I have to admit, the layout does look a bit dated but in a retro/cool kind of way. It's still my go to site for tech news. And I love that it's build by geeks...for geeks.
Best comments section around. Some of them are funny, some of them are brilliant, some of them piss me off. But I still find myself spending more time on the reaction to the story than the story itself. Here's to another 20 years!
Bezos hates Trump. Trump hates Bezos. So you can immediately discount Arizona, Wyoming, and Alabama. Florida is out - too many natural disasters. Same goes for Louisiana. In the Northeast the taxes are too high and land is expensive, although they have a highly educated population. Lots of tech companies in Minnesota but brutal weather and high taxes.
My guess is that it ends up in Austin. Conservative state (well, Purple State) but a liberal city and that suits Bezos' politics. Low taxes. They can poach potential employees from Dell. Relatively low cost of living. Abundant amounts of cheap land. A state government that is friendly towards business.
If they end up in Texas it will be Austin - bet on it.
I have developed a healthy distain for sales people of all shapes and sizes. On the rare occasion where I have met an honest one they rarely last very long. From my viewpoint, the sales subculture is little more than a snake pit. Tell the customer whatever you think they want to hear, whether it is true or not, and make the sale. Get them to sign on the line that is dotted.
After the sale is made they are gone.
Two industries where sale people provide no value whatsoever is cars and homes. Both have legal protections so help keep things the way they are. Car dealers have exclusive arrangements with car manufacturers. Just as Tesla about all the BS they have had to go through trying to break up that tidy little relationship.
Real estate agents have the MLS (or Monopoly Listing System as I like to refer to is as) to hide behind.
It is the classic middle man ploy where the middleman provides no real benefit other than access to the person that has the goods. And in return they get a piece of the action. Now if this person is providing actual value to the transaction then I have no problem paying them for that service but in the case of cars and homes I see them providing little if any value.
Why can't I just go to Ford's website and pick the car and options I want and have them ship it to me? Why can't I just find a house I like - using Zillow or similar tool - contact the seller and agree on a price? Let a lawyer draw up the paper work and call it a day. No middleman needed or wanted.
6% commission for some bimbo to unlock the door and tell me where the kitchen is and the backyard? That's 18K on a 300K house. No thanks. Now granted, the seller pays the commission but it just gets passed on to the buyer in the form of a higher price.
Car salespeople are even worse. In my entire life I have met exactly one honest car salesman. He sold me the car I am still driving today. A few years ago I thought about trading it in but when I found out he was gone I decided just to hang on it.
Interesting. Not having been in ALL grocery stores I probably should have stated that the layout is the same in every grocery store that I have been in. Honestly I've never seen a store with a diagonal layout.
Where I live there is a store called Sprouts. A lot like Whole Foods, just a lot less pretentious. They have the best produce bar none. When I walk in the store I don't see aisle after aisle. The store is open, well lit. I can see every item at a glance. A lot of the time their prices are as good or better than Safeway or Kroger. Their staff is knowledgable and friendly and seem to enjoy their jobs.
They don't sell much junk food and that suits me fine. I don't buy much of that stuff anyway. The store is smaller but it has everything I want.
They chose not to copy the other stores and for me, it works. The store is more inviting and I like shopping there. I'm not sure whether I spend more or less than I would at the big supermarkets. I just know that it's a better experience.
One thing that Amazon excels at is the customer experience. WF is good at that too but they were losing money. Amazon will straighten that out and lower prices. I imagine they will set up kiosks in WF where you can order and pick up items you bought on Amazon. They will bring something that has been sorely lacking in the grocery business - innovation.
You had better believe that Kroger and the other supermarket chains are quaking in their collective boots over this. Amazon does this all the time. They find business segments that are poorly run - book publishing, TV/Movie/Music, etc. - with poor customer service and they swoop in and take over it.
Supermarkets are burdened with having to deal with literally hundreds of union locals. They have been slow to embrace technology. Supermarkets operate on extraordinarily thin margins. They were slow to catch on to the organic food trend, thus allowing the growth of Whole Foods and others in the first place.
Next time you're in a grocery store take notice of how it is laid out. Lots of vertical aisles. Impulse items at the cash registers. Necessities (eggs, milk, bread, etc.) at the very back of the store. Junk food is always between the front of the store and the necessities. Promoted products are at eye level on the shelves, other products at the bottom where you might not see them.
Every Kroger or Safeway store looks exactly like this. And it has for the past 50 years. This is not exactly an industry of innovation. Amazon, pardon the pun, is going to eat their lunch.
This guy is a master at getting the government (i.e. taxpayers) to foot the bill for him. $7,500 tax credit for every new car that Tesla sells? Same deal with the solar panels.
Don't get me wrong - I want solar to be the answer. But....
1) Current batteries only operate at about 20% efficiency. Get it up to about 50% and we really have something. 2) Disposing of old batteries and outdated solar panels is an environmental disaster just waiting to explode. These things contain some of the most toxic chemicals known to mankind. You think the latest oil spill was a disaster? You ain't seen nothing yet.
People don't want to talk about this because they want to believe that solar is "clean". And in several aspects it is. But it's not "free" in the sense that there are no byproducts or pollutants. I think that in the next 5-10 years this is going to be a real problem. What do we do then Elon?
Personally I love working from home and do it whenever I can. I find that I have less distractions, I don't have to "dress up", and I don't miss the commute one bit. But I know others that don't care for it. Trying to work from the kitchen table with kids running around is no picnic.
You've got to have, at a minimum, a dedicated office space where you can close the door if necessary. A spare bedroom works just fine. A good headset for conference calls is a must. There is nothing worse than trying to decipher someone on a conference call with a crappy cellphone where every other word cuts out. And the dog is barking and the kids are screaming. When you're on a call, close the door, put on the headset. You will hear others better and they will hear you better.
Where I work we use Skype for IM, WebEx for video conferencing, and SharePoint for document collaboration. I'm not a huge SharePoint fan but collectively it works. The biggest issue is trust. The way I explain it to my team is that working from home is a perk. You don't have to partake but if you do there are certain expectations. Log on to Skype during business hours and check your email regularly. If you need to step out that's fine, just let me know where you are. Above all - get your shit done.
If I see a big drop in productivity or get even the slightest inkling that they are goofing off I have a conversation with them and make it clear that it had better stop. If it happens again, work from home is over for that employee. I haven't had a single team member violate the ground rules and our turnover is very low. When you treat people right they are happy and productive. Simple as that.
Shoulder the costs? You mean like the costs to combat crime, drugs, homelessness and other big city problems? The costs to combat the massive amounts of pollution? Poor schools?
Small cities aren't the only places asking others to "shoulder the costs".
Once again, we have two situations - repatriation and immigration - that were caused by government. Specifically government inaction. The tax loopholes that have allowed companies to legally stash money offshore have existed for years. Both democrats and republicans are to blame for this. Trump says he's going to do something about it. We'll see.
The immigration mess is a classic government bungle. The last official amnesty - back in the Reagan years - was supposed to solve the problem. Obviously it did not and we are still arguing about building walls and keeping out "foreigners" that are "taking our jobs". Meanwhile, the legal immigration system is still broken and people that want to get in legitimately are waiting literally years to have applications processed.
The Veterans Affairs disaster that Cook refers to is spot on. It is an embarrassment that wounded and disabled war veterans are treated the way they are. Arizona, by the way, has the worst VA division in the whole country and John McCain has been a Senator in that state since dirt was young. One of the biggest Neo-cons in the entire government and his state comes dead last in the care and treatment of veterans.
Hahaha....lots of experience with this game. Here is how it's played:
Big Consulting Company:
All of them (IBM, Deloitte, etc.) have the same model - up or out. Meaning that the one and only goal is to get promoted to partner. If you make it, it's the land of milk and honey. If you don't you're gone. So what happens is that a lot of the really good, strong technical people get fed up with the politics and leave. What remains, generally, are the ass kissers. That and a bunch of wet behind the ears recent grads that have lots of energy but don't know much. Generally on a large project you will have 2-3 relatively good consultants and they get all the face time with the client. The wet behind the ears types are put in the back room, training on your nickel. The partners show up at go-live weekend, golf outings and selected social and networking events.
Small Consulting Company:
This is generally where you find the people that are more interested in getting things done than climbing the corporate ladder. But the good ones will be stretched really thin, often serving 3 or more clients at the one time. Small consulting places rarely carry a bench and rarely if ever do any sort of training for their consultants. Burnout is common. Often, turnover is high as a result.
When I bring in consultants I always use smaller outfits. They will work harder for your business and are more committed to quality. I won't even take calls from the Big 4.
We live in a society where status and instant gratification are paramount. I'm not just picking on Millenials here - because I see this kind of behavior from all age groups. In the old days, people would save up for things. If you saw someone driving a Mercedes that was a real achievement. Today, any schmuck willing for fork over $400-500 a month can drive one.
For many people it's more important to LOOK rich than to BE rich. Looking rich is easy. You just go out and lease cars you can't really afford and put everything else on revolving credit. Instant status. Here's the problem: all your money is tied up in rapidly depreciating "assets" (and I use that term very loosely). Building wealth requires discipline and sacrifice. Unless you inherit money or win the lottery there is no shortcut. If you want to own a home then you have to sacrifice in the short term in order to save enough money for the down payment. That's the hard part. Once you get enough for the down payment, paying the mortgage is just like cutting a rent check except that you're paying yourself instead of the landlord.
But it's really hard to do since there are so many traps set up that suck wealth away from you without you realizing it. Leasing cars is one of them. If you have a business and can write off the cost of the lease then leasing a new car makes financial sense. Otherwise, get a 3 year old car for about half the price and buy it don't rent, I mean lease, it. And hang on to it for at least 5 years. That alone will probably put about $15,000 dollars in your pocket at the end of the 5 years.
The other thing is take a close look at how you spend your money on non-essential items. Do you really need 300 channels and 1 Gigabit internet service? Is it absolutely necessary to have the newest iPhone every 2 years? Is it practical to spend $300 on a pair of sneakers? Expensive vacations every year? Eating out a restaurants 3-4 times a week?
Now I'm not suggesting that we should live like hermits and drive rusty, broken down, unsafe vehicles. All I'm suggesting is a little restraint. Drive a Ford instead of a Mercedes. Eat out once or twice a week instead of every night. Pass on the Air Jordans. Those kinds of small sacrifices will enable you to save your money and buy a home. Don't think rich. Be rich.
I have used Oracle products for a long time. At Open World it was all they talked about. They are trying to frame this as a benefit for the customer. The real reason they are pushing cloud is that it is more profitable for Oracle. With the current ERP offerings they have to support a multitude of hardware, operating systems, databases, middleware, firewalls, etc. It is an enormous effort to try to keep up with all the 3rd party patches. By moving to cloud Oracle only has to support one stack - theirs.
Cloud might sound great but I have seen studies that show the first few years you are ahead. After that the costs rise dramatically. Remember, you are not buying software you are renting it. You also give up a lot of control. Control over when your systems are patched, outages, feature rollouts. Your data is no longer in your control. It is sitting one someone else's servers. That alone is enough to make it a non starter.
I was with AT&T for 12 years but they finally nickel and dimed me off their customer list. First, they were charging me for text messages when everyone else includes them. Then they started playing games with the grandfathered "unlimited" plan I had. Twice they raised the price by $10/month. That was the final straw.
I went from paying about $145/month (and that included a 22% discount from a former employer) for two lines to $100/month for 3 lines with T-Mobile. The third line was a promotion so I put a chip in the wife's iPad and she's happy as a clam. No contract. Unlimited data, voice and text. No charge for tethering. Unlimited calling to Canada and Mexico. Pretty sweet deal.
As near as I can tell, the coverage is just as good as it was before. Maybe better in some places. I think there was a time when AT&T and Verizon could legitimately say they had better networks. But I think the gap has closed considerably. It all comes down to where you live and the coverage in your neighborhood. Now it's just a race to the bottom.
1) A foldable design where, when it's closed, the display is on the outside. When it's open, the display size doubles on the inside. 2) A way to run Android Apps, virtualized, as well as whatever MS has in their store. Without that, the phone is DOA in my opinion. I want to be able to run any App I want regardless of OS. 3) 5 day battery. If it was a double size flip phone you could have a separate battery in each half, essentially doubling the battery size and life. Yes it's going to be heavier but a 5 day charge cycle is killer:-) 4) A way to project the image on to a wall, like a projector. 4K would be great. 5) A way to wirelessly connect to your cable box (or Roku, or Netflix, or whatever) to access and display content. If you can do that who needs a TV set?
There you have it Microsoft. I anxiously await your first prototype.
Men are underrepresented as Pre-School teachers. It is overwhelmingly women. Where is the outrage over that? Asian men are underrepresented in the NBA. African American women are underrepresented as Librarians. Who gives a shit?
This reminds me of that idiotic argument that female tennis players at Wimbledon should make the same as the male competitors. Yeah - except that the men play 5 sets (not 3 like the ladies do), and the audience is overwhelmingly larger for the mens events (and, by extension the advertising dollars). Yet Wimbledon succumbed to political pressure. Same tactic here I suppose.
Don't bother. It has shriveled up and smells like a rotting corpse from lack of use. That's what those 100 hour workweeks will do to you. Occupational hazard.
3D TV is dead...again. There have been numerous attempts to foist 3D upon the public and each attempt has failed. Maybe if someone can up with a way to do it without the goofy glasses it has a chance. Other than that...it joins Betamax on the trash heap of tech.
in this case I am. These sorts of "show us your labor stats" demands are nothing more than shakedowns from the PC crowd. We already have plenty of reverse discrimination laws in place - none of which give any weight to merit when it comes to job placement decisions. These laws are purely based on quotas but the backers of these laws will never use the term "quota".
In many cases, a woman or a minority IS the best candidate for the job. But that suitability should be based SOLELY on merit.
If a woman shows up for a job interview and she is 7 months pregnant is it discrimination to not hire her, knowing that in a month she will be on maternity leave for 3 or 4 months? I don't think so.
If a non-white applies for a job and english is not their first language and communication is a key skill (as it is in many jobs) is it discrimination to not hire that person? Again, I don't think so.
So when labor laws require quotas from this group or that group we are, by definition, causing the following: 1) The exclusion of qualified while males, who might have been hired for the position if not for the quotas. 2) Lowering standards to accommodate otherwise under qualified candidates. 3) Resentment among current staff, due to items 1 & 2.
I actually applaud Oracle for standing up to this sort of extortion. Personally I wish more companies would.
I'm not suggesting they offer grandfathered plans forever. I am suggesting that they honor the plans for existing customers. This reminds me of the airlines and the frequent flyer miles. Instead of doing away with the program they just devalue the miles and make it more difficult to redeem them. Eventually the miles become essentially worthless.
The TelCo's are doing the same thing with "unlimited" plans. Keep bumping up the price and eventually the remaining grandfathered customers will drop out.
I'm not denying that there are people out there that abuse the unlimited data. If so, then deal with that small majority and leave the rest of us alone. For the record, I'm one of the AT&T grandfathered data users and I don't use anywhere near 500 GB per month. Probably more like 3-4GB. And what is my reward for being responsible with my data usage? They charge me more. Yeah. Once my contract is up I'm gone.
I also hear that Verizon is doing away with contracts all together. This is how they will worm out of the grandfathered unlimited plans. They will say it only applies to contract customers once the contracts are gone so is the unlimited data. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to admit, the layout does look a bit dated but in a retro/cool kind of way. It's still my go to site for tech news. And I love that it's build by geeks...for geeks.
Best comments section around. Some of them are funny, some of them are brilliant, some of them piss me off. But I still find myself spending more time on the reaction to the story than the story itself. Here's to another 20 years!
Bezos hates Trump. Trump hates Bezos. So you can immediately discount Arizona, Wyoming, and Alabama. Florida is out - too many natural disasters. Same goes for Louisiana. In the Northeast the taxes are too high and land is expensive, although they have a highly educated population. Lots of tech companies in Minnesota but brutal weather and high taxes.
My guess is that it ends up in Austin. Conservative state (well, Purple State) but a liberal city and that suits Bezos' politics. Low taxes. They can poach potential employees from Dell. Relatively low cost of living. Abundant amounts of cheap land. A state government that is friendly towards business.
If they end up in Texas it will be Austin - bet on it.
I have developed a healthy distain for sales people of all shapes and sizes. On the rare occasion where I have met an honest one they rarely last very long. From my viewpoint, the sales subculture is little more than a snake pit. Tell the customer whatever you think they want to hear, whether it is true or not, and make the sale. Get them to sign on the line that is dotted.
After the sale is made they are gone.
Two industries where sale people provide no value whatsoever is cars and homes. Both have legal protections so help keep things the way they are. Car dealers have exclusive arrangements with car manufacturers. Just as Tesla about all the BS they have had to go through trying to break up that tidy little relationship.
Real estate agents have the MLS (or Monopoly Listing System as I like to refer to is as) to hide behind.
It is the classic middle man ploy where the middleman provides no real benefit other than access to the person that has the goods. And in return they get a piece of the action. Now if this person is providing actual value to the transaction then I have no problem paying them for that service but in the case of cars and homes I see them providing little if any value.
Why can't I just go to Ford's website and pick the car and options I want and have them ship it to me? Why can't I just find a house I like - using Zillow or similar tool - contact the seller and agree on a price? Let a lawyer draw up the paper work and call it a day. No middleman needed or wanted.
6% commission for some bimbo to unlock the door and tell me where the kitchen is and the backyard? That's 18K on a 300K house. No thanks. Now granted, the seller pays the commission but it just gets passed on to the buyer in the form of a higher price.
Car salespeople are even worse. In my entire life I have met exactly one honest car salesman. He sold me the car I am still driving today. A few years ago I thought about trading it in but when I found out he was gone I decided just to hang on it.
Put...the....coffee....down!!!!!
Interesting. Not having been in ALL grocery stores I probably should have stated that the layout is the same in every grocery store that I have been in. Honestly I've never seen a store with a diagonal layout.
Where I live there is a store called Sprouts. A lot like Whole Foods, just a lot less pretentious. They have the best produce bar none. When I walk in the store I don't see aisle after aisle. The store is open, well lit. I can see every item at a glance. A lot of the time their prices are as good or better than Safeway or Kroger. Their staff is knowledgable and friendly and seem to enjoy their jobs.
They don't sell much junk food and that suits me fine. I don't buy much of that stuff anyway. The store is smaller but it has everything I want.
They chose not to copy the other stores and for me, it works. The store is more inviting and I like shopping there. I'm not sure whether I spend more or less than I would at the big supermarkets. I just know that it's a better experience.
One thing that Amazon excels at is the customer experience. WF is good at that too but they were losing money. Amazon will straighten that out and lower prices. I imagine they will set up kiosks in WF where you can order and pick up items you bought on Amazon. They will bring something that has been sorely lacking in the grocery business - innovation.
You had better believe that Kroger and the other supermarket chains are quaking in their collective boots over this. Amazon does this all the time. They find business segments that are poorly run - book publishing, TV/Movie/Music, etc. - with poor customer service and they swoop in and take over it.
Supermarkets are burdened with having to deal with literally hundreds of union locals. They have been slow to embrace technology. Supermarkets operate on extraordinarily thin margins. They were slow to catch on to the organic food trend, thus allowing the growth of Whole Foods and others in the first place.
Next time you're in a grocery store take notice of how it is laid out. Lots of vertical aisles. Impulse items at the cash registers. Necessities (eggs, milk, bread, etc.) at the very back of the store. Junk food is always between the front of the store and the necessities. Promoted products are at eye level on the shelves, other products at the bottom where you might not see them.
Every Kroger or Safeway store looks exactly like this. And it has for the past 50 years. This is not exactly an industry of innovation. Amazon, pardon the pun, is going to eat their lunch.
This guy is a master at getting the government (i.e. taxpayers) to foot the bill for him. $7,500 tax credit for every new car that Tesla sells? Same deal with the solar panels.
Don't get me wrong - I want solar to be the answer. But....
1) Current batteries only operate at about 20% efficiency. Get it up to about 50% and we really have something.
2) Disposing of old batteries and outdated solar panels is an environmental disaster just waiting to explode. These things contain some of the most toxic chemicals known to mankind. You think the latest oil spill was a disaster? You ain't seen nothing yet.
People don't want to talk about this because they want to believe that solar is "clean". And in several aspects it is. But it's not "free" in the sense that there are no byproducts or pollutants. I think that in the next 5-10 years this is going to be a real problem. What do we do then Elon?
The other half goes in the divorce settlement.
Personally I love working from home and do it whenever I can. I find that I have less distractions, I don't have to "dress up", and I don't miss the commute one bit. But I know others that don't care for it. Trying to work from the kitchen table with kids running around is no picnic.
You've got to have, at a minimum, a dedicated office space where you can close the door if necessary. A spare bedroom works just fine. A good headset for conference calls is a must. There is nothing worse than trying to decipher someone on a conference call with a crappy cellphone where every other word cuts out. And the dog is barking and the kids are screaming. When you're on a call, close the door, put on the headset. You will hear others better and they will hear you better.
Where I work we use Skype for IM, WebEx for video conferencing, and SharePoint for document collaboration. I'm not a huge SharePoint fan but collectively it works. The biggest issue is trust. The way I explain it to my team is that working from home is a perk. You don't have to partake but if you do there are certain expectations. Log on to Skype during business hours and check your email regularly. If you need to step out that's fine, just let me know where you are. Above all - get your shit done.
If I see a big drop in productivity or get even the slightest inkling that they are goofing off I have a conversation with them and make it clear that it had better stop. If it happens again, work from home is over for that employee. I haven't had a single team member violate the ground rules and our turnover is very low. When you treat people right they are happy and productive. Simple as that.
Shoulder the costs? You mean like the costs to combat crime, drugs, homelessness and other big city problems? The costs to combat the massive amounts of pollution? Poor schools?
Small cities aren't the only places asking others to "shoulder the costs".
Once again, we have two situations - repatriation and immigration - that were caused by government. Specifically government inaction. The tax loopholes that have allowed companies to legally stash money offshore have existed for years. Both democrats and republicans are to blame for this. Trump says he's going to do something about it. We'll see.
The immigration mess is a classic government bungle. The last official amnesty - back in the Reagan years - was supposed to solve the problem. Obviously it did not and we are still arguing about building walls and keeping out "foreigners" that are "taking our jobs". Meanwhile, the legal immigration system is still broken and people that want to get in legitimately are waiting literally years to have applications processed.
The Veterans Affairs disaster that Cook refers to is spot on. It is an embarrassment that wounded and disabled war veterans are treated the way they are. Arizona, by the way, has the worst VA division in the whole country and John McCain has been a Senator in that state since dirt was young. One of the biggest Neo-cons in the entire government and his state comes dead last in the care and treatment of veterans.
Sadly, the government is full of John McCains.
Hahaha....lots of experience with this game. Here is how it's played:
Big Consulting Company:
All of them (IBM, Deloitte, etc.) have the same model - up or out. Meaning that the one and only goal is to get promoted to partner. If you make it, it's the land of milk and honey. If you don't you're gone. So what happens is that a lot of the really good, strong technical people get fed up with the politics and leave. What remains, generally, are the ass kissers. That and a bunch of wet behind the ears recent grads that have lots of energy but don't know much. Generally on a large project you will have 2-3 relatively good consultants and they get all the face time with the client. The wet behind the ears types are put in the back room, training on your nickel. The partners show up at go-live weekend, golf outings and selected social and networking events.
Small Consulting Company:
This is generally where you find the people that are more interested in getting things done than climbing the corporate ladder. But the good ones will be stretched really thin, often serving 3 or more clients at the one time. Small consulting places rarely carry a bench and rarely if ever do any sort of training for their consultants. Burnout is common. Often, turnover is high as a result.
When I bring in consultants I always use smaller outfits. They will work harder for your business and are more committed to quality. I won't even take calls from the Big 4.
We live in a society where status and instant gratification are paramount. I'm not just picking on Millenials here - because I see this kind of behavior from all age groups. In the old days, people would save up for things. If you saw someone driving a Mercedes that was a real achievement. Today, any schmuck willing for fork over $400-500 a month can drive one.
For many people it's more important to LOOK rich than to BE rich. Looking rich is easy. You just go out and lease cars you can't really afford and put everything else on revolving credit. Instant status. Here's the problem: all your money is tied up in rapidly depreciating "assets" (and I use that term very loosely). Building wealth requires discipline and sacrifice. Unless you inherit money or win the lottery there is no shortcut. If you want to own a home then you have to sacrifice in the short term in order to save enough money for the down payment. That's the hard part. Once you get enough for the down payment, paying the mortgage is just like cutting a rent check except that you're paying yourself instead of the landlord.
But it's really hard to do since there are so many traps set up that suck wealth away from you without you realizing it. Leasing cars is one of them. If you have a business and can write off the cost of the lease then leasing a new car makes financial sense. Otherwise, get a 3 year old car for about half the price and buy it don't rent, I mean lease, it. And hang on to it for at least 5 years. That alone will probably put about $15,000 dollars in your pocket at the end of the 5 years.
The other thing is take a close look at how you spend your money on non-essential items. Do you really need 300 channels and 1 Gigabit internet service? Is it absolutely necessary to have the newest iPhone every 2 years? Is it practical to spend $300 on a pair of sneakers? Expensive vacations every year? Eating out a restaurants 3-4 times a week?
Now I'm not suggesting that we should live like hermits and drive rusty, broken down, unsafe vehicles. All I'm suggesting is a little restraint. Drive a Ford instead of a Mercedes. Eat out once or twice a week instead of every night. Pass on the Air Jordans. Those kinds of small sacrifices will enable you to save your money and buy a home. Don't think rich. Be rich.
I have used Oracle products for a long time. At Open World it was all they talked about. They are trying to frame this as a benefit for the customer. The real reason they are pushing cloud is that it is more profitable for Oracle. With the current ERP offerings they have to support a multitude of hardware, operating systems, databases, middleware, firewalls, etc. It is an enormous effort to try to keep up with all the 3rd party patches. By moving to cloud Oracle only has to support one stack - theirs.
Cloud might sound great but I have seen studies that show the first few years you are ahead. After that the costs rise dramatically. Remember, you are not buying software you are renting it. You also give up a lot of control. Control over when your systems are patched, outages, feature rollouts. Your data is no longer in your control. It is sitting one someone else's servers. That alone is enough to make it a non starter.
I was with AT&T for 12 years but they finally nickel and dimed me off their customer list. First, they were charging me for text messages when everyone else includes them. Then they started playing games with the grandfathered "unlimited" plan I had. Twice they raised the price by $10/month. That was the final straw.
I went from paying about $145/month (and that included a 22% discount from a former employer) for two lines to $100/month for 3 lines with T-Mobile. The third line was a promotion so I put a chip in the wife's iPad and she's happy as a clam. No contract. Unlimited data, voice and text. No charge for tethering. Unlimited calling to Canada and Mexico. Pretty sweet deal.
As near as I can tell, the coverage is just as good as it was before. Maybe better in some places. I think there was a time when AT&T and Verizon could legitimately say they had better networks. But I think the gap has closed considerably. It all comes down to where you live and the coverage in your neighborhood. Now it's just a race to the bottom.
1) A foldable design where, when it's closed, the display is on the outside. When it's open, the display size doubles on the inside. :-)
2) A way to run Android Apps, virtualized, as well as whatever MS has in their store. Without that, the phone is DOA in my opinion. I want to be able to run any App I want regardless of OS.
3) 5 day battery. If it was a double size flip phone you could have a separate battery in each half, essentially doubling the battery size and life. Yes it's going to be heavier but a 5 day charge cycle is killer
4) A way to project the image on to a wall, like a projector. 4K would be great.
5) A way to wirelessly connect to your cable box (or Roku, or Netflix, or whatever) to access and display content. If you can do that who needs a TV set?
There you have it Microsoft. I anxiously await your first prototype.
Obviously an organized protest. Should be interesting.
Men are underrepresented as Pre-School teachers. It is overwhelmingly women. Where is the outrage over that? Asian men are underrepresented in the NBA. African American women are underrepresented as Librarians. Who gives a shit?
This reminds me of that idiotic argument that female tennis players at Wimbledon should make the same as the male competitors. Yeah - except that the men play 5 sets (not 3 like the ladies do), and the audience is overwhelmingly larger for the mens events (and, by extension the advertising dollars). Yet Wimbledon succumbed to political pressure. Same tactic here I suppose.
Don't bother. It has shriveled up and smells like a rotting corpse from lack of use. That's what those 100 hour workweeks will do to you. Occupational hazard.
Obama has thousands of "shovel ready" jobs ready to fix our roads and bridges and...oh, wait a minute.
3D TV is dead...again. There have been numerous attempts to foist 3D upon the public and each attempt has failed. Maybe if someone can up with a way to do it without the goofy glasses it has a chance. Other than that...it joins Betamax on the trash heap of tech.
in this case I am. These sorts of "show us your labor stats" demands are nothing more than shakedowns from the PC crowd. We already have plenty of reverse discrimination laws in place - none of which give any weight to merit when it comes to job placement decisions. These laws are purely based on quotas but the backers of these laws will never use the term "quota".
In many cases, a woman or a minority IS the best candidate for the job. But that suitability should be based SOLELY on merit.
If a woman shows up for a job interview and she is 7 months pregnant is it discrimination to not hire her, knowing that in a month she will be on maternity leave for 3 or 4 months? I don't think so.
If a non-white applies for a job and english is not their first language and communication is a key skill (as it is in many jobs) is it discrimination to not hire that person? Again, I don't think so.
So when labor laws require quotas from this group or that group we are, by definition, causing the following:
1) The exclusion of qualified while males, who might have been hired for the position if not for the quotas.
2) Lowering standards to accommodate otherwise under qualified candidates.
3) Resentment among current staff, due to items 1 & 2.
I actually applaud Oracle for standing up to this sort of extortion. Personally I wish more companies would.
I'm not suggesting they offer grandfathered plans forever. I am suggesting that they honor the plans for existing customers. This reminds me of the airlines and the frequent flyer miles. Instead of doing away with the program they just devalue the miles and make it more difficult to redeem them. Eventually the miles become essentially worthless.
The TelCo's are doing the same thing with "unlimited" plans. Keep bumping up the price and eventually the remaining grandfathered customers will drop out.
I'm not denying that there are people out there that abuse the unlimited data. If so, then deal with that small majority and leave the rest of us alone. For the record, I'm one of the AT&T grandfathered data users and I don't use anywhere near 500 GB per month. Probably more like 3-4GB. And what is my reward for being responsible with my data usage? They charge me more. Yeah. Once my contract is up I'm gone.
I also hear that Verizon is doing away with contracts all together. This is how they will worm out of the grandfathered unlimited plans. They will say it only applies to contract customers once the contracts are gone so is the unlimited data. Problem solved.