Apparently, having two charismatic young founders is enough to get you all kinds of funding. Too bad they didn't know (or care) to translate that funding into a tangible product by giving enough of it to people with the necessary skills.
On the flip-side, you can have ALL the necessary skills, and ideas, vision and even stories required for a product like this, but without your own pile of funding, or some charismatic front-men to tell the story to people who will hand over money, the project is just as dead.
The problem comes when you work in an industry with low job density, meaning that you have to uproot and relocate to a new city to hop jobs. With specialized degrees and specialized fields of employment, this is very common today, and these specialized employees are getting the turnover treatment just the same as the HR staff, IT staff and other fungible crew.
The pay is better when you're specialized, but not good enough to handle a cross-country move every 3 years. I've done 3 city-hops in my career, strangely enough, the one prompted by a company shutdown and period of no work was paid for by the company I moved to, the two that I did by choice were largely and completely out of pocket. The time the company compensated my move, the compensation was worth about 4 months of gross pay. Even stranger, one company I was working at was acquired by a bigger company, and it worked out that I didn't have to move as a result of the acquisition, though the rest of the acquired crew did, the acquiring company paid me again about a 4 month "retention bonus" to stay with them for at least a year, so, in a sense, they compensated me for a move I didn't have to make.
So much of who hires you is luck and timing, especially in a specialized field, it's fantasy to think you have much control over the process.
That was a good one, worked as a temp for an unholy witch - she was nice to half the crew and completely mental on the other half. One day her boss directed me to defy her, so that moved me from her good list to her bad list. Thing was, weeks earlier, I had gone above and beyond my job description to give her a computer tool that made her life much easier, and it was a hidden effect because the tool was handling a big ramp-up in her work load, allowing the temps to do it themselves. On my way out the door, I managed to take my tool with me - I didn't ever want to work as a temp again anyway, and never have - she went so over the top with the agency they said they couldn't place me again, though they did somewhat reluctantly pay me for time served. I like to think I caused her 28 year old donut and coffee living self to have a mini-stroke that day.
Military, private, and if Great Britain gets another nationalistic shot in the arm, they just might make a "new Concorde" applying the lessons learned from the last go around.
You're not just paying for fuel, you're also paying for maintenance, staffing, ground facilities, national security, baggage handlers unions, etc.
As you point out, ground "time costs" run 2-3 hours per flight, minimum, so to make the reduction in flight time worthwhile, it needs to be a 5+ hour flight to begin with, otherwise you won't notice the advantage except in the ticket price, and perhaps the awful delays when your super-jet has mechanical problems delaying takeoff (without a whole fleet of fungible replacements at the ready.)
As they said: NY-LA, interesting. NY-DC, not so much.
As the gap between the rich and poor expands, there will be a market for the faster air travel, you might not call it a mass market, but I've met people who have a Cessna Citation for speed plus a Gulfstrem when they're not in a hurry - these guys would certainly add a 1200+mph jet to their fleet if they could use it over land routes.
Well, now you've got ubiquity via the Microsoft Store, and if your "helpee" doesn't have paint installed, you can spend five minutes educating them about the Microsoft Store... free advertising for Microsoft Store - did you get the part in the article where she said Microsoft Store, I think it's something they're promoting.
And, do you really think a company that pushes lengthy restart updates at you every couple of weeks gives a damn about your time or convenience?
I talked with an engineer in ~2005 who "wanted to try Linux" - he asked how he would do things like Word, Excel (Open Office) Photoshop (GIMP), Internet Explorer (Firefox), etc. in Linux. I told him about the equivalent software, his response:
"You mean I'd have to learn new names and icons for the programs? I don't think I'm up for that much effort..."
Sorry, I have (been forced to) used Office and recently Office 365 - they are no prize whatsoever. 3+ years ago I worked at a shop that used Google's office suite, it works better, faster and more reliably. I haven't used "local" POP3 mail clients for over a decade, but when I did, Thunderbird and Eudora ran flaming rings around Office.
The only reason I see to prefer Office to any other mail and calendaring solutions is because it's integrated into the company directory, and if the company would divorce its personnel directory from office, that advantage would disappear too.
I suppose the 15.10 that I'm typing this on is even worse off, then?
Funny that it's in better shape than the 14.04 LTS running on another machine in my house - that 14.04 has patched itself into all kinds of system-error complaints, and seems to be more crash prone - maybe because it runs Kodi all the time, but I like to think most of the problems are in the updates. The last update to Kodi that changed the whole user interface was particularly annoying.
A simple answer would be to require the drug manufacturers to accept returned drugs for credit or exchange with fresh ones. Set a maximum legal exchange fee of $0.05 per dose and see what happens to the official expiration dates.
Plus the fact that Silicon Valley companies have become some of the biggest jerks in history at swinging non-compete, anti-poach and other employee abuse agreements around as wildly as they can possibly imagine.
I work for a major corporation which has this provision in its non-compete, no doubt as a bone for the "unconscionable" provisions of the law.
The mechanism goes like this: if you want to take a job with a competing firm, first you must notify corporate legal who must review the potential move and either release you from non-compete obligations, or enforce the non-compete clause by offering you continued employment at a compensation rate matching the bona-fide offer you presented to legal for evaluation, whether or not you are actually working for the company.
First problem: what does submitting your offer to legal and waiting for a response do to your chances of landing the outside job? what does it do to your continued career development if you end up not leaving?
Second problem: how often does it all go as advertised, without lengthy delays, stonewalling, etc?
Final problem: even if the company does pay you for non-compete, that's very temporary while you look for other work, basically little better than unemployment compensation - and you'll be trying to get it out of a legal department for a company that you're cutting ties with - what could possibly go wrong?
But.... putting it into the hands of the knuckleheads on the street was probably the fastest way to get it introduced into the industrial settings where it makes sense.
Long running properties like a series (Stranger Things) have pretty well mapped future income curves, if they're a smash hit on release that's almost like money in the bank for the next decade.
If you accept that the world is not black and white, and that some obligations are more legitimate than others, then many of these obligations may be in that grey zone approaching predatory, unconscionable, and even illegitimate.
Certainly some debtors in this pool knew exactly what they were getting into, and received good and valuable education as a result of taking on this debt, but there is a big piece of that industry that pushes people into debt they have little or no realistic chance of repaying by the terms of the loan, knowing they will profit on the whole from those who try to make good, pay more than they borrowed, but drown under interest, fees, etc.
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AlienBob got fired...
Apparently, having two charismatic young founders is enough to get you all kinds of funding. Too bad they didn't know (or care) to translate that funding into a tangible product by giving enough of it to people with the necessary skills.
On the flip-side, you can have ALL the necessary skills, and ideas, vision and even stories required for a product like this, but without your own pile of funding, or some charismatic front-men to tell the story to people who will hand over money, the project is just as dead.
The problem comes when you work in an industry with low job density, meaning that you have to uproot and relocate to a new city to hop jobs. With specialized degrees and specialized fields of employment, this is very common today, and these specialized employees are getting the turnover treatment just the same as the HR staff, IT staff and other fungible crew.
The pay is better when you're specialized, but not good enough to handle a cross-country move every 3 years. I've done 3 city-hops in my career, strangely enough, the one prompted by a company shutdown and period of no work was paid for by the company I moved to, the two that I did by choice were largely and completely out of pocket. The time the company compensated my move, the compensation was worth about 4 months of gross pay. Even stranger, one company I was working at was acquired by a bigger company, and it worked out that I didn't have to move as a result of the acquisition, though the rest of the acquired crew did, the acquiring company paid me again about a 4 month "retention bonus" to stay with them for at least a year, so, in a sense, they compensated me for a move I didn't have to make.
So much of who hires you is luck and timing, especially in a specialized field, it's fantasy to think you have much control over the process.
That was a good one, worked as a temp for an unholy witch - she was nice to half the crew and completely mental on the other half. One day her boss directed me to defy her, so that moved me from her good list to her bad list. Thing was, weeks earlier, I had gone above and beyond my job description to give her a computer tool that made her life much easier, and it was a hidden effect because the tool was handling a big ramp-up in her work load, allowing the temps to do it themselves. On my way out the door, I managed to take my tool with me - I didn't ever want to work as a temp again anyway, and never have - she went so over the top with the agency they said they couldn't place me again, though they did somewhat reluctantly pay me for time served. I like to think I caused her 28 year old donut and coffee living self to have a mini-stroke that day.
With an agenda in pocket, you can observe almost anything and write a story about how your observations back up your agenda.
Military, private, and if Great Britain gets another nationalistic shot in the arm, they just might make a "new Concorde" applying the lessons learned from the last go around.
You're not just paying for fuel, you're also paying for maintenance, staffing, ground facilities, national security, baggage handlers unions, etc.
As you point out, ground "time costs" run 2-3 hours per flight, minimum, so to make the reduction in flight time worthwhile, it needs to be a 5+ hour flight to begin with, otherwise you won't notice the advantage except in the ticket price, and perhaps the awful delays when your super-jet has mechanical problems delaying takeoff (without a whole fleet of fungible replacements at the ready.)
As they said: NY-LA, interesting. NY-DC, not so much.
As the gap between the rich and poor expands, there will be a market for the faster air travel, you might not call it a mass market, but I've met people who have a Cessna Citation for speed plus a Gulfstrem when they're not in a hurry - these guys would certainly add a 1200+mph jet to their fleet if they could use it over land routes.
Well, now you've got ubiquity via the Microsoft Store, and if your "helpee" doesn't have paint installed, you can spend five minutes educating them about the Microsoft Store... free advertising for Microsoft Store - did you get the part in the article where she said Microsoft Store, I think it's something they're promoting.
And, do you really think a company that pushes lengthy restart updates at you every couple of weeks gives a damn about your time or convenience?
Lasers are faster than missiles, but can a laser tracking system successfully track a hypersonic missile and deliver enough energy to stop it?
It is a lower pain threshold way of paying, but ultimately quite costly, especially compared to using FOSS.
I talked with an engineer in ~2005 who "wanted to try Linux" - he asked how he would do things like Word, Excel (Open Office) Photoshop (GIMP), Internet Explorer (Firefox), etc. in Linux. I told him about the equivalent software, his response:
"You mean I'd have to learn new names and icons for the programs? I don't think I'm up for that much effort..."
Sorry, I have (been forced to) used Office and recently Office 365 - they are no prize whatsoever. 3+ years ago I worked at a shop that used Google's office suite, it works better, faster and more reliably. I haven't used "local" POP3 mail clients for over a decade, but when I did, Thunderbird and Eudora ran flaming rings around Office.
The only reason I see to prefer Office to any other mail and calendaring solutions is because it's integrated into the company directory, and if the company would divorce its personnel directory from office, that advantage would disappear too.
And if you "need the Cloud" Google Docs, for 10+ years, outperforming Office 365 even today.
I suppose the 15.10 that I'm typing this on is even worse off, then?
Funny that it's in better shape than the 14.04 LTS running on another machine in my house - that 14.04 has patched itself into all kinds of system-error complaints, and seems to be more crash prone - maybe because it runs Kodi all the time, but I like to think most of the problems are in the updates. The last update to Kodi that changed the whole user interface was particularly annoying.
Useful? perhaps not. Informative and interesting, definitely.
A simple answer would be to require the drug manufacturers to accept returned drugs for credit or exchange with fresh ones. Set a maximum legal exchange fee of $0.05 per dose and see what happens to the official expiration dates.
Plus the fact that Silicon Valley companies have become some of the biggest jerks in history at swinging non-compete, anti-poach and other employee abuse agreements around as wildly as they can possibly imagine.
Ever see a "severability" clause?
Want to try to sue for specific performance on that 15% pay cut? I bet you really don't, given the chances and amount of any potential win.
I work for a major corporation which has this provision in its non-compete, no doubt as a bone for the "unconscionable" provisions of the law.
The mechanism goes like this: if you want to take a job with a competing firm, first you must notify corporate legal who must review the potential move and either release you from non-compete obligations, or enforce the non-compete clause by offering you continued employment at a compensation rate matching the bona-fide offer you presented to legal for evaluation, whether or not you are actually working for the company.
First problem: what does submitting your offer to legal and waiting for a response do to your chances of landing the outside job? what does it do to your continued career development if you end up not leaving?
Second problem: how often does it all go as advertised, without lengthy delays, stonewalling, etc?
Final problem: even if the company does pay you for non-compete, that's very temporary while you look for other work, basically little better than unemployment compensation - and you'll be trying to get it out of a legal department for a company that you're cutting ties with - what could possibly go wrong?
Police body cams are already getting facial recognition, whether supplied by Google or others.
But.... putting it into the hands of the knuckleheads on the street was probably the fastest way to get it introduced into the industrial settings where it makes sense.
Long running properties like a series (Stranger Things) have pretty well mapped future income curves, if they're a smash hit on release that's almost like money in the bank for the next decade.
Exactly, he's talking about "R&D" investment with long term payouts.
If you accept that the world is not black and white, and that some obligations are more legitimate than others, then many of these obligations may be in that grey zone approaching predatory, unconscionable, and even illegitimate.
Certainly some debtors in this pool knew exactly what they were getting into, and received good and valuable education as a result of taking on this debt, but there is a big piece of that industry that pushes people into debt they have little or no realistic chance of repaying by the terms of the loan, knowing they will profit on the whole from those who try to make good, pay more than they borrowed, but drown under interest, fees, etc.