That tax break is not for the 1% but for middle class people who could not afford an electric car without it, or wouldn't otherwise want to spend the full amount on such a vehicle. That in turn has made the market for electric cars an attractive one, where it is economically viable to design, manufacture and sell EVs in larger numbers. With the market (and infrastructure) for EVs reaching a certain critical mass, there's a huge incentive to research technologies to further drive down prices and/or increase range and efficiency. Some believe that the critical mass has already been reached, which makes further electrification "an irreversible trend." This would probably have happened without subsidies as well, but a lot later. And once the market takes off, subsidies can be decreased. In my country this is already happening; the Luxury/Pollution Tax on EVs is still 0% I believe (this tax exceeds the factory price for the more ridiculous SUVs), but companies no longer get the Small Scale Environmental Investment subsidy when they buy an EV, and the income tax payable on company cars is no longer 0% either.
Helicopters? Expensive to run and they certainly cannot land everywhere. This vehicle looks like it can land in most places where there are no overhead obstructions, and if the cost can drop to where it becomes a viable mode of public transport, hospitals could replace their one helicopter with a whole fleet of these.
Self driving cars will also help alleviate congestion, when there are enough of them. They can drive bumper to bumper. At intersections they can just keep going at speed, passing each other after a short negotiation and small speed adjustment to create and time the right gaps in the flow of traffic, with the traffic lights turned off. (The traffic light would need to be smart as well; it would turn on again when a manually driven vehicle approaches)
BYOD isn't a cost-saver, it's a matter of convenience. And playing on private phones has nothing to do with it (so sick and tired of that old "Blackberry is a business tool; iPhone / Android is a toy"-line).
Most employees prefer using their private phones for work stuff over having to carry a second phone, and BYOD can also be offered to employees who formerly did not qualify for a company phone. For a while, having a BB was something of a status symbol, but as soon as companies figured out how to make BYOD secure enough, most people got rid of them even if they didn't have to. The hold-outs who kept their BBs were seen as dinosaurs. The "current state of affairs" at places that did BYOD the right way is just fine and dandy.
Most of my clients that implemented this saw BYOD as a win-win: they no longer have to provide company phones, and most employees seem to prefer using their private phone for business stuff (and bearing the costs as well) over having to carry 2 phones. In case where the employee had a choice between a company phone or BYOD, almost everyone ditched their Blackberry and used their personal device instead. And it certainly was seen as a win by employees who did not qualify for a company phone, but now have access to their work email, agenda, directory and IM service.
Nope, this have nothing to do with private chats or calls during work hours. They cannot ban Whatsapp from private phones, only require that they are removed from private phones that are enrolled in their BYOD infrastructure (on Android and iOS, you can enforce this too). Instead of having a policy that requires employees to only use business-approved channels for business-related communications (and perhaps reinforce that policy with a short mandatory CYA* E-learning course), they opt for the easiest way to comply. As always.
Free market economies give us a choice... of course "us" means that sometimes others will do the choosing for you. Phone manufacturers prefer batteries with higher energy densities that are (usually) safe enough, over more expensive batteries that might let the owners of those phones keep theirs a little but longer. And if this flame retardant makes the battery (and the phone) a little bit bulkier, then manufacturers will not use it either. Especially Apple, since they need to placate the growing mob of belligerent protesters outside their HQ screaming for even thinner phones. Because above all we want thinner phones. Right?
When robots start to replace human workers en masse, it kind of makes sense. Our current income tax is predominantly a tax on labour; other sources of income are usually taxed differently (and a lot lower). So if the labour is done by robots, there's a tax on them. The only problem is that that kind of labour is extremely mobile, and will thus gravitate to whichever country has no robot tax.
You'd be surprised. Maybe this suit is unique (I've no idea) but the phenomenon certainly isn't: this is a common complaint of people dealing with this kind of material; like police detectives. I've heard that the people dealing with kiddy porn on a daily basis generally don't last very long on that detail; apparently it is not something that you get desensitised to very easily. And a lot of them complained of symptoms that are at least very similar to PTSD. Maybe war isn't the only way to get messed up emotionally, tough guy.
At least IBM still does actual research. Companies like Intellectual Ventures consist only of stink tanks where they get together to make up bullshit patents like that. But not to worry: in a few years, Watson will be able to automate this and spit out patents for all obvious stuff that hasn't been patented yet.
Working for a big company also gives you opportunities. Within the company itself you may have the opportunity to try various things in different roles, so you can find out what you enjoy doing best. If you work as a consultant, working for a big firm will open doors that most likely remain closed to you as a freelancer or in a small firm. In my experience, clients are much more willing to look past small "shortcomings" (i.e. lack of bullcrap certificates) and hire you, if you have a big company behind you. At the least that company will be willing and able to replace you if it turns out you suck at your job. Also, working for a big firm (especially as a consultant) gives you a great opportunity to build an extensive professional network. Lastly, a well known company name rarely hurts your resumé.
There are some downsides: as you said, the job might be much more constrained than you'd like. They will try to force you into a well defined role, and if they can't, be prepared to hear this at every annual appraisal: "What the hell are you, anyway?".
If you want to remain working at a large firm but also want to be a generalist, look and prepare for jobs where being a generalist is an asset, like solution or enterprise architect, or working as an "IT guy" in a small innovation or prototyping team. The last carries a bit of a risk: it's often hard to justify such teams in times of budget cuts.
"Going forward"? What's wrong with "from now on", or "soon", or simply leaving that little bit off completely since it conveys zero information? I know business people like the term "going forward" because it sounds both positive and purposeful, but it's such an ugly turn of phrase when tacked on to the end of a statement like that.
I tried an Apple Watch for a while, to find out what the fuss is about (a more or less work related activity). They are useful for certain things, convenient for others, but in the end I found the bother of having to wear it (and charge it every night) to outweigh its usefulness. But that's just me. I wouldn't call them too expensive for what they do, but too expensive for their expected lifetime. If they'd commit to one or a few case form factors, sell a variety of cases ranging from cheap to luxurious, and let us swap out the electronics every few years for a modest price, then they'd make more sense financially.
Those are the downsides. Despite people who claim "I think my refrigerator doesn't have to be connected to the Internet, therefore the entire concept of the Internet of Things must be utterly worthless", there are plenty of useful ways devices can be improved by adding connectivity. Yes,security is a big concern,but that doesn't mean that the only winning move is not to play.
These devices do not have to communicate with "the internet", at worst they need to be able to connect a remote access gateway or cloud service (mothership). Those channels aren't all that easy to hack, and with a proper firewall, you can get your LAN reasonably secure without crippling well designed IoT devices. The devices might still be somewhat vulnerable to someone with physical access or access to your WiFi,but that leaves only a small percentage of attackers, and until the actual firewall is compromised, it can still serve to provide intrusion detection.
What some have proposed to make IoT more secure is a firewall that's on by default,with which IoT devices are "paired" using a standardised request, i.e. the device does a one-off request to the firewall to open some holes (preferably to specific addresses, outbound only, etc), and permission to connect to certain local devices (for example a home automation hub), which the user approves using a simple interface. Attempts by the device to contact other stuff on the intranet or to access an unsanctioned internet address result in an intrusion warning.
When you're writing a mobile app or building a website, you are not writing compilers, browsers, router firmware, web servers, PHP interpreters, proxies, or even libraries for 3rd party use. If you are writing libraries, chances are that you're writing these for your own use or your team's, probably in the language you're building the rest of the app or website in.
Languages that do come to mind in these fields are Objective-C, Swift, C# or Java for mobile apps, or Javascript, Java, PHP, Ruby or C# for web development (just my personal list, I am sure there are many others). You can use C for both, but personally I don't know anyone who does. PS. I don't count the object-oriented variations of C as "C".
You'd be surprised. "Africa" isn't some homogenous continent of droughts, poverty and suffering. Some countries have a decent middle class, albeit small by our standards. And the upper class can afford private jets, so they can well afford to give a pretty nice drone to their kids.
Mostly the people who "forgot about them" got really rich from BTC, or people with very large amounts selling slowly on the way up. Most others have unloaded after gaining a "modest" profit (10 - 100x), thinking that surely the limit must have been reached.
Several areas aren't doing so well at all at Apple, which is why they don't just need a strong CEO, but strong sector heads (or directors, or whatever they are called) who can deliver reliably as well as innovate on their own, without the CEO babysitting them. Promoting the director of a sector that is doing well is just going to wreck that sector, not save the company.
Why? Because IT is more than administering AD. A lot of my work is in innovative environments, where it helps to be able to design and build prototype hardware. You might call that EE work but I see it as supplemental to what I do in IT. Having a good working knowledge of both domains helps both on the hardware and the software side, and the fact that I can do both parts is an immense time-saver (that holds true for many generalists in innovation). Also, EE provide a solid grounding in mathematics; useful when you have to develop algorithms or when working with complex maths or statistics applications, and which allows me to act as a generalist in another few nooks and crannies of IT.
In a lot of cases, designing circuits comes down to remembering, modifying and combining basic patterns. Certainly in the case of that radio. And that's my problem: my memory sucks and I do not remember the basic circuits that I pretty much never had any practical use for (doing digital electronics), even if they were certainly part of the curriculum.
Nope. I have seen that circuit or similar ones, but I couldn't recall them from memory. I might be able to come up with this from scratch if I brush up a bit on the theory. I've done very little in the way of analog circuit design in my life, but I've been doing digital electronics since the age of 7. Maybe that's how I ended up in IT (where my EE education has come in handy very often)
Slashdot Mirror
That tax break is not for the 1% but for middle class people who could not afford an electric car without it, or wouldn't otherwise want to spend the full amount on such a vehicle. That in turn has made the market for electric cars an attractive one, where it is economically viable to design, manufacture and sell EVs in larger numbers. With the market (and infrastructure) for EVs reaching a certain critical mass, there's a huge incentive to research technologies to further drive down prices and/or increase range and efficiency. Some believe that the critical mass has already been reached, which makes further electrification "an irreversible trend." This would probably have happened without subsidies as well, but a lot later. And once the market takes off, subsidies can be decreased. In my country this is already happening; the Luxury/Pollution Tax on EVs is still 0% I believe (this tax exceeds the factory price for the more ridiculous SUVs), but companies no longer get the Small Scale Environmental Investment subsidy when they buy an EV, and the income tax payable on company cars is no longer 0% either.
Helicopters? Expensive to run and they certainly cannot land everywhere. This vehicle looks like it can land in most places where there are no overhead obstructions, and if the cost can drop to where it becomes a viable mode of public transport, hospitals could replace their one helicopter with a whole fleet of these.
Self driving cars will also help alleviate congestion, when there are enough of them. They can drive bumper to bumper. At intersections they can just keep going at speed, passing each other after a short negotiation and small speed adjustment to create and time the right gaps in the flow of traffic, with the traffic lights turned off. (The traffic light would need to be smart as well; it would turn on again when a manually driven vehicle approaches)
BYOD isn't a cost-saver, it's a matter of convenience. And playing on private phones has nothing to do with it (so sick and tired of that old "Blackberry is a business tool; iPhone / Android is a toy"-line).
Most employees prefer using their private phones for work stuff over having to carry a second phone, and BYOD can also be offered to employees who formerly did not qualify for a company phone. For a while, having a BB was something of a status symbol, but as soon as companies figured out how to make BYOD secure enough, most people got rid of them even if they didn't have to. The hold-outs who kept their BBs were seen as dinosaurs. The "current state of affairs" at places that did BYOD the right way is just fine and dandy.
Most of my clients that implemented this saw BYOD as a win-win: they no longer have to provide company phones, and most employees seem to prefer using their private phone for business stuff (and bearing the costs as well) over having to carry 2 phones. In case where the employee had a choice between a company phone or BYOD, almost everyone ditched their Blackberry and used their personal device instead. And it certainly was seen as a win by employees who did not qualify for a company phone, but now have access to their work email, agenda, directory and IM service.
Nope, this have nothing to do with private chats or calls during work hours. They cannot ban Whatsapp from private phones, only require that they are removed from private phones that are enrolled in their BYOD infrastructure (on Android and iOS, you can enforce this too). Instead of having a policy that requires employees to only use business-approved channels for business-related communications (and perhaps reinforce that policy with a short mandatory CYA* E-learning course), they opt for the easiest way to comply. As always.
*) CYA = Cover Your Arse.
Free market economies give us a choice... of course "us" means that sometimes others will do the choosing for you. Phone manufacturers prefer batteries with higher energy densities that are (usually) safe enough, over more expensive batteries that might let the owners of those phones keep theirs a little but longer. And if this flame retardant makes the battery (and the phone) a little bit bulkier, then manufacturers will not use it either. Especially Apple, since they need to placate the growing mob of belligerent protesters outside their HQ screaming for even thinner phones. Because above all we want thinner phones. Right?
He substituted the cards before the game started, by conning the casino in using that specific (flawed) brand of cards.
Launch date: 4th of July.
Space program
With loud report
Light, and get away.
When robots start to replace human workers en masse, it kind of makes sense. Our current income tax is predominantly a tax on labour; other sources of income are usually taxed differently (and a lot lower). So if the labour is done by robots, there's a tax on them. The only problem is that that kind of labour is extremely mobile, and will thus gravitate to whichever country has no robot tax.
You'd be surprised. Maybe this suit is unique (I've no idea) but the phenomenon certainly isn't: this is a common complaint of people dealing with this kind of material; like police detectives. I've heard that the people dealing with kiddy porn on a daily basis generally don't last very long on that detail; apparently it is not something that you get desensitised to very easily. And a lot of them complained of symptoms that are at least very similar to PTSD. Maybe war isn't the only way to get messed up emotionally, tough guy.
Two African swallows can carry a Wifi transmitter between them using a bit of string.
At least IBM still does actual research. Companies like Intellectual Ventures consist only of stink tanks where they get together to make up bullshit patents like that. But not to worry: in a few years, Watson will be able to automate this and spit out patents for all obvious stuff that hasn't been patented yet.
Working for a big company also gives you opportunities. Within the company itself you may have the opportunity to try various things in different roles, so you can find out what you enjoy doing best. If you work as a consultant, working for a big firm will open doors that most likely remain closed to you as a freelancer or in a small firm. In my experience, clients are much more willing to look past small "shortcomings" (i.e. lack of bullcrap certificates) and hire you, if you have a big company behind you. At the least that company will be willing and able to replace you if it turns out you suck at your job. Also, working for a big firm (especially as a consultant) gives you a great opportunity to build an extensive professional network. Lastly, a well known company name rarely hurts your resumé.
There are some downsides: as you said, the job might be much more constrained than you'd like. They will try to force you into a well defined role, and if they can't, be prepared to hear this at every annual appraisal: "What the hell are you, anyway?".
If you want to remain working at a large firm but also want to be a generalist, look and prepare for jobs where being a generalist is an asset, like solution or enterprise architect, or working as an "IT guy" in a small innovation or prototyping team. The last carries a bit of a risk: it's often hard to justify such teams in times of budget cuts.
"Going forward"? What's wrong with "from now on", or "soon", or simply leaving that little bit off completely since it conveys zero information? I know business people like the term "going forward" because it sounds both positive and purposeful, but it's such an ugly turn of phrase when tacked on to the end of a statement like that.
I tried an Apple Watch for a while, to find out what the fuss is about (a more or less work related activity). They are useful for certain things, convenient for others, but in the end I found the bother of having to wear it (and charge it every night) to outweigh its usefulness. But that's just me. I wouldn't call them too expensive for what they do, but too expensive for their expected lifetime. If they'd commit to one or a few case form factors, sell a variety of cases ranging from cheap to luxurious, and let us swap out the electronics every few years for a modest price, then they'd make more sense financially.
Those are the downsides. Despite people who claim "I think my refrigerator doesn't have to be connected to the Internet, therefore the entire concept of the Internet of Things must be utterly worthless", there are plenty of useful ways devices can be improved by adding connectivity. Yes,security is a big concern,but that doesn't mean that the only winning move is not to play.
These devices do not have to communicate with "the internet", at worst they need to be able to connect a remote access gateway or cloud service (mothership). Those channels aren't all that easy to hack, and with a proper firewall, you can get your LAN reasonably secure without crippling well designed IoT devices. The devices might still be somewhat vulnerable to someone with physical access or access to your WiFi,but that leaves only a small percentage of attackers, and until the actual firewall is compromised, it can still serve to provide intrusion detection.
What some have proposed to make IoT more secure is a firewall that's on by default,with which IoT devices are "paired" using a standardised request, i.e. the device does a one-off request to the firewall to open some holes (preferably to specific addresses, outbound only, etc), and permission to connect to certain local devices (for example a home automation hub), which the user approves using a simple interface. Attempts by the device to contact other stuff on the intranet or to access an unsanctioned internet address result in an intrusion warning.
When you're writing a mobile app or building a website, you are not writing compilers, browsers, router firmware, web servers, PHP interpreters, proxies, or even libraries for 3rd party use. If you are writing libraries, chances are that you're writing these for your own use or your team's, probably in the language you're building the rest of the app or website in.
Languages that do come to mind in these fields are Objective-C, Swift, C# or Java for mobile apps, or Javascript, Java, PHP, Ruby or C# for web development (just my personal list, I am sure there are many others). You can use C for both, but personally I don't know anyone who does. PS. I don't count the object-oriented variations of C as "C".
You'd be surprised. "Africa" isn't some homogenous continent of droughts, poverty and suffering. Some countries have a decent middle class, albeit small by our standards. And the upper class can afford private jets, so they can well afford to give a pretty nice drone to their kids.
Mostly the people who "forgot about them" got really rich from BTC, or people with very large amounts selling slowly on the way up. Most others have unloaded after gaining a "modest" profit (10 - 100x), thinking that surely the limit must have been reached.
It is a UFO until the craft has been identified. After all that's what "UFO" means.
Several areas aren't doing so well at all at Apple, which is why they don't just need a strong CEO, but strong sector heads (or directors, or whatever they are called) who can deliver reliably as well as innovate on their own, without the CEO babysitting them. Promoting the director of a sector that is doing well is just going to wreck that sector, not save the company.
Why? Because IT is more than administering AD. A lot of my work is in innovative environments, where it helps to be able to design and build prototype hardware. You might call that EE work but I see it as supplemental to what I do in IT. Having a good working knowledge of both domains helps both on the hardware and the software side, and the fact that I can do both parts is an immense time-saver (that holds true for many generalists in innovation). Also, EE provide a solid grounding in mathematics; useful when you have to develop algorithms or when working with complex maths or statistics applications, and which allows me to act as a generalist in another few nooks and crannies of IT.
In a lot of cases, designing circuits comes down to remembering, modifying and combining basic patterns. Certainly in the case of that radio. And that's my problem: my memory sucks and I do not remember the basic circuits that I pretty much never had any practical use for (doing digital electronics), even if they were certainly part of the curriculum.
Nope. I have seen that circuit or similar ones, but I couldn't recall them from memory. I might be able to come up with this from scratch if I brush up a bit on the theory. I've done very little in the way of analog circuit design in my life, but I've been doing digital electronics since the age of 7. Maybe that's how I ended up in IT (where my EE education has come in handy very often)