I often see people saying we should cap government / charity employee salaries. After all, why should an administrator make $250k for the government or charity?
The answer is simply that people don't work as a charity. People need to be paid the market rate to get talented people, and if a government job is the equivalent of a C level executive, expect to pay a C level salary.
However, this should NOT be confused with inflated salaries just for the sake of big fat paychecks (e.g. a desk jockey who gets $200k)
My favorite smokers are the ones who take big giant puffs before tossing their cigarette, walking through the door, and exhaling. As if "not smoking" on the subway just means so long as you don't take the actual lit cigarette into the car.
Some of this depends on what field you're in. I know some sales guys who do 90% of their business over martinis at a posh bar. They're more likely to get to go enjoy a liquid lunch, with management approval.
However, in other parts of the world this is not uncommon. It all depends on where you work and what the culture is
You do realize your cellphone ALREADY has a powerful explosive in the back of it? It's called Lithium (it's the component in lithium ion batteries), and it REALLY does not like water. All you need to create an explosion is a multi tool, and some water.
Yet, how often have you heard about people blowing up their cell phones?
Since the industrial times, a lot of innovations have given individuals the ability to do a lot of damage if they use their tools incorrectly. Someone with a car who wants to go on a killing spree can be quite effective. Yet, mostly people don't. Because actually people are not interested in killing other people.
Like when hurricane katrina came through and destroyed those liberals. Except the most damage wasn't to the very gay and very liberal french quarter, but the ones next door.
Message from god / the republicans: very clear. They hate Gay Adjacents.
So let me get this straight: to encourage peace, you'd like us to ENGAGE in a policy of cyberwar in the hopes that a little drubbing from us will prove too much for them?
Dream on. Global politics are MUCH more complicated than you might imagine
If you compare the energy output of a single power station today to the energy output of all the camp fires in one night of prehistoric human history, it probably seems like a massive difference.
We know that future technology will be orders of magnitude bigger / more powerful than current technology.
And it's cool to think that, maybe, when you have a warp core that powers a space ship going FTL with many millions of petawatts of energy, some star trek technology like replicators might come true:)
Emergency services have been using things like "zombie attacks" for decades. There's a lot of reasons why. One is if a civilian stumbles onto your training exercise, they're more likely to think it's some sort of movie then to get scared. Another is it's a bit lighthearted for a serious subject and may make it more enjoyable for people involved. And, any skills or experienced from the fantasy directly carries over to real life situations.
Agreed. The cost of the car > cost of a battery. While you may need to replace the battery at 100k miles, it's no different then needing to rebuild the engine, or make another major repair...
In Asia, where light skinned is beautiful, people literally cover themselves voluntarily head to toe (including mask for pollution + hat + trendy glasses).
Literally you can't see who a person is. I've literally gone up to another girl outside my girlfriends house because she had a similar scooter / build / mask. Fortunately I was waving when I was coming up, otherwise I might have kissed some random girl on the street.
In secure areas (read: airports, banks, etc.) there's typically a sign at the front telling you to remove all facial obstructions.
Have you SEEN CCD cameras? VGA images where they turn the contrast up to 100 in grainy black and white?
If you take into account any height difference, and choose a suitable subject, the defense may argue that it could have been someone with make up, but they won't find you by a long shot.
UNLESS facial recognition cameras are being installed with ridiculously high resolutions and then downgraded before releasing to the media so that people don't realize they're downgraded.
Scary thought? Maybe. But unlikely. Mostly security cameras are just a scarecrow to ward off the bad guys....
yes some people are stupid and might get hurt or die. That will happen no matter how stupid people travel. That doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer because of the stupid.
Which is why if I see someone about to cause an accident that might be fatal to me and not them, I should be allowed to launch missles at them, and blast through safely in a ball of fire, james bond style
You can't be serious saying it is more dangerous to give way at slow speed versus coming to a complete stop and then having to huff and puff back up to speed, while simultaneously being overtaken with inches to spare by a bunch of impatient motorists because you can't outpace them.
The "Idaho Stop" allows you to go when other traffic has to stop. Anybody coming behind you has to stop where you can go.
Additionally, I am not saying that you cannot roll through a red light, ever. The problem is each situation (and danger) is different and you need to be able to judge it yourself, and not just say "Oh I have right of way, let's go!"
Just about every cyclist I know treat 'right of way' as synonymous to 'enter at your own risk'.
That is mostly locale specific. In America, cyclists tend to be more cautious because of the fact cycling is unusual. In Holland, asia, and other places where biking is common, they'll cut in front of an eighteen wheeler with a couch and child on the back of the bike, and make him slam on his brakes.
IAAC (I Am A Cyclist). However I think that people who treat riding a bike as if they own the road are asking for trouble.
It doesn't matter if you SHOULD have right of way. It matters if someone will see you and stop (and not run you over). When you come up to any dangerous intersection (or any intersection) you should slow down, look to make sure you're not going to get plowed into, and THEN go.
As a cyclist, you might be going 30 KPH easily, but you're much easier to miss for a motorist because you are so small, and you might come at an odd direction (most people aren't used to making sure there's no cyclists on the shoulder).
Well the key question the article is not addressing, is how much redundancy do you need?
If the inability to take up slack would result in a catastrophic failure, or loss of money, companies should (and do) have a lot of extra slack. You see this in some support jobs where people are there as an emergency support only, but the down side of having an accident happen with no one on duty is much greater than the down side to employ someone to do mostly no work.
On the other hand, some functions don't have such a critical cost of failure. In this case, you may actually WANT to be running a little hot -- you want some weeks to have too much work so that when the work is pushed off a week, the next week you have enough work for everyone.
On a traveling mailing list I was on, some one posted a horror story urging women traveling alone to find travel partners and be careful about getting in cabs. Apparently the cabby took her to the middle of no where, robbed her, raped her, and left her tied up until a local farmer found her the next morning.
I can't tell you how many cab drivers have screwed me over. Taken me for a ride that involves going an incredibly wrong direction for an incredibly juicy fare.
Additionally, how do you know your cab is real? Sometimes taxis are "fake" -- not actually registered but painted to look so. You run a risk any time you hop in a cab.
Tell me some stories of people you know who had a bad experience hitch hiking.
I know MANY people who hitchhike all the time. Students, young women, people who you would expect would be the victims of these types of "bad things" that the people who accept hitch hikers would do.
None of them have bad stories (I've asked out of curiosity), but many have stories of the time in the porsche/jaguar/mercedes decided to pull over and let them ride along in luxury.
A lot of people want to believe that their fellow members of humanity are simply evil. I don't get that. Even "bad" people don't see themselves as evil, and with the exception of a few extreme sociopaths people are basically good.
Actually the MBAs take a very long term view of things. At some point, all the outsourced jobs should lift the developing world up into the developed world. It'll mean a much better quality of life for many people, which will create jobs, globally. Ultimately, if jobs become truly frictionless, someone in India should make exactly what someone in the US makes for the same job at the same qualifications. Leading to a better world.
Of course that's VERY long term. Short term, sucks to be outsourced.
Well bacteria DO evolve. We can watch it happen in petri dishes, apply a bit of antibiotic every day, at first only a few colonies will survive but then you'll get a carpet of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
All it takes is the one bacteria who figures out how to synthesize the new protiens and it could go viral (pardon the pun).
Of course, we don't know what would happen. It could cause the end of civilization, or it could just be that DNA is taught as having "an extra base pair in some bacteria do to the oops of 2025"
While it does have some kinks to work out, consider:
1. While those working at the equator will indeed have the car at home when it's mostly dark out, a sizeable population of those well-to-do enough to afford cars live far enough north (or south) of the equator that their car will be home for quite a number of daylight hours.
2. Quite a number of people work from home these days. In this instance you WOULD be home the hours you're working.
3. Of those not working from home, a large portion are business owners or work in a small company where you might decide to install your carport at work, and be able to do that.
4. Companies offer company cars to some employees, why not add a carport to the work parking lot?
5. Big companies like Apple just LOVE environmental initiatives, if this became big, you'd have them rolling these out on campus (I'll leave for another discussion whether it's out of altruism or PR concerns or...?).
6. The key point is cost savings. If people save enough money with this, companies would install these and RENT them to their emplyees. Let's say you save $20 / gas a week, and these things last for 10 years before breaking down. That's $10k in saved money by employees. If they are cheap enough, say $5k an installation, you have a situation where the employer could rent them back to employees.
7. (In relation to point 6) Gas prices only go up, and technology only gets better. If it doesn't make financial sense now for some, it probably will in the future (and this is something that will take years to roll out anyways).
8. (In relation to point 6 & 7) Your costs are not everyone's costs. For instance, when I drove in Europe gas costs for me were $200+ a week commuting (even though I was relatively close, due to very high gas prices). At that rate, our earlier calculation would be a savings of $100k over a 10 year period. If my employer won't rent me one, I'm sure I can find saavy business owners around the block to come to an agreement for rental of space for an installation. Sign me up!
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Actually if your airplane is going 1,000 mph into your descent, you, sir, have a problem.
I don't know the top speed you can land, but I would bet it's not much more than 200mph....
Hey! You should label posts like that NSFW. I just creamed my pants at an inopportune time.
I often see people saying we should cap government / charity employee salaries. After all, why should an administrator make $250k for the government or charity?
The answer is simply that people don't work as a charity. People need to be paid the market rate to get talented people, and if a government job is the equivalent of a C level executive, expect to pay a C level salary.
However, this should NOT be confused with inflated salaries just for the sake of big fat paychecks (e.g. a desk jockey who gets $200k)
My favorite smokers are the ones who take big giant puffs before tossing their cigarette, walking through the door, and exhaling. As if "not smoking" on the subway just means so long as you don't take the actual lit cigarette into the car.
Some of this depends on what field you're in. I know some sales guys who do 90% of their business over martinis at a posh bar. They're more likely to get to go enjoy a liquid lunch, with management approval.
However, in other parts of the world this is not uncommon. It all depends on where you work and what the culture is
You do realize your cellphone ALREADY has a powerful explosive in the back of it? It's called Lithium (it's the component in lithium ion batteries), and it REALLY does not like water. All you need to create an explosion is a multi tool, and some water.
Yet, how often have you heard about people blowing up their cell phones?
Since the industrial times, a lot of innovations have given individuals the ability to do a lot of damage if they use their tools incorrectly. Someone with a car who wants to go on a killing spree can be quite effective. Yet, mostly people don't. Because actually people are not interested in killing other people.
Like when hurricane katrina came through and destroyed those liberals. Except the most damage wasn't to the very gay and very liberal french quarter, but the ones next door.
Message from god / the republicans: very clear. They hate Gay Adjacents.
So let me get this straight: to encourage peace, you'd like us to ENGAGE in a policy of cyberwar in the hopes that a little drubbing from us will prove too much for them?
Dream on. Global politics are MUCH more complicated than you might imagine
If you compare the energy output of a single power station today to the energy output of all the camp fires in one night of prehistoric human history, it probably seems like a massive difference.
We know that future technology will be orders of magnitude bigger / more powerful than current technology.
And it's cool to think that, maybe, when you have a warp core that powers a space ship going FTL with many millions of petawatts of energy, some star trek technology like replicators might come true :)
Emergency services have been using things like "zombie attacks" for decades. There's a lot of reasons why. One is if a civilian stumbles onto your training exercise, they're more likely to think it's some sort of movie then to get scared. Another is it's a bit lighthearted for a serious subject and may make it more enjoyable for people involved. And, any skills or experienced from the fantasy directly carries over to real life situations.
Agreed. The cost of the car > cost of a battery. While you may need to replace the battery at 100k miles, it's no different then needing to rebuild the engine, or make another major repair...
In Asia, where light skinned is beautiful, people literally cover themselves voluntarily head to toe (including mask for pollution + hat + trendy glasses).
Literally you can't see who a person is. I've literally gone up to another girl outside my girlfriends house because she had a similar scooter / build / mask. Fortunately I was waving when I was coming up, otherwise I might have kissed some random girl on the street.
In secure areas (read: airports, banks, etc.) there's typically a sign at the front telling you to remove all facial obstructions.
Have you SEEN CCD cameras? VGA images where they turn the contrast up to 100 in grainy black and white?
If you take into account any height difference, and choose a suitable subject, the defense may argue that it could have been someone with make up, but they won't find you by a long shot.
UNLESS facial recognition cameras are being installed with ridiculously high resolutions and then downgraded before releasing to the media so that people don't realize they're downgraded.
Scary thought? Maybe. But unlikely. Mostly security cameras are just a scarecrow to ward off the bad guys....
MOD PARENT UP!
yes some people are stupid and might get hurt or die. That will happen no matter how stupid people travel. That doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer because of the stupid.
Which is why if I see someone about to cause an accident that might be fatal to me and not them, I should be allowed to launch missles at them, and blast through safely in a ball of fire, james bond style
You can't be serious saying it is more dangerous to give way at slow speed versus coming to a complete stop and then having to huff and puff back up to speed, while simultaneously being overtaken with inches to spare by a bunch of impatient motorists because you can't outpace them.
The "Idaho Stop" allows you to go when other traffic has to stop. Anybody coming behind you has to stop where you can go.
Additionally, I am not saying that you cannot roll through a red light, ever. The problem is each situation (and danger) is different and you need to be able to judge it yourself, and not just say "Oh I have right of way, let's go!"
Just about every cyclist I know treat 'right of way' as synonymous to 'enter at your own risk'.
That is mostly locale specific. In America, cyclists tend to be more cautious because of the fact cycling is unusual. In Holland, asia, and other places where biking is common, they'll cut in front of an eighteen wheeler with a couch and child on the back of the bike, and make him slam on his brakes.
IAAC (I Am A Cyclist). However I think that people who treat riding a bike as if they own the road are asking for trouble.
It doesn't matter if you SHOULD have right of way. It matters if someone will see you and stop (and not run you over). When you come up to any dangerous intersection (or any intersection) you should slow down, look to make sure you're not going to get plowed into, and THEN go.
As a cyclist, you might be going 30 KPH easily, but you're much easier to miss for a motorist because you are so small, and you might come at an odd direction (most people aren't used to making sure there's no cyclists on the shoulder).
Well the key question the article is not addressing, is how much redundancy do you need?
If the inability to take up slack would result in a catastrophic failure, or loss of money, companies should (and do) have a lot of extra slack. You see this in some support jobs where people are there as an emergency support only, but the down side of having an accident happen with no one on duty is much greater than the down side to employ someone to do mostly no work.
On the other hand, some functions don't have such a critical cost of failure. In this case, you may actually WANT to be running a little hot -- you want some weeks to have too much work so that when the work is pushed off a week, the next week you have enough work for everyone.
It's called negotiating. The question is not, "Would you like half of $3 billion?" The question is "What percentage of $3 billion would you like?"
And the best leverage Disney has is to play the "It's my ball and I'm going home if you don't want to play by my rules" routine.
On a traveling mailing list I was on, some one posted a horror story urging women traveling alone to find travel partners and be careful about getting in cabs. Apparently the cabby took her to the middle of no where, robbed her, raped her, and left her tied up until a local farmer found her the next morning.
THIS.
I can't tell you how many cab drivers have screwed me over. Taken me for a ride that involves going an incredibly wrong direction for an incredibly juicy fare.
Additionally, how do you know your cab is real? Sometimes taxis are "fake" -- not actually registered but painted to look so. You run a risk any time you hop in a cab.
Check your axioms, namely:
"Hitchhiking is bad"
Tell me some stories of people you know who had a bad experience hitch hiking.
I know MANY people who hitchhike all the time. Students, young women, people who you would expect would be the victims of these types of "bad things" that the people who accept hitch hikers would do.
None of them have bad stories (I've asked out of curiosity), but many have stories of the time in the porsche/jaguar/mercedes decided to pull over and let them ride along in luxury.
A lot of people want to believe that their fellow members of humanity are simply evil. I don't get that. Even "bad" people don't see themselves as evil, and with the exception of a few extreme sociopaths people are basically good.
Actually the MBAs take a very long term view of things. At some point, all the outsourced jobs should lift the developing world up into the developed world. It'll mean a much better quality of life for many people, which will create jobs, globally. Ultimately, if jobs become truly frictionless, someone in India should make exactly what someone in the US makes for the same job at the same qualifications. Leading to a better world.
Of course that's VERY long term. Short term, sucks to be outsourced.
Well bacteria DO evolve. We can watch it happen in petri dishes, apply a bit of antibiotic every day, at first only a few colonies will survive but then you'll get a carpet of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
All it takes is the one bacteria who figures out how to synthesize the new protiens and it could go viral (pardon the pun).
Of course, we don't know what would happen. It could cause the end of civilization, or it could just be that DNA is taught as having "an extra base pair in some bacteria do to the oops of 2025"
While it does have some kinks to work out, consider:
1. While those working at the equator will indeed have the car at home when it's mostly dark out, a sizeable population of those well-to-do enough to afford cars live far enough north (or south) of the equator that their car will be home for quite a number of daylight hours.
2. Quite a number of people work from home these days. In this instance you WOULD be home the hours you're working.
3. Of those not working from home, a large portion are business owners or work in a small company where you might decide to install your carport at work, and be able to do that.
4. Companies offer company cars to some employees, why not add a carport to the work parking lot?
5. Big companies like Apple just LOVE environmental initiatives, if this became big, you'd have them rolling these out on campus (I'll leave for another discussion whether it's out of altruism or PR concerns or...?).
6. The key point is cost savings. If people save enough money with this, companies would install these and RENT them to their emplyees. Let's say you save $20 / gas a week, and these things last for 10 years before breaking down. That's $10k in saved money by employees. If they are cheap enough, say $5k an installation, you have a situation where the employer could rent them back to employees.
7. (In relation to point 6) Gas prices only go up, and technology only gets better. If it doesn't make financial sense now for some, it probably will in the future (and this is something that will take years to roll out anyways).
8. (In relation to point 6 & 7) Your costs are not everyone's costs. For instance, when I drove in Europe gas costs for me were $200+ a week commuting (even though I was relatively close, due to very high gas prices). At that rate, our earlier calculation would be a savings of $100k over a 10 year period. If my employer won't rent me one, I'm sure I can find saavy business owners around the block to come to an agreement for rental of space for an installation. Sign me up!
I could go on, but I hope I've made my point. :D