Not just that, very similar technology is used for the Dutch national public transport card that is under development (and currently piloted in Rotterdam). In a case of weird reciprocity, the Royal Holloway University of London wrote a report on the Dutch card system, initially recommending immediate replacement but later changing that to "recommend further investigation".
IOW, ask your developers to create the standard together.
Better order a cage and have a few medics standing by for the inevitable K&R vs. ANSI style deathmatch.
Coding standards should not optional, and you can and should enforce them. Just make sure that they are reasonable (i.e. not too loose nor to strict), make sense, and are the same across your organisation (don't let every project have their own standards). If a developer has a reasonable objection to parts of the coding standards, then it's worth listening to him and consider changes the standard, but if he refuses to apply the standard because he disagrees with some of its rules, then he's off the team.
It seems there is an allegation of tampering that no one seems to be able to prove or disprove. Regardsless of who won or should have won, that fact alone should give anyone pause when it comes to voting by machine. With hand marked ballots counted by hand, there will be a representative of a party of my own conviction at most polling stations, who can tell me with conviction: "No tampering has taken place here". When votes are counted by hands in the presence of representatives of all partirs, I can be pretty sure that there is no widespread tampering, without having to take any expert's word for it.
The whole idea of using Avatars for meeting is that you do not have to travel. Certain kinds of training (not technical) and meetings with a social element benefit greatly from virtual environments. It is not as good as meeting in person, but a damn sight better than highly annoying teleconferencing, or MSN, or even videoconferencing. It is more conducive to social "chatter" than those alternatives, and it's way easier to set up breakout sessions. And unlike videoconferencing, there's no real limit on the number of physical sites that can join in.
Conferencing and training in virtual worlds is still in its infancy (I am involved in a pilot for a large multinational), but in this age of CO2 awareness and rising airline ticket prices, expect this mode of social interaction to become more commonplace quickly in the workplace.
The matter is way too complex to really understand - I don't think it should have had a referendum in the first place. Instead it should have been set up by one EU parliament, and ratified by the next after the elections. Then competent people (the politicians) that can understand the meaning of the document can vote on it, and indirectly the general public votes as well. Not everything is suitable for referendum.
The problem is with the document itself. It should be a real constitution, like the US and many other countries have. A document that delimits Europe's influence over its member states and its people, and clearly states what they can and cannot do, and how they do it. It does not have to be more than a few pages in very simple language that anyone can understand. Then we'll have something meaningful to vote on... and I think it'd good and right that we actually get to vote on it, too.
So I understandably have a hard time agreeing that government could declare a position either way on this. They should just be silent and mind their own business.
And they have, in this case. The decision was that each case is to be judged individually, by a medical committee working to some generic guidelines.
Not a bad decision, except I am pissed off at the way it came about. Basically the discussion was stirred up by the religious part of the ruling coalition, using veiled religious arguments. The liberal (in the American sense of the word) part of the coalition wanted to allow embryo selection. So... for the sake of the coalition they avoided the decision. Just like they have every single other major decision so far. The only thing our current government has to show for over a year of lackluster ruling, is more taxes. Oh, and they made the Segway street legal.
The founder, then-CEO and General Chief LordofitAll fires off irate messages on a daily basis, but the whole company steadfastly ignores him and continues to crank out crap?
If Gates thinks he can improve the company by sending emails like this, I am not surprised that they are continuing to crank out crap.
Instead of foaming at the mouth at every incident he himself suffers, he'd be better off finding out if these are not incidents but structural problems, and if so, get the responsible execs to map out the extend of the problems and propose how their respective organisations are going to address them. Then ask them to report meaningful results on a regular basis.
I view these problems as a direct result in regards to a lack of IT project managers.
I find that there's a rather shocking lack of senior, competent technical personnel in general. On a lot of larger projects, there's not a great deal of senior devs to go around so a couple of them end up as dev lead / team lead even though their managerial skills aren't so great. There's no testers to be had so the developers end up doing the testing, and the user acceptance tests end up poorly written aand poorly facilitated. Junior developers have far too much leeway in writing code because there's not enough seniors to coach them, or even do proper code reviews. Application and infrastructure architects are too busy to give each project the attention it deserves, and as a result performance and scalability are not built into the design, and are often not even tested for before release.
In short, a lack of senior staff means a lack of attention, coaching and oversight. If you have too many juniors, your project is going to take a lot longer to correct "newbie" mistakes, and these mistakes are caught later after they're made as well. Either allow for this extra time, or end up with crappy code.
Sadly, the idea has taken hold with upper management that IT is simply a commodity, and as a result most IT shops have become piss-poor at identifying and nurturing talent. They expect junior developer to become "mediors" automatically after a few years, where in practice they have picked up a ton of bad habits on which they've never been corrected. And I expect the shortage to increase in the future... more and more professional IT staff are starting to look for ways out.
Jeez... if only Americans would have done the same thing in response to this guys [utah.edu] efforts in his administration to do the same thing.
I hear you, brother... here in the Netherlands, such a bill would draw only little media attention; there'd be some token resistance from the opposition (I'm no leftie, but glad to see some left wing parties who still feel strongly about privacy issues). There certainly wouldn't be any mass interest let alone protest marches.
But why should that surprise anyone... we're already the world's #1 phone wiretapper by an (un)comfortable lead. I'm surprised our national security agency doesn't already have powers similar to these.
the article notes Apple gets supplementary revenue from the sale of proprietary connectors for the iPod and other devices.
So? You'll still need the proprietary iPod connector to hook it up to this charger hub, and Apple can still make it's money there (though there are already 3rd party chargers and connectors available). Though they have a point; my iPod won't charge in a universal USB charger, or even when connected to the computer it won't charge when its "dismounted" in Windows, and I am sure there's a reason for that.
Frankly, the article does hit on one major problem with "synthetic" child porn - it's often not really synthetic. Remember the movie "A Scanner Darkly" ? That's the kind of thing were starting to see, not the full-on synthetic of a Final Fantasy. It's damned hard to figure out which is which, and in the mean time, people get exploited. [...] I like the obscenity standard. It's tough, for a reason.
No. In a proper lawful society we do not prosecute victimless thoughtcrime, and we do not prosecute without proof. Synthetic child porn harms no one, unless you want to believe that it works like a drug pushing the user to the real stuff... well, so far there's not much proof of that happening. If the material is not really synthetic, then prove it if you can, and then prosecute to the fullest extend of the law. Is that hard to prove? It may well be, but I think we should hesitate to reject good legal principles just because it is convenient in an issue that happens to touch our hearts. This is "Think of the children!" taken to its extreme.
Bad as child pornography is, what scares me a whole lot more is the way people get worked up about it. Looking at the insane hysteria the surrounds this subject, one would think that there's a child molester around every corner, and that our children are never safe. Anyone seen that South Park episode on the subject? Not far from the truth... And worse: it seems that once an accusation has been leveled, the full burden of proof falls upon the accused, both in the legal and the public domain. In this day and age, how hard is it really to plant "evidence" on someone's computer (or even unwitingly download it)?
By the way, synthetic child porn has been outlawed here in the Netherlands for some time, and recently our courts saw a first conviction and stiff sentence under this new law. Mind, this was for mere posession, not creating or traficking.
The DOD replaced reasonable passwords with Common Access Cards. The difference? Instead of having to find out someone's 8+ character alphanumeric password that changes every month
... which people will forget, especially if they have several, and will therefore write it down on a yellow sticky conveniently pasted to the edge of the CRT.
[...]need to have physical access to their card and need to know their 6 digit number that never changes. Meanwhile, everyone is forgetting their card in the reader when they go to lunch, so they can't get back on base -- but feel free to use it yourself in the meantime.
After a few weeks people will remember their 6 digit code and never have to write it down again, which is more secure. At a well known defense organisation I worked for, the security people actually forbade sysadmins to enable expiring password... they felt that expiring passwords were just another example of security theater. Better to log time and date of last access and display it to the user when they log on again, in red if the last access was outside their regular hours.
Oh and as for people leaving cards in their machines: just change the doors so that you need your card to leave as well as enter the building. Most companies already do this, including my current client, where I've never come across a card left in a machine yet.
So when I wear a funny T-shirt, can I demand money from everyone who laughs at it? I mean, I want that money, and according to copyright apologist logic, that means they owe it to me.
Well, perhaps they do? (silly analogy coming up). What if you had spent millions to hire a group of famous comedians to come up with the funniest T-shirt ever? Suppose that you planned to wear it standing inside a tent, so that you can charge people $10 admission to come look and laugh. Wouldn't you be pissed at people sneaking in under the canvas without paying, or copying the T-shirt for their friends?
Copying isn't stealing because no one is deprived of the thing being copied. That's Copyright Debate 101, man.
You're conveniently leaving out part of the debate; people may not be deprived of the physical thing, but they are being deprived of income they rightfully hoped to make with it. Rightfully, because they are not just showing their works to everyone and them demand payment, like in your analogy; they try and keep a careful control of the works they paid to have produced, and charge a fee to enjoy that work. What gives you the right to circumvent those controls, not so that you can keep enjoying your purchase or anything other under "fair use", but to enjoy the work without paying for it and passing it off to your friends?
Semantically you may be right, but insisting that copyright is not stealing is usually nothing more than a deliberate attempt to cloud the issue, and the fact that it is [i]wrong[/i] to copy an intellectual work without permission. Or perhaps you would argue that it isn't wrong... in that case I expect better arguments than "Hey, it's not stealing...".
Mind, I am dead against MPAA and RIAA tactics as well as the antics of our various bureaus in the EC. The fines demanded of casual copiers is outrageous, as is the legal pressure exerted on these individuals. And most of these cases do not belong in the domain of criminal law... though some of them do. But I do not believe this "information wnats to be free" crap. Those who pay to have music and movies produced, have the right to ask a price to enjoy those works and set conditions for using them. Fair use and sensible consumer protection should apply, but for the rest, if you don't agree with the price or the conditions attached, your only moral option is to not obtain the music or movies, and spend your money elsewhere.
I understand that the battery life and screen readability of these things is supposed to be pretty good, though.
They are. Battery life is notably longer compared to regular laptops. The screen readability is excellent, and for long reading sessions (when you are reading novels rather than glancing at references) the experience is beyond compare.
So, if these math geniuses get a degree there, whats to keep them from just moving out of country? Nothing? Honestly, if I were born in an absolutely impoverished country, and ended up being a genius and getting a graduate degree in mathematics, I'm sure I'd hop on the first chance at a big corporate job in some other country.
Would you? Perhaps for a while; a good many graduates from both first and third world countries fancy the idea of working abroad for a while. But not many people have the blood to permanently settle somewhere else.
Also remember that as a good scientist in the employ of a western corporation, you may make a decent income in "the west", but at home you'll live like a king. I know a few western expats who have trouble returning to their own wealthy countries for just that reason.
Re:More Annoying Money Wasters for Rich People
on
Zeppelins Over California
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· Score: 4, Insightful
They take rich people's money, which would otherwise be locked down in someone's personal possession, i.e. not in the economy.
Not really, the savings you and your fellow rich men have in the bank are being put to good use, e.g the money is on loan at interest to others, or reinvested. Or perhaps the money appears to be locked down in equity, in which case it has already left the owner's hands in exchange for that equity. If you'd keep your savings in an old sock, then it would truly be locked down.
But I agree, I don't object to money sinks for rich folks. People will be putting food on the table by providing this money waster, perhaps science or engineering will be advanced a little bit, and most importantly it's the rich people's own damn money. I prefer rich people spending cash on useless frippery, to taxing those people to death and spending the taxes on, say, putting little rainbow-colored stickers on every lamppost along a (shortish) stretch of highway to "give it an identity", for a cost of $200.000 (I kid you not).
Gotta be honest though. Having the 'leetest rig' just makes you top of a very small pile.
A pile of what, exactly?
It seems that "leet" mostly means a side window, big fans (preferably with a control panel in one of the drive bays), really weird SATA cables, and lots and lots of blue LEDs.
Even the tech press is calling cyberglars* "hackers". Even slashdot, who should have striven to maintain the word that used to be a badge of honor back when nerds were being rediculed, uses "hacker" like the ignorant lusers do.
In other words, pretty much everyone save a few die-hards refers to "crackers" as "hackers" now. That's how languages evolve; trying to go back to the original meaning of the word would be as pointless and futile as Hormel's attempt to disassociate the word Spam from unsollicited emails. Or, taking your example, as futile as trying to get "gay" to mean happy again.
I've heard these claims about how freelancers make more than their FTE counterparts before, but so far I haven't seen any evidence to support it.
I'm not sure how things are over in whereever it is you live, but over here hourly rates for skilled freelancers are pretty good, and that goes for plumbers and carpenters as well as IT professionals. Fixed salaries on the other hand tend to be on the low side. Perhaps this difference is due to the fact that there is a very real difference in social security for employees and freelancers. Employees get a decent stipend for a short while if they are laid off (plus severance pay), and for longer periods they get a reasonable basic income. When I am unemployed, sick or otherwise unable to work, I get nothing.
I don't mind sharing my own experience. When I was employed, my gross pay was about 50k (Euros) + lease car (which comes with a huge tax slapped on). Not great but not bad either for someone on my level, and it affords a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. My current freelance gig is through an agency who take a chunk out of my earnings; I bill them just under 70 an hour, which comes to about 125k a year working 40 hours a week and taking 35 days off. Not bad... this was ample to give myself a small raise and at the same time set aside plenty of cash for when I'd find myself out of work. Of course next year will probably find myself idle between jobs more often, and now I'll have to pay for my own car and training and such, but then again when I cut out this expensive agency for my next gigs, I'll more often than not be able to charge 80 - 100.
My personal goal so far is to make enough to have the same disposable income on average as I had during my employment. So far the numbers look good and I should be able to sustain this goal, while having much more days off and loads more freedom in my work.
A huge benefit is the fact that as a business I can buy all sorts of toys as business expenses... When I buy computers, video projectors, printers etc, VAT is returned to me (19%), and I will not have to pay income tax on the remainder (and income tax is 40-50% around here!). Effectively all my toys come at 50% off. In addition I get all sorts of silly business tax breaks so I'll end up paying a lot less tax than I would have on income from employment.
have found the rewards are way beyond monetary (though the money isnt bad either), and my success or failure is totally in my own hands rather than next weeks decision by the shareholders.
Hear, hear! I did the same thing at the start of this year, quit my IT Solutions Provider (read: peddlers of warm meat) and went Freelance. I got lucky too, being offered to continue on an assignment with my client, a Fortune 500 corporation. I have a contract for all of this year which means my freelance career doesn't start with a big loan or a big dip in my (nonexistent) life savings, and at the end of the year I'll have a tidy little nest-egg to see me through idle time. Not that finding work is an issue at the moment, on the contrary.
Funny thing is: even though I am doing basically the same work, doing it freelance makes all the difference. No more singing the company song, doing silly useless appraisals and attending boring company meetings. No more dealing with corporate accountants who screw up my expense claims; my accountant now works for me, not with (or against) me, and if he does a bum job I'll fire his ass. And the work itself is more interesting too. I meet a lot of business and IT people as well as suppliers and other 3rd parties. These used to be just people I worked with, easily met and quickly forgotten, but now they are potential sources of followup assignments, potential partners or people with useful friends. Now that it's my business instead of just my job, I find myself actively networking, which is a new and interesting dimension to what I do every day.
Yes, going Freelance is not a bad way to change your job without changing your profession. It may seem scary if you have a family, but I imagine that in the USA (as opposed to Europe with our unbelievable job security) it is not that much more risky than having a steady job... if you do your job well, you'll eat well. Do a bum job, and come bad times your steady job may not be that permanent after all. And as a freelancer on a contract you'll have more cash coming your way, which means you can build up a reserve instead of living from paycheck to paycheck.
Politicians might stop wasting vast amounts of European taxpayers money on their own vastly over-budget but completely worthless GPS system
From Wikipedia:
Galileo is intended to provide more precise measurements to all users than available through GPS or GLONASS, better positioning services at high latitudes and an independent positioning system upon which European nations can rely even in times of war or political disagreement.
It might be redundant for many positioning applications, but completely worthless...?
According to the same source, the EU is spending 3.4 billion Euros on this. This is just half of what we're spending on "administration" this year, and considering the other truly worthless crap we are spending money on, having our own GPS system is a pretty good goal in comparison.
But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions?
1) Commercial launches such as these pay for themselves and help defray the total cost of the India space programme.
2) High tech stuff like this creates jobs for academics and skilled workers, who'll be part of India's growing middle class. I believe that creating wealth top-down, by having wealth trickle down from an affluent and productive middle class to the poor, works a hell of a lot better than forever "giving that man a fish to eat".
I think the iPhone et al are cool as a *personal* tool/toy but more often than not, they don't scale into a company where protection of IP and low TCO are mandated. For your personal use, you can absorb all the geekiness you want because the support required starts and ends with yourself.
Try to deploy 1000 iPhones in a company and you're going to hemorrhage money.
Various companies I work for are increasingly offering their employees more options, sometimes including iPhones. And their IT departments are coping just fine. It does take a different approach to infrastructure and support, to be sure, but I think that a centralised one-size-fits-all approach will lose favour with both employers and employees.
As an example, some companies provide tools to access corporate systems from your home machine, and allow employees to install stuff on office workstations for personal use (within reason, and always with a valid license). Surprisingly those companies have not seen a notable increase in support costs or virus / trojan issues and whatnot.
In the past, employees would eagerly accept Blackberries from their employer. These days, the answer is often: "No, I do not want another device to carry around". People often already have their own smart phones, and they do not want another device but want the one they already have to work with corporate systems. My current client now offers (optional) Blackberries to some, but also offers ActiveSync to everyone who wants it, for use with personal smart phones. And other syncing software can be installed as well, if necessary.
I personally don't give a fuck about ringtones or cameras or the ability to play mp3s/videos/games on my phone. At all.
Different strokes for different folks! I too am a business centric user. Personally, I consider the following features of my phone to be must-haves, more or less in that order:
- Making calls
- Calendar
- Address book
- Notepad
I do not care much for email, certainly not business emails. I get too many of those as it is, and I prefer to set aside a few minutes a few times a day to clear my inbox and trash each mail or turn it into an action item (a la Getting Things Done). Push email will simply kill me.
I too laughed at these extra features of the newer phones, especially cameras. But I found myself using the camera from time to time (making snaps of whiteboards mostly). I've use the GPS / TomTom software when visiting cities or driving around other countries. The email function is handy to read / write short personal mails on holiday so I don't have to go into a web cafe. I've even used my phone's browser to do quick price checks or the like when shopping. I still have a separate iPod for listening to music, but if my phone can take on that task as well, why not? One less thing to carry around.
None of these functions are life-savers, but they sure are handy, especially since I am always carrying that phone with me anyway. They might be nice-to-haves, but some of them are very nice.
I like the Windows Mobile platform for its versatility, good integration with Outlook (which is what most businesses use), and for doing a reasonable job at what it is supposed to do. WM6 is pretty stable too... the only problem I have with the platform is the GUI's piss-poor performance, and that is where the iPhone shines. If the new iPhone will indeed offer UMTS and GPS, it might tip the scales enough for me to pick one up.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just that, very similar technology is used for the Dutch national public transport card that is under development (and currently piloted in Rotterdam). In a case of weird reciprocity, the Royal Holloway University of London wrote a report on the Dutch card system, initially recommending immediate replacement but later changing that to "recommend further investigation".
Better order a cage and have a few medics standing by for the inevitable K&R vs. ANSI style deathmatch.
Coding standards should not optional, and you can and should enforce them. Just make sure that they are reasonable (i.e. not too loose nor to strict), make sense, and are the same across your organisation (don't let every project have their own standards). If a developer has a reasonable objection to parts of the coding standards, then it's worth listening to him and consider changes the standard, but if he refuses to apply the standard because he disagrees with some of its rules, then he's off the team.
It seems there is an allegation of tampering that no one seems to be able to prove or disprove. Regardsless of who won or should have won, that fact alone should give anyone pause when it comes to voting by machine. With hand marked ballots counted by hand, there will be a representative of a party of my own conviction at most polling stations, who can tell me with conviction: "No tampering has taken place here". When votes are counted by hands in the presence of representatives of all partirs, I can be pretty sure that there is no widespread tampering, without having to take any expert's word for it.
The whole idea of using Avatars for meeting is that you do not have to travel. Certain kinds of training (not technical) and meetings with a social element benefit greatly from virtual environments. It is not as good as meeting in person, but a damn sight better than highly annoying teleconferencing, or MSN, or even videoconferencing. It is more conducive to social "chatter" than those alternatives, and it's way easier to set up breakout sessions. And unlike videoconferencing, there's no real limit on the number of physical sites that can join in.
Conferencing and training in virtual worlds is still in its infancy (I am involved in a pilot for a large multinational), but in this age of CO2 awareness and rising airline ticket prices, expect this mode of social interaction to become more commonplace quickly in the workplace.
The problem is with the document itself. It should be a real constitution, like the US and many other countries have. A document that delimits Europe's influence over its member states and its people, and clearly states what they can and cannot do, and how they do it. It does not have to be more than a few pages in very simple language that anyone can understand. Then we'll have something meaningful to vote on... and I think it'd good and right that we actually get to vote on it, too.
And they have, in this case. The decision was that each case is to be judged individually, by a medical committee working to some generic guidelines.
Not a bad decision, except I am pissed off at the way it came about. Basically the discussion was stirred up by the religious part of the ruling coalition, using veiled religious arguments. The liberal (in the American sense of the word) part of the coalition wanted to allow embryo selection. So... for the sake of the coalition they avoided the decision. Just like they have every single other major decision so far. The only thing our current government has to show for over a year of lackluster ruling, is more taxes. Oh, and they made the Segway street legal.
Instead of foaming at the mouth at every incident he himself suffers, he'd be better off finding out if these are not incidents but structural problems, and if so, get the responsible execs to map out the extend of the problems and propose how their respective organisations are going to address them. Then ask them to report meaningful results on a regular basis.
In short, a lack of senior staff means a lack of attention, coaching and oversight. If you have too many juniors, your project is going to take a lot longer to correct "newbie" mistakes, and these mistakes are caught later after they're made as well. Either allow for this extra time, or end up with crappy code.
Sadly, the idea has taken hold with upper management that IT is simply a commodity, and as a result most IT shops have become piss-poor at identifying and nurturing talent. They expect junior developer to become "mediors" automatically after a few years, where in practice they have picked up a ton of bad habits on which they've never been corrected. And I expect the shortage to increase in the future... more and more professional IT staff are starting to look for ways out.
But why should that surprise anyone... we're already the world's #1 phone wiretapper by an (un)comfortable lead. I'm surprised our national security agency doesn't already have powers similar to these.
Bad as child pornography is, what scares me a whole lot more is the way people get worked up about it. Looking at the insane hysteria the surrounds this subject, one would think that there's a child molester around every corner, and that our children are never safe. Anyone seen that South Park episode on the subject? Not far from the truth... And worse: it seems that once an accusation has been leveled, the full burden of proof falls upon the accused, both in the legal and the public domain. In this day and age, how hard is it really to plant "evidence" on someone's computer (or even unwitingly download it)?
By the way, synthetic child porn has been outlawed here in the Netherlands for some time, and recently our courts saw a first conviction and stiff sentence under this new law. Mind, this was for mere posession, not creating or traficking.
Oh and as for people leaving cards in their machines: just change the doors so that you need your card to leave as well as enter the building. Most companies already do this, including my current client, where I've never come across a card left in a machine yet.
Semantically you may be right, but insisting that copyright is not stealing is usually nothing more than a deliberate attempt to cloud the issue, and the fact that it is [i]wrong[/i] to copy an intellectual work without permission. Or perhaps you would argue that it isn't wrong... in that case I expect better arguments than "Hey, it's not stealing...".
Mind, I am dead against MPAA and RIAA tactics as well as the antics of our various bureaus in the EC. The fines demanded of casual copiers is outrageous, as is the legal pressure exerted on these individuals. And most of these cases do not belong in the domain of criminal law... though some of them do. But I do not believe this "information wnats to be free" crap. Those who pay to have music and movies produced, have the right to ask a price to enjoy those works and set conditions for using them. Fair use and sensible consumer protection should apply, but for the rest, if you don't agree with the price or the conditions attached, your only moral option is to not obtain the music or movies, and spend your money elsewhere.
Also remember that as a good scientist in the employ of a western corporation, you may make a decent income in "the west", but at home you'll live like a king. I know a few western expats who have trouble returning to their own wealthy countries for just that reason.
But I agree, I don't object to money sinks for rich folks. People will be putting food on the table by providing this money waster, perhaps science or engineering will be advanced a little bit, and most importantly it's the rich people's own damn money. I prefer rich people spending cash on useless frippery, to taxing those people to death and spending the taxes on, say, putting little rainbow-colored stickers on every lamppost along a (shortish) stretch of highway to "give it an identity", for a cost of $200.000 (I kid you not).
It seems that "leet" mostly means a side window, big fans (preferably with a control panel in one of the drive bays), really weird SATA cables, and lots and lots of blue LEDs.
I don't mind sharing my own experience. When I was employed, my gross pay was about 50k (Euros) + lease car (which comes with a huge tax slapped on). Not great but not bad either for someone on my level, and it affords a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.
My current freelance gig is through an agency who take a chunk out of my earnings; I bill them just under 70 an hour, which comes to about 125k a year working 40 hours a week and taking 35 days off. Not bad... this was ample to give myself a small raise and at the same time set aside plenty of cash for when I'd find myself out of work. Of course next year will probably find myself idle between jobs more often, and now I'll have to pay for my own car and training and such, but then again when I cut out this expensive agency for my next gigs, I'll more often than not be able to charge 80 - 100.
My personal goal so far is to make enough to have the same disposable income on average as I had during my employment. So far the numbers look good and I should be able to sustain this goal, while having much more days off and loads more freedom in my work.
A huge benefit is the fact that as a business I can buy all sorts of toys as business expenses... When I buy computers, video projectors, printers etc, VAT is returned to me (19%), and I will not have to pay income tax on the remainder (and income tax is 40-50% around here!). Effectively all my toys come at 50% off. In addition I get all sorts of silly business tax breaks so I'll end up paying a lot less tax than I would have on income from employment.
Funny thing is: even though I am doing basically the same work, doing it freelance makes all the difference. No more singing the company song, doing silly useless appraisals and attending boring company meetings. No more dealing with corporate accountants who screw up my expense claims; my accountant now works for me, not with (or against) me, and if he does a bum job I'll fire his ass. And the work itself is more interesting too. I meet a lot of business and IT people as well as suppliers and other 3rd parties. These used to be just people I worked with, easily met and quickly forgotten, but now they are potential sources of followup assignments, potential partners or people with useful friends. Now that it's my business instead of just my job, I find myself actively networking, which is a new and interesting dimension to what I do every day.
Yes, going Freelance is not a bad way to change your job without changing your profession. It may seem scary if you have a family, but I imagine that in the USA (as opposed to Europe with our unbelievable job security) it is not that much more risky than having a steady job... if you do your job well, you'll eat well. Do a bum job, and come bad times your steady job may not be that permanent after all. And as a freelancer on a contract you'll have more cash coming your way, which means you can build up a reserve instead of living from paycheck to paycheck.
According to the same source, the EU is spending 3.4 billion Euros on this. This is just half of what we're spending on "administration" this year, and considering the other truly worthless crap we are spending money on, having our own GPS system is a pretty good goal in comparison.
2) High tech stuff like this creates jobs for academics and skilled workers, who'll be part of India's growing middle class. I believe that creating wealth top-down, by having wealth trickle down from an affluent and productive middle class to the poor, works a hell of a lot better than forever "giving that man a fish to eat".
- Making calls
- Calendar
- Address book
- Notepad
I do not care much for email, certainly not business emails. I get too many of those as it is, and I prefer to set aside a few minutes a few times a day to clear my inbox and trash each mail or turn it into an action item (a la Getting Things Done). Push email will simply kill me.
I too laughed at these extra features of the newer phones, especially cameras. But I found myself using the camera from time to time (making snaps of whiteboards mostly). I've use the GPS / TomTom software when visiting cities or driving around other countries. The email function is handy to read / write short personal mails on holiday so I don't have to go into a web cafe. I've even used my phone's browser to do quick price checks or the like when shopping. I still have a separate iPod for listening to music, but if my phone can take on that task as well, why not? One less thing to carry around.
None of these functions are life-savers, but they sure are handy, especially since I am always carrying that phone with me anyway. They might be nice-to-haves, but some of them are very nice.
I like the Windows Mobile platform for its versatility, good integration with Outlook (which is what most businesses use), and for doing a reasonable job at what it is supposed to do. WM6 is pretty stable too... the only problem I have with the platform is the GUI's piss-poor performance, and that is where the iPhone shines. If the new iPhone will indeed offer UMTS and GPS, it might tip the scales enough for me to pick one up.