Not so long ago, there wasn't social security. What people did then was either plan for retirement (rare), work for a company for long enough that they were provided for after retirement* (almost as rare), or count on family (children) to take care of them in later years.
*What social security has done was to eliminate a few pieces of this. It's rare that private companies in the US provide a defined benefit plan and instead typically only offer 401(k) which is not required. Also, it's not as often that you see elderly parents living with one of thier offspring. Rather, they get along until they absolutely can't on their own and more often than not are sent to a retirement "community" where someone else can take care of them. Of course, neither of these has happened across the board, but are both quite prevalent these days.
I work for the local county now, and am required to pay into ss as well as the county mandated retirement plan. If I stay here for 21 years, I'll have the retirement plan, (maybe) ss, my 401(k) and my personal savings which is spread out in several buckets. I know, however, that not everyone can do all of that. So my fiance and I, in building our new house, are planning an extra downstairs guest room in the event a family member(s) isn't going to make it financially. My parents won't be starving in the street, they'll have their own "apartment" at my house, and as their son, I feel it's my duty to take care of them as they did for me once.
Very true, but don't confuse evolution as we see it happen with evolution "proving" creation. Evolution as we see it happen is certainly fact. But evolution explianing creation is merely a theory, as is the creationists view.
As a matter of fact, any attempt to define how man (or any creature, really) was created will remain a theory because anyone who was there when it happened is long since deceased.
Given that our planet has gone through several climate changes in the past two million years, I would suggest natural adjustment. However, I'm certain we're slightly speeding the process this time around with our pollutants. Of course (and IANOS), it's probably as minimal as the amount of time lost in a year cause by the recent tsunami.
I just started playing SWG a few months ago, and I have to say, I'm having fun. Of course, the forums are filled with both whiners and satisfied people, but my guess is you get that in every game. Since joining SWG I've mastered a profession, started a couple of others, joined a guild, etc... the usual MMORPG rituals.
So I wonder, why is it you've switched to WoW and are not looking back?
The past century or so of history shows that the entertainment industry has a virtually unbroken track record of opposing any technological advances,
I cannot at all agree with this one
But this is very definitely not the situation he's talking about: instead,
but specifically in the realm of professional musician, which I used to be.
I'll start with the indie artists, which I support on a much larger scale than I do artists with major labels. An indie (or their producer) incurs all costs up front, and hopes to at least break even in cd sales to cover those costs. That doesn't always happen, but it's a good target. While cd's hopefully pay for themselves, the artists make their real income from live performances. Now, the majority of people that use P2P to download songs aren't downloading indie tunes, but rather tunes by bigger name performers who they hear on pop/hip hop/country radio (don't get me started on payola in the radio industry).
Even with major labels, whose business model is deplorable with regards to profitability, incur all costs up front, and hope to make revenue off of cd sales. In their case, the typical run of cd's is 100,000 per (while indies typically run 4 - 10,000 per) so they do save in bulk. Of course, major labels do like to spend more money on artwork, promotion, but that's a different arguememtn, and one we could go on for hours about. So in the music industry, the loss is a situation where expenses exceed revenues. There isn't any cry regarding loss of additional expected revenues, but I can assure that most major labels are, in fact, coming out in the red over the last few years.
I can't argue with you regarding the relation of your comments to the movie industry as, frankly, I don't pay much attention to Hollywood for a few reasons... the primary one being most movies suck IMHO, and I rarely see them other than on cable.
It doesn't matter if that person would have purchased it or not. The fact remains... that person now has a copy of it, and likewise should have paid for that copy (unless, of course, the artists wanted it freely distributed, which does happen). It's similar to describing kleptomania (aside from the physical theft arguement). That person might not have ordinarily paid for the item they stole, but it's now in their posession nonetheless.
That's still such a weak arguement. It's true you didn't steal anything by removing it from someone's person. However, the person who bought it never removed it from the artist's person either. What you stole was the revenue the artist expected from the additional copy of their work that's now in your hands.
All of your numbers make sense, except for one. If your average salary for those 50 employees is $50,000/year, then your cost (salary * ~150%) of keeping them is closer to $3,750,000/year. Just being a geeky former HR coder over here.
Then I stand (half?) corrected. To call them the Houston Symphony Orchestra I suppose would be a bussiness-like entity, while calling them an orchestra would be collective then?
Does that mean "Cheap Trick says" is correct while "the band say" is also correct?
That's precisely how I learned it. You would say "A NASA shuttle" or "an N-A-S-A shuttle" based on those rules.
The one that gets me is the following. I learned that an organization/band/etc... is a single entity. Usage would be "The Houston Symphony Orchestra claims to have...." rather than "The Houston Symphony Orchestra claim to have...." In writetn media, I often see it written as the latter.
Er... no. What I thought would be implied by my comment was that in the last 4 years, as a contractor (many contracts) I didn't have trouble finding work, except for that 4 month period after Enron et. al. flooded the market with IT folks. My phone rings weekly for contracts still, and I wonder if other folks are having trouble finding work or not.
But thanks for the sarcastic thought thoughtless comment.
Workers who once envisioned a bright future now only see grim possibilities.
Is that just a bit of an overstatement? My first 4 years in the industry I was fulltime. The longest layoff I had (I'm now fulltime again) in 9 years as a contract programmer after that was 4 months. That followed the Enron/Dynegy/El Paso fiasco in Houston.
What people out there in the/. community have grim prospects because of the offshore outsourcing?
Oh, and p.s. I meant to type "former employees of Enron" as they've (the ones I knew) all been laid off for some time now. Enron does still exist, though, just under a new name... Prisma Energy International.
So far all I know about is Jeff Skilling's wife, who worked for Enron briefly.
Regarding the fattest city.. that's a pretty strange moniker. Evndently that's merely based on fast food restaurants per capita. It's our second year in a row, and I assume, as long as fast food is popular, we'll continue to hold that crown. Of course, trying to base it on actual per capita average weight would be impossible, but it seems a little outrageous the way it stands. The skinny (get it? get it?) of it all is Houston is the 4th most populous, but second largest in land area (to Jacksonville, FL of all places) in the country.. read: it's very spread out. My commute is not unusual at 45 minutes in light traffic. Fast food is a way of life for a lot of people.. I just don't overdo it. At 33, I'm 6'3" and weight 185#.... right in line with my suggested weight.
I know you didn't mention that as a mean rib (another pun?), but after hearing it for over a year now, I had to vent on somebody:)
The case hasn't even appeared in court. It's just that this action seems to fall under the Patriot Act, according to the prosecutors. The beauty of our judicial system (though not infallible) is that he gets his day in court. If the judge is a reasonable person, this man will either be acquited or get probation to be made an example of.
Not the helpful answer you were looking for, but both.
I've been a professional coder for 12 years, and was a hobbyist for 8 before that. To this day, I still get in front of the monitor for at least a short while almost every night. Sometimes that's writing code, sometimes reading, sometimes playing games.
I still love the feeling of accomplishment when a project comes together. That's not to say I get that feeling all the time. Sometimes I have to fix a bug, sometimes track down (for hours) why a function isn't doing exactly what we thought it would do (requiring polling through regmon or some other monotonous task). It's not all fun and games, but it's still programming, and it's still solving problems, which I like to think I'm good at (I'm also good at ending sentences with prepositions).
I apologize if this isn't any help to you, but I think it pieces together both camps, and maybe there's really a middle ground that most developers agree on.
Create a test account on the box with very few privileges. Really, any developer worth their weight ought to know to have a non-development environment to test projects.
Further out on the extreme branch, one could either partition and install a few OS's, or use MS Virtual PC to create a few different "boxen" with different OS's, different patches, etc... to get a full view of what the project is(n't) compatible with.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so long ago, there wasn't social security. What people did then was either plan for retirement (rare), work for a company for long enough that they were provided for after retirement* (almost as rare), or count on family (children) to take care of them in later years.
*What social security has done was to eliminate a few pieces of this. It's rare that private companies in the US provide a defined benefit plan and instead typically only offer 401(k) which is not required. Also, it's not as often that you see elderly parents living with one of thier offspring. Rather, they get along until they absolutely can't on their own and more often than not are sent to a retirement "community" where someone else can take care of them. Of course, neither of these has happened across the board, but are both quite prevalent these days.
I work for the local county now, and am required to pay into ss as well as the county mandated retirement plan. If I stay here for 21 years, I'll have the retirement plan, (maybe) ss, my 401(k) and my personal savings which is spread out in several buckets. I know, however, that not everyone can do all of that. So my fiance and I, in building our new house, are planning an extra downstairs guest room in the event a family member(s) isn't going to make it financially. My parents won't be starving in the street, they'll have their own "apartment" at my house, and as their son, I feel it's my duty to take care of them as they did for me once.
Very true, but don't confuse evolution as we see it happen with evolution "proving" creation. Evolution as we see it happen is certainly fact. But evolution explianing creation is merely a theory, as is the creationists view.
As a matter of fact, any attempt to define how man (or any creature, really) was created will remain a theory because anyone who was there when it happened is long since deceased.
Given that our planet has gone through several climate changes in the past two million years, I would suggest natural adjustment. However, I'm certain we're slightly speeding the process this time around with our pollutants. Of course (and IANOS), it's probably as minimal as the amount of time lost in a year cause by the recent tsunami.
their internet was most likely being stolen by 10 other surrounding apartments
:)
Don't you mean borrowed? Sorry, I could help but try to turn it into a **AA IP rights arguement
I just started playing SWG a few months ago, and I have to say, I'm having fun. Of course, the forums are filled with both whiners and satisfied people, but my guess is you get that in every game. Since joining SWG I've mastered a profession, started a couple of others, joined a guild, etc... the usual MMORPG rituals.
So I wonder, why is it you've switched to WoW and are not looking back?
Incidentally, I read a while back (maybe on /.) that Cyrix was looking into analog processors for PC use. I wonder if VIA has canned that research.
Prompting a motoralla/cyrix comeback!
Who'd have thunk it?
While I do agree with your comment
The past century or so of history shows that the entertainment industry has a virtually unbroken track record of opposing any technological advances,
I cannot at all agree with this one
But this is very definitely not the situation he's talking about: instead,
but specifically in the realm of professional musician, which I used to be.
I'll start with the indie artists, which I support on a much larger scale than I do artists with major labels. An indie (or their producer) incurs all costs up front, and hopes to at least break even in cd sales to cover those costs. That doesn't always happen, but it's a good target. While cd's hopefully pay for themselves, the artists make their real income from live performances. Now, the majority of people that use P2P to download songs aren't downloading indie tunes, but rather tunes by bigger name performers who they hear on pop/hip hop/country radio (don't get me started on payola in the radio industry).
Even with major labels, whose business model is deplorable with regards to profitability, incur all costs up front, and hope to make revenue off of cd sales. In their case, the typical run of cd's is 100,000 per (while indies typically run 4 - 10,000 per) so they do save in bulk. Of course, major labels do like to spend more money on artwork, promotion, but that's a different arguememtn, and one we could go on for hours about. So in the music industry, the loss is a situation where expenses exceed revenues. There isn't any cry regarding loss of additional expected revenues, but I can assure that most major labels are, in fact, coming out in the red over the last few years.
I can't argue with you regarding the relation of your comments to the movie industry as, frankly, I don't pay much attention to Hollywood for a few reasons... the primary one being most movies suck IMHO, and I rarely see them other than on cable.
It doesn't matter if that person would have purchased it or not. The fact remains... that person now has a copy of it, and likewise should have paid for that copy (unless, of course, the artists wanted it freely distributed, which does happen). It's similar to describing kleptomania (aside from the physical theft arguement). That person might not have ordinarily paid for the item they stole, but it's now in their posession nonetheless.
That's still such a weak arguement. It's true you didn't steal anything by removing it from someone's person. However, the person who bought it never removed it from the artist's person either. What you stole was the revenue the artist expected from the additional copy of their work that's now in your hands.
All of your numbers make sense, except for one. If your average salary for those 50 employees is $50,000/year, then your cost (salary * ~150%) of keeping them is closer to $3,750,000/year. Just being a geeky former HR coder over here.
I know SWG as ~200,000 players subscribed. If their cost of upkeep is ~$3MM/month, then I think they should reevaluate their maintenance plan.
Of course, they're in it for profit too, but ~#36MM/year, I would assume, is likely paying for new game development as well. Just a hunch though.
That's why everyone should code in Visual Basic. Because RAD stands for Rapid Application Dynamics!
For those who couldn't tell... </funny>.
Grammar lesson of the day for me... thanks!
Then I stand (half?) corrected. To call them the Houston Symphony Orchestra I suppose would be a bussiness-like entity, while calling them an orchestra would be collective then?
Does that mean "Cheap Trick says" is correct while "the band say" is also correct?
That's precisely how I learned it. You would say "A NASA shuttle" or "an N-A-S-A shuttle" based on those rules.
The one that gets me is the following. I learned that an organization/band/etc... is a single entity. Usage would be "The Houston Symphony Orchestra claims to have...." rather than "The Houston Symphony Orchestra claim to have...." In writetn media, I often see it written as the latter.
Er... no. What I thought would be implied by my comment was that in the last 4 years, as a contractor (many contracts) I didn't have trouble finding work, except for that 4 month period after Enron et. al. flooded the market with IT folks. My phone rings weekly for contracts still, and I wonder if other folks are having trouble finding work or not.
But thanks for the sarcastic thought thoughtless comment.
Workers who once envisioned a bright future now only see grim possibilities.
/. community have grim prospects because of the offshore outsourcing?
Is that just a bit of an overstatement? My first 4 years in the industry I was fulltime. The longest layoff I had (I'm now fulltime again) in 9 years as a contract programmer after that was 4 months. That followed the Enron/Dynegy/El Paso fiasco in Houston.
What people out there in the
Oh, and p.s. I meant to type "former employees of Enron" as they've (the ones I knew) all been laid off for some time now. Enron does still exist, though, just under a new name... Prisma Energy International.
So far all I know about is Jeff Skilling's wife, who worked for Enron briefly.
:)
Regarding the fattest city.. that's a pretty strange moniker. Evndently that's merely based on fast food restaurants per capita. It's our second year in a row, and I assume, as long as fast food is popular, we'll continue to hold that crown. Of course, trying to base it on actual per capita average weight would be impossible, but it seems a little outrageous the way it stands. The skinny (get it? get it?) of it all is Houston is the 4th most populous, but second largest in land area (to Jacksonville, FL of all places) in the country.. read: it's very spread out. My commute is not unusual at 45 minutes in light traffic. Fast food is a way of life for a lot of people.. I just don't overdo it. At 33, I'm 6'3" and weight 185#.... right in line with my suggested weight.
I know you didn't mention that as a mean rib (another pun?), but after hearing it for over a year now, I had to vent on somebody
Quite honestly, being as developer in Houston, I knew several loyal employees of Enron.
The case hasn't even appeared in court. It's just that this action seems to fall under the Patriot Act, according to the prosecutors. The beauty of our judicial system (though not infallible) is that he gets his day in court. If the judge is a reasonable person, this man will either be acquited or get probation to be made an example of.
Not the helpful answer you were looking for, but both.
I've been a professional coder for 12 years, and was a hobbyist for 8 before that. To this day, I still get in front of the monitor for at least a short while almost every night. Sometimes that's writing code, sometimes reading, sometimes playing games.
I still love the feeling of accomplishment when a project comes together. That's not to say I get that feeling all the time. Sometimes I have to fix a bug, sometimes track down (for hours) why a function isn't doing exactly what we thought it would do (requiring polling through regmon or some other monotonous task). It's not all fun and games, but it's still programming, and it's still solving problems, which I like to think I'm good at (I'm also good at ending sentences with prepositions).
I apologize if this isn't any help to you, but I think it pieces together both camps, and maybe there's really a middle ground that most developers agree on.
I'm not sure, but I can guarantee they're worth a lot more on Jupiter.
Create a test account on the box with very few privileges. Really, any developer worth their weight ought to know to have a non-development environment to test projects.
Further out on the extreme branch, one could either partition and install a few OS's, or use MS Virtual PC to create a few different "boxen" with different OS's, different patches, etc... to get a full view of what the project is(n't) compatible with.