In SC5, the traffic algorithm is so broken that a grid layout will leave you awash in traffic jams. The most efficient layout in SC5 is a snake pattern with one end being the (single) connection to the region.
I've heard tell of some people who managed to get 600k or so in SC5, but yes, it is crap. Highly visual and oooh shiny crap, but crap.
For those unaware, they finally came out with the offline version back in March, but I was so disgusted with the initial online only launch that I didn't even know this until a few weeks ago. I bought it, and am highly, highly disappointed. A HUGE step backward from Simcity4 in almost every area.
The city sizes are tiny. Basically, you can get a perhaps 10 by 10 city blocks in the city. This is probably about 5% of the size in a large city in SC4. It is unrealistic that a city of 10 by 10 blocks would sprout populations of huge skyscrapers and boast populations of over 200k. Unless it were a city within a sprawling metropolis, but that is not what SC5 is. You have huge empty regions with absolutely nothing between anywhere from 3 to 8 or so cities that are limited in size and have incredibly dense population.
Maxis says that the reason for this is that they thought peoples computers wouldn't be able to handle larger sized cities. Well, tough titty if they have to upgrade their computer once a decade. My three year old computer handles SC5 without a hiccup even with cities over 200k in size. Perhaps if people are having framerate issues, they should (gasp!) back off the sliders? Frankly, I think the Maxis response is a lie to cover the fact that online probably can't handle the large city sizes, and they are too proud to admit that online is a complete and utter fail and waste for a game like Simcity.
Power naps, caffeine naps, 8 hour versus 10+ hour days, etc have been studied for years and it has been scientifically proven that they improve productivity. But here is the problem: Employers are not interested in increasing productivity. They are interested in the appearance of productivity. And that means, people awake and working, with butts in chairs.
My upper management wants to see project deadlines hit. They don't care what or how we get it done.
Same here, they don't care if you do it during the day or at night as long as it gets done... Oh, and as long as you are here from 8:30 to 5:30 because it looks bad to the other departments if you are not here. You can go ahead and work nights at your discretion, but your butt does need to be in the chair from 8:30 until 5:30.
A few months ago, I got a call at 6:00 in the morning about an issue. I worked on it until 9, took a shower and went to work. On the way to work, and issue came up, and I asked if someone else could look at it because I was on the way to work. It got escalated to the CEO who demanded to know why I was not at work at that hour. I explained that I was called early in the morning and was working on an issue at home. he replied that occasional early morning calls are a fact of life and not an excuse for not getting to work on time.
So in order to perform my job to the expectations of management, I have to be able to foretell the future, so that I know whether I have to get up at 5:30 and go to the office and wait for the support call that I already foretold, or whether I can get up at 7:30 and go to the office because there will be no support call that day or I might get one, but I can complete it before I need to head to the office.
it is possible to scientifically test dowsing, it would just be expensive and scientists have already decided that dowsing is BS and don't want to do the research to prove it.
All you have to do is have a dowser go out and do his/her thing. Where they indicate there is water, dig. Also, dig 10 or 20 other random holes and figure out if there is water within about the same depth. Repeat about 100 times at different geologically separated and diversified areas. Shouldn't cost more than 10 or 20 million to put this to bed one way or another.
Apparently on slashdot, the plural of anecdote is the exception that proves the rule. So five or 10 people have seen witching work. Therefore it doesn't work.
Gas lines, water lines, sewer lines, coaxial lines, electric lines can all be found with a minimum of effort without witching sticks. All you have to do is go to a random spot, any old spot, it doesn't even have to be within 1000 miles of a human settlement, and dig. If you do not hit one of the above, you will at the very least cut the only fiber connection to an entire continent.
I think unions were great at busting up some frankly inhumane hiring practices. These days, it seems like you need a union against the union as the percentage they take from you is probably about equal to the percentage cut you would have to take if you didn't have the union backing you.
If you're only open the hours I'm at work, I'm not going to shop at your store.
This is my problem, too. The problem is that companies not only expect you to to work late into the evening "when necessary", meaning on days that end in "y", but they also expect that the fact that you worked a 20 hour shift on Monday does not mean you can come in late on Tuesday, and you certainly cannot expect to be allowed to take a half hour to go run some errands during the day, unless you are willing to give up your lunch hour to run those errands instead of maintaining your health so that you can be a more productive employee.
In the vast majority of places I have worked, they have claimed that I am an exempt employee and thus cannot be paid overtime, although that is not true by the letter of the law in most cases. Also, in most of those places, they do allow you an hour for lunch and you are not actually "on the clock", however, they also expect you to work 8:30 to 5:30, not 9 to 5. So you still work at least a full 8 hours.
Recently I was told by my boss that I need to bring my laptop to lunch in case there is a problem at work. That means, as far as I can tell, that I am not actually on a lunch break at all. Also, it means that I am limited to eating places that have free public wifi, because they won't pay for tethering and I'm sure not going to pay for it just for their use, and also that wherever I go has electric outlets within reach of the table because the battery on my 4 year old laptop only lasts about 10-15 minutes.
I'm surprised they are actually allowed to call terrorists terrorists.In the U.S., it is not PC to call terrorists terrorists. However, you can call people who hate government oppression in response to terrorist acts terrorists.
It's not a "thought" crime if what you're watching (and thereby encouraging the production of) is illegal to view.
Watching something does not encourage the production of something. When you stop and rubberneck at an accident, does that mean you love accidents and want to encourage the production of them?
$20 for food? Well, that will get you through breakfast if you are a lousy tipper.
, add an extra $20 for taxi or mass transit if they don't have rental car.
Better make sure the hotel is within a mile or two of the work place and you don't go anywhere for lunch.
It doesn't cost that much to process the receipts
It takes me about half an hour for a week long trip. That is about $100 cost to the company. Then it has to go to my manager who has to look it over and then to HR. Altogether it probably costs about $200 to process the receipts.
And you need the proof that expenses are legitimate if you are a government agency or a public firm, even a private firm is going to have to have details if they want to claim the expenses on their taxes.
Not according to the IRS. They allow a per diem rate (and it is much more than $20).
For New York City, the per diem rate is $303 lodging plus $71 food.
For Oklahoma City, where I am now, the per diem rate is $87 lodging and $66 food.
I would have to say that the lodging rate for Oklahoma City is lower than you are going to be able to find decent quality lodging in Oklahoma City. The overall average rate in Oklahoma City is $99, with three star rating average of $141 or more than double the IRS suggested per diem.
Contrast that to New York City, where the overall average rate is $221 and the three start average is $177. If I recall, the food in New York City is very pricey as well, although the IRS site only allows slightly more for the food in NYC than in OKC.
I guess if you are going to New York, get a per diem. If you are going to Oklahoma City, get a receipt.
I learned Fortran, then Pascal, then C, then 68000, then 6802. Well, in school anyway. I had already learned Basic when I was in 5th grade at home.
When I first started working with C++, I was lost and confused and couldn't figure it out.
I went into Java with some trepidation, owing to my previous experience with C++ as an OOL. However, the OO model in Java was so much easier to understand that after having learned Java, I was able to go back to C++ and this time around it made sense.
If they require you to use the internet, and desktop at home for business purposes then they absolutely should reimburse you for it. Clothes are something else entirely. I mean, presumably you were going to wear clothes anyway. Maybe they require you to wear clothes that you wouldn't normally wear. If it was specific, like a uniform, they do normally provide that sort of thing. If it is khakis, dress slacks, or a suit, I would expect that they would cover this in the dress code policy and it would be your understanding that part of your compensation is to cover those items. If they wanted to go so far as to outline a similar policy for home desktop and internet use for business purposes and make that part of your compensation, I would be agreeable to that as well, and would want the flexibility to adjust my compensation accordingly.
As an example, when my previous company went from providing temporary cell phones to their employees when traveling, to NOT providing them and still requiring the employees to have one, their should have been a commensurate adjustment to employee compensation to cover the cost difference.
This is what I don't understand about companies. They are too cheap to just reimburse you at a flat $50 rate for your cell phone, and so they will require you, an employee that costs them probably $100-$200 an hour, to go through and cross out the non-work related calls, then they will require someone else in HR who costs about the same to crosscheck what you did to make sure you are not lying, then they will reimburse you $45 because the phone bill was $90 and half the calls were company related. Total dollars recovered? $5. Dollars spent saving that money? $50-$100.
It is the same way with travel. Rather than give you a per diem of $100, they want itemized receipts, which you have to collect, enter into the system, submit, your manager has to review and approve, and then Travel has to audit and approve. All because they don't want you to go eat Ramen and pocket the other $97. They spend thousands of dollars of company time to save a few hundred dollars on travel expenses.
I am not aware of any construction company that requires you to have your own hammer and nails.
I am aware of some contractors that expect the customer to provide them with tools and consumables. This is baffling to me.
Oddly enough, I am also aware of some companies that require employees to bring their own keyboard and mouse. The keying facility in Mexico that we used to work with required their people to bring heir own because when they used company equipment, the equipment got broken very frequently. Apparently, the employees take better care of their own equipment. I'm not sure if Mexican law requires for them to be reimbursed. I would guess probably not.
And business plans are waaaay fucking cheaper then residential plans
Your business must be better at negotiation than the ones I have worked with. The last company had 300 employees and their plans cost them $100 per employee. No Data, No Texting. Limited to about 1200 minutes. They dropped that plan eventually and went to reimbursing as that was much cheaper. Then they dropped that and went to just not paying for employees phones at all, which was even cheaper. It should be noted that this company involved a lot of travel and cell phone was often the only means of contact with the employee.
I work for a small company that has the same policy. They do not issue corporate phones, but you must have a phone and must be reachable 24/7. You must receive work e-mails on your phone and in order to do that, you have to install software which allows the company full control of your phone, including remotely wiping it. This irks me, that the company will not buy me a phone, but reserves the right to brick the phone I pay for at any time. They do reimburse a certain amount for the phone bill, but you have to get the reimbursement request in within 30 days. if you don't, then you get nothing, and they won't let you go back in time and not answer your phone.
I never give any customers my cell phone number. Certain people at work know my cell phone number, but if I were ever to leave or get fired, all the people would know about it, probably before I do.
That is kind of a surprisingly low number. I've seen about that number killed in a 6 story building I was in before we moved to this one. But then I guess it depends on how the outside of the building looks to a passing bird.
Hydro surprises some people, but in the best case a dam starts outby destroying a large swath of habitat, then permanently disrupts fish migration and the ecosystems dependant on the waterway.
And then when you blow it up to appease the environmentalists, it destroys the ecosystem AGAIN.
Slashdot Mirror
In SC5, the traffic algorithm is so broken that a grid layout will leave you awash in traffic jams. The most efficient layout in SC5 is a snake pattern with one end being the (single) connection to the region.
I've heard tell of some people who managed to get 600k or so in SC5, but yes, it is crap. Highly visual and oooh shiny crap, but crap.
For those unaware, they finally came out with the offline version back in March, but I was so disgusted with the initial online only launch that I didn't even know this until a few weeks ago. I bought it, and am highly, highly disappointed. A HUGE step backward from Simcity4 in almost every area.
The city sizes are tiny. Basically, you can get a perhaps 10 by 10 city blocks in the city. This is probably about 5% of the size in a large city in SC4. It is unrealistic that a city of 10 by 10 blocks would sprout populations of huge skyscrapers and boast populations of over 200k. Unless it were a city within a sprawling metropolis, but that is not what SC5 is. You have huge empty regions with absolutely nothing between anywhere from 3 to 8 or so cities that are limited in size and have incredibly dense population.
Maxis says that the reason for this is that they thought peoples computers wouldn't be able to handle larger sized cities. Well, tough titty if they have to upgrade their computer once a decade. My three year old computer handles SC5 without a hiccup even with cities over 200k in size. Perhaps if people are having framerate issues, they should (gasp!) back off the sliders? Frankly, I think the Maxis response is a lie to cover the fact that online probably can't handle the large city sizes, and they are too proud to admit that online is a complete and utter fail and waste for a game like Simcity.
Power naps, caffeine naps, 8 hour versus 10+ hour days, etc have been studied for years and it has been scientifically proven that they improve productivity. But here is the problem: Employers are not interested in increasing productivity. They are interested in the appearance of productivity. And that means, people awake and working, with butts in chairs.
My upper management wants to see project deadlines hit. They don't care what or how we get it done.
Same here, they don't care if you do it during the day or at night as long as it gets done... Oh, and as long as you are here from 8:30 to 5:30 because it looks bad to the other departments if you are not here. You can go ahead and work nights at your discretion, but your butt does need to be in the chair from 8:30 until 5:30.
A few months ago, I got a call at 6:00 in the morning about an issue. I worked on it until 9, took a shower and went to work. On the way to work, and issue came up, and I asked if someone else could look at it because I was on the way to work. It got escalated to the CEO who demanded to know why I was not at work at that hour. I explained that I was called early in the morning and was working on an issue at home. he replied that occasional early morning calls are a fact of life and not an excuse for not getting to work on time.
So in order to perform my job to the expectations of management, I have to be able to foretell the future, so that I know whether I have to get up at 5:30 and go to the office and wait for the support call that I already foretold, or whether I can get up at 7:30 and go to the office because there will be no support call that day or I might get one, but I can complete it before I need to head to the office.
it is possible to scientifically test dowsing, it would just be expensive and scientists have already decided that dowsing is BS and don't want to do the research to prove it.
All you have to do is have a dowser go out and do his/her thing. Where they indicate there is water, dig. Also, dig 10 or 20 other random holes and figure out if there is water within about the same depth. Repeat about 100 times at different geologically separated and diversified areas. Shouldn't cost more than 10 or 20 million to put this to bed one way or another.
Apparently on slashdot, the plural of anecdote is the exception that proves the rule. So five or 10 people have seen witching work. Therefore it doesn't work.
Gas lines, water lines, sewer lines, coaxial lines, electric lines can all be found with a minimum of effort without witching sticks. All you have to do is go to a random spot, any old spot, it doesn't even have to be within 1000 miles of a human settlement, and dig. If you do not hit one of the above, you will at the very least cut the only fiber connection to an entire continent.
I think unions were great at busting up some frankly inhumane hiring practices. These days, it seems like you need a union against the union as the percentage they take from you is probably about equal to the percentage cut you would have to take if you didn't have the union backing you.
If you're only open the hours I'm at work, I'm not going to shop at your store.
This is my problem, too. The problem is that companies not only expect you to to work late into the evening "when necessary", meaning on days that end in "y", but they also expect that the fact that you worked a 20 hour shift on Monday does not mean you can come in late on Tuesday, and you certainly cannot expect to be allowed to take a half hour to go run some errands during the day, unless you are willing to give up your lunch hour to run those errands instead of maintaining your health so that you can be a more productive employee.
In the vast majority of places I have worked, they have claimed that I am an exempt employee and thus cannot be paid overtime, although that is not true by the letter of the law in most cases. Also, in most of those places, they do allow you an hour for lunch and you are not actually "on the clock", however, they also expect you to work 8:30 to 5:30, not 9 to 5. So you still work at least a full 8 hours.
Recently I was told by my boss that I need to bring my laptop to lunch in case there is a problem at work. That means, as far as I can tell, that I am not actually on a lunch break at all. Also, it means that I am limited to eating places that have free public wifi, because they won't pay for tethering and I'm sure not going to pay for it just for their use, and also that wherever I go has electric outlets within reach of the table because the battery on my 4 year old laptop only lasts about 10-15 minutes.
Green Eggs and Ham FTW!
I'm surprised they are actually allowed to call terrorists terrorists.In the U.S., it is not PC to call terrorists terrorists. However, you can call people who hate government oppression in response to terrorist acts terrorists.
It's not a "thought" crime if what you're watching (and thereby encouraging the production of) is illegal to view.
Watching something does not encourage the production of something. When you stop and rubberneck at an accident, does that mean you love accidents and want to encourage the production of them?
Drop that per diem to $20 for food
$20 for food? Well, that will get you through breakfast if you are a lousy tipper.
, add an extra $20 for taxi or mass transit if they don't have rental car.
Better make sure the hotel is within a mile or two of the work place and you don't go anywhere for lunch.
It doesn't cost that much to process the receipts
It takes me about half an hour for a week long trip. That is about $100 cost to the company. Then it has to go to my manager who has to look it over and then to HR. Altogether it probably costs about $200 to process the receipts.
And you need the proof that expenses are legitimate if you are a government agency or a public firm, even a private firm is going to have to have details if they want to claim the expenses on their taxes.
Not according to the IRS. They allow a per diem rate (and it is much more than $20).
For New York City, the per diem rate is $303 lodging plus $71 food.
For Oklahoma City, where I am now, the per diem rate is $87 lodging and $66 food.
I would have to say that the lodging rate for Oklahoma City is lower than you are going to be able to find decent quality lodging in Oklahoma City. The overall average rate in Oklahoma City is $99, with three star rating average of $141 or more than double the IRS suggested per diem.
Contrast that to New York City, where the overall average rate is $221 and the three start average is $177. If I recall, the food in New York City is very pricey as well, although the IRS site only allows slightly more for the food in NYC than in OKC.
I guess if you are going to New York, get a per diem. If you are going to Oklahoma City, get a receipt.
I learned Fortran, then Pascal, then C, then 68000, then 6802. Well, in school anyway. I had already learned Basic when I was in 5th grade at home. When I first started working with C++, I was lost and confused and couldn't figure it out.
I went into Java with some trepidation, owing to my previous experience with C++ as an OOL. However, the OO model in Java was so much easier to understand that after having learned Java, I was able to go back to C++ and this time around it made sense.
I am anxiously awaiting the popping of the .gov bubble.
If they require you to use the internet, and desktop at home for business purposes then they absolutely should reimburse you for it. Clothes are something else entirely. I mean, presumably you were going to wear clothes anyway. Maybe they require you to wear clothes that you wouldn't normally wear. If it was specific, like a uniform, they do normally provide that sort of thing. If it is khakis, dress slacks, or a suit, I would expect that they would cover this in the dress code policy and it would be your understanding that part of your compensation is to cover those items. If they wanted to go so far as to outline a similar policy for home desktop and internet use for business purposes and make that part of your compensation, I would be agreeable to that as well, and would want the flexibility to adjust my compensation accordingly.
As an example, when my previous company went from providing temporary cell phones to their employees when traveling, to NOT providing them and still requiring the employees to have one, their should have been a commensurate adjustment to employee compensation to cover the cost difference.
This is what I don't understand about companies. They are too cheap to just reimburse you at a flat $50 rate for your cell phone, and so they will require you, an employee that costs them probably $100-$200 an hour, to go through and cross out the non-work related calls, then they will require someone else in HR who costs about the same to crosscheck what you did to make sure you are not lying, then they will reimburse you $45 because the phone bill was $90 and half the calls were company related. Total dollars recovered? $5. Dollars spent saving that money? $50-$100.
It is the same way with travel. Rather than give you a per diem of $100, they want itemized receipts, which you have to collect, enter into the system, submit, your manager has to review and approve, and then Travel has to audit and approve. All because they don't want you to go eat Ramen and pocket the other $97. They spend thousands of dollars of company time to save a few hundred dollars on travel expenses.
I am not aware of any construction company that requires you to have your own hammer and nails.
I am aware of some contractors that expect the customer to provide them with tools and consumables. This is baffling to me.
Oddly enough, I am also aware of some companies that require employees to bring their own keyboard and mouse. The keying facility in Mexico that we used to work with required their people to bring heir own because when they used company equipment, the equipment got broken very frequently. Apparently, the employees take better care of their own equipment. I'm not sure if Mexican law requires for them to be reimbursed. I would guess probably not.
And business plans are waaaay fucking cheaper then residential plans
Your business must be better at negotiation than the ones I have worked with. The last company had 300 employees and their plans cost them $100 per employee. No Data, No Texting. Limited to about 1200 minutes. They dropped that plan eventually and went to reimbursing as that was much cheaper. Then they dropped that and went to just not paying for employees phones at all, which was even cheaper. It should be noted that this company involved a lot of travel and cell phone was often the only means of contact with the employee.
I work for a small company that has the same policy. They do not issue corporate phones, but you must have a phone and must be reachable 24/7. You must receive work e-mails on your phone and in order to do that, you have to install software which allows the company full control of your phone, including remotely wiping it. This irks me, that the company will not buy me a phone, but reserves the right to brick the phone I pay for at any time. They do reimburse a certain amount for the phone bill, but you have to get the reimbursement request in within 30 days. if you don't, then you get nothing, and they won't let you go back in time and not answer your phone.
I never give any customers my cell phone number. Certain people at work know my cell phone number, but if I were ever to leave or get fired, all the people would know about it, probably before I do.
It's New York. Apparently, having 2400 square feet there is some sort of big deal.
That is kind of a surprisingly low number. I've seen about that number killed in a 6 story building I was in before we moved to this one. But then I guess it depends on how the outside of the building looks to a passing bird.
Hydro surprises some people, but in the best case a dam starts outby destroying a large swath of habitat, then permanently disrupts fish migration and the ecosystems dependant on the waterway.
And then when you blow it up to appease the environmentalists, it destroys the ecosystem AGAIN.