One obvious possible reason for this : benefits and salary. Fact is, they do need to offer you a competitive salary for your age and experience or you might jump ship and leave for another company in 6 months, which costs them money. (efficiency wages) As a contractor, you might start doing more hours for another company...but they still get the benefits of your skills.
Benefits : bigger companies are self insured. They may not want to admit this, but if you're older, they DO have to pay more for your health coverage, on average. That's a huge hidden cost, and so it doesn't make economic sense to have any more older employees on the payroll than strictly necessary. As you are well aware, the reason health insurance and employment are linked in this stupid manner is because the tax laws don't charge taxes on employer purchased health insurance, no matter how expensive the policy is.
Flexibility : if there's a downturn (like, ahem, right now), they can immediately cut the hours back on a contractor with "no hard feelings". Kind of like the difference between renting a service month to month, or signing a 2 year lease. On the plus side, they're paying you a hefty premium over the hourly rate of one of their salaried employees, are they not?
Do those risks of strain cause permanent damage or result in early death? I doubt it.
Just so you know, I'm not saying that it isn't the mark of a pathetic loser to play games all the time. All of the activities I mentioned are probably vastly more enjoyable in certain ways than playing games, and vastly more fulfilling. But, strictly speaking, the risk of death is probably higher.
That's the bare minimum to avoid heart failure from atrophy, not to look buff and get laid. I'm not saying that sitting on the couch and playing games isn't a pathetic loser thing to do...just that it's probably pretty darn safe.
Assuming you fill your snack stash with healthier food, and get maybe an hour of exercise a week, I don't see how games could be anything but just about the safest possible hobby.
Athletics? All sorts of wear and tear on your body. Many sports carry the risk of head injury. Even golf can destroy your joints and you might get hit by a flying golf ball.
Going to bars and trying to get laid? Don't get me started on all the risks there.
Driving sports cars? Skydiving? Riding motorcycles? Rock climbing? Hiking? Hunting? Fishing in a small boat?
Every single one of those activities is not particularly risky...but they are all significantly more dangerous than sitting on your couch or a chair and playing a video game.
As long as you avoid serious obesity (a small amount of paunch is not correlated with an increased risk of death) and occasionally get a tiny amount of exercise, it's probably about the safest hobby in existence.
That's just an urban legend about orthopedic surgeons. Fact is, in order to even be considered for it, you have to pretty much max out your medical school grades and perform extremely well on a standardized test that measures your book smarts called the "USMLE Step 1"
And hard working. EE courses may be tough, but hard work can get you through them. Maybe not the EE program at Caltech or MIT, but certainly at a state school.
More than that. At a minimum, one can reasonably expect that someone who is medical school talent could pass the highest paying undergrad major. Electrical engineering or geology or similar. 10 years * 80k per year = 800,000. Plus the cost of tuition, which is another 300k. Plus the fact that a doctor has to work about 60-80 hours per week during residency, rather than a more reasonable 50. I think someone who worked 80 hours a week as a geologist or an electrical engineer would likely be able to break six figures. 1.5 mil sounds about right, for a premium of $100k per year to make up this investment. That's about what doctors are actually paid on average.
I think I spell pretty well. Doctors mostly use abbreviations anyways. I don't see how mispelling hyperglycemic like "hyperglicyemic" would change the meaning any.
Not true : you can't overclock laptops very well. They don't have the cooling for it, and overclocking the CPU would double power draw and cut battery life in half.
1. Yep, a housebound medical student during his basic science years, where my job is to study 8 hours a day.
2. My browser doesn't have spell check, its a long story why.
3. I am using XP 64 bit, and it's an e6400 chip overclocked by 50%. I recently considered upgrading, but found that it would not give me much more CPU performance per processing core. It would e-spank the W700d, however, at most tasks despite being 2 years old.
This machine was built 2 years ago. I have a core 2 duo at 3.2 GHZ, several hard drives at 7200 rpm, an Geforce 8800 GT, sennheiser HD 580 headphones, and dual DVI ports (yours has only single, so you can't have 2 monitors like I do. Also, good quality 28" displays without a TN panel, comparable to mine, cost more like $800 each). So no, my e-wang is bigger. And, obviously, if I had built it today, it would be an i7 based system that would also e-spank your sleek new laptop.
Still, that is a sweet system. Just, as always, for the same cost, desktops >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> laptops in performance and usability at the same price point.
e6400. 50% overclock. PER core performance is within 20% of the top end CPU you can buy today, and the apps I run are not multithreaded, unfortunately.
I built this machine 2 years ago. It has an e6400, overclocked to 3.2ghz. Yes, I've looked very carefully at the benchmarks : I could put another $1200 and upgrade to an i7 with an SSD, but I would only get an average of 20% more CPU performance.
That's why I said "CPU unit"...it's a legitimate term to describe the big black noisy box near my feet that contains all the guts of the computer. I know the CPU is actually just one chip in the box, but a lot of people call the whole box the CPU.
I'm sitting in front of a hand built desktop that runs at 3.2 Ghz (Lenovo runs at 2.53) with 4 gigs of RAM and a terrabyte of hard disk space. I'm using an IBM model M keyboard (long live the king!) with dual 27" monitors from Dell, with S-IPA panels.
Total cost? about 2 grand, and I put together the CPU unit 2 years ago.
If you read my post more carefully, you will notice certain key words. I talk about LOSSLESS encoding. A 16 gig ipod nano can store about 48 cds worth of music using a completely lossless recording format. Portable players are obsolete.
As for the quality of the electronics for actually amplifying the sound : ok, I'll give you some rope, there. I don't know if the ipod has as good a D/A converter or amplifier as the high end portable cd players from the early 90s. I've actually tried a headphone amp on one of them, and I can hear a pretty clear cut difference.
So, since a CD is digital, with error correction codes, the ONLY thing this solves is that it might make it easier for a cheap, portable CD player to read the disk. When you rip that CD to a lossless audio file, current technology will do that just fine.
Uh...hello? What exactly is the point, then? Last I heard, portable CD players have been made completely and utterly obsolete due to the advent of portable MP3 players, which are now cheaper, smaller, and can hold a whole CD binder worth of music in a device smaller than a cellphone.
If everything that you think you are (your memories) gets gradually shifted and rewritten from day to day, who are we? Never minding the fact that it appears our conscious existence ends when we die, it's almost as if we die a tiny bit every day. While I think I remember who I was 10, 20 years ago, if these memories are faulty and always being revised, perhaps I am that person no longer.
Some days, I look around and find it remarkable that I even exist. But, sadly, that appears to be a temporary state of being. Not only will I not exist in the future, it appears that I will not even be able to know I don't exist. And now, with these discoveries on memory, it appears that this gradual process of death happens even when we are still alive.
Please, kindly pardon me for any inconvenience this letter may cost you because I know it may come to you as a surprise as we'have no previous correspondence.
I got your contact as i was searching for helping hand in your country , this is why I decided to appeal to you directly for assistance because I' have no relations or friends in your country for help me.I am Mrs.Tema Williams from Zimbabwe. I am a widow being that I lost my husband last year.
My husband was able to secure a sum of $2,500,000 dollars American through creative use of finanial instruments from the state of Utah.
I want you to do me a favour to receive this funds to a safe account in your country or any safer place as the beneficiary.
For your assistance, I have two options for you. Firstly you can choose to have 5% of the money for your assistance, and helping my family investing this funds, or you can go into partnership with me for the proper profitable investment of the money in your country. Which ever the option you want, please do notify me in your reply.
I have plans to do investment in your country, like real estate and industrial production.This is my reason for writing to you. Please if you are willing to assist me and my only Son Williams, indicate your interest in replying soonest.
I've seen a lot of proposals for high tech advancements on the infantry soldier. From power suits, to medical robot arms integrated into stretchers, to drones for spying, to head to toe electronics gear.
But wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to work on a complete remotely controlled robot to replace a soldier? If you aren't sending a human in harm's way, there's an awful lot more missions you could accomplish, and you wouldn't be as worried about casualties or armor...
I thought of a way to make these PRT vehicles both anonymous and to solve the vandalization problem.
While there would be multiple fare options, there would be the option of paying for a transit card using cash - but, you have to put down a $50 or so deposit.
Each car would have a camera that photographs the interior once the occupants exit it, but the camera would have an obvious motorized shutter that would be closed while the car is in route. So you would know you had privacy.
Obviously, if it turns out you vandalized or left some kind of mess, you lose the deposit.
You're the first slashdotter I've seen who actually confesses to downloading porn. So, I have to ask : why do you have to download so much of it. And second, where's the good stuff? What I don't like is that porn on say youporn usually has ugly, fat partners. But the only porn with hot partners is commercial and it tends to be incredibly fake.
Where can you find porn that has 'pretty girl next door', a male partner that is not hideously ugly nor orange from tanning and grotesque from steroids, and the pair acts like a realistic couple? Where the male actually can finish the job from the stimulation of his partner's vagina alone, and doesn't have to beat himself off afterwards.
You mean if the license plate matches that of a banned customer AND the face matches for the face recognition algorithm? Yeah, that could work...except that it is easy to get a new license plate. Only if walmart had DMV records could they catch you if you switched plates. Same with credit cards.
Slashdot Mirror
One obvious possible reason for this : benefits and salary. Fact is, they do need to offer you a competitive salary for your age and experience or you might jump ship and leave for another company in 6 months, which costs them money. (efficiency wages) As a contractor, you might start doing more hours for another company...but they still get the benefits of your skills.
Benefits : bigger companies are self insured. They may not want to admit this, but if you're older, they DO have to pay more for your health coverage, on average. That's a huge hidden cost, and so it doesn't make economic sense to have any more older employees on the payroll than strictly necessary. As you are well aware, the reason health insurance and employment are linked in this stupid manner is because the tax laws don't charge taxes on employer purchased health insurance, no matter how expensive the policy is.
Flexibility : if there's a downturn (like, ahem, right now), they can immediately cut the hours back on a contractor with "no hard feelings". Kind of like the difference between renting a service month to month, or signing a 2 year lease. On the plus side, they're paying you a hefty premium over the hourly rate of one of their salaried employees, are they not?
Do those risks of strain cause permanent damage or result in early death? I doubt it.
Just so you know, I'm not saying that it isn't the mark of a pathetic loser to play games all the time. All of the activities I mentioned are probably vastly more enjoyable in certain ways than playing games, and vastly more fulfilling. But, strictly speaking, the risk of death is probably higher.
That's the bare minimum to avoid heart failure from atrophy, not to look buff and get laid. I'm not saying that sitting on the couch and playing games isn't a pathetic loser thing to do...just that it's probably pretty darn safe.
Assuming you fill your snack stash with healthier food, and get maybe an hour of exercise a week, I don't see how games could be anything but just about the safest possible hobby.
Athletics? All sorts of wear and tear on your body. Many sports carry the risk of head injury. Even golf can destroy your joints and you might get hit by a flying golf ball.
Going to bars and trying to get laid? Don't get me started on all the risks there.
Driving sports cars? Skydiving? Riding motorcycles? Rock climbing? Hiking? Hunting? Fishing in a small boat?
Every single one of those activities is not particularly risky...but they are all significantly more dangerous than sitting on your couch or a chair and playing a video game.
As long as you avoid serious obesity (a small amount of paunch is not correlated with an increased risk of death) and occasionally get a tiny amount of exercise, it's probably about the safest hobby in existence.
Why don't they use an amphibious vehicle, powered by a diesel engine?
That's just an urban legend about orthopedic surgeons. Fact is, in order to even be considered for it, you have to pretty much max out your medical school grades and perform extremely well on a standardized test that measures your book smarts called the "USMLE Step 1"
And hard working. EE courses may be tough, but hard work can get you through them. Maybe not the EE program at Caltech or MIT, but certainly at a state school.
More than that. At a minimum, one can reasonably expect that someone who is medical school talent could pass the highest paying undergrad major. Electrical engineering or geology or similar. 10 years * 80k per year = 800,000. Plus the cost of tuition, which is another 300k. Plus the fact that a doctor has to work about 60-80 hours per week during residency, rather than a more reasonable 50. I think someone who worked 80 hours a week as a geologist or an electrical engineer would likely be able to break six figures. 1.5 mil sounds about right, for a premium of $100k per year to make up this investment. That's about what doctors are actually paid on average.
I think I spell pretty well. Doctors mostly use abbreviations anyways. I don't see how mispelling hyperglycemic like "hyperglicyemic" would change the meaning any.
Not true : you can't overclock laptops very well. They don't have the cooling for it, and overclocking the CPU would double power draw and cut battery life in half.
PER CORE. AKA, for tasks limited to single CPU core.
1. Yep, a housebound medical student during his basic science years, where my job is to study 8 hours a day.
2. My browser doesn't have spell check, its a long story why.
3. I am using XP 64 bit, and it's an e6400 chip overclocked by 50%. I recently considered upgrading, but found that it would not give me much more CPU performance per processing core. It would e-spank the W700d, however, at most tasks despite being 2 years old.
This machine was built 2 years ago. I have a core 2 duo at 3.2 GHZ, several hard drives at 7200 rpm, an Geforce 8800 GT, sennheiser HD 580 headphones, and dual DVI ports (yours has only single, so you can't have 2 monitors like I do. Also, good quality 28" displays without a TN panel, comparable to mine, cost more like $800 each). So no, my e-wang is bigger. And, obviously, if I had built it today, it would be an i7 based system that would also e-spank your sleek new laptop.
Still, that is a sweet system. Just, as always, for the same cost, desktops >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> laptops in performance and usability at the same price point.
e6400. 50% overclock. PER core performance is within 20% of the top end CPU you can buy today, and the apps I run are not multithreaded, unfortunately.
I built this machine 2 years ago. It has an e6400, overclocked to 3.2ghz. Yes, I've looked very carefully at the benchmarks : I could put another $1200 and upgrade to an i7 with an SSD, but I would only get an average of 20% more CPU performance.
That's why I said "CPU unit"...it's a legitimate term to describe the big black noisy box near my feet that contains all the guts of the computer. I know the CPU is actually just one chip in the box, but a lot of people call the whole box the CPU.
As usual, Portability = $$$$$$$$$
I'm sitting in front of a hand built desktop that runs at 3.2 Ghz (Lenovo runs at 2.53) with 4 gigs of RAM and a terrabyte of hard disk space. I'm using an IBM model M keyboard (long live the king!) with dual 27" monitors from Dell, with S-IPA panels.
Total cost? about 2 grand, and I put together the CPU unit 2 years ago.
If you read my post more carefully, you will notice certain key words. I talk about LOSSLESS encoding. A 16 gig ipod nano can store about 48 cds worth of music using a completely lossless recording format. Portable players are obsolete.
As for the quality of the electronics for actually amplifying the sound : ok, I'll give you some rope, there. I don't know if the ipod has as good a D/A converter or amplifier as the high end portable cd players from the early 90s. I've actually tried a headphone amp on one of them, and I can hear a pretty clear cut difference.
So, since a CD is digital, with error correction codes, the ONLY thing this solves is that it might make it easier for a cheap, portable CD player to read the disk. When you rip that CD to a lossless audio file, current technology will do that just fine.
Uh...hello? What exactly is the point, then? Last I heard, portable CD players have been made completely and utterly obsolete due to the advent of portable MP3 players, which are now cheaper, smaller, and can hold a whole CD binder worth of music in a device smaller than a cellphone.
If everything that you think you are (your memories) gets gradually shifted and rewritten from day to day, who are we? Never minding the fact that it appears our conscious existence ends when we die, it's almost as if we die a tiny bit every day. While I think I remember who I was 10, 20 years ago, if these memories are faulty and always being revised, perhaps I am that person no longer.
Some days, I look around and find it remarkable that I even exist. But, sadly, that appears to be a temporary state of being. Not only will I not exist in the future, it appears that I will not even be able to know I don't exist. And now, with these discoveries on memory, it appears that this gradual process of death happens even when we are still alive.
PLEASE KINDLY PARDON ME FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE
Good Day,
Please, kindly pardon me for any inconvenience this letter may cost you because I know it may come to you as a surprise as we'have no previous correspondence.
I got your contact as i was searching for helping hand in your country , this is why I decided to appeal to you directly for assistance because I' have no relations or friends in your country for help me.I am Mrs.Tema Williams from Zimbabwe. I am a widow being that I lost my husband last year.
My husband was able to secure a sum of $2,500,000 dollars American through creative use of finanial instruments from the state of Utah.
I want you to do me a favour to receive this funds to a safe account in your country or any safer place as the beneficiary.
For your assistance, I have two options for you. Firstly you can choose to have 5% of the money for your assistance, and helping my family investing this funds, or you can go into partnership with me for the proper profitable investment of the money in your country. Which ever the option you want, please do notify me in your reply.
I have plans to do investment in your country, like real estate and industrial production.This is my reason for writing to you. Please if you are willing to assist me and my only Son Williams, indicate your interest in replying soonest.
Thanks and best regards .
Mrs Tema Williams
I've seen a lot of proposals for high tech advancements on the infantry soldier. From power suits, to medical robot arms integrated into stretchers, to drones for spying, to head to toe electronics gear. But wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to work on a complete remotely controlled robot to replace a soldier? If you aren't sending a human in harm's way, there's an awful lot more missions you could accomplish, and you wouldn't be as worried about casualties or armor...
I thought of a way to make these PRT vehicles both anonymous and to solve the vandalization problem.
While there would be multiple fare options, there would be the option of paying for a transit card using cash - but, you have to put down a $50 or so deposit.
Each car would have a camera that photographs the interior once the occupants exit it, but the camera would have an obvious motorized shutter that would be closed while the car is in route. So you would know you had privacy.
Obviously, if it turns out you vandalized or left some kind of mess, you lose the deposit.
You're the first slashdotter I've seen who actually confesses to downloading porn. So, I have to ask : why do you have to download so much of it. And second, where's the good stuff? What I don't like is that porn on say youporn usually has ugly, fat partners. But the only porn with hot partners is commercial and it tends to be incredibly fake. Where can you find porn that has 'pretty girl next door', a male partner that is not hideously ugly nor orange from tanning and grotesque from steroids, and the pair acts like a realistic couple? Where the male actually can finish the job from the stimulation of his partner's vagina alone, and doesn't have to beat himself off afterwards.
You mean if the license plate matches that of a banned customer AND the face matches for the face recognition algorithm? Yeah, that could work...except that it is easy to get a new license plate. Only if walmart had DMV records could they catch you if you switched plates. Same with credit cards.