#1 - If it sparks their interest at a young age, a world of options opens up to them. How many Entertainment Tonight reporters are there in the world? How many fashion designers are there in the world? Plenty, but they pale in comparison to the number of technical positions out there.
#2 - I tend to believe that the conceptual and critical thought involved in science and math is much more complex than the thought involved in pop culture.
For example, lets take basic astronomy: Learning the names of the stars, constellations, stellar movements, etc. is going to be useful how? She planning on captaining a boat?
I never said to have them memorize everything. In fact, I never really knew any of my constellations all that well. I'd look up, maybe be able to see a dipper or two, maybe Orion's belt, but that would be about it. But get me out in the middle of nowhere on a pitch black dark night, look up and see the Milky Way and imagine the solar system, the galaxy, the universe... I get giddy every time.
Fact is, she (they) are reading. Most of the young girls I've known would easily choose to just not read than to read something of little to no interest. Even if they are reading "garbage" mags, it still has to be better than them NOT reading Popular Science.
Fine, but at least attempt to encourage them into something better along the way. Actually, I got one of my cousins a novel one time and half expected her to just chuck it aside. But I spent a decent amount of time trying to find something that was somewhat complex without completely scaring here off. Turns out that she dove right in and absolutely loved it. Problem is, outside of school, her parents did not actively encourage that kind of thing. Don't give up on them just because you think they could be worse off.
I wasn't missing the point, I was refuting the point (to some extent). Basically, while being a studious consumer of pop culture may increase your brain's capacity and capabilities, I argue that a large portion of that capacity and capability is specific to pop culture topics. Therefore, it is waste to other topics.
Take your stereotypical college nerd and frat dude... who would you trust more to manage your wardrobe? The nerd is intelligent and can come up with all sorts of simulations to model different wardrobes. But he just doesn't understand "clashing". While the frat dude does understand "clashing", but doesn't understand something similar such as why two electrons move away from each other.
This article is basically attempting to boil human intelligence down into 1 category, and is then making the broad statement that this 1 category can apply to any subject. I'm pretty sure we can all disagree with that. However, as I said in my first sentence here ("to some extent"), I think that the skills developed in consuming pop culture can still apply in more useful areas. But I do not think it is as much as the article makes it out to be - ie you can spend ages 0 to 40 consuming pop culture and then go into quantum physics.
What they don't tell you in the article is that Microsoft hired a crack team of spec ops mercenaries to hunt down and kill the spammers in their sleep.
Unfortunately, being intelligent about completely useless topics is still completely useless. So some teenage girl spends age 13 through age 19 reading every issue of Elle, Cosmo, People, US Weekly (that's "US" weekly, not "U.S." weekly... I know, it sounds like a legitimate magazine but it is just a celeb-stalking magazine), etc... what good does it do her? Sure, she's developed her ability to collect and retain oodles of information, but right now her resources are all filled up with useless crap about what celeb is dating what other celeb and the latest fall fashions.
And who's not to say that her ability to collect and retain information is not catered to these useless data types (ie, the data type of "fall fashions"). Just because she can retain tons of information about fall fashions does not mean she can understand field lines for differential equations.
This topic ticks me off in particular because I have some young girl cousins (13, 14) and their families do nothing but feed them this useless crap. Instead of getting them a subscription to Popular Science or something (maybe even the for kids version), they shower them with Elle and Cosmo Girl. Then they reinforce the whole idea of turning themselves into objects for the boys to chase around by giving them makeup kits, little pink purses, high-cut baby tees, and accessories covered in bling. I try to talk to them about basic science and math, but they just go "huh, really?" and move on to something else. It's depressing because most of their families are non-technical types, and basically they (mainly their female relatives) are playing 'doll dress-up' with their younger siblings/kids/cousins/nieces. This wouldn't be as bad if they would reinforce some intelligent topics as well, even if it were just generic earth science or basic astronomy. Take them on some nature hikes and point out the different types of trees, look at specific plant structures and try to think how each unique plant has adapted to its environment. Take them out into some rural area in the middle of the night and take a gander at the stars. Show them how our solar system is constructed. Look at a globe and point out interesting geographical points on Earth... Anything... Just give them a chance. Right now they are being doomed to a life of pop culture, consumerism, and thoughtless dribble.
Unfortunately there are these little things like ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and Export Control restrictions. Whereby, no matter how innocent the action may be, if they can trace the source of controlled information back to you, they'll fine the hell out of ya and throw you in jail. Although, I guess if you publish anonymously, you could try to skirt that.
People sometimes think these restrictions only apply if you cross borders. But even if you are in the USA, if you talk about restricted information around non-citizens, you are in violation, even if you did not know they were non-citizens.
Wait, what's the difference between a "rose" and a "rose"? Never heard that phrase before. Or, are you just saying rose, as in a plant, and rose, as is the past tense of the rise verb?
My original estimate of your car's life was based on a minimal amount of driving, around 10 miles a day for work. But with at least an hour per day, I would assume you're on the highway for at least part of the time, and with the rest on surface streets you should still average 50 mph. So that gives you 50 mi/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks = 12500 miles just for work. Add in an average 5 hour each way trip every 2 months... 10 hours * 60 mph * 6 trips/year = 3600 miles. In 6 years you'll be at 100k miles. Sell the car off for $5k, and you just spent $5k/year on a car. Whereas sticking with $10k cars every 2 years, you can probaby bump the cost down to $1.5k/year (not to mention insurance). That's $3.5k/year in your pocket... the equivalent of a 5% raise if your salary is $60k. And the thing that cinches the deal (and why I'm even spending time arguing my side) is that you can get 2005 sedans, fully loaded, with 35k miles for $10k - we're talking practically new cars with low miles for 70% off the price... not some junker curb-side special. They even come with full warranties on them if you buy them from a dealer. So you spend no more on upkeep than you would with a new car.
This whole situation is a result of the 0% financing and factory price deals that have been running for the last couple years. The used car market is completely flooded and deals are everywhere. But that's not the point of this discussion anyways, just one example. The point was the mentality of always borrowing to spend. CCs with balances, home loans, car loans, lines of credit, hard money, financing for your couch, bed, TV, computer, pool table, etc... it's everywhere and tons of people do it. But they spend a lot of time in debt. I guess we're back to the different mentalities thing where some people just don't care if they spend their whole life in debt as long as they live comfortably.
I, personally, dislike that idea and have lived my entire life (so far, still pretty young) with 0 balance on my CCs and cars that I own (and I've been pretty happy, it's not like I'm just hoarding money and never doing anything). Although I do have my student loans (but those were unavoidable, I needed to get my degree to get my job), they'll be paid off very soon so I can stop wasting money on the interest.
I dunno, it just doesn't make sense to me, but I guess I shouldn't really care too much. Because in the end if everybody else over-extends their finances so they are living only a few pay checks ahead of the schedule, then I'll be more likely to get better deals by picking up (for cash) where others have dropped the ball. I won't be the guy driving the BMW or wearing the rolex, but I'll be living damn comfortable, debt free.
Good point. Anyone have any idea what sorts of frequencies this time-dithering technique uses? I know I would be extremely annoyed if I picked up a nice LCD and suddenly started noticing the flicker or experiencing headaches because of it.
That's the problem, most smart companies don't make that realization because 99% of the people don't ever consider jumping ship from the system (although if the working conditions are bad enough, they may jump to a different ship). The idea of being on your own, securing your own customers and contracts, doing the work yourself, and managing the entire process is scary to most people. The companies have no incentive to provide better raises because in the past a 3% raise most years with a 5% raise every so often and an occasional bonus has worked and provided a great employee retention rate. And it will probably continue to do so because the average employee considers that "good enough". Despite the fact that the executives give themselves 15% raises every year and that today, on average, they make 400x more than blue collar workers, while 15 years ago that number was at 80x (someone posted the reference to a Stanford article in other comments somewhere).
Well, maybe it's just different mentalities, but I don't understand one bit how someone can wash $35k (plus interest) down the sink and not care. If you really are driving the car to hell and back, and you don't want to be worrying about a high mileage vehicle, then 5 to 10 years down the road the car situation is going to present itself again. You'll sell it for a couple $k but then what? Another $35k car? I'll say the $14k car was not a bad decision. But the excess $22k could be spent in so many better ways. Perhaps get into a house a couple years sooner than you expected, or whatever.
And food/clothing is hardly comparable to a car. You can't survive without food, and you can't get through society without clothes. However you can survive perfectly fine with $10k cars if all you are doing is commuting to work. If you have a farm or something else, sure that's a different story.
And as far as a car and house as representing "freedom" exactly how free are you when you're making mandatory monthly payments on them?
Actually, it sounds like the game invoked raw emotional rage in you. Since games are often compared as works of art, this can only be seen as an undeniable success on behalf of the creators. Artists love to invoke intense emotion in the viewers of their works. And it looks like Peter got you good:)
Now the aiming system in GTA:SA is another issue altogether. That thing is a piece of shit, and it most certainly is not art.
Oh yeh, and as proof of the system (which I'm sure you don't need), I work with some absolutely brilliant minds that have spent their entire lives working for corporations. Some of them even have 20 or 30 years with this company. Yet they hit salary and wage caps along the way and are probably earning less than $150k/year. Around here, we recognize that these people are absolutely priceless. But the corporation doesn't realize that and doesn't care. Even if they suddenly demanded $250k/year, there's no avenue for them to get that through the corporation. The only way they can do it is to quit and become a consultant. The problem is, most of them don't have the mentality to do that. They can't even comprehend the instability of being self employed. Which is not necessarily a defect in their mentalities... most people in this country can't comprehend the same thing.
That's the point I was making. If they needed a red button pusher, they would hire a red button pusher for $5/hour. Instead, they hired you at a substantially higher cost for the very reasons you described (and I was attempting to allude to with my previous list of tasks). The tasks are not menial, and require knowledge and expertise to troubleshoot. But that's your job. Doing a good job of finding the kink in the network is part of your job description.
And in the grand scheme of things, I'm not arguing that the amount of good work you are doing is only worth an extra 3%. I'm arguing that the amount of good work you are doing is only worth an extra 3% to the company. If you performed the same exact work on your own (effectively cutting out the middle man - the company - who also happens to be the customer), you could mandate the 10% raise year over year.
When working for a corporation, you are in a system. The system has its rules and processes and 90% of the time you can't jump the system. If you don't like it, get out of the system. I may be a "corporate bitch" right now, but I plan on jumping out of the system as soon as possible. I know I'll never make any serious money working for someone else, just enough to survive and live reasonbly comfortably. But I'm only with them long enough to gain the experience that will allow me jump out on my own.
People just need to make that realization. Sitting in the system, complaining about the system, without a plan to get out of the system is just annoying.
It would be cool if you could train scientists and engineers, and have them manage and research such projects. They would work on their own developments. And then they could gradually grow to not believing in you. At that point you would have to decide if their really cool developments are worth keeping. Imagine if they developed something to produce 100% more grain. But everyone they shared their idea with lost some belief in you. Then you would have to decice whether to kill them off to prevent the loss of your believers, or try to keep the invention while ramping up your "recruitment" program. I haven't played BW1 or BW2, so maybe this does exist, I dunno. Sounds like a great idea to me though.
I have argued on the side of company owners before and that people shouldn't be expecting 10% raises for just satisfactory performance. But CEO pay is one area that erks the hell out of me. People put CEOs up on an ivory pedestal as if they have godly skills that enable them to command companies singlehandedly towards the future. The simply fact of the matter is that their job is no harder than any other senior manager that works directly with a group of 20 or 30 employees on a daily basis. They have advisors that present cost, schedule, and risk analyses to them, and they make subsequent decisions based on those analyses. The only difference about their job is the little bit of limelight that they see. And that they are the public face of the company should it take a nose dive. This is worth a few more bucks a year, but not tens of millions of dollars a year. What's the max a senior manager makes? Couple hundred k? Call it $250k. CEOs shouldn't be paid more than 3x or 4x that. An individual CEO may have the capability to engage a major deal for a company that will rake in millions or possibly billions of revenue. But they are in no way, shape, or form doing the work themselves. In fact, their contribution to the total effort is probably only in the 5% to 10% range. There is no way the actual work the CEO performs is worth more than a million or so a year. And that's excluding the ridiculous options they receive. The job of a CEO is not that complicated. The implications of their decisions are simply just a bit more serious, that's it.
And what the hell is with severance packages? Hire a CEO at $5 million per year and $5 million in options. He doesn't perform, so the board fires him after 1 year and sends him on his way with a $10 million severance package? What in the f'ing hell is up with that? I am absolutely convinced that severance packages only exist because the CEO has friends on the board. Plenty of blue collar workers never see a severance package. And the few that do only see enough to help them through the rough time inbetween jobs. The CEO was just paid $5 million plus $5 million in options for a years worth of work. He wouldn't know "rough times" if they hit in the back of the head. Severance packages for CEOs are just icing on their corrupted cake.
Don't like it? Then start your own company. Then you, as the owner, can decide what to do with the money that YOUR company earns. It's the owner's company right now, so he makes the decision. He made the decision to hire you, and apparently you have done a good enough job to make him more money. That's called a good business decisions. It's not called forking over cash to employees because of some phantom obligation to someone that has no ownership or say in the company.
Sure, YOU not THEM do the work, so you feel like something is owed to you (above and beyond the salary/wages that were agreed upon prior to employment). But just remember, YOU would not have a job without THEM and their company.
However, not giving your employees at least cost-of-living increases is a sure way to lose them in the future. Raises are a business decision. Nobody gives raises because they like their employees and want to see them happier. They give raises because they value their employee's work and don't want to lose them. If that ends up making the employees happier, then all the better because happier employees will probably work better. I would say not giving a cost-of-living increase plus perhaps an additional 1% is a bad business decision (if you like your employees' work) because the employees become less happy and are more likely to leave.
Lower power consumption. The screen is a huge sink on the battery. Decrease that by 50% or so and you can probably get a couple more hours out of your battery. Techies, admins, field engineers will buy those up in droves.
I think the point the parent poster was trying to make was that a 19" LCD hogs a lot more than a 12" LCD, not that laptop LCDs hog more than desktop LCDs or CRTs. I didn't see anything in the link about comparing different sized LCDs, just LCDs and CRTs. It makes sense though because a larger screen requires a larger or more powerful backlight, which should consume more energy. Unless the backlight scaling for energy consumption is flat over those sizes... I don't know.
It's really just an easily moveable computer anymore. Pack it up at home, unpack it at the hotel room and sit it on the table. Or pack it up at your primary residence, unpack at your investment residence while you spend a week there taking care of business.
I know a couple people who have picked up 19"ers. The things are absolute monstrosities and weigh half a ton. But you don't see them carrying the laptops around in their backpack every day. They carry it in a laptop bag from their permanent residence to their next temp residence then to the next temp residence after that. They aren't out in the field using their laptops for diagnostics on equipment. People just want a computer they can use wherever they happen to be for that week.
Having said that, I was looking into getting a true "portable" laptop computer, and was thinking that even a 15.4"er might be kinda hefty. I am contimplating something in the 12" to 14" range because I simple want the laptop for collecting and manipulating data, and writing documents on the fly. I have no desire to watch a 2 hour movie on a screen in my laptop on a daily basis. Although, for convenience, I might watch a movie or play a game during a flight if I don't have any other work I can complete. But that's about it. I'll stick to a 110" diagonal projection screen for watching movies for real:)
Slashdot Mirror
I found some better ipod porn here.
#1 - If it sparks their interest at a young age, a world of options opens up to them. How many Entertainment Tonight reporters are there in the world? How many fashion designers are there in the world? Plenty, but they pale in comparison to the number of technical positions out there.
#2 - I tend to believe that the conceptual and critical thought involved in science and math is much more complex than the thought involved in pop culture.
For example, lets take basic astronomy: Learning the names of the stars, constellations, stellar movements, etc. is going to be useful how? She planning on captaining a boat?
I never said to have them memorize everything. In fact, I never really knew any of my constellations all that well. I'd look up, maybe be able to see a dipper or two, maybe Orion's belt, but that would be about it. But get me out in the middle of nowhere on a pitch black dark night, look up and see the Milky Way and imagine the solar system, the galaxy, the universe
Fact is, she (they) are reading. Most of the young girls I've known would easily choose to just not read than to read something of little to no interest. Even if they are reading "garbage" mags, it still has to be better than them NOT reading Popular Science.
Fine, but at least attempt to encourage them into something better along the way. Actually, I got one of my cousins a novel one time and half expected her to just chuck it aside. But I spent a decent amount of time trying to find something that was somewhat complex without completely scaring here off. Turns out that she dove right in and absolutely loved it. Problem is, outside of school, her parents did not actively encourage that kind of thing. Don't give up on them just because you think they could be worse off.
I wasn't missing the point, I was refuting the point (to some extent). Basically, while being a studious consumer of pop culture may increase your brain's capacity and capabilities, I argue that a large portion of that capacity and capability is specific to pop culture topics. Therefore, it is waste to other topics.
... who would you trust more to manage your wardrobe? The nerd is intelligent and can come up with all sorts of simulations to model different wardrobes. But he just doesn't understand "clashing". While the frat dude does understand "clashing", but doesn't understand something similar such as why two electrons move away from each other.
Take your stereotypical college nerd and frat dude
This article is basically attempting to boil human intelligence down into 1 category, and is then making the broad statement that this 1 category can apply to any subject. I'm pretty sure we can all disagree with that. However, as I said in my first sentence here ("to some extent"), I think that the skills developed in consuming pop culture can still apply in more useful areas. But I do not think it is as much as the article makes it out to be - ie you can spend ages 0 to 40 consuming pop culture and then go into quantum physics.
Check out People or US Weekly the next time you are at the supermarket ... they are NOT written using decent english.
What they don't tell you in the article is that Microsoft hired a crack team of spec ops mercenaries to hunt down and kill the spammers in their sleep.
Unfortunately, being intelligent about completely useless topics is still completely useless. So some teenage girl spends age 13 through age 19 reading every issue of Elle, Cosmo, People, US Weekly (that's "US" weekly, not "U.S." weekly ... I know, it sounds like a legitimate magazine but it is just a celeb-stalking magazine), etc ... what good does it do her? Sure, she's developed her ability to collect and retain oodles of information, but right now her resources are all filled up with useless crap about what celeb is dating what other celeb and the latest fall fashions.
... Anything ... Just give them a chance. Right now they are being doomed to a life of pop culture, consumerism, and thoughtless dribble.
And who's not to say that her ability to collect and retain information is not catered to these useless data types (ie, the data type of "fall fashions"). Just because she can retain tons of information about fall fashions does not mean she can understand field lines for differential equations.
This topic ticks me off in particular because I have some young girl cousins (13, 14) and their families do nothing but feed them this useless crap. Instead of getting them a subscription to Popular Science or something (maybe even the for kids version), they shower them with Elle and Cosmo Girl. Then they reinforce the whole idea of turning themselves into objects for the boys to chase around by giving them makeup kits, little pink purses, high-cut baby tees, and accessories covered in bling. I try to talk to them about basic science and math, but they just go "huh, really?" and move on to something else. It's depressing because most of their families are non-technical types, and basically they (mainly their female relatives) are playing 'doll dress-up' with their younger siblings/kids/cousins/nieces. This wouldn't be as bad if they would reinforce some intelligent topics as well, even if it were just generic earth science or basic astronomy. Take them on some nature hikes and point out the different types of trees, look at specific plant structures and try to think how each unique plant has adapted to its environment. Take them out into some rural area in the middle of the night and take a gander at the stars. Show them how our solar system is constructed. Look at a globe and point out interesting geographical points on Earth
Looks like there are some people in the mexican government who can't be bought. (Score:5, Funny)
Vewwy Vewwy interesting.
Unfortunately there are these little things like ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and Export Control restrictions. Whereby, no matter how innocent the action may be, if they can trace the source of controlled information back to you, they'll fine the hell out of ya and throw you in jail. Although, I guess if you publish anonymously, you could try to skirt that.
People sometimes think these restrictions only apply if you cross borders. But even if you are in the USA, if you talk about restricted information around non-citizens, you are in violation, even if you did not know they were non-citizens.
My favorite, from a 20 oz pop ... Serving Per Container: 2
Right, because I want someone else slobbering all over my 20 oz.
Wait, what's the difference between a "rose" and a "rose"? Never heard that phrase before. Or, are you just saying rose, as in a plant, and rose, as is the past tense of the rise verb?
My original estimate of your car's life was based on a minimal amount of driving, around 10 miles a day for work. But with at least an hour per day, I would assume you're on the highway for at least part of the time, and with the rest on surface streets you should still average 50 mph. So that gives you 50 mi/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks = 12500 miles just for work. Add in an average 5 hour each way trip every 2 months
This whole situation is a result of the 0% financing and factory price deals that have been running for the last couple years. The used car market is completely flooded and deals are everywhere. But that's not the point of this discussion anyways, just one example. The point was the mentality of always borrowing to spend. CCs with balances, home loans, car loans, lines of credit, hard money, financing for your couch, bed, TV, computer, pool table, etc
I, personally, dislike that idea and have lived my entire life (so far, still pretty young) with 0 balance on my CCs and cars that I own (and I've been pretty happy, it's not like I'm just hoarding money and never doing anything). Although I do have my student loans (but those were unavoidable, I needed to get my degree to get my job), they'll be paid off very soon so I can stop wasting money on the interest.
I dunno, it just doesn't make sense to me, but I guess I shouldn't really care too much. Because in the end if everybody else over-extends their finances so they are living only a few pay checks ahead of the schedule, then I'll be more likely to get better deals by picking up (for cash) where others have dropped the ball. I won't be the guy driving the BMW or wearing the rolex, but I'll be living damn comfortable, debt free.
Good point. Anyone have any idea what sorts of frequencies this time-dithering technique uses? I know I would be extremely annoyed if I picked up a nice LCD and suddenly started noticing the flicker or experiencing headaches because of it.
That's the problem, most smart companies don't make that realization because 99% of the people don't ever consider jumping ship from the system (although if the working conditions are bad enough, they may jump to a different ship). The idea of being on your own, securing your own customers and contracts, doing the work yourself, and managing the entire process is scary to most people. The companies have no incentive to provide better raises because in the past a 3% raise most years with a 5% raise every so often and an occasional bonus has worked and provided a great employee retention rate. And it will probably continue to do so because the average employee considers that "good enough". Despite the fact that the executives give themselves 15% raises every year and that today, on average, they make 400x more than blue collar workers, while 15 years ago that number was at 80x (someone posted the reference to a Stanford article in other comments somewhere).
Well, maybe it's just different mentalities, but I don't understand one bit how someone can wash $35k (plus interest) down the sink and not care. If you really are driving the car to hell and back, and you don't want to be worrying about a high mileage vehicle, then 5 to 10 years down the road the car situation is going to present itself again. You'll sell it for a couple $k but then what? Another $35k car? I'll say the $14k car was not a bad decision. But the excess $22k could be spent in so many better ways. Perhaps get into a house a couple years sooner than you expected, or whatever.
And food/clothing is hardly comparable to a car. You can't survive without food, and you can't get through society without clothes. However you can survive perfectly fine with $10k cars if all you are doing is commuting to work. If you have a farm or something else, sure that's a different story.
And as far as a car and house as representing "freedom" exactly how free are you when you're making mandatory monthly payments on them?
Actually, it sounds like the game invoked raw emotional rage in you. Since games are often compared as works of art, this can only be seen as an undeniable success on behalf of the creators. Artists love to invoke intense emotion in the viewers of their works. And it looks like Peter got you good :)
Now the aiming system in GTA:SA is another issue altogether. That thing is a piece of shit, and it most certainly is not art.
Oh yeh, and as proof of the system (which I'm sure you don't need), I work with some absolutely brilliant minds that have spent their entire lives working for corporations. Some of them even have 20 or 30 years with this company. Yet they hit salary and wage caps along the way and are probably earning less than $150k/year. Around here, we recognize that these people are absolutely priceless. But the corporation doesn't realize that and doesn't care. Even if they suddenly demanded $250k/year, there's no avenue for them to get that through the corporation. The only way they can do it is to quit and become a consultant. The problem is, most of them don't have the mentality to do that. They can't even comprehend the instability of being self employed. Which is not necessarily a defect in their mentalities ... most people in this country can't comprehend the same thing.
That's the point I was making. If they needed a red button pusher, they would hire a red button pusher for $5/hour. Instead, they hired you at a substantially higher cost for the very reasons you described (and I was attempting to allude to with my previous list of tasks). The tasks are not menial, and require knowledge and expertise to troubleshoot. But that's your job. Doing a good job of finding the kink in the network is part of your job description.
And in the grand scheme of things, I'm not arguing that the amount of good work you are doing is only worth an extra 3%. I'm arguing that the amount of good work you are doing is only worth an extra 3% to the company. If you performed the same exact work on your own (effectively cutting out the middle man - the company - who also happens to be the customer), you could mandate the 10% raise year over year.
When working for a corporation, you are in a system. The system has its rules and processes and 90% of the time you can't jump the system. If you don't like it, get out of the system. I may be a "corporate bitch" right now, but I plan on jumping out of the system as soon as possible. I know I'll never make any serious money working for someone else, just enough to survive and live reasonbly comfortably. But I'm only with them long enough to gain the experience that will allow me jump out on my own.
People just need to make that realization. Sitting in the system, complaining about the system, without a plan to get out of the system is just annoying.
It would be cool if you could train scientists and engineers, and have them manage and research such projects. They would work on their own developments. And then they could gradually grow to not believing in you. At that point you would have to decide if their really cool developments are worth keeping. Imagine if they developed something to produce 100% more grain. But everyone they shared their idea with lost some belief in you. Then you would have to decice whether to kill them off to prevent the loss of your believers, or try to keep the invention while ramping up your "recruitment" program. I haven't played BW1 or BW2, so maybe this does exist, I dunno. Sounds like a great idea to me though.
I have argued on the side of company owners before and that people shouldn't be expecting 10% raises for just satisfactory performance. But CEO pay is one area that erks the hell out of me. People put CEOs up on an ivory pedestal as if they have godly skills that enable them to command companies singlehandedly towards the future. The simply fact of the matter is that their job is no harder than any other senior manager that works directly with a group of 20 or 30 employees on a daily basis. They have advisors that present cost, schedule, and risk analyses to them, and they make subsequent decisions based on those analyses. The only difference about their job is the little bit of limelight that they see. And that they are the public face of the company should it take a nose dive. This is worth a few more bucks a year, but not tens of millions of dollars a year. What's the max a senior manager makes? Couple hundred k? Call it $250k. CEOs shouldn't be paid more than 3x or 4x that. An individual CEO may have the capability to engage a major deal for a company that will rake in millions or possibly billions of revenue. But they are in no way, shape, or form doing the work themselves. In fact, their contribution to the total effort is probably only in the 5% to 10% range. There is no way the actual work the CEO performs is worth more than a million or so a year. And that's excluding the ridiculous options they receive. The job of a CEO is not that complicated. The implications of their decisions are simply just a bit more serious, that's it.
And what the hell is with severance packages? Hire a CEO at $5 million per year and $5 million in options. He doesn't perform, so the board fires him after 1 year and sends him on his way with a $10 million severance package? What in the f'ing hell is up with that? I am absolutely convinced that severance packages only exist because the CEO has friends on the board. Plenty of blue collar workers never see a severance package. And the few that do only see enough to help them through the rough time inbetween jobs. The CEO was just paid $5 million plus $5 million in options for a years worth of work. He wouldn't know "rough times" if they hit in the back of the head. Severance packages for CEOs are just icing on their corrupted cake.
Don't like it? Then start your own company. Then you, as the owner, can decide what to do with the money that YOUR company earns. It's the owner's company right now, so he makes the decision. He made the decision to hire you, and apparently you have done a good enough job to make him more money. That's called a good business decisions. It's not called forking over cash to employees because of some phantom obligation to someone that has no ownership or say in the company.
Sure, YOU not THEM do the work, so you feel like something is owed to you (above and beyond the salary/wages that were agreed upon prior to employment). But just remember, YOU would not have a job without THEM and their company.
However, not giving your employees at least cost-of-living increases is a sure way to lose them in the future. Raises are a business decision. Nobody gives raises because they like their employees and want to see them happier. They give raises because they value their employee's work and don't want to lose them. If that ends up making the employees happier, then all the better because happier employees will probably work better. I would say not giving a cost-of-living increase plus perhaps an additional 1% is a bad business decision (if you like your employees' work) because the employees become less happy and are more likely to leave.
The people driving electric vehicles get to park near the building entrance and get free electricity for their car. I guess those are incentives.
Lower power consumption. The screen is a huge sink on the battery. Decrease that by 50% or so and you can probably get a couple more hours out of your battery. Techies, admins, field engineers will buy those up in droves.
I think the point the parent poster was trying to make was that a 19" LCD hogs a lot more than a 12" LCD, not that laptop LCDs hog more than desktop LCDs or CRTs. I didn't see anything in the link about comparing different sized LCDs, just LCDs and CRTs. It makes sense though because a larger screen requires a larger or more powerful backlight, which should consume more energy. Unless the backlight scaling for energy consumption is flat over those sizes ... I don't know.
It's really just an easily moveable computer anymore. Pack it up at home, unpack it at the hotel room and sit it on the table. Or pack it up at your primary residence, unpack at your investment residence while you spend a week there taking care of business.
:)
I know a couple people who have picked up 19"ers. The things are absolute monstrosities and weigh half a ton. But you don't see them carrying the laptops around in their backpack every day. They carry it in a laptop bag from their permanent residence to their next temp residence then to the next temp residence after that. They aren't out in the field using their laptops for diagnostics on equipment. People just want a computer they can use wherever they happen to be for that week.
Having said that, I was looking into getting a true "portable" laptop computer, and was thinking that even a 15.4"er might be kinda hefty. I am contimplating something in the 12" to 14" range because I simple want the laptop for collecting and manipulating data, and writing documents on the fly. I have no desire to watch a 2 hour movie on a screen in my laptop on a daily basis. Although, for convenience, I might watch a movie or play a game during a flight if I don't have any other work I can complete. But that's about it. I'll stick to a 110" diagonal projection screen for watching movies for real
*SWOOSH* ... that's the sound of the joke doing 120 mph over your head.