This is why TV and movies cost more than they "should". I'll add the same point for watching professional sports. Why should Jerry Seinfeld have made $1M per episode? The short answer is, because he could. Let's look at the cause and effect a little more closely.
IF people are willing to pay $9 for a movie ticket, THEN Sandra Bullock can make $15M on her next movie.
This is not the same as "BECAUSE Sandra Bullock wants to make $15M on her next movie, we need to charge you $9 per ticket."
As a society, our ideas of the value of being entertained seems to be out of whack.
Finally, through use of price discrimination and market segmentation, the entertainment industry can, and will continue to, try to get $9 out of the person who's willing to spend it. The question is, why are they not trying to get $0.25 out of the person who's only willing to spend that? It's better to figure out a way to charge that user and get something out of them than to continue to not serve that section of the market.
Anyway, if a show only brought in $3M per episode instead of $5M, that could potentially only affect the few top named stars and the executive producer. If each of them accepted a pay cut, the other 500 people involved with the show could probably even take a modest pay increase.
I'm a heavy internet user, and a very happy customer of Teksavvy. I run a business from home and download my share of high-bandwidth content.
I think it's fair that I pay a little more than you, but it's just as fair to say that you should pay a little less than me. If my cost is going to go up $22.50 a month, your should go down, say $5 per month. But you can bet that's not going to happen.
As Teksavvy president Rocky Gaudrault is quoted as saying, "It's in the thousands of multiples beyond what the costs are." This is less about fairly balancing costs between consumers and is more an excuse to charge heavy users more without charging light users less.
I just looked at the just released 17" Macbook Pro, and it says it ships within 24 hours. Add in expedited shipping and I'm pretty sure you could have your hands on one in 4 days max. Whenever I've done this, they've shipped from China. I'm in Canada, and the same happens for Americans. I can't see how shipping to NZ from China can be THAT much less efficient that shipping to Canada.
Buy buying from Apple directly, you get the added bonus of potentially being able to save a bit of $$ by buying a refurbished unit.
Early on in my career, I showed up for an interview. I drove 30 minutes to get there, was in my suit, and ready to rock. I got there, and the front desk person handed me a 10 page document, and told me to sit down and fill it in. I hadn't even met anybody else yet. It was a programming test. I filled in a page or two, decided I didn't want to work at a place like that, and walked out.
I later interviewed at a large corporation as a Perl programmer. I passed all the interviews, and then they wanted me to write a Perl programme to show them I actually did know what I was talking about. I took their specs, which they said should take maybe an hour to finish. It took me 7 hours. I handed it in, along with my notes on where their specs were vague and why I'd taken the route I had. I got the job and they rewrote the test after that.
Maybe I'm a good programmer or maybe I'm not, but I'm with you that programmers will be more likely to take a test when the risk/reward balance is topped to the correct side.
What exactly was repugnant to you in my post? I was merely trying to subtly make the point that if you were referring to Christianity in your original post, you had the theology wrong.
This time I'm making the point more clearly.
Possibly you were referring to other religions. In Islam, for example, it is taught that a follower's good deads will be weighed against his bad deeds after death. While there are aspects of this in the Bible and I don't want to discount this, one of the central theses of Christianity is that one is saved by trusting in Jesus' sacrifice, rather than attaining a certain level of "goodness" or avoiding a certain level of "badness".
Because, if the soul-mind connection can be interefered with, that negates the moral purpose of the soul as repository for merits and demerits caused by good and bad actions. If your bad actions can result from a bad connection, then the soul (and the self) should not accrue the demerits, bad karma, stains, evil, or whatever you want to call it. Because if they did, then I could go to hell for walking under a strong magnet.
Maybe you should consider a religion where one's good or bad actions are not the key influencers of one's eternal destiny--Christianity, for example.
First, I want to make it clear that I think these rates are ridiculous and I absolutely do not support them. However...
The rates quoted are the rates SAIC is charging. They are NOT the rates the contractors are paid. The article is very misleading on this point and I'm surprised that this hasn't been picked up on here.
If SAIC charges their client $600k per year for a consultant, SAIC is probably paying that employee, say, $140k. It's extremely disingenuous to state that these contractors themselves are making this type of salary. It is their employer who is billing this kind of money for their employees' time.
I'm sure there's a lot of blame to go around here, but from reading the article the only people I can say are DEFINITELY to blame are the ones at the government who approved SAIC's budget.
Unfortunately, teachers who rely on this cursory grading may overlook that their students had inserted off-topic references to bananas in their essays.
I once got 117% on a History essay in high school. I got 97% on the essay, 10% extra credit for handing it in early, and 10% for typing it. Perhaps I lost those 3% by putting "Help I'm a bug" in the middle of the essay. Thanks, Calvin & Hobbes.
How's blau.de for roaming throughout Europe? I'm going to be in Europe for 5 weeks this summer, part work, part vacation. I'll be spending time in England, the Netherlands, a couple days in Germany (mostly travelling) and Switzerland. Does anyone know if a plan and USB device I can either pick up in England that will work in all those places, or in the Netherlands (probably more realistic) that will work without roaming charges in both the Netherlands and Switzerland?
Good thing we're all just like you. I'm going to be in Europe for about 5 weeks this summer. I'm self employed, and am designating two weeks for work and three weeks for vacation.
I suppose, according to your logic, I should only go for 3 weeks and spend the other two weeks working at home instead of in a village in the Swiss Alps...? There are still evenings and weekends, and of course this lets my wife and kids enjoy 5 weeks of vacation instead of 3.
I don't think it would be that difficult from a third party app's point of view. The background app's state could still be "off", just like it is now. Then app makers could release a new version that supports multitasking in a background state if they feel their app could make some use of this.
Manual transmission drivers don't have three feet, they can't hold the break, clutch and gas at the same time.
The usual use is different, but apparently you have never heard of heel and toe shifting. It is certainly possible to press the accelerator, clutch and BRAKE (not "break") pedals simultaneously.
Does anybody know of a company providing Mac OS X VPSs? I presume this would be expensive, but I've been idly looking around for this for the last couple weeks and haven't even found one company.
I'd just like to know if there's anyone selling virtual private servers running Mac OS X Server.
I think now would be a great time to produce an app that does "lightning-fast" searches of GMail inboxes... That would be (not very) quick way of finding out whether Google bought reMail to integrate it, or to kill it.
Hey, maybe I found the missing step 2:
1. Build email searching app
2. *** GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE *** (darn, we have to buy ANOTHER one of these?)
3. Profit!
Yeah, I know what you mean about the tall part, at least. At 6'4 and 200lbs I don't fit particularly well into the average airline seat. What burns me is the 5'4 person in front of me thinking it's OK to just pop their seat the whole way back as soon as the flight starts. I'm sorry (OK actually I'm NOT sorry) but that's MY space. I don't assume I can move my seatback into the space of the person behind me if they're using it.
I'm not normally an asshole, but on a plane I become one. My knees are jammed up against the seat as it is, so if the person in front tries to move their seat back, I make absolutely no concession for them. They quickly find out that having their entire seat banged and jostled every 3 minutes while I change positions is much less comfortable than just moving their seat forward again.
You're absolutely right about that. There are a few factors at play as well, for me at least.
How do you accurately estimate jobs that are out of your control? For example, if a job entails writing to a third party API, how do you know that that API is properly documented? Is the documentation correct? Will the people respond if/when you find problems with it? Things like this are completely out of your control as the contractor, unless of course you do all that work up front.
If I'm doing to do all that work up front when bidding for a job against other people, WHY should I do that? So that I can get undercut by someone who DIDN'T do their homework? No thanks. I'll save myself the time, and explain to the customer why I am not going to provide a fixed bid. I don't think I've ever gotten the contract when I've explained this to a potential customer, but hopefully it at least made them screen applications a little more carefully.
I already have way too much work with clients who are happy with me and are willing to pay me my hourly rates. I wouldn't want to jeopardize my existing client relationships to take on a high-risk, fixed-bid contract with a new customer.
When (some) customers are on a fixed bid, it makes them think that they can be as inefficient as they want, because I'm the one absorbing that inefficiency. Because I'm busy enough as it is, why should I take this on? With hourly contracts, I'm in charge of my own efficiency, and since I have enough customers who are fine with this, I'd rather be in control than have a new client, with whom I haven't yet built a trust relationship, in control.
I do have one client with whom I do fixed bid work. However, they aren't a client I had to pick up through a competitive open bidding process. In that case it works out very well for both of us.
I'm just one person. If I got and took every potential client that rang me up, I'd be completely swamped and then I'd lose all my clients. I'd much rather be able to cherry pick just those clients where it's a really good match for both of us.
I almost always bill per hour. Most of the time my clients give me an email or verbal idea of what they want over the phone. I try to get as many questions answered as I can without wasting time.
I then take the task and break it down into as many bite-sized subtasks as I can. This does a couple things:
1. It shows where I have unanswered questions
2. It's easier to estimate "add 3 new roles to management interface" and "add cart admin role to admin interface" than it is to estimate "make admin area more secure".
Once that's complete (for this round), I put all those line items into a spreadsheet. I then estimate the number of hours it takes in a reasonable best, and worst, case scenario. So "add cart admin rold to admin interface" might be 3-4.5 hours.
I then add all those up, and add about 33% for planning, and 33% for testing/deployment. Sometimes it can be more or less depending on my experience with the client. I then give that spreadsheet to the client and say, I'm pretty confident your price will be within this range. The areas that have high variability are the areas we need to work on nailing down further. I will bill you actual time taken, but I'll let you know if the range is nearing the top number so we can re-evaluate. That almost never happens, or I should say that when it does, it's almost always because the client has asked for more work, and they understand this.
Customers almost always appreciate this approach and find it helpful. Most of the time I only do this for the first project for a client, and then they just ask me to give them a verbal idea of how hard the project will be since they trust me.
For the very occasional fixed bid work I do, I just take the high number, pad it a bit, and double my hourly rate. I tell customers ahead of time though that they are better off hiring me hourly in almost every circumstance. I usually don't spend a lot of time on fixed bid work because, frankly, I usually don't want it.
It sounds to me a bit like the author of that article is a little miffed that he's been disintermediated. He mentioned several times about how Apple PR hasn't gotten back to him on this or that, therefore these features must be absent. He also mentions how Apple views the press as an extension of their marketing arm.
It all smells a little like sour grapes to me. Boo hoo Apple won't tell *ME*, a member of the PRESS, things that I want to know! Therefore they must be absent! Yeah, that'll shame Apple into talking to you. Way to push them around.
My own take, which is just about as informed as the writer's, is that the iPad will include the same Microsoft Exchange, VPN, multitasking, document saving & transferring, etc. etc. capabilities as the iPhone or iPod Touch. And why not? It's the same OS? The only place they're likely to differ is if the iPad doesn't include a camera.
I can't understand why Apple would REMOVE VPN functionality from the iPad when it's there already. I suppose they might ship without Exchange support as it's a new mail client, but if that is the case I'll expect it in a forthcoming new version, just like what happened with the original iPhone.
If you can't pass a basic English test (ELPE/TOEFL), then you won't be admitted to the University of Waterloo. This is one of the reasons why applicants fail entrance to UW; they/we must pass an English exam in order to be admitted. This point is made in TFA.
As a native English speaker, I found the ELPE to be small potatoes, if you'll pardon my pun.
You're obviously not Canadian, nor are you familiar with the Canadian education system. A "university" in Canada denotes a certain (high) standard of learning, unlike, say, our neighbours to the south.
In Canada, for instance, there is a great difference between "universities" and "colleges"... although many universities have colleges, but now I'm confusing myself.
I really know of no way that one would be able to purchase a university degree in Canada. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be almost impossible. It would be much easier and less expensive to purchase one from another country.
I have a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo and I live in the region still. One of the reasons that UW has so many people failing the ELPE (English Language Proficiency Exam), and one of the reasons it requires the test in the first place, is because of the numbers of foreign students at the university.
Waterloo has, I believe, the largest math and computer science programmes in the world. It also what is generally regarded as Canada's best engineering school. These hard science and engineering programmes attract a large number of far eastern students. When I was in school in the '90s, you'd have been more likely to hear Cantonese than English if you wandered around the Math building. I don't want to generalise, but many of these students probably come to Waterloo because they can get a great education in a programme that doesn't require them to speak perfect English, and where they have a large number of their peers.
Probably one of the reasons that Waterloo students fail the ELPE in such high numbers is that many of them are foreigners for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language. I only wish I spoke multiple languages as well as many Waterloo students speak English.
Because we North Americans (I'll include Canada so the Americans just write my comment off as racist) have a high percentage of lazy fat people who hate the outdoors.
OK I'll temper that a bit. We have winter, and many people dislike winter. They wish to experience it as little as possible. Therefore they start their cars before they get in, so they don't have to scrape as much ice off their windscreens (or at least so it comes off easier). Their car is also toasty warm quicker.
In northern Europe, engine pre-heaters are more common. I believe you can buy Volvos with petrol- or diesel-fired heaters from the factory. That way your engine is truly warm and so is your interior, without wasting fuel pointlessly running your engine. Those aren't factory options here and basically nobody does that because a) they've never heard of the option, and b) it would cost a couple thousand dollars. I'd love to have one in my diesel Land Rover but I cheaped out and put in an electric recirculating coolant heater instead for a couple hundred dollars.
You will note that both Webasto and Eberspacher are German companies. Their presence in North America is mostly limited to transport trucks and other commercial vehicles.
Either you live where the sun shines all the time and it never gets below freezing, or you're a snow bunny.
Or, your car's engine is so efficient that it doesn't generate enough heat while idling to warm your cabin.
Neither my '05 Volvo XC90 (2.5t petrol) or my '86 Land Rover 110 (2.5t diesel) generate enough heat under idle to noticeably lift the engine temperature, let alone the temperature coming into the cab. On my Land Rover I fitted a recirculating oil heater to help this out somewhat. I can idle my Volvo all I want but it's not going to help the interior temperature much. The best it will do is start to defrost the windows.
I agree. If we "just" (I know it's harder than it sounds) rank countries on their environmental standards and impose an environmental tariff on all imported goods, that would be a good start. Goods imported from, say, Sweden would be given a 1x tariff. Goods from China would be given a 3x tariff. Suddenly that $5 Chinese doll in Walmart would be $20, with $15 going towards an environmental cleanup fund or something. Sure, every country would complain that their tariff was unfairly calculated, but whatever.
Lets not let the environment, and our children and grandchildren, pay for our greed and shortsightedness. I'm all for lifting up the world's and not just our own standards of living, but we're not paying the full cost of our decisions.
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This is why TV and movies cost more than they "should". I'll add the same point for watching professional sports. Why should Jerry Seinfeld have made $1M per episode? The short answer is, because he could. Let's look at the cause and effect a little more closely.
IF people are willing to pay $9 for a movie ticket, THEN Sandra Bullock can make $15M on her next movie.
This is not the same as "BECAUSE Sandra Bullock wants to make $15M on her next movie, we need to charge you $9 per ticket."
As a society, our ideas of the value of being entertained seems to be out of whack.
Finally, through use of price discrimination and market segmentation, the entertainment industry can, and will continue to, try to get $9 out of the person who's willing to spend it. The question is, why are they not trying to get $0.25 out of the person who's only willing to spend that? It's better to figure out a way to charge that user and get something out of them than to continue to not serve that section of the market.
Anyway, if a show only brought in $3M per episode instead of $5M, that could potentially only affect the few top named stars and the executive producer. If each of them accepted a pay cut, the other 500 people involved with the show could probably even take a modest pay increase.
I'm a heavy internet user, and a very happy customer of Teksavvy. I run a business from home and download my share of high-bandwidth content.
I think it's fair that I pay a little more than you, but it's just as fair to say that you should pay a little less than me. If my cost is going to go up $22.50 a month, your should go down, say $5 per month. But you can bet that's not going to happen.
As Teksavvy president Rocky Gaudrault is quoted as saying, "It's in the thousands of multiples beyond what the costs are." This is less about fairly balancing costs between consumers and is more an excuse to charge heavy users more without charging light users less.
Bell is an evil company that hates its customers.
Why not just order directly from Apple? I'll even provide you the link: http://store.apple.com/nz/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTAyNTQzMzk. There you go.
I just looked at the just released 17" Macbook Pro, and it says it ships within 24 hours. Add in expedited shipping and I'm pretty sure you could have your hands on one in 4 days max. Whenever I've done this, they've shipped from China. I'm in Canada, and the same happens for Americans. I can't see how shipping to NZ from China can be THAT much less efficient that shipping to Canada.
Buy buying from Apple directly, you get the added bonus of potentially being able to save a bit of $$ by buying a refurbished unit.
Early on in my career, I showed up for an interview. I drove 30 minutes to get there, was in my suit, and ready to rock. I got there, and the front desk person handed me a 10 page document, and told me to sit down and fill it in. I hadn't even met anybody else yet. It was a programming test. I filled in a page or two, decided I didn't want to work at a place like that, and walked out.
I later interviewed at a large corporation as a Perl programmer. I passed all the interviews, and then they wanted me to write a Perl programme to show them I actually did know what I was talking about. I took their specs, which they said should take maybe an hour to finish. It took me 7 hours. I handed it in, along with my notes on where their specs were vague and why I'd taken the route I had. I got the job and they rewrote the test after that.
Maybe I'm a good programmer or maybe I'm not, but I'm with you that programmers will be more likely to take a test when the risk/reward balance is topped to the correct side.
What exactly was repugnant to you in my post? I was merely trying to subtly make the point that if you were referring to Christianity in your original post, you had the theology wrong.
This time I'm making the point more clearly.
Possibly you were referring to other religions. In Islam, for example, it is taught that a follower's good deads will be weighed against his bad deeds after death. While there are aspects of this in the Bible and I don't want to discount this, one of the central theses of Christianity is that one is saved by trusting in Jesus' sacrifice, rather than attaining a certain level of "goodness" or avoiding a certain level of "badness".
Because, if the soul-mind connection can be interefered with, that negates the moral purpose of the soul as repository for merits and demerits caused by good and bad actions. If your bad actions can result from a bad connection, then the soul (and the self) should not accrue the demerits, bad karma, stains, evil, or whatever you want to call it. Because if they did, then I could go to hell for walking under a strong magnet.
Maybe you should consider a religion where one's good or bad actions are not the key influencers of one's eternal destiny--Christianity, for example.
First, I want to make it clear that I think these rates are ridiculous and I absolutely do not support them. However...
The rates quoted are the rates SAIC is charging. They are NOT the rates the contractors are paid. The article is very misleading on this point and I'm surprised that this hasn't been picked up on here.
If SAIC charges their client $600k per year for a consultant, SAIC is probably paying that employee, say, $140k. It's extremely disingenuous to state that these contractors themselves are making this type of salary. It is their employer who is billing this kind of money for their employees' time.
I'm sure there's a lot of blame to go around here, but from reading the article the only people I can say are DEFINITELY to blame are the ones at the government who approved SAIC's budget.
Unfortunately, teachers who rely on this cursory grading may overlook that their students had inserted off-topic references to bananas in their essays.
I once got 117% on a History essay in high school. I got 97% on the essay, 10% extra credit for handing it in early, and 10% for typing it. Perhaps I lost those 3% by putting "Help I'm a bug" in the middle of the essay. Thanks, Calvin & Hobbes.
How's blau.de for roaming throughout Europe? I'm going to be in Europe for 5 weeks this summer, part work, part vacation. I'll be spending time in England, the Netherlands, a couple days in Germany (mostly travelling) and Switzerland. Does anyone know if a plan and USB device I can either pick up in England that will work in all those places, or in the Netherlands (probably more realistic) that will work without roaming charges in both the Netherlands and Switzerland?
Good thing we're all just like you. I'm going to be in Europe for about 5 weeks this summer. I'm self employed, and am designating two weeks for work and three weeks for vacation.
I suppose, according to your logic, I should only go for 3 weeks and spend the other two weeks working at home instead of in a village in the Swiss Alps...? There are still evenings and weekends, and of course this lets my wife and kids enjoy 5 weeks of vacation instead of 3.
I don't think it would be that difficult from a third party app's point of view. The background app's state could still be "off", just like it is now. Then app makers could release a new version that supports multitasking in a background state if they feel their app could make some use of this.
Manual transmission drivers don't have three feet, they can't hold the break, clutch and gas at the same time.
The usual use is different, but apparently you have never heard of heel and toe shifting. It is certainly possible to press the accelerator, clutch and BRAKE (not "break") pedals simultaneously.
Thanks for the tips. Neither one is quite what I'm looking for, but I'd never heard of serverlogistics.
Does anybody know of a company providing Mac OS X VPSs? I presume this would be expensive, but I've been idly looking around for this for the last couple weeks and haven't even found one company.
I'd just like to know if there's anyone selling virtual private servers running Mac OS X Server.
I think now would be a great time to produce an app that does "lightning-fast" searches of GMail inboxes... That would be (not very) quick way of finding out whether Google bought reMail to integrate it, or to kill it.
Hey, maybe I found the missing step 2:
1. Build email searching app
2. *** GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE *** (darn, we have to buy ANOTHER one of these?)
3. Profit!
Yeah, I know what you mean about the tall part, at least. At 6'4 and 200lbs I don't fit particularly well into the average airline seat. What burns me is the 5'4 person in front of me thinking it's OK to just pop their seat the whole way back as soon as the flight starts. I'm sorry (OK actually I'm NOT sorry) but that's MY space. I don't assume I can move my seatback into the space of the person behind me if they're using it.
I'm not normally an asshole, but on a plane I become one. My knees are jammed up against the seat as it is, so if the person in front tries to move their seat back, I make absolutely no concession for them. They quickly find out that having their entire seat banged and jostled every 3 minutes while I change positions is much less comfortable than just moving their seat forward again.
You could try a similar tact.
You're absolutely right about that. There are a few factors at play as well, for me at least.
How do you accurately estimate jobs that are out of your control? For example, if a job entails writing to a third party API, how do you know that that API is properly documented? Is the documentation correct? Will the people respond if/when you find problems with it? Things like this are completely out of your control as the contractor, unless of course you do all that work up front.
If I'm doing to do all that work up front when bidding for a job against other people, WHY should I do that? So that I can get undercut by someone who DIDN'T do their homework? No thanks. I'll save myself the time, and explain to the customer why I am not going to provide a fixed bid. I don't think I've ever gotten the contract when I've explained this to a potential customer, but hopefully it at least made them screen applications a little more carefully.
I already have way too much work with clients who are happy with me and are willing to pay me my hourly rates. I wouldn't want to jeopardize my existing client relationships to take on a high-risk, fixed-bid contract with a new customer.
When (some) customers are on a fixed bid, it makes them think that they can be as inefficient as they want, because I'm the one absorbing that inefficiency. Because I'm busy enough as it is, why should I take this on? With hourly contracts, I'm in charge of my own efficiency, and since I have enough customers who are fine with this, I'd rather be in control than have a new client, with whom I haven't yet built a trust relationship, in control.
I do have one client with whom I do fixed bid work. However, they aren't a client I had to pick up through a competitive open bidding process. In that case it works out very well for both of us.
I'm just one person. If I got and took every potential client that rang me up, I'd be completely swamped and then I'd lose all my clients. I'd much rather be able to cherry pick just those clients where it's a really good match for both of us.
I almost always bill per hour. Most of the time my clients give me an email or verbal idea of what they want over the phone. I try to get as many questions answered as I can without wasting time.
I then take the task and break it down into as many bite-sized subtasks as I can. This does a couple things:
1. It shows where I have unanswered questions
2. It's easier to estimate "add 3 new roles to management interface" and "add cart admin role to admin interface" than it is to estimate "make admin area more secure".
Once that's complete (for this round), I put all those line items into a spreadsheet. I then estimate the number of hours it takes in a reasonable best, and worst, case scenario. So "add cart admin rold to admin interface" might be 3-4.5 hours.
I then add all those up, and add about 33% for planning, and 33% for testing/deployment. Sometimes it can be more or less depending on my experience with the client. I then give that spreadsheet to the client and say, I'm pretty confident your price will be within this range. The areas that have high variability are the areas we need to work on nailing down further. I will bill you actual time taken, but I'll let you know if the range is nearing the top number so we can re-evaluate. That almost never happens, or I should say that when it does, it's almost always because the client has asked for more work, and they understand this.
Customers almost always appreciate this approach and find it helpful. Most of the time I only do this for the first project for a client, and then they just ask me to give them a verbal idea of how hard the project will be since they trust me.
For the very occasional fixed bid work I do, I just take the high number, pad it a bit, and double my hourly rate. I tell customers ahead of time though that they are better off hiring me hourly in almost every circumstance. I usually don't spend a lot of time on fixed bid work because, frankly, I usually don't want it.
It sounds to me a bit like the author of that article is a little miffed that he's been disintermediated. He mentioned several times about how Apple PR hasn't gotten back to him on this or that, therefore these features must be absent. He also mentions how Apple views the press as an extension of their marketing arm.
It all smells a little like sour grapes to me. Boo hoo Apple won't tell *ME*, a member of the PRESS, things that I want to know! Therefore they must be absent! Yeah, that'll shame Apple into talking to you. Way to push them around.
My own take, which is just about as informed as the writer's, is that the iPad will include the same Microsoft Exchange, VPN, multitasking, document saving & transferring, etc. etc. capabilities as the iPhone or iPod Touch. And why not? It's the same OS? The only place they're likely to differ is if the iPad doesn't include a camera.
I can't understand why Apple would REMOVE VPN functionality from the iPad when it's there already. I suppose they might ship without Exchange support as it's a new mail client, but if that is the case I'll expect it in a forthcoming new version, just like what happened with the original iPhone.
If you can't pass a basic English test (ELPE/TOEFL), then you won't be admitted to the University of Waterloo. This is one of the reasons why applicants fail entrance to UW; they/we must pass an English exam in order to be admitted. This point is made in TFA.
As a native English speaker, I found the ELPE to be small potatoes, if you'll pardon my pun.
You're obviously not Canadian, nor are you familiar with the Canadian education system. A "university" in Canada denotes a certain (high) standard of learning, unlike, say, our neighbours to the south.
... although many universities have colleges, but now I'm confusing myself.
In Canada, for instance, there is a great difference between "universities" and "colleges"
I really know of no way that one would be able to purchase a university degree in Canada. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be almost impossible. It would be much easier and less expensive to purchase one from another country.
I have a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo and I live in the region still. One of the reasons that UW has so many people failing the ELPE (English Language Proficiency Exam), and one of the reasons it requires the test in the first place, is because of the numbers of foreign students at the university.
Waterloo has, I believe, the largest math and computer science programmes in the world. It also what is generally regarded as Canada's best engineering school. These hard science and engineering programmes attract a large number of far eastern students. When I was in school in the '90s, you'd have been more likely to hear Cantonese than English if you wandered around the Math building. I don't want to generalise, but many of these students probably come to Waterloo because they can get a great education in a programme that doesn't require them to speak perfect English, and where they have a large number of their peers.
Probably one of the reasons that Waterloo students fail the ELPE in such high numbers is that many of them are foreigners for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language. I only wish I spoke multiple languages as well as many Waterloo students speak English.
Because we North Americans (I'll include Canada so the Americans just write my comment off as racist) have a high percentage of lazy fat people who hate the outdoors.
OK I'll temper that a bit. We have winter, and many people dislike winter. They wish to experience it as little as possible. Therefore they start their cars before they get in, so they don't have to scrape as much ice off their windscreens (or at least so it comes off easier). Their car is also toasty warm quicker.
In northern Europe, engine pre-heaters are more common. I believe you can buy Volvos with petrol- or diesel-fired heaters from the factory. That way your engine is truly warm and so is your interior, without wasting fuel pointlessly running your engine. Those aren't factory options here and basically nobody does that because a) they've never heard of the option, and b) it would cost a couple thousand dollars. I'd love to have one in my diesel Land Rover but I cheaped out and put in an electric recirculating coolant heater instead for a couple hundred dollars.
You will note that both Webasto and Eberspacher are German companies. Their presence in North America is mostly limited to transport trucks and other commercial vehicles.
Either you live where the sun shines all the time and it never gets below freezing, or you're a snow bunny.
Or, your car's engine is so efficient that it doesn't generate enough heat while idling to warm your cabin.
Neither my '05 Volvo XC90 (2.5t petrol) or my '86 Land Rover 110 (2.5t diesel) generate enough heat under idle to noticeably lift the engine temperature, let alone the temperature coming into the cab. On my Land Rover I fitted a recirculating oil heater to help this out somewhat. I can idle my Volvo all I want but it's not going to help the interior temperature much. The best it will do is start to defrost the windows.
I agree. If we "just" (I know it's harder than it sounds) rank countries on their environmental standards and impose an environmental tariff on all imported goods, that would be a good start. Goods imported from, say, Sweden would be given a 1x tariff. Goods from China would be given a 3x tariff. Suddenly that $5 Chinese doll in Walmart would be $20, with $15 going towards an environmental cleanup fund or something. Sure, every country would complain that their tariff was unfairly calculated, but whatever.
Lets not let the environment, and our children and grandchildren, pay for our greed and shortsightedness. I'm all for lifting up the world's and not just our own standards of living, but we're not paying the full cost of our decisions.