I had heard that certain passges of the Bible can not be read in public in some states due to their Hate Crimes laws. I can't back it up, though. I didn't find anything right off the bat.
Well, I am not a software developer anymore. My title is product manager, but my work is more like that of an account manager, project manager, and software configurator rolled into one.
My city only has a little over 1 million population. I figure I am underpaid for what I do at the moment, but since I just took this job 6 months ago after ditching a job that was paying even less, I'll give them a year or two to live up to the 6 figures that they promised I'd be making within a few years.
I used to get about 2.5 times my current pay, but that was back when we still had the twin towers in NYC.
I have a big problem with salaries in the U.S. -- employees believe they have a right to a raise every year, even if they are not providing more service or helping the company with added efficiency.
Typically, technical employees DO provide more service every year, based on constantly learning how to do what they do better, as well as commonly picking up other skills from surrounding employees. In addition to this, many times, when an employee quits, it is up to the existing employees to pick up the slack, because the company won't hire a replacement, or hires an entry level replacement which can only pick up a small amount of the work that was done by the outgoing person.
In addition, every year, the cost of living goes up. Many companies consider a Cost of Living Adjustment a raise, but it is absolutely not. It just allows you to maintain the same style of living you had last year. If you do not receive even a Cost of Living Adjustment, your style of living must diminish, and your company is saying to you that you are worth less to them this year than you were last year.
You mention several things that may be affecting the companies ability to pay raises. Well, that's life. We justify high CEO salaries by saying that they take all the risk in running the business. But in reality this is purest BS. The employees take all the risk because they will be fired, not the CEO. They will not receive raises if money is short. Even if the CEO gets canned, he will get a glorious severance package. Plus, the fact that he was a spectacular failure as a CEO is worth more on a resume than if hw was a spectacular success as a programmer.
You also mention that businesses have to look long term, over 5 years or more. In publically held companies, I observe that the "public" will not allow them to look more than one quarter in the future. Investors will not allow them to spend more money on research or developing new products. Everything is quarter to quarter financials until the old products you have become obsolete and your business fails.
Require the car to be in park in order to operate the GPS. This way, you can't program a new route while driving.
The first thing I thought when the article said that "1 in 10 didn't bother to program the unit before setting out" was that their statistic was measuring the wrong thing AND it was still not an accurate reflection. I only program my GPS about 1 in 10 times, usually only when I am going to a new place, and like most GPS units, it can ONLY be programmed while sitting still. Mine doesn't go off of being in park, but off of the output from the Vehicle Speed Sensor. Only preprogrammed destinations can be pulled up while you are moving (unless you know the secret override keypress sequence, which I can never remember).
Actually the fact that most GPS units can not be programmed while driving is quite annoying when you have a passenger along to help you, or when you are driving on a long stretch of practically empty highway and feel like playing with the GPS.
Lawyers are not a necessary evil. If people could treat each other fairly and honestly, there would be no need for lawyers. It is only because there is unnecessary evil that we have lawyers.
Can you explain how a "theory" differs from "proven science"?
That's easy. A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena.
"Proven science" does not exist. Science is an attempt to explain how the natural world works. It does so by refining, tuning, and occasionally tossing out ever more and more precise rules of thumb. Science never has the "right" answer. It has an answer that is correct taking into account always more and more variables, but there are always more variables available that we don't take into consideration.
We can put rockets in space and calculate their orbits precisely, but we would be idiots to send them up without the ability to correct course deviations.
No, there is no "proven science" but there are very usable, highly accurate, yet still infinitessimally incorrect rules of thumb.
Actually, pastors can get in a lot of trouble for sharing their political views with the congregation. It kind of strikes me as odd really. My pastor got in hot water last year for telling people to do exactly what you said; be politcally active, research the candidates and what they vote for and what they stand for. He didn't endorse a candidate. Just told people to be active, to vote, and to think about who they were voting for. Apparently, that is a big no-no. We don't want people thinking about who they vote for. We don't want pastor's encouraging people to vote.
Freedom of speech apparently mostly applies to spammers, because it doesn't apply to pastors.
The scenarios you mention are already covered by regulations and as such, the entities are not being "negligent" but are willfully disobeying regulations. Of course the regulation itself shows that we are putting the burden of protection on the entity rather than addressing the real problem, which is that there are people out there who prey on children, break into homes, murder people, etc.
Rather than fire the poor IT administrator who was probably forced aginst his will to use MS OSes, why don't they fire the manager that made that decision. Or the manager who hired someonw with minum IT skills in the first place, or the executive that only allocated $25k for an IT administrator position.
Actually, I think firing anyone is overkill anyway, since I am not as willing as others to put blame on the hospital.
I don't think there should be such thing as negligence when it comes to defending yourself against the actions of a human. I'm not saying there aren't times when you do have to defend yourself against a human, but I don't think it should be classified as negligence if you don't. The fault lies purely on the perpetrator.
If I leave my door unlocked, and get burgled, sure, the burglar is at fault - they're just as guilty as if they broke through ten metres of steel plating - but I am at least partly to blame too.
I disagree. The only reason we have to lock our doors is because there is some problem with our society in that some people don't seem to realize that if something belongs to someone else, that you are not supposed to mess with it. There should be no reason to lock our doors, no need to run antivirus, no need to block ports. The reason we have to do these things is that there are people who don't choose to obey our laws.
I will say that part of the blame may go on the adware/spyware companies. They are sort of like the dozens of pawn shops around my neighborhood, which essentially promise to give people a small amount of money if they steal stuff and bring it in. The amount they offer is pretty pathetic, but if you didn't pay for it, what do you care?
If the people who implemented the hospital system were capable of doing the job correctly, they most likely would have done it somewhere else. Hospital IT staff are one of the most underpaid IT staffs that you will find. Since they offer such low wages, they often have to resort to hiring IT people who don't really know IT and so are willing to use them as a stepping stone to a REAL IT job.
Regional and national hospitals tend to pay better though.
Welcome to Oklahoma! We are one of five states that does not allow write-ins (so I doubt if it is unconstitutional). Plus we have the distinction of being the only state where a candidate must be able to show a higher than 2% following in order to be listed on the ballot.
That's true, but economies of scale drive the average down for other things. My company of 4 employees pays over $4000 a year for professional liability. A company of 20 pays another couple of thousand. A facility to house 20 people is not 5 times the cost of a facility for 4 people. A printer shared by 20 people is cheaper than a printer shared by 4. Etc.
Well, I live in a state that doesn't allow write in candidates, so we are limited to the ones on the ballot. So our choices are : vote for whomever you think will be the least evil, or don't vote and let the other masses choose for you.
Fewer than 5% of people get a job by answering an ad. Most people get jobs by knowing people. In many cases, the job position doesn't exist, but they will create a position for you. Other than my restaurant jobs, all of my professional jobs save one were due to knowing someone. And the other one was one who knew me by reputation and cold-called to offer me a job.
I once ran across a listing on one of the job sites where someone had literally cut and pasted my resume onto a job posting. I mean word for word. It wasn't something dumb like 5 years C++ or anything either. It was something like "Gave a presentation on Data Warehousing in Paris to a division of one of the world's largest construction and agricultural machine manufacturers." Word...for...Word.
I applied. Never even got an interview.
I always wondered how come large companies are being forced to a quota system to only hire a certain number of white males, while there are other huge companies out there that have a staff consisting of 95% or more Indians. Why don't they have to be diverse.
I think that we should force the same quotas on the companies that we outsource or offshore to as well. We should make those companies in India and Mexico hire a representative number of whites, blacks, asians, etc.
It doesn't surprise me that an illegal would get paid more than a legal person. If they pay cash under the table, the copany doesn't have to pay their share of Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment tax, workers compensation, healthcare benefits. Altogether, this stuff can add up to more than 20%.
Incidentally, the company I work for claims that each employee costs it at least twcie their salary. The only way I can see this being true is if they are counting things like utilities, cube space, and middle management salaries and dividing that out amongst the actual workers.
I also own a couple of businesses, and the cost to me of employing someone has never been more than about 25% above their salary. Of course, my companies don't have an employer sponsored health plan (but neither does the company that employs me).
...Native Americans (which the first right brilliant whites thought were Indians)
If the first whites thought that the Native Americans were East Indians, then why did they call them "Indeo" meaning "With God"? Or if they really were naming them after the East Indians, then why did they name them after a number of different groups of people that were not yet united under the name of India? And if they really thought this was India, then why did they wander from place to place naming it after themselves and their home countries?
I know there is a crapload of solar energy bombarding our planet every day, but isn't there some point where the amount of solar energy that we intercept for our own use causes problems with our environment. Trees and plants depend on solar energy for their sustenance, so it is obvious we shouldn't put solar collectors above them and block out their light. But there is also the issue of solar energy heating our atmosphere and the ground. Solar energy is the driving force behind our weather. At some point, and that point probably doesn't have to be very high, we would likely see some disturbing side effects of using this energy.
I dont see going from gasoline to solar as going from fossil fuel to free energy. I see it as going from running on the battery to running on the alternator juice that is supposed to be powering up the battery.
Well, lucky for us then that those EMP spears don't exist.
Personally, I think the racers on Fast And Furious were confused about what those spears were doing. They didn't disable the electronics, they just turned on all of the video screens and monitors and caused their stereo and amplifiers to run at full volume, thus making the alternator pull most of the power from the engine just to run the electronics.
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I had heard that certain passges of the Bible can not be read in public in some states due to their Hate Crimes laws. I can't back it up, though. I didn't find anything right off the bat.
Well, I am not a software developer anymore. My title is product manager, but my work is more like that of an account manager, project manager, and software configurator rolled into one.
My city only has a little over 1 million population. I figure I am underpaid for what I do at the moment, but since I just took this job 6 months ago after ditching a job that was paying even less, I'll give them a year or two to live up to the 6 figures that they promised I'd be making within a few years.
I used to get about 2.5 times my current pay, but that was back when we still had the twin towers in NYC.
Wow, that's more than I get with 17 years of experience. You'll pardon me if I don't weep for the poor Microsoft employees.
I have a big problem with salaries in the U.S. -- employees believe they have a right to a raise every year, even if they are not providing more service or helping the company with added efficiency.
Typically, technical employees DO provide more service every year, based on constantly learning how to do what they do better, as well as commonly picking up other skills from surrounding employees. In addition to this, many times, when an employee quits, it is up to the existing employees to pick up the slack, because the company won't hire a replacement, or hires an entry level replacement which can only pick up a small amount of the work that was done by the outgoing person.
In addition, every year, the cost of living goes up. Many companies consider a Cost of Living Adjustment a raise, but it is absolutely not. It just allows you to maintain the same style of living you had last year. If you do not receive even a Cost of Living Adjustment, your style of living must diminish, and your company is saying to you that you are worth less to them this year than you were last year.
You mention several things that may be affecting the companies ability to pay raises. Well, that's life. We justify high CEO salaries by saying that they take all the risk in running the business. But in reality this is purest BS. The employees take all the risk because they will be fired, not the CEO. They will not receive raises if money is short. Even if the CEO gets canned, he will get a glorious severance package. Plus, the fact that he was a spectacular failure as a CEO is worth more on a resume than if hw was a spectacular success as a programmer.
You also mention that businesses have to look long term, over 5 years or more. In publically held companies, I observe that the "public" will not allow them to look more than one quarter in the future. Investors will not allow them to spend more money on research or developing new products. Everything is quarter to quarter financials until the old products you have become obsolete and your business fails.
Yes, you have the right to refuse, at which point they have probable cause, so they will arrest you and look inside your trunk.
Require the car to be in park in order to operate the GPS. This way, you can't program a new route while driving.
The first thing I thought when the article said that "1 in 10 didn't bother to program the unit before setting out" was that their statistic was measuring the wrong thing AND it was still not an accurate reflection. I only program my GPS about 1 in 10 times, usually only when I am going to a new place, and like most GPS units, it can ONLY be programmed while sitting still. Mine doesn't go off of being in park, but off of the output from the Vehicle Speed Sensor. Only preprogrammed destinations can be pulled up while you are moving (unless you know the secret override keypress sequence, which I can never remember).
Actually the fact that most GPS units can not be programmed while driving is quite annoying when you have a passenger along to help you, or when you are driving on a long stretch of practically empty highway and feel like playing with the GPS.
Lawyers are not a necessary evil. If people could treat each other fairly and honestly, there would be no need for lawyers. It is only because there is unnecessary evil that we have lawyers.
Can you explain how a "theory" differs from "proven science"?
That's easy. A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena.
"Proven science" does not exist. Science is an attempt to explain how the natural world works. It does so by refining, tuning, and occasionally tossing out ever more and more precise rules of thumb. Science never has the "right" answer. It has an answer that is correct taking into account always more and more variables, but there are always more variables available that we don't take into consideration.
We can put rockets in space and calculate their orbits precisely, but we would be idiots to send them up without the ability to correct course deviations.
No, there is no "proven science" but there are very usable, highly accurate, yet still infinitessimally incorrect rules of thumb.
Actually, pastors can get in a lot of trouble for sharing their political views with the congregation. It kind of strikes me as odd really. My pastor got in hot water last year for telling people to do exactly what you said; be politcally active, research the candidates and what they vote for and what they stand for. He didn't endorse a candidate. Just told people to be active, to vote, and to think about who they were voting for. Apparently, that is a big no-no. We don't want people thinking about who they vote for. We don't want pastor's encouraging people to vote.
Freedom of speech apparently mostly applies to spammers, because it doesn't apply to pastors.
The scenarios you mention are already covered by regulations and as such, the entities are not being "negligent" but are willfully disobeying regulations. Of course the regulation itself shows that we are putting the burden of protection on the entity rather than addressing the real problem, which is that there are people out there who prey on children, break into homes, murder people, etc.
Rather than fire the poor IT administrator who was probably forced aginst his will to use MS OSes, why don't they fire the manager that made that decision. Or the manager who hired someonw with minum IT skills in the first place, or the executive that only allocated $25k for an IT administrator position.
Actually, I think firing anyone is overkill anyway, since I am not as willing as others to put blame on the hospital.
I don't think there should be such thing as negligence when it comes to defending yourself against the actions of a human. I'm not saying there aren't times when you do have to defend yourself against a human, but I don't think it should be classified as negligence if you don't. The fault lies purely on the perpetrator.
If I leave my door unlocked, and get burgled, sure, the burglar is at fault - they're just as guilty as if they broke through ten metres of steel plating - but I am at least partly to blame too.
I disagree. The only reason we have to lock our doors is because there is some problem with our society in that some people don't seem to realize that if something belongs to someone else, that you are not supposed to mess with it. There should be no reason to lock our doors, no need to run antivirus, no need to block ports. The reason we have to do these things is that there are people who don't choose to obey our laws.
I will say that part of the blame may go on the adware/spyware companies. They are sort of like the dozens of pawn shops around my neighborhood, which essentially promise to give people a small amount of money if they steal stuff and bring it in. The amount they offer is pretty pathetic, but if you didn't pay for it, what do you care?
If the people who implemented the hospital system were capable of doing the job correctly, they most likely would have done it somewhere else. Hospital IT staff are one of the most underpaid IT staffs that you will find. Since they offer such low wages, they often have to resort to hiring IT people who don't really know IT and so are willing to use them as a stepping stone to a REAL IT job.
Regional and national hospitals tend to pay better though.
Welcome to Oklahoma! We are one of five states that does not allow write-ins (so I doubt if it is unconstitutional). Plus we have the distinction of being the only state where a candidate must be able to show a higher than 2% following in order to be listed on the ballot.
That's true, but economies of scale drive the average down for other things. My company of 4 employees pays over $4000 a year for professional liability. A company of 20 pays another couple of thousand. A facility to house 20 people is not 5 times the cost of a facility for 4 people. A printer shared by 20 people is cheaper than a printer shared by 4. Etc.
Well, I live in a state that doesn't allow write in candidates, so we are limited to the ones on the ballot. So our choices are : vote for whomever you think will be the least evil, or don't vote and let the other masses choose for you.
Fewer than 5% of people get a job by answering an ad. Most people get jobs by knowing people. In many cases, the job position doesn't exist, but they will create a position for you. Other than my restaurant jobs, all of my professional jobs save one were due to knowing someone. And the other one was one who knew me by reputation and cold-called to offer me a job.
I once ran across a listing on one of the job sites where someone had literally cut and pasted my resume onto a job posting. I mean word for word. It wasn't something dumb like 5 years C++ or anything either. It was something like "Gave a presentation on Data Warehousing in Paris to a division of one of the world's largest construction and agricultural machine manufacturers." Word...for...Word.
I applied. Never even got an interview.
I always wondered how come large companies are being forced to a quota system to only hire a certain number of white males, while there are other huge companies out there that have a staff consisting of 95% or more Indians. Why don't they have to be diverse.
I think that we should force the same quotas on the companies that we outsource or offshore to as well. We should make those companies in India and Mexico hire a representative number of whites, blacks, asians, etc.
Only if you used the new coversheets. Didn't yo get the memo?
It doesn't surprise me that an illegal would get paid more than a legal person. If they pay cash under the table, the copany doesn't have to pay their share of Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment tax, workers compensation, healthcare benefits. Altogether, this stuff can add up to more than 20%.
Incidentally, the company I work for claims that each employee costs it at least twcie their salary. The only way I can see this being true is if they are counting things like utilities, cube space, and middle management salaries and dividing that out amongst the actual workers.
I also own a couple of businesses, and the cost to me of employing someone has never been more than about 25% above their salary. Of course, my companies don't have an employer sponsored health plan (but neither does the company that employs me).
...Native Americans (which the first right brilliant whites thought were Indians)
If the first whites thought that the Native Americans were East Indians, then why did they call them "Indeo" meaning "With God"? Or if they really were naming them after the East Indians, then why did they name them after a number of different groups of people that were not yet united under the name of India? And if they really thought this was India, then why did they wander from place to place naming it after themselves and their home countries?
I know there is a crapload of solar energy bombarding our planet every day, but isn't there some point where the amount of solar energy that we intercept for our own use causes problems with our environment. Trees and plants depend on solar energy for their sustenance, so it is obvious we shouldn't put solar collectors above them and block out their light. But there is also the issue of solar energy heating our atmosphere and the ground. Solar energy is the driving force behind our weather. At some point, and that point probably doesn't have to be very high, we would likely see some disturbing side effects of using this energy.
I dont see going from gasoline to solar as going from fossil fuel to free energy. I see it as going from running on the battery to running on the alternator juice that is supposed to be powering up the battery.
Well, lucky for us then that those EMP spears don't exist.
Personally, I think the racers on Fast And Furious were confused about what those spears were doing. They didn't disable the electronics, they just turned on all of the video screens and monitors and caused their stereo and amplifiers to run at full volume, thus making the alternator pull most of the power from the engine just to run the electronics.
Which is, many times, the reason why companies outsource to contractors even though they are "more expensive" than employees.