Probably more importantly, IE was free while Navigator 4.0 was $49. While there were free licenses available for personal and educational use, corporations and institutions adopted IE en masse as the cheap âoegood enoughâ solution especially since Windows 95 had an extremely rapid corporate migration due to much improved networking and hardware support.
I bought a Vizio E-series 2016 for my father. Perfect dumb tv and was on the shelf at his local Walmart. (previous E series were smart). Probably $100 less than a smart TV. These TVs were unique in that the only smart features were provided via built-in Google Cast. So pretty much beam apps from your ipad, including a custom vizio app. Otherwise nothing smart -- no netflix, amazon, nothing. Using Google Cast worked great for me visiting, but was beyond his capability. He just wanted a dumb TV to watch cable TV on.
In 2017, Vizio changed strategy and announced a free upgrade for all 2016 E Series owners. To the "full" Smart TV package on almost every Vizio. And now his "dumb" TV is getting Airplay 2. I didn't realize until this article that this "free" upgrade was just another shot at monetization -- artificial price differentiation to make the sale (since obviously the smarts were in the original TV), then give the smarts free to those who didn't pay for it to unlock the third party revenue stream. Impressive.
The problem with N2 is that some prisoners are going to hold their breath for 3-4 minutes, then start breathing the N2. While the comments are accurate about people who want to die, or accidentally die via N2 being quick and painless, its going to be pretty ghastly to watch some guy hold his breath until blue, then start gasping for air, then go unconscious and die. Some guy will train himself for a 7+ minute breath hold. Other forms of execution aren't affected by prisoner choice -- seems an obviously cruel method to let people live as long as they can hold their breath.
In August 1992 I purchased a 486-66 machine with 4MB of RAM for $3000. It was pretty top of the line for consumer use. In May 1993 I purchased 4MB of RAM for $400. In spring 1995 I purchased 8MB of RAM for $300 for the machine. Ran Linux in each configuration (first install SLS in April 1993 -- May purchase was to get X somewhat functional). Each sum was a lot of money at the time for me as a college student.
In 1987, the company I worked for spent $2000 for 4MB RAM for a 386 Novell server. In 1982, the company I worked for spent $2000 for a 512K RAM disk for CP/M (trade name of "Semidisk" -- it had an external power supply and would maintain state across the reboots and power cycles of the host machine)
CS50 has always been fast and loose. I can remember showing weaker students my code and letting them copy a few lines or the answers to early problems. And vice versa. Many times TAs were in the labs shoulder to shoulder with us helping us with problem sets. Collaboration was always encouraged as long as you came up with some original ideas for harder problems and you weren't blatantly ripping off other people. Intro to CS is designed to get to pretty challenging material quick. You can't get to the fun stuff if everyone has to solve every easy and medium problem from scratch. Back in the dot-com days, passing CS50/51 with a good grade was sufficient to get a professional programming job, regardless of major. Those who didn't go to Harvard may not realize that getting easy problems 100% right is not culturally respected in the sciences there -- most exams are solely problems that range from hard to extremely hard and a 50 or 60 is an A-.
Plagiarism is a tough standard to apply to computer science at the intro level, similar to plagiarism in algebra. I completely understand and respect the Be Reasonable concept -- that's how we rolled (I took CS50 at roughly the same time as the current professor). I saw stuff that went over the line as well (printouts fished out of bins or stolen from printers, cut and paste specials)
I like the Be Reasonable concept, but it has clearly reached its limit if this many students are getting dragged into investigations.
Was the price of Blu-ray 3D films and Blu-ray 3D players set too high?
- didn't even hit the radar by this point
One issue not discussed yet is that content was very expensive. At one point there was a limited amount of 3D VOD at about twice normal VOD prices ($9 or so). But Netflix never supported 3D for DVD rentals. Nor redbox. Some of the "trashy" 3D wasn't bad but were you really going to spend $30 to watch The Green Lantern? So most people had a very limited amount of 3D content. Both of the cable companies around me had no 3D content other than pay VOD and that is long gone. The only movie I wanted to see in the past few years that was available to me in 3D was Harry Potter 7 Part 2 which was pretty decent.
There are still millions of 3D TVs out there (and most can find a 3D BluRay player). Make a good 3D movie, people will buy it if they were going to buy the BluRay anyway. Passive 3D is available cheap on many mid-range or better TVs these days, though its becoming rarer.
If there was cheap content, people would still be watching 3D.
Actually there's another location in an office park in Warwick, Rhode Island (RI DHS office). I only had a 4.5 month wait for my GE interview (a year ago, its not getting any better). They clearly haven't done the math -- if the wait was shorter, I'd suggest my wife and friends do it. As it is, I'd only suggest it for true road warriors.
If they want people to do it, make it so you can arrive an hour early for your next flight and sign up at the airport -- not wait 5 months.
If you're going to do it, might as well do GE. I don't know that many road warriors who don't do at least an occasional international flight. And you can easily wait 75 minutes at Logan for customs/immigration if you're sitting in the back of the 2nd 747 to land in a row.
So I have 7 ipads. All of them were purchased used except one from work.
My family uses 4 (1 each), my parents have 2, and an ipad 1 sits around unused as it has minimal value at this point due to app compatibility. Most wealthy families I know have multiple ones (one or more for kids, one or more for parents). All lower middle class families I know of have one or more for the family. With cheap apps, its a good value especially used.
I'm considering buying a eighth to run navigation and fish finder for my boat. An used ipad plus the sensor is far cheaper and more powerful than a dedicated boat unit. I also have 3 more specialty tablets that are hardly used as ipad is more powerful. And two Sony Dashs.
Apple hit a great price/value point for these units. And badly misjudged obsolescence -- the batteries last many years, unlike iphones. There aren't any killer apps driving upgrades Consumers don't want bigger screens (though there's some good professional use cases). Or pencils. The tablet category may be the most rapidly matured piece of electronics in history. 5 years from brand new and hot to a completely mature market.
Many people have used an emergency brake to effectively stop a car at speed. Just because you (and my mother) can't, don't knock the concept. For slowing to a stop it works ok -- panic stops good luck.
I have this car. It's not how it works. It's not three presses.
The shove to park normally works. There's an "easy" press up and a "hard" press up. The problem is if you do it a little softly you go into neutral instead. Since its not mechanical you tend to do it with a lighter touch than most cars. I had it happen to me once when I went to open the door and the car started rolling. I shifted into park. People need to pay attention when they drive. It is very easy to drive this car if you pay attention and it took no special instruction during the test drive or for relatives. I drive rental cars for work all the time and its no different than the standard "this brand does things a bit different" feel.
This transmission shifter design supports the "Sport" mode in the transmission which optionally allows gear selection of the transmission . It lets you get out of sport both up and down with a hard press and is a more natural feel than the "separate gate" design. You do a hard press down to get into sport, soft presses up and down if you want to pick the gear, hard press up or down to get out. You can also paddle shift up and down. Its a pretty cool and effective design -- unfortunately sport mode itself isn't particularly fun.
There have been several firmware upgrades to this transmission which I highly recommend (for shift quality and RPM gates). I also think it improved this problem.
Good call. .
When it blows up, it will be your problem. I've had signed blood oaths from business executives that they fully understand the risks of legacy unsupported equipment running business processes. When it blows up, IT folk are still the ones on nights and weekends trying to patch it together. Even if you pull off a miracle and quickly resolve 80% of failures, your professionalism (and future raises) will be shattered over the other 20%.
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There's a certain amount of legacy gear you can never avoid (we have a VAX plugged in if we need an update and recompile for a piece of hardware delivered about 40 years ago to a key customer and still in active use). And we have a lot of very expensive industrial equipment that relies on legacy OSs. There's no excuse for not keeping basic equipment up to date. That CEO has no understanding of risk management. I know small businesses that just closed up shop and went out of business after a major IT failure. He's playing Russian roulette with his company. For people who have options, you should never work somewhere that disrespects your profession.
So as a certified Naval Nuclear engineer (though a decade stale...)
These nuclear plants are designed for significant manning for routine operations. One of the key systems controls distribution of electrical power and continuous control of voltage through the various electrical "grids" in the ship. This system is highly manual because its the type of thing that a trained person does really well and there are all kinds of niche conditions that rely on a lot of judgment.
As the voltage is manually tweaked multiple times/hour, it is pretty certain that the voltage would go out of spec in a matter of days or weeks, eventually triggering cascading failure as one redundant system after another falls offline due to electrical transients.
Highly unlikely it would make it a year. With one really trained person you could probably make it 5-10 years until equipment failure due to a lack of maintenance (either skills or parts) caused shutdown.
So I've hired a lot of older programmers, and a lot of older programmers are my best ones.
1) You can't fake management. I've fired far more managers than top technical guys. If you're not really into management, you're not going to make it. It's starting over in an entirely new skillset. Be a team lead for a few people if necessary or expected for your company.
2) Find a really tough area. It's probably not going to be the new cool language of the week. My top older programmers have been mainframe specialists, database architects, systems architects, data warehousing specialists. Whatever was really tough at the time. By focusing on really hard, complex problems you scare off the younger competition. It's ok, they want to work on the new shiny stuff anyway.
3) Learn to communicate. Those new young guys do, but they have their own style. Take advantage of your background and create your own style. You need to build partnerships with managers and customers so they have confidence in you. Make your experience valuable to the team doing peer reviews, designs, etc. Spend time mentoring new guys in the "right way" to build and maintain systems. Not being an old fogey/jerk -- just sharing the wealth with everyone new and old. My best old guys can reach across the org and get me access to data sources unreachable through the front door. Access to their "old guys network" and institutional knowledge is something they bring to the table. The young guys bring something else. I assign each to the jobs that are right for them.
4) Push the future from your perspective. The young guys are from an edgy and somewhat naïve perspective. You need to push the future from your perspective. If you keep your head down and keep programming, the young guys will win, one will get lucky and end up in management and potentially all hell will break loose. Even if you don't win, being part of the strategic planning process makes sure you stay in the game and the voice of experience and discipline is heard (and keeps middle aged guys like me in charge).
Some of my saddest days was guys retiring at 60+ or dying on the job. I can always hire new young guys -- it takes decades to get more experienced guys.
There's a real art. Used to be, if you ordered a triple play from the cable company, they'd send out a top guy since they were the only ones qualified for all 3. Some of those guys really went above and beyond for a pro installation.
Go either to the attic, basement, or crawlspace. Run from there to the closest point. Hug the walls even if its the long way, cable is cheap. Then do a short outdoor hop if necessary.
If you've got some money, go ahead and hire a pro. For $200-300 you'll be done. Or cut the walls and repaint. Your wife will like a custom color anyway.
If you're patient, chop the cable, blame it on the previous resident, other construction, etc., and pay the service fee for the reinstallation at a better location. I ripped out both a cable company box and all the phone wire as an eyesore and left the wires dangling from the pole. (We have two cable companies in town).
One way not mentioned that they save money is efficient repair.
When you get a warranty payment from Squaretrade they make you send back the broken device. Which they can turn around at leisure, without the difficulties of getting it back to you, and fix it and sell it on ebay. And get most of their money back.
It is much more costly (and time consuming) as an individual consumer to get your computer fixed. So the actuarial calculation is more complicated than you describe -- if their repair and resale costs are low enough compared to mine, both of us can make money under this model.
Since I have little kids who I let use a few computers, I buy the warranty on their primary devices. It has more than paid off (though that was the dog's fault). I ordered an identical device from Amazon, swapped the hard drives, and sent them the broken computer with the new hard drive. Money very well spent.
The big problem with warranties is most companies are sleazy and do everything possible to avoid paying out. Luckily there are now a few that actually focus on good customer service.
I understand your point, but I feel sorry for you too. While your comment is true at the macro level, it is infrequently true at the workgroup level of a large organization.
A good/great manager wants to retain people and get maximum performance. Economics says that you should pay more for a given individual than any other company since they have an experience premium due to their unique knowledge (not quite true at macro level due to option theory discounting). I always try to pay my top performers the MAXIMUM the company will allow me to and will game the system if necessary to do so.
I've had managers who've given me tens of thousands of raises and bonuses that I didn't expect or need because they saw in the long-term I would leave if not competitively paid and the only way to get there was to lift my salary over a period of years. They've supported expensive training and coaching, travel to conferences, and an open checkbook on business travel. And I've had some that were incompetent jerks. Importantly, my company has done a good job in ensuring the incompetent jerks could not do permanent damage to the organization or my career while supporting me in protecting the company's interests and goals, and has continued to ensure raises and promotions for top performers throughout the downturn.
In some industries, a short-term financial focus as you describe may be normal and acceptable. In mine, people will quickly find new jobs inside or outside the company if you approach compensation and job responsibilities with that mindset. And you will fail.
I'm an IT director at a Fortune 500 company. $46M budget. 300 people counting contractors.
You need to understand how salaries are handled at your company for job transfers. At my company, at some times we can give nothing, some times we've been able to price to market, some times we can give a little bit. All depends on the current philosophy of HR and status of the salary reserve. Is your manager doing the best they can?
If the level is the same (both jobs are coded level X internally), no raise is legit. I can assure you that higher levels are much more accessible as a manager than a sysadmin. But it may take 2-3 raise/promotion cycles to get you where you deserve to be. I have a woman who it will take at least 5 years since I'll never be able to give her more than 10%/year, and it may take a decade if she keeps earning more promotions from me. I wish I could get a 10% raise every year for a decade. You will get much better ratings and raises as an underlevelled, underpaid manager than you will as an appropriately levelled, fairly paid sysadmin. One thing I look at is that new managers crash and burn fairly frequently. It is much more humane not to give a big raise/promo off the bat since then I have to demote the person and strip their pay away 6 months down the road. If they don't accept this voluntarily its a very scarring process. Or if let them retain the level/pay they often end up getting laid off eventually because they're now uncompetitive against their peers at the higher level once I get them back to their old job. This is VERY, VERY company specific -- you need to understand the compensation culture.
It's pretty easy to get an entry-level IT manager (as your HR group has noticed, especially recently). Lots of experienced IT managers and directors on the street right now too. Much harder to get a techie with your type of skills.
If you want to make 25% more, you should get a job elsewhere. If your company and your manager are trustworthy, you should take the job. This is your shot. If you are just going to be an average manager -- probably not worth it. If you're going to be a great manager, this could be the path to great things. If IT management is all clogged up above you due to the economy making subsequent promotions unlikely, I would really think twice unless you really think you're a potential management superstar (I'm guessing not based on your background). Oh, and arguing over 5% as a manager is stupid.
The flip side is, can you survive with who will get the job if you don't take it? This happened to my sister-in-law. Not the right time so she passed -- ended up with a post-MBA know-nothing who didn't understand the group and made her life miserable for the next 3 years. The good old days may already be gone.
The big reason that data centers "quadrupled" was better documentation, not some massive influx of spending. The government extensively audited data centers in recent years and found numerous ones. When I was in the government, there were no "data centers" on our campus, but there were at least 10 "server rooms" or "labs" that shared a lot of characteristics. In the past few years, people got really worked up about counting data centers, hence a lot of marginal areas were sucked in. Hint: it made the reduction targets a lot easier if you include a bunch of closets and stuff you wanted to get rid of anyway.
This article takes a handful of random facts and discovers a conspiracy instead of actually asking someone who knows something about government IT.
Gotta love all the useless comments.
The key is not the standard. It is satisfying DSS (Defense Security Service) whose local rep has to approve your countermeasures.
In most standard office environments, this is how we did it:
Buy a computer
Buy a certified "container" that is permitted to hold classified information. (This is normally a special file cabinet with a $1000 lock). Use the proper logs to track opening and closing the container.
Put the container next to the computer.
You can never leave an open container unaccompanied.
You can never leave secret material unaccompanied (even bathroom, etc.)
Use a removable hard drive so you can lock the secret hard drive in the cabinet rather than the whole CPU (they do make containers that hold the CPU).
Label the hard drive, CPU, and printer with secret stickers.
No network within 10 feet of the computer.
The annoying part is that DSS may require a full security package with diagrams, etc. You will need a specialist to create this package -- impossible to do it from scratch.
The issues that others brought up about floppies, USB, etc. are overblown. You can always figure out a way to get data out if you're a spy. Those are not requirements unless DSS tells you or you choose to do them as a mitigation strategy.
This poster has some good examples (but needs to occasionally hit return).
The key term is Return on Invested Capital. If a public company purchases a $100K computer, that means they need $15K/year more in profit just to stay even in Wall Street's eyes (15% ROIC is low). That doesn't count depreciation (20K). So $35K/year total. If its leased, they just need to cover the lease payments ($25K/year).
The lease company survives because they are a low-risk company making 8-10%/year. Acceptable for a leasing company, unacceptable for a growing Fortune 100 company.
A well-funded privately held business is normally stupid to lease. In their case, the ROIC on the computer purchase only needs to exceed the return on other investments. Therefore, if you have money in the bank making 2-3%, its much better to get the 8-10% from owning your own computers (vs. leasing). Of course you'd prefer 15%+, but 8-10% isn't bad outside the gaze of Wall Street analysts.
At my Fortune 100 company, Finance teaches all the functional managers about ROIC and the Street numbers. Good thing, because it is clear that from an absolute perspective, we are getting ripped off. But if our investors were happy with 8-10% they'd buy another stock.
And to the original post -- If you're not fully accounting for turn-in costs, late fees, repair costs, shipping, taxes, support, etc., in your lease buy analysis, you may be making an expensive mistake. It is very easy to lose big money by assuming optimistic predictions at lease inception will come true such as returning the equipment on time.
Good summary. In addition, most modern satellite destruction methods proposed involve disabling the satellite (laser through the power supply) or knocking it out of orbit. Blowing them to bits is not considered particularly helpful. In fact, a really cheap and potentially effective method is to forget about aiming for satellites and just fill the areas with high-velocity space junk to destroy everything.
Unfortunately, indications are that the Chinese have heavily studied anti-satellite weapons (based on articles in Chinese military studies journals). Their military is numbers-based, can accept high casualties, is not dependent on satellites, and has short lines of supply and communications. Should China invade Taiwan, holding the satellites of the world hostage might be enough to keep the US out of the conflict. If not and all satellites are destroyed, it hurts the US a lot more than China.
A handful of defense satellites have been designed (at enormous cost) to be immune from this problem. Of course, that still leaves a lot of really angry DirecTV owners.
There are several monopoly issues concerned by health care provision by hospitals:
1) Medicare controls reimbursement of certain types of procedures to minimize overlap by hospitals in the same market. That's why there will be one place that does transplant surgery in a midsize market.
2) In most smaller markets, there is not sufficient choice for competition. You need two good size hospitals, plus your health insurance needs to cover both hospitals (thus removing their leverage and raising cost) plus they both need your specialty. Oh, and they might both agree to outsource transcription and deny you effective choice.
3) The nature of the transcription decision is not verifiable by consumers (even the hospital didn't know) if the hospital chooses to or accidentally lies.
4) For emergency services, there is rarely effective consumer choice (decisions are frequently made by distance, ER loading, or ambulance service preference).
I had DirecTV in a shipyard for a couple months. It worked great except when the ten story crane parked in front of it. Bummer. You'd see the picture break up and hope the crane was just passing by instead of parking. We would have preferred cable (at least we'd get networks) but the contract said TV, not network TV. Watched a lot of MTV2, mostly.
Plenty of knowledgable people are buying ED (enhanced definition = 864x480) rather than HD 42" plasmas. Mainly because they're $3000 rather than $4200 ($4800 when I bought mine). For cable/broadcast/DVD the picture is actually better on an ED plasma due to a closer match to the source resolution while achieving the aesthetic and widescreen advantages of plasma. For HD there is clearly some differences, but few people with HD TVs have decoders anyway (most only take advantage of progressive scan DVD). My cable company only gets 6 HD channels (no standard networks) so I don't have a huge demand for HD. But HBO HD looks fantastic in ED, regardless. In three years when more channels are available in HD and HD recording is common, I'll take the $1800 and pay for most of a 50" HD plasma. If you're buying a $3000 TV, you're probably pretty aware of what you're missing out on (which today isn't much).
It is difficult to convince most visitors that they are not looking at an HDTV (even on a analog cable signal).
umm...no
My company has a 40:1 ratio of data to voice bandwidth at a site with 1800 people. That's about the same at all our sites nationwide. Most intracompany (PBX to PBX) VOIP deployments easily merge into existing data traffic lines. Merging voice traffic into data does nothing but cause a temporary blip in the cascading growth of data traffic.
Any evidence of said congestion? Almost all the congestion I see is single point of failure related, server-related, or configuration related. The backbone is pretty robust these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably more importantly, IE was free while Navigator 4.0 was $49. While there were free licenses available for personal and educational use, corporations and institutions adopted IE en masse as the cheap âoegood enoughâ solution especially since Windows 95 had an extremely rapid corporate migration due to much improved networking and hardware support.
I bought a Vizio E-series 2016 for my father. Perfect dumb tv and was on the shelf at his local Walmart. (previous E series were smart). Probably $100 less than a smart TV. These TVs were unique in that the only smart features were provided via built-in Google Cast. So pretty much beam apps from your ipad, including a custom vizio app. Otherwise nothing smart -- no netflix, amazon, nothing. Using Google Cast worked great for me visiting, but was beyond his capability. He just wanted a dumb TV to watch cable TV on.
In 2017, Vizio changed strategy and announced a free upgrade for all 2016 E Series owners. To the "full" Smart TV package on almost every Vizio. And now his "dumb" TV is getting Airplay 2. I didn't realize until this article that this "free" upgrade was just another shot at monetization -- artificial price differentiation to make the sale (since obviously the smarts were in the original TV), then give the smarts free to those who didn't pay for it to unlock the third party revenue stream. Impressive.
The problem with N2 is that some prisoners are going to hold their breath for 3-4 minutes, then start breathing the N2. While the comments are accurate about people who want to die, or accidentally die via N2 being quick and painless, its going to be pretty ghastly to watch some guy hold his breath until blue, then start gasping for air, then go unconscious and die. Some guy will train himself for a 7+ minute breath hold. Other forms of execution aren't affected by prisoner choice -- seems an obviously cruel method to let people live as long as they can hold their breath.
In August 1992 I purchased a 486-66 machine with 4MB of RAM for $3000. It was pretty top of the line for consumer use. In May 1993 I purchased 4MB of RAM for $400. In spring 1995 I purchased 8MB of RAM for $300 for the machine. Ran Linux in each configuration (first install SLS in April 1993 -- May purchase was to get X somewhat functional). Each sum was a lot of money at the time for me as a college student.
In 1987, the company I worked for spent $2000 for 4MB RAM for a 386 Novell server. In 1982, the company I worked for spent $2000 for a 512K RAM disk for CP/M (trade name of "Semidisk" -- it had an external power supply and would maintain state across the reboots and power cycles of the host machine)
Computer programming is a little different....
CS50 has always been fast and loose. I can remember showing weaker students my code and letting them copy a few lines or the answers to early problems. And vice versa. Many times TAs were in the labs shoulder to shoulder with us helping us with problem sets. Collaboration was always encouraged as long as you came up with some original ideas for harder problems and you weren't blatantly ripping off other people. Intro to CS is designed to get to pretty challenging material quick. You can't get to the fun stuff if everyone has to solve every easy and medium problem from scratch. Back in the dot-com days, passing CS50/51 with a good grade was sufficient to get a professional programming job, regardless of major. Those who didn't go to Harvard may not realize that getting easy problems 100% right is not culturally respected in the sciences there -- most exams are solely problems that range from hard to extremely hard and a 50 or 60 is an A-.
Plagiarism is a tough standard to apply to computer science at the intro level, similar to plagiarism in algebra. I completely understand and respect the Be Reasonable concept -- that's how we rolled (I took CS50 at roughly the same time as the current professor). I saw stuff that went over the line as well (printouts fished out of bins or stolen from printers, cut and paste specials) I like the Be Reasonable concept, but it has clearly reached its limit if this many students are getting dragged into investigations.
Was the price of Blu-ray 3D films and Blu-ray 3D players set too high?
- didn't even hit the radar by this point
One issue not discussed yet is that content was very expensive. At one point there was a limited amount of 3D VOD at about twice normal VOD prices ($9 or so). But Netflix never supported 3D for DVD rentals. Nor redbox. Some of the "trashy" 3D wasn't bad but were you really going to spend $30 to watch The Green Lantern? So most people had a very limited amount of 3D content. Both of the cable companies around me had no 3D content other than pay VOD and that is long gone. The only movie I wanted to see in the past few years that was available to me in 3D was Harry Potter 7 Part 2 which was pretty decent.
There are still millions of 3D TVs out there (and most can find a 3D BluRay player). Make a good 3D movie, people will buy it if they were going to buy the BluRay anyway. Passive 3D is available cheap on many mid-range or better TVs these days, though its becoming rarer. If there was cheap content, people would still be watching 3D.
Actually there's another location in an office park in Warwick, Rhode Island (RI DHS office). I only had a 4.5 month wait for my GE interview (a year ago, its not getting any better). They clearly haven't done the math -- if the wait was shorter, I'd suggest my wife and friends do it. As it is, I'd only suggest it for true road warriors.
If they want people to do it, make it so you can arrive an hour early for your next flight and sign up at the airport -- not wait 5 months.
If you're going to do it, might as well do GE. I don't know that many road warriors who don't do at least an occasional international flight. And you can easily wait 75 minutes at Logan for customs/immigration if you're sitting in the back of the 2nd 747 to land in a row.
So I have 7 ipads. All of them were purchased used except one from work.
My family uses 4 (1 each), my parents have 2, and an ipad 1 sits around unused as it has minimal value at this point due to app compatibility. Most wealthy families I know have multiple ones (one or more for kids, one or more for parents). All lower middle class families I know of have one or more for the family. With cheap apps, its a good value especially used.
I'm considering buying a eighth to run navigation and fish finder for my boat. An used ipad plus the sensor is far cheaper and more powerful than a dedicated boat unit. I also have 3 more specialty tablets that are hardly used as ipad is more powerful. And two Sony Dashs.
Apple hit a great price/value point for these units. And badly misjudged obsolescence -- the batteries last many years, unlike iphones. There aren't any killer apps driving upgrades Consumers don't want bigger screens (though there's some good professional use cases). Or pencils. The tablet category may be the most rapidly matured piece of electronics in history. 5 years from brand new and hot to a completely mature market.
Many people have used an emergency brake to effectively stop a car at speed. Just because you (and my mother) can't, don't knock the concept. For slowing to a stop it works ok -- panic stops good luck.
I have this car. It's not how it works. It's not three presses. The shove to park normally works. There's an "easy" press up and a "hard" press up. The problem is if you do it a little softly you go into neutral instead. Since its not mechanical you tend to do it with a lighter touch than most cars. I had it happen to me once when I went to open the door and the car started rolling. I shifted into park. People need to pay attention when they drive. It is very easy to drive this car if you pay attention and it took no special instruction during the test drive or for relatives. I drive rental cars for work all the time and its no different than the standard "this brand does things a bit different" feel. This transmission shifter design supports the "Sport" mode in the transmission which optionally allows gear selection of the transmission . It lets you get out of sport both up and down with a hard press and is a more natural feel than the "separate gate" design. You do a hard press down to get into sport, soft presses up and down if you want to pick the gear, hard press up or down to get out. You can also paddle shift up and down. Its a pretty cool and effective design -- unfortunately sport mode itself isn't particularly fun. There have been several firmware upgrades to this transmission which I highly recommend (for shift quality and RPM gates). I also think it improved this problem.
When it blows up, it will be your problem. I've had signed blood oaths from business executives that they fully understand the risks of legacy unsupported equipment running business processes. When it blows up, IT folk are still the ones on nights and weekends trying to patch it together. Even if you pull off a miracle and quickly resolve 80% of failures, your professionalism (and future raises) will be shattered over the other 20%.
There's a certain amount of legacy gear you can never avoid (we have a VAX plugged in if we need an update and recompile for a piece of hardware delivered about 40 years ago to a key customer and still in active use). And we have a lot of very expensive industrial equipment that relies on legacy OSs. There's no excuse for not keeping basic equipment up to date. That CEO has no understanding of risk management. I know small businesses that just closed up shop and went out of business after a major IT failure. He's playing Russian roulette with his company. For people who have options, you should never work somewhere that disrespects your profession.
So as a certified Naval Nuclear engineer (though a decade stale...) These nuclear plants are designed for significant manning for routine operations. One of the key systems controls distribution of electrical power and continuous control of voltage through the various electrical "grids" in the ship. This system is highly manual because its the type of thing that a trained person does really well and there are all kinds of niche conditions that rely on a lot of judgment. As the voltage is manually tweaked multiple times/hour, it is pretty certain that the voltage would go out of spec in a matter of days or weeks, eventually triggering cascading failure as one redundant system after another falls offline due to electrical transients. Highly unlikely it would make it a year. With one really trained person you could probably make it 5-10 years until equipment failure due to a lack of maintenance (either skills or parts) caused shutdown.
So I've hired a lot of older programmers, and a lot of older programmers are my best ones.
1) You can't fake management. I've fired far more managers than top technical guys. If you're not really into management, you're not going to make it. It's starting over in an entirely new skillset. Be a team lead for a few people if necessary or expected for your company.
2) Find a really tough area. It's probably not going to be the new cool language of the week. My top older programmers have been mainframe specialists, database architects, systems architects, data warehousing specialists. Whatever was really tough at the time. By focusing on really hard, complex problems you scare off the younger competition. It's ok, they want to work on the new shiny stuff anyway.
3) Learn to communicate. Those new young guys do, but they have their own style. Take advantage of your background and create your own style. You need to build partnerships with managers and customers so they have confidence in you. Make your experience valuable to the team doing peer reviews, designs, etc. Spend time mentoring new guys in the "right way" to build and maintain systems. Not being an old fogey/jerk -- just sharing the wealth with everyone new and old. My best old guys can reach across the org and get me access to data sources unreachable through the front door. Access to their "old guys network" and institutional knowledge is something they bring to the table. The young guys bring something else. I assign each to the jobs that are right for them.
4) Push the future from your perspective. The young guys are from an edgy and somewhat naïve perspective. You need to push the future from your perspective. If you keep your head down and keep programming, the young guys will win, one will get lucky and end up in management and potentially all hell will break loose. Even if you don't win, being part of the strategic planning process makes sure you stay in the game and the voice of experience and discipline is heard (and keeps middle aged guys like me in charge).
Some of my saddest days was guys retiring at 60+ or dying on the job. I can always hire new young guys -- it takes decades to get more experienced guys.
There's a real art. Used to be, if you ordered a triple play from the cable company, they'd send out a top guy since they were the only ones qualified for all 3. Some of those guys really went above and beyond for a pro installation.
Go either to the attic, basement, or crawlspace. Run from there to the closest point. Hug the walls even if its the long way, cable is cheap. Then do a short outdoor hop if necessary.
If you've got some money, go ahead and hire a pro. For $200-300 you'll be done. Or cut the walls and repaint. Your wife will like a custom color anyway.
If you're patient, chop the cable, blame it on the previous resident, other construction, etc., and pay the service fee for the reinstallation at a better location. I ripped out both a cable company box and all the phone wire as an eyesore and left the wires dangling from the pole. (We have two cable companies in town).
One way not mentioned that they save money is efficient repair.
When you get a warranty payment from Squaretrade they make you send back the broken device. Which they can turn around at leisure, without the difficulties of getting it back to you, and fix it and sell it on ebay. And get most of their money back.
It is much more costly (and time consuming) as an individual consumer to get your computer fixed. So the actuarial calculation is more complicated than you describe -- if their repair and resale costs are low enough compared to mine, both of us can make money under this model.
Since I have little kids who I let use a few computers, I buy the warranty on their primary devices. It has more than paid off (though that was the dog's fault). I ordered an identical device from Amazon, swapped the hard drives, and sent them the broken computer with the new hard drive. Money very well spent.
The big problem with warranties is most companies are sleazy and do everything possible to avoid paying out. Luckily there are now a few that actually focus on good customer service.
I understand your point, but I feel sorry for you too. While your comment is true at the macro level, it is infrequently true at the workgroup level of a large organization.
A good/great manager wants to retain people and get maximum performance. Economics says that you should pay more for a given individual than any other company since they have an experience premium due to their unique knowledge (not quite true at macro level due to option theory discounting). I always try to pay my top performers the MAXIMUM the company will allow me to and will game the system if necessary to do so.
I've had managers who've given me tens of thousands of raises and bonuses that I didn't expect or need because they saw in the long-term I would leave if not competitively paid and the only way to get there was to lift my salary over a period of years. They've supported expensive training and coaching, travel to conferences, and an open checkbook on business travel. And I've had some that were incompetent jerks. Importantly, my company has done a good job in ensuring the incompetent jerks could not do permanent damage to the organization or my career while supporting me in protecting the company's interests and goals, and has continued to ensure raises and promotions for top performers throughout the downturn.
In some industries, a short-term financial focus as you describe may be normal and acceptable. In mine, people will quickly find new jobs inside or outside the company if you approach compensation and job responsibilities with that mindset. And you will fail.
The above is pretty practical advice.
I'm an IT director at a Fortune 500 company. $46M budget. 300 people counting contractors.
You need to understand how salaries are handled at your company for job transfers. At my company, at some times we can give nothing, some times we've been able to price to market, some times we can give a little bit. All depends on the current philosophy of HR and status of the salary reserve. Is your manager doing the best they can?
If the level is the same (both jobs are coded level X internally), no raise is legit. I can assure you that higher levels are much more accessible as a manager than a sysadmin. But it may take 2-3 raise/promotion cycles to get you where you deserve to be. I have a woman who it will take at least 5 years since I'll never be able to give her more than 10%/year, and it may take a decade if she keeps earning more promotions from me. I wish I could get a 10% raise every year for a decade. You will get much better ratings and raises as an underlevelled, underpaid manager than you will as an appropriately levelled, fairly paid sysadmin. One thing I look at is that new managers crash and burn fairly frequently. It is much more humane not to give a big raise/promo off the bat since then I have to demote the person and strip their pay away 6 months down the road. If they don't accept this voluntarily its a very scarring process. Or if let them retain the level/pay they often end up getting laid off eventually because they're now uncompetitive against their peers at the higher level once I get them back to their old job. This is VERY, VERY company specific -- you need to understand the compensation culture.
It's pretty easy to get an entry-level IT manager (as your HR group has noticed, especially recently). Lots of experienced IT managers and directors on the street right now too. Much harder to get a techie with your type of skills.
If you want to make 25% more, you should get a job elsewhere. If your company and your manager are trustworthy, you should take the job. This is your shot. If you are just going to be an average manager -- probably not worth it. If you're going to be a great manager, this could be the path to great things. If IT management is all clogged up above you due to the economy making subsequent promotions unlikely, I would really think twice unless you really think you're a potential management superstar (I'm guessing not based on your background). Oh, and arguing over 5% as a manager is stupid.
The flip side is, can you survive with who will get the job if you don't take it? This happened to my sister-in-law. Not the right time so she passed -- ended up with a post-MBA know-nothing who didn't understand the group and made her life miserable for the next 3 years. The good old days may already be gone.
The big reason that data centers "quadrupled" was better documentation, not some massive influx of spending. The government extensively audited data centers in recent years and found numerous ones. When I was in the government, there were no "data centers" on our campus, but there were at least 10 "server rooms" or "labs" that shared a lot of characteristics. In the past few years, people got really worked up about counting data centers, hence a lot of marginal areas were sucked in. Hint: it made the reduction targets a lot easier if you include a bunch of closets and stuff you wanted to get rid of anyway.
This article takes a handful of random facts and discovers a conspiracy instead of actually asking someone who knows something about government IT.
Gotta love all the useless comments. The key is not the standard. It is satisfying DSS (Defense Security Service) whose local rep has to approve your countermeasures.
In most standard office environments, this is how we did it: Buy a computer Buy a certified "container" that is permitted to hold classified information. (This is normally a special file cabinet with a $1000 lock). Use the proper logs to track opening and closing the container. Put the container next to the computer. You can never leave an open container unaccompanied. You can never leave secret material unaccompanied (even bathroom, etc.) Use a removable hard drive so you can lock the secret hard drive in the cabinet rather than the whole CPU (they do make containers that hold the CPU). Label the hard drive, CPU, and printer with secret stickers. No network within 10 feet of the computer. The annoying part is that DSS may require a full security package with diagrams, etc. You will need a specialist to create this package -- impossible to do it from scratch.
The issues that others brought up about floppies, USB, etc. are overblown. You can always figure out a way to get data out if you're a spy. Those are not requirements unless DSS tells you or you choose to do them as a mitigation strategy.
The key term is Return on Invested Capital. If a public company purchases a $100K computer, that means they need $15K/year more in profit just to stay even in Wall Street's eyes (15% ROIC is low). That doesn't count depreciation (20K). So $35K/year total. If its leased, they just need to cover the lease payments ($25K/year).
The lease company survives because they are a low-risk company making 8-10%/year. Acceptable for a leasing company, unacceptable for a growing Fortune 100 company.
A well-funded privately held business is normally stupid to lease. In their case, the ROIC on the computer purchase only needs to exceed the return on other investments. Therefore, if you have money in the bank making 2-3%, its much better to get the 8-10% from owning your own computers (vs. leasing). Of course you'd prefer 15%+, but 8-10% isn't bad outside the gaze of Wall Street analysts.
At my Fortune 100 company, Finance teaches all the functional managers about ROIC and the Street numbers. Good thing, because it is clear that from an absolute perspective, we are getting ripped off. But if our investors were happy with 8-10% they'd buy another stock.
And to the original post -- If you're not fully accounting for turn-in costs, late fees, repair costs, shipping, taxes, support, etc., in your lease buy analysis, you may be making an expensive mistake. It is very easy to lose big money by assuming optimistic predictions at lease inception will come true such as returning the equipment on time.
Good summary. In addition, most modern satellite destruction methods proposed involve disabling the satellite (laser through the power supply) or knocking it out of orbit. Blowing them to bits is not considered particularly helpful. In fact, a really cheap and potentially effective method is to forget about aiming for satellites and just fill the areas with high-velocity space junk to destroy everything.
Unfortunately, indications are that the Chinese have heavily studied anti-satellite weapons (based on articles in Chinese military studies journals). Their military is numbers-based, can accept high casualties, is not dependent on satellites, and has short lines of supply and communications. Should China invade Taiwan, holding the satellites of the world hostage might be enough to keep the US out of the conflict. If not and all satellites are destroyed, it hurts the US a lot more than China.
A handful of defense satellites have been designed (at enormous cost) to be immune from this problem. Of course, that still leaves a lot of really angry DirecTV owners.
There are several monopoly issues concerned by health care provision by hospitals: 1) Medicare controls reimbursement of certain types of procedures to minimize overlap by hospitals in the same market. That's why there will be one place that does transplant surgery in a midsize market. 2) In most smaller markets, there is not sufficient choice for competition. You need two good size hospitals, plus your health insurance needs to cover both hospitals (thus removing their leverage and raising cost) plus they both need your specialty. Oh, and they might both agree to outsource transcription and deny you effective choice. 3) The nature of the transcription decision is not verifiable by consumers (even the hospital didn't know) if the hospital chooses to or accidentally lies. 4) For emergency services, there is rarely effective consumer choice (decisions are frequently made by distance, ER loading, or ambulance service preference).
I had DirecTV in a shipyard for a couple months. It worked great except when the ten story crane parked in front of it. Bummer. You'd see the picture break up and hope the crane was just passing by instead of parking. We would have preferred cable (at least we'd get networks) but the contract said TV, not network TV. Watched a lot of MTV2, mostly.
Plenty of knowledgable people are buying ED (enhanced definition = 864x480) rather than HD 42" plasmas. Mainly because they're $3000 rather than $4200 ($4800 when I bought mine). For cable/broadcast/DVD the picture is actually better on an ED plasma due to a closer match to the source resolution while achieving the aesthetic and widescreen advantages of plasma. For HD there is clearly some differences, but few people with HD TVs have decoders anyway (most only take advantage of progressive scan DVD). My cable company only gets 6 HD channels (no standard networks) so I don't have a huge demand for HD. But HBO HD looks fantastic in ED, regardless. In three years when more channels are available in HD and HD recording is common, I'll take the $1800 and pay for most of a 50" HD plasma. If you're buying a $3000 TV, you're probably pretty aware of what you're missing out on (which today isn't much).
It is difficult to convince most visitors that they are not looking at an HDTV (even on a analog cable signal).
umm...no My company has a 40:1 ratio of data to voice bandwidth at a site with 1800 people. That's about the same at all our sites nationwide. Most intracompany (PBX to PBX) VOIP deployments easily merge into existing data traffic lines. Merging voice traffic into data does nothing but cause a temporary blip in the cascading growth of data traffic. Any evidence of said congestion? Almost all the congestion I see is single point of failure related, server-related, or configuration related. The backbone is pretty robust these days.