Imagine that instead of a 2 hour meeting, it was a two hour teleconference with a horde of managers at the other end, where you were needed, but only for brief intervals, and politeness / relationship management required you to be there. Also imagine that you don't have desk phones because they interrupt the shared working area and you're a coder so you can use IM. So you have to do the teleconference in a room without a computer, just you and the telecon device.
That's a DAY killer. If that was scheduled to 2pm, you'd spend your morning dreading it, lunchtime dreading it, the meeting dying and going slightly insane, and then afterwards recovering.
You might as well turn up in the morning, say hello to the boss to show you turned up, then fuck off down the pub until 2pm, come back in a state where you can handle fools and buffoons and funny accents, and then go straight home afterwards.
And I tell you, getting a whole day's pay just for a two hour teleconference would still be being underpaid, per hour.
WHY THE FUCK ARE TWO HOUR TELECONFERENCES SCHEDULED AT 2PM. You can't do shit between 4pm and 5pm. You can't do shit between 1pm and 2pm. Too short a timespan. You might as well fill the day with other meetings (call it a 'meeting day') and never even turn on your PC. Or you could cut your throat.
And someone nicked my gameboy micro, so I don't even have that for teleconferences anymore.
Indeed. I would probably want to make them learn in an emulator - maybe Blitz Basic 2 or AMOS in UAE (or on a MiniMig), or BASIC on a BBC or CPC emulator (WinAPE also has a nice assembler, for those people that think that's a great idea for some reason).
Sticking them in Visual Studio means a high learning curve - the software itself, and the language, and I also don't think any of the languages on that platform are suitable.
Assembly as the first language? 99.99% of first learners who aren't doing a mandatory course in school would walk away.
The first language has to be PICK UP AND GO. It is allowed to be a horrible abstraction of what the computer can do. It should be limited, to not confuse with abilities. It should allow creativity to be expressed. It should be easy to see results, no complex build system, nothing inbetween the programmer, the code, and running the code.
Then when the first language is too slow, or doesn't allow something to be done, the learner will pick their own path forward, be that assembler, C, Java, C#, Python or whatever. Every language you've listed, excepting possibly Python, is a follow-on language for those that have got the programming bug.
It is pick up and go, yet it has object oriented abilities.
Also there's a lovely Emacs highlighter package for it.
Shame it's totally irrelevant. But it was a language I really enjoyed in my first year of university (a very long time ago). Maybe it's time for Jodula 3, a Modula 3 system that compiles to the JVM.
Most of the people posting here really haven't grasped (1) and (2).
Assembly as a first language is ridiculous, yet so many are arguing for it.
Not only is it irrelevant today apart from microcontrollers, which they might get a job programming in 10-15 years time (assuming they're young now), but it will be incredibly frustrating.
The student has to come to the decision to use C, Assembler, etc, themselves, when they decide they have to in order to realise their vision for whatever they're programming. I.e., they're not beginners any more.
In the 80s that would mean writing your game in BASIC, and then finding that performance sucked. You'd extend BASIC with some extensions you found in a magazine or bought (e.g., Sprites Alive! on the Amstrad CPC) to see if that would help, and it would for the first few projects.
What's the modern equivalent? They've already done their MySpace profile, and so on. Maybe they've done basic HTML and CSS by themselves. Now they want to go further... or write games online? So is Flash the answer? Java for applets, despite the massive initial learning barrier (shared by most of the languages being recommended in this story)? Or do you scrape them away from the web and onto RealBasic, especially if they look at PHP, ugh.
I would add in (2a) ability to get quick results, however primitive they are. 10 INPUT "What's your name? "; a$: Print a$ + " is a fag!" : REM: Instant fun.
I agree with (4) but it shouldn't be overriding.
Also many young people will never get turned on by programming, whatever you do. Maybe you should get them into repairing cars, or building things, or whatever. Or disown them.
I agree that Visual Basic is as bad a choice for a first language as any other complex programming platform.
What made old skool BASIC good was that it was limited in ability. Admitted data structures were limited to arrays, which was a problem. However a medium-complexity basic like Blitz Basic 2 on the Amiga allowed the creative side to be expressed, without having to wade through complex APIs like you would with a modern language.
And the best way to learn programming to a young person (under 16) is to allow their ideas to be expressed and implemented, be that writing your first football league tracking application, to a simple game, to a text adventure, and so on. If that means using BASIC, e.g., RealBasic, then so be it. It needs to be pick-up-able.
I bet there are people saying Haskell and ML on this thread, for some academic reasons. The last thing a young person wants to be doing is learning how to manipulate data structures, functionally, with all the brain-fuckery that involves, and only to get a sorted list at the end. That isn't exciting, it's not even something to be slogged through, it's tedious and will actually put them off, totally.
10 Print "I am god!" : goto 10 run
instant result.
It's sad that computer magazines don't have programming in them any more, unlike the 80s. Game type-ins promised rewards to typing, and learning was osmotic.
Yes, for more energy you should eat Ready Brek every morning, because it will wrap you in a warm visible glow. Clearly we now have direct proof of Ready Brek's effectiveness in providing more energy to the body, and hence the photons that the body emits.
*hopes that Americans have Ready Brek and used to get the same TV adverts*
I think the next generation 80GB, as a boot and apps drive, could be very compelling, if the price is right. You could probably get dual-boot Windows and Linux in 80GB, for the OS and apps for each./home and/Users will have to be on the big dumb slow disc.
The problem being, as in this article, £95 to reseat a memory chip, that's 10 minutes work.
£2 for technicians time, assuming he wrote up the invoice and all that as well. £93 profit.
But the customer is expecting to get a technician in who has ethics and morals and all that. I.e., someone getting more like £10 for the repair. And even then the repair cost in total shouldn't be over £30.
You're paying for good, professional service, but getting low-rate service. That's why people bitch.
What you have here is an entire industry (Plumbing) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
What you have here is an entire industry (Electricians) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
What you have here is an entire industry (Mechanics) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
Basically, ignorance is asking people to rip you off. It shouldn't be like that, but it is. A stuck seat belt becomes a £100 repair if you're a female. A small leak becomes a £300 repair if you don't know the basics of plumbing.
Read up, and then be specific when it comes to the repair. You might not know how to solder a water pipe with a leak, but you can point at it and diagnose the problem you want solved.
Seems that you're best off finding a local PC repairman that will come to your house to fix things, than going to even a reputable store like PC World, never mind a dodgy high street computer shop. And that's if you don't know anybody else who can help. Hell, people know to check their oil and tyre pressures, why can't they be told how to check their memory is seated well?
At least plumbers, electricians, gas fitters, etc, have trade organisations that try to guarantee some standards amongst their members. It's why in the UK you never get a non-CORGI gas fitter in. Maybe IT Technicians need a similar trade organisation, just so the advert in yellow pages has the logo, and people know they won't get ripped off.
1 in 10 times the terrorist will get through, so all 300 people aren't terrorists.
Isn't this why detection equipment should list false positive and false negative rates?
For something that can mess up someone's life, you probably want a really really low false positive rate, e.g., 1:100,000. For messing up someone's day, 1:10,000. For delaying someone by an hour: 1:500. For detecting people to check their bags at customs, 1:5.
If it is imperative that you detect something, you need a really low false negative rate. "Is this person a terrorist?", for example.
Sadly it's very hard to have both. That's why it is very hard to detect american lager is lager and not piss. "Is this piss?" is your detection question, a false negative is a disaster (vomiting and sobriety), but a false positive means you could get sober, and that's a big issue.
It's the "that" option. Seriously. We're not Europe by any stretch of the imagination!
Of course, it's better than the USA. We just have the same problem with public transport as any other country that doesn't realise that cars need to be able to integrate with it. Getting from your door to the public transport is often a real pain. That, or changes en-route take too long.
Train station in Cambridge, UK, is 8 miles from my door. To get there from the bus stop 100 yards from my door takes 20 minutes (bus into town) + 5 minutes (wait for another bus) + 10 minutes (bus to train station) + X minutes (delays) + Y minutes (wait for train). Door->Car->Park&Ride->Direct Bus Link->Train Station will take at most 20 minutes next year, once this system is in place.
Oh course, I meant C as in the kid wasn't yours because she had cheated. But indeed it is but one reason for getting divorced, just one where support shouldn't be ongoing from the man even if he was named on the birth certificate. I wouldn't go as far as backdating money invested by the man in the child and returning it, but...
I do think a computerised algorithm that takes a lot of things into account, even including career abandonment of one party in the marriage is at least a reasonable first step to working out fair awards, and could lead to fewer cases going to expensive legal proceedings.
Also when we start dealing with silly amounts of money (tens of millions), it's not like losing half of it is going to destroy any ones life.
Who are you going to buy instead? Everyone gets their systems built in China, under these conditions. Foxconn is probably one of the better ones.
It's the cost of cheap, disposable goods in the West.
Used to be you'd buy a fridge built in your country, a TV, a car, a washing machine, everything, and it would last years and years. But they were expensive, and major purchases. They kept an economy alive, with people being paid reasonable wages. The electronics industry in a rapid speed to be competitive has changed this. We could have a computer that lasted 10 years, but it would really hold things back if you gamed, or did real work. So it drove an industry of rapid upgrades for computers and personal electronics, that don't last long. Western design, eastern construction.
But these eastern companies don't have the same standards of construction, of employee care, or values, as we do. Additionally the stresses of overwork are immense, they don't have cushy offices, free coffee and 9-5 hours like many of us. Also their upbringing is different. Coupled together, it will add up to a situation where people burn out rapidly, or worse commit suicide if something goes wrong. Many people to replace them of course. Nothing like your own company breaking into your own living space and scaring the bejesus out of you.
Fucking killing yourself over a front-facing camera, or an OLED screen, or whatever the iPhone 4 will have. Hell, it was probably an iPod Touch 3 for all we know. That shows a massive failure of the value system. Hell, it'll turn out to be the iPhone clone rip-offs that Foxconn probably make on the side won't it? As long as the Chinese elite bosses are okay, that's all that matters. Everything else is a meatgrinder. It's 18th Century with hi-tech, and it won't improve until we stop feeding it.
Does seem from other comments (although their veracity is in the air) that this guy could have been the Numero Uno Miser ever.
But, 14 years. You know, I might have held out for a year or two if I was that miserly and spiteful and if I stood to gain $2.5m (especially if I had little more than that in total)... but we're talking about 14 years that he could have said "screw this, $2.5m for me to get out of here is surely better than this!" at any time.
Somewhere, at around the fifth year, some alarm bells should have been ringing. There's no way it should have got to 14. I also have deep worries about sending people to jail for so long without a trial by jury, especially for contempt in a civil case.
Maybe he's too much of a miser to sue!
Or the miser stuff is made up because he was in jail, and his ex-wife wasn't and got to create the history.
I wouldn't have the first clue how to drive an automatic, I've never driven one, and I see them so rarely that they're weird things to me when I do. I fail to see how driving a stick is difficult, but must be weird not to have it there.
However the current generation of flappy paddle semi-autos really seem to be getting there, well, according to top gear, I haven't tried one.
Sign me up. Especially the sex thing, 'cos I always get shot down with that. I'm a human KAL 007 it appears, and women are defence installations to me.
I fear self-driving cars are another thing like flying cars that will never really work out. Sure, they'll parallel park themselves, they might be able to take over motorway cruising, but you'll have to be on hand to steer it through the billions of things that can ruin your day on the ground in busy situations.
He must have really hated his wife for 14 years in jail to have been a better alternative that even holding over every penny he had, never mind what was presumably a 50/50 split, or more generous in his favour given it was 14 years ago.
But not enough to hire a hitman or run her over or something?
You see, something doesn't add up. He was around 60 when jailed. Now he's 74. That's 14 years out of a theoretical 20 years he had left to live at the time. It's illogical. If it was pure spite, then that's amazing.
I have no problem with the concept that all assets earned/obtained within a marriage by both people should be split equally should that marriage end.
At the end, there should be no upkeep requirement from one party to the other.
At the end, assets each person had going into the marriage shouldn't be taken into account, but retained by that person (or the value of that asset if sold off during the marriage). There is an argument that if you get married after a long relationship, that relationship period should also count.
I.e., if you own five houses, then get married to someone with none, buy two more together then get divorced, you keep six houses (including your original five), they're yours, they get one.
The only ongoing support should be for children created in the marriage or adopted in the marriage, unless subsequently found out that someone cheated.
Also the sex of the person should not be taken into account. Cases should be submitted as person A and person B, the above should be fed into a computer, and a figure should come out. The arguments won't be about what each person should get, which is horribly weighted towards the woman, as if they're incapable of work or earning anything when they are, divorce law should come out of the 20th Century at some point. Instead they will be about what went in at the beginning. A pre-nuptial can override, but maybe a prenuptial should be mandatory anyway.
Burning loads of money after separation isn't an excuse, it's vindictive and silly.
And I'm sure the above, hastily written concept, has holes in it, so don't get pedantic on me.
So we're talking $420,000 so far spent on this man. Instead he could have had assets seized and been forced into work, and paying tax, and having some money garnished. Or his actual money would have shown up after a few years when he thought people weren't looking.
It's not as if he was a danger to people on the street - the number one reason to put someone into jail.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine that instead of a 2 hour meeting, it was a two hour teleconference with a horde of managers at the other end, where you were needed, but only for brief intervals, and politeness / relationship management required you to be there. Also imagine that you don't have desk phones because they interrupt the shared working area and you're a coder so you can use IM. So you have to do the teleconference in a room without a computer, just you and the telecon device.
That's a DAY killer. If that was scheduled to 2pm, you'd spend your morning dreading it, lunchtime dreading it, the meeting dying and going slightly insane, and then afterwards recovering.
You might as well turn up in the morning, say hello to the boss to show you turned up, then fuck off down the pub until 2pm, come back in a state where you can handle fools and buffoons and funny accents, and then go straight home afterwards.
And I tell you, getting a whole day's pay just for a two hour teleconference would still be being underpaid, per hour.
WHY THE FUCK ARE TWO HOUR TELECONFERENCES SCHEDULED AT 2PM. You can't do shit between 4pm and 5pm. You can't do shit between 1pm and 2pm. Too short a timespan. You might as well fill the day with other meetings (call it a 'meeting day') and never even turn on your PC. Or you could cut your throat.
And someone nicked my gameboy micro, so I don't even have that for teleconferences anymore.
Indeed. I would probably want to make them learn in an emulator - maybe Blitz Basic 2 or AMOS in UAE (or on a MiniMig), or BASIC on a BBC or CPC emulator (WinAPE also has a nice assembler, for those people that think that's a great idea for some reason).
Sticking them in Visual Studio means a high learning curve - the software itself, and the language, and I also don't think any of the languages on that platform are suitable.
Ooh, it's pub time. tata.
Assembly as the first language? 99.99% of first learners who aren't doing a mandatory course in school would walk away.
The first language has to be PICK UP AND GO. It is allowed to be a horrible abstraction of what the computer can do. It should be limited, to not confuse with abilities. It should allow creativity to be expressed. It should be easy to see results, no complex build system, nothing inbetween the programmer, the code, and running the code.
Then when the first language is too slow, or doesn't allow something to be done, the learner will pick their own path forward, be that assembler, C, Java, C#, Python or whatever. Every language you've listed, excepting possibly Python, is a follow-on language for those that have got the programming bug.
MODULA3 is clearly the best option.
It is pick up and go, yet it has object oriented abilities.
Also there's a lovely Emacs highlighter package for it.
Shame it's totally irrelevant. But it was a language I really enjoyed in my first year of university (a very long time ago). Maybe it's time for Jodula 3, a Modula 3 system that compiles to the JVM.
Most of the people posting here really haven't grasped (1) and (2).
Assembly as a first language is ridiculous, yet so many are arguing for it.
Not only is it irrelevant today apart from microcontrollers, which they might get a job programming in 10-15 years time (assuming they're young now), but it will be incredibly frustrating.
The student has to come to the decision to use C, Assembler, etc, themselves, when they decide they have to in order to realise their vision for whatever they're programming. I.e., they're not beginners any more.
In the 80s that would mean writing your game in BASIC, and then finding that performance sucked. You'd extend BASIC with some extensions you found in a magazine or bought (e.g., Sprites Alive! on the Amstrad CPC) to see if that would help, and it would for the first few projects.
What's the modern equivalent? They've already done their MySpace profile, and so on. Maybe they've done basic HTML and CSS by themselves. Now they want to go further ... or write games online? So is Flash the answer? Java for applets, despite the massive initial learning barrier (shared by most of the languages being recommended in this story)? Or do you scrape them away from the web and onto RealBasic, especially if they look at PHP, ugh.
I would add in (2a) ability to get quick results, however primitive they are. 10 INPUT "What's your name? "; a$: Print a$ + " is a fag!" : REM: Instant fun.
I agree with (4) but it shouldn't be overriding.
Also many young people will never get turned on by programming, whatever you do. Maybe you should get them into repairing cars, or building things, or whatever. Or disown them.
I agree that Visual Basic is as bad a choice for a first language as any other complex programming platform.
What made old skool BASIC good was that it was limited in ability. Admitted data structures were limited to arrays, which was a problem. However a medium-complexity basic like Blitz Basic 2 on the Amiga allowed the creative side to be expressed, without having to wade through complex APIs like you would with a modern language.
And the best way to learn programming to a young person (under 16) is to allow their ideas to be expressed and implemented, be that writing your first football league tracking application, to a simple game, to a text adventure, and so on. If that means using BASIC, e.g., RealBasic, then so be it. It needs to be pick-up-able.
I bet there are people saying Haskell and ML on this thread, for some academic reasons. The last thing a young person wants to be doing is learning how to manipulate data structures, functionally, with all the brain-fuckery that involves, and only to get a sorted list at the end. That isn't exciting, it's not even something to be slogged through, it's tedious and will actually put them off, totally.
10 Print "I am god!" : goto 10
run
instant result.
It's sad that computer magazines don't have programming in them any more, unlike the 80s. Game type-ins promised rewards to typing, and learning was osmotic.
Yes, for more energy you should eat Ready Brek every morning, because it will wrap you in a warm visible glow. Clearly we now have direct proof of Ready Brek's effectiveness in providing more energy to the body, and hence the photons that the body emits.
*hopes that Americans have Ready Brek and used to get the same TV adverts*
I think the next generation 80GB, as a boot and apps drive, could be very compelling, if the price is right. You could probably get dual-boot Windows and Linux in 80GB, for the OS and apps for each. /home and /Users will have to be on the big dumb slow disc.
So, what is it?
I read the article, and I read this:
How it is presented. Google has to come up with a coherent, one sentence answer to âoeWhat is it?â
So, err, that's not good. Even Google don't know what it is!
It looks like desktop widgets, ON THE INTARWEB!
The problem being, as in this article, £95 to reseat a memory chip, that's 10 minutes work.
£2 for technicians time, assuming he wrote up the invoice and all that as well.
£93 profit.
But the customer is expecting to get a technician in who has ethics and morals and all that. I.e., someone getting more like £10 for the repair. And even then the repair cost in total shouldn't be over £30.
You're paying for good, professional service, but getting low-rate service. That's why people bitch.
What you have here is an entire industry (Plumbing) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
What you have here is an entire industry (Electricians) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
What you have here is an entire industry (Mechanics) that apparently specializes in ripping off its customers and preying on their ignorance.
Basically, ignorance is asking people to rip you off. It shouldn't be like that, but it is. A stuck seat belt becomes a £100 repair if you're a female. A small leak becomes a £300 repair if you don't know the basics of plumbing.
Read up, and then be specific when it comes to the repair. You might not know how to solder a water pipe with a leak, but you can point at it and diagnose the problem you want solved.
Seems that you're best off finding a local PC repairman that will come to your house to fix things, than going to even a reputable store like PC World, never mind a dodgy high street computer shop. And that's if you don't know anybody else who can help. Hell, people know to check their oil and tyre pressures, why can't they be told how to check their memory is seated well?
At least plumbers, electricians, gas fitters, etc, have trade organisations that try to guarantee some standards amongst their members. It's why in the UK you never get a non-CORGI gas fitter in. Maybe IT Technicians need a similar trade organisation, just so the advert in yellow pages has the logo, and people know they won't get ripped off.
Yeah, that's more like messing up a week of someone's life. A year would be 1:1m, a lifetime, 1:100m or more.
I'd argue that more than 1:100,000 murder trials end up imprisoning an innocent person however.
1 in 10 times the terrorist will get through, so all 300 people aren't terrorists.
Isn't this why detection equipment should list false positive and false negative rates?
For something that can mess up someone's life, you probably want a really really low false positive rate, e.g., 1:100,000. For messing up someone's day, 1:10,000. For delaying someone by an hour: 1:500. For detecting people to check their bags at customs, 1:5.
If it is imperative that you detect something, you need a really low false negative rate. "Is this person a terrorist?", for example.
Sadly it's very hard to have both. That's why it is very hard to detect american lager is lager and not piss. "Is this piss?" is your detection question, a false negative is a disaster (vomiting and sobriety), but a false positive means you could get sober, and that's a big issue.
I think we could adjust the brief, hastily sketched out ideas to accommodate these issues.
It's the "that" option. Seriously. We're not Europe by any stretch of the imagination!
Of course, it's better than the USA. We just have the same problem with public transport as any other country that doesn't realise that cars need to be able to integrate with it. Getting from your door to the public transport is often a real pain. That, or changes en-route take too long.
Train station in Cambridge, UK, is 8 miles from my door. To get there from the bus stop 100 yards from my door takes 20 minutes (bus into town) + 5 minutes (wait for another bus) + 10 minutes (bus to train station) + X minutes (delays) + Y minutes (wait for train). Door->Car->Park&Ride->Direct Bus Link->Train Station will take at most 20 minutes next year, once this system is in place.
Oh course, I meant C as in the kid wasn't yours because she had cheated. But indeed it is but one reason for getting divorced, just one where support shouldn't be ongoing from the man even if he was named on the birth certificate. I wouldn't go as far as backdating money invested by the man in the child and returning it, but ...
I do think a computerised algorithm that takes a lot of things into account, even including career abandonment of one party in the marriage is at least a reasonable first step to working out fair awards, and could lead to fewer cases going to expensive legal proceedings.
Also when we start dealing with silly amounts of money (tens of millions), it's not like losing half of it is going to destroy any ones life.
Who are you going to buy instead? Everyone gets their systems built in China, under these conditions. Foxconn is probably one of the better ones.
It's the cost of cheap, disposable goods in the West.
Used to be you'd buy a fridge built in your country, a TV, a car, a washing machine, everything, and it would last years and years. But they were expensive, and major purchases. They kept an economy alive, with people being paid reasonable wages. The electronics industry in a rapid speed to be competitive has changed this. We could have a computer that lasted 10 years, but it would really hold things back if you gamed, or did real work. So it drove an industry of rapid upgrades for computers and personal electronics, that don't last long. Western design, eastern construction.
But these eastern companies don't have the same standards of construction, of employee care, or values, as we do. Additionally the stresses of overwork are immense, they don't have cushy offices, free coffee and 9-5 hours like many of us. Also their upbringing is different. Coupled together, it will add up to a situation where people burn out rapidly, or worse commit suicide if something goes wrong. Many people to replace them of course. Nothing like your own company breaking into your own living space and scaring the bejesus out of you.
Fucking killing yourself over a front-facing camera, or an OLED screen, or whatever the iPhone 4 will have. Hell, it was probably an iPod Touch 3 for all we know. That shows a massive failure of the value system. Hell, it'll turn out to be the iPhone clone rip-offs that Foxconn probably make on the side won't it? As long as the Chinese elite bosses are okay, that's all that matters. Everything else is a meatgrinder. It's 18th Century with hi-tech, and it won't improve until we stop feeding it.
Does seem from other comments (although their veracity is in the air) that this guy could have been the Numero Uno Miser ever.
But, 14 years. You know, I might have held out for a year or two if I was that miserly and spiteful and if I stood to gain $2.5m (especially if I had little more than that in total) ... but we're talking about 14 years that he could have said "screw this, $2.5m for me to get out of here is surely better than this!" at any time.
Somewhere, at around the fifth year, some alarm bells should have been ringing. There's no way it should have got to 14. I also have deep worries about sending people to jail for so long without a trial by jury, especially for contempt in a civil case.
Maybe he's too much of a miser to sue!
Or the miser stuff is made up because he was in jail, and his ex-wife wasn't and got to create the history.
I wouldn't have the first clue how to drive an automatic, I've never driven one, and I see them so rarely that they're weird things to me when I do. I fail to see how driving a stick is difficult, but must be weird not to have it there.
However the current generation of flappy paddle semi-autos really seem to be getting there, well, according to top gear, I haven't tried one.
Sign me up. Especially the sex thing, 'cos I always get shot down with that. I'm a human KAL 007 it appears, and women are defence installations to me.
I fear self-driving cars are another thing like flying cars that will never really work out. Sure, they'll parallel park themselves, they might be able to take over motorway cruising, but you'll have to be on hand to steer it through the billions of things that can ruin your day on the ground in busy situations.
He must have really hated his wife for 14 years in jail to have been a better alternative that even holding over every penny he had, never mind what was presumably a 50/50 split, or more generous in his favour given it was 14 years ago.
But not enough to hire a hitman or run her over or something?
You see, something doesn't add up. He was around 60 when jailed. Now he's 74. That's 14 years out of a theoretical 20 years he had left to live at the time. It's illogical. If it was pure spite, then that's amazing.
I meant forced as in "if he wanted more than a double wide and 20" TV", not as in "do this or else".
Someone who has made millions and lived the lifestyle will have tried to make them again.
He could have had his passports confiscated and have been required to report to a police station every week instead.
I have no problem with the concept that all assets earned/obtained within a marriage by both people should be split equally should that marriage end.
At the end, there should be no upkeep requirement from one party to the other.
At the end, assets each person had going into the marriage shouldn't be taken into account, but retained by that person (or the value of that asset if sold off during the marriage). There is an argument that if you get married after a long relationship, that relationship period should also count.
I.e., if you own five houses, then get married to someone with none, buy two more together then get divorced, you keep six houses (including your original five), they're yours, they get one.
The only ongoing support should be for children created in the marriage or adopted in the marriage, unless subsequently found out that someone cheated.
Also the sex of the person should not be taken into account. Cases should be submitted as person A and person B, the above should be fed into a computer, and a figure should come out. The arguments won't be about what each person should get, which is horribly weighted towards the woman, as if they're incapable of work or earning anything when they are, divorce law should come out of the 20th Century at some point. Instead they will be about what went in at the beginning. A pre-nuptial can override, but maybe a prenuptial should be mandatory anyway.
Burning loads of money after separation isn't an excuse, it's vindictive and silly.
And I'm sure the above, hastily written concept, has holes in it, so don't get pedantic on me.
I fail to see where the benefit is in keeping an old man in jail for so long, at taxpayers expense, is.
14 years? I've seen figures of $30,000 PA to keep a prisoner captive. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_cost_of_one_prisoner_in_the_U.S.
So we're talking $420,000 so far spent on this man. Instead he could have had assets seized and been forced into work, and paying tax, and having some money garnished. Or his actual money would have shown up after a few years when he thought people weren't looking.
It's not as if he was a danger to people on the street - the number one reason to put someone into jail.
and unsupported on anything other than firefox and IE.
WTG Einstein.