's a different story. But hope springs eternal....
I have a couple of older Macs at home - a MacBook Pro and an iMac. Both of which I was able to upgrade to some degree. But the newer ones seem to have taken vendor lockdown to the extreme. I guess I just like to tinker - be it computers or cars - and buying a locked down machine does not appeal to me.
Proprietary SSD's? Really?
Actually in the Philippines it is. At the place I work we have people in Manila and work with consultants from Tata. The folks from the Philippines are far, far easier to communicate with than those mumblers from India. After asking one of them to repeat themselves for the third time I usually just give up and move on.
Complaining to upper managements does no good. I'm pretty sure that Tata is greasing all of them.
Well yeah, and something I neglected to mention that you alluded to is blue tooth on the phone. Whenever I turn that on it seems to drain my battery big time. So not only is the smart watch useless, the phone now has less utility because I now have to charge it more often...to connect to the watch...which gives me little to no benefit. Sure sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me.
I've got enough distractions without another one on my wrist. One that I have to charge up every day. One that doesn't do much without the phone that it is paired with. I like watches - real watches with automatic movements. Little mechanical works of art. Not some stupid little redundant blue tooth toy.
Before you say anything to your employer make sure you have enough money put away that you can walk out the door if they decide not to retain you. I would also put out some feelers to other places about part time contract work. Your current employer might give you that option but they might not. If they don't you have something to fall back on.
As others have noted, going from 40 hours a week to 0 hours a week is a big change. It's not just about money it's about having a routine, workplace friendships, having goals and accomplishments, etc. Maybe you can find all of those things outside the workplace and if you can then God bless you. But for some there might be an empty feeling. Tapering down to 15-20 hours a week might be good. Or even taking full time contract positions for 3 months and then take 3 months off. Lots of options.
I'm kind of in the camp where if your employer treated you right then you should give them some notice when you retire. It doesn't have to be a whole year but maybe 3-6 months would feel right. If it where me I would give them enough notice to train a replacement. If they decide not to retain you to train your replacement then big deal. You can move on to a contract gig or just ride off into the sunset. Either way you have a clear conscience.
It is blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention that cable subscriptions are way, way down. The gig is up for these bandits. It took me a while to figure it out but I went from paying about $140 a month for 200 channels of crap to:
1) An $18 Mohu Leaf OTA antenna. One time cost and picks up about 35 channels, many of them in fantastic resolution. Monthly cost: $0
2) Plex media server. Free to install and use. Lots of channels with zero commercials. Monthly cost: $0
3) Pluto. Another free media app with lots of free content, albeit with commercials. Monthly cost: $0
4) Netflix. Comes free with my T-Mobile family plan, which I already had before the promotion was introduced. I decided to bump up to the 4K plan and extra screens. Monthly cost: $2.
5) Amazon Prime. I got Prime just for the free shipping. I consider the TV shows and movies an added bonus. If you want to include the yearly membership then Monthly cost: $8.
So I went from about $140 a month to about $10 a month. Along the way I mostly ditched all commercials and I get to watch what I want when I want.
The people that have yet to figure this out (this means you, cable subscribers) are left to pick up the pieces as the cable companies try to figure out how to stem the bleeding. ESPN is laying people off left right and center. Viewership is down across the board. Once the advertisers figure this out they will demand lower rates, thus the profits plunge even further. Meanwhile, the cable companies predictably are in scramble mode. This password cracking down is just another pointless maneuver. It's not going to work and I think deep down they know it.