Well, we have the power grid for security and infrastructure reasons... we could also have a water grid (water pipelines from areas with more rain/flooding to areas that are more arid (AZ,NM,TX,UT) with more sun. The southwest is a much better place to use solar.. and ergo a good place to separate water for hydrogen fuel. Not the most efficient energy conversion, but actual storage ability is a big benefit. This hydrogen can then be transported where needed throughout the country.
Critical investments into such a project would require research into desalinization techniques, as well as safe processes for hydrogen storage and transportation. Additionally actually running water pipelines across the country could be the largest construction project since the interstate highways.
If I were a billionaire, this is where my investments would be targeting... Expecting the project to take 20-30 years to complete, but offering a huge amount of return, with enough cooperation.
Speak for yourself... I've been capped as far as income for well over a decade now. It doesn't go nearly as far today as in 2000... In 2000 I had a fair amount of extra money to play with... now I just pay my bills with not nearly the same left... my bills are pretty much the same.. except food, gas, utilities etc. are more. Fuel going up more still, will definitely impact.
On the flip side, I think that fossil fuels should be preserved not for the environment, but because getting vehicles off the ground and into space takes a combustible fuel source (for the foreseeable future). Anything we do on earth can be adapted to other fuel sources... getting off the planet is another story.
Are you now, or have you ever been associated with the communist party..?
I see here that you went to a party where over 10% of those in attendance were muslim. I also see here that you were at another even where 15% in attendance were clearly muslim. Note: that this is now part of your public record... Have a nice day.
Well, my current play with Simple Mobile is $50/month.. and I was with Boost before that for around the same price... When I looked at handsets/plans for T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon... most similar plans were anywhere from $90-140/month from what I was looking at. I got divorced a couple years ago, and decided to switch to prepay through mvno's at that time. Much less expensive, and though I use a higher end smart phone, there are lesser phones available.
If you've actually shopped around comparing the MVNO's (Simple Mobile, Boost, etc) vs. the main carriers with subsidized phones, you'd find my statement pretty accurate, but since you seem to be unable to look into anything on your own, you can take your attitude and shove it back up your rectum.
I'd be in favor of a well organized guild for software developers... not strictly a Union per-se, but a guild that binds together similar to a union, but seniority in status is not based strictly on years in the guild.
I'd like to see a $120K/year (top 10%) base salary floor for H1-B workers... if there *really* such a dire shortage, then that would be a prevailing salary.. with re-evaluation every 5 years to whatever the average pay of the top 85th percentile.
Having a shortage of high-IQ people is laughable as IQ is derived from the average for a test group. 100 is average and probably 90% of people are within 10% above, or below depending on the test... the bell curve is pretty high. Falling outside this range is rare, and genius or retarded levels more rare. There will in general always be x% of geniuses in the population. The problem is raising the average population to higher levels, which simply isn't happening and our educational system seems ill-prepared to do. My great grandmother was a school teacher.. I once looked through some of her older course books. Her 5th grade english textbook was harder than anything I had to take in HS.
Communication (reading/writing) are the core of learning... if you can reason, read and write, you can learn anything else. We've drifted away from this. I've never been particularly good with language and grammar. I don't enjoy reading novels, I prefer technical books. That said, it's the single biggest shortcoming in current K-12 education in this country today. Basic math skills are nearly equally important... everything else, a young, curious mind can and will learn on their own.
Too much time is spent on things that are either becoming more intuitive or will change greatly. I would love to see K-4 spend about 1/3-1/2 their in-class time on reading/writing exercises. At the higher grades, around 3rd, introduce more math concepts, and in the HS age, then introduce more specialized choices. With the sheer size of schools in more urban/suburban areas, it would be great to actually segment children based on behavior and performance. You keep up, or get left behind... not "everyone is special"... in the real world, there are winners and losers.
I'm in the middle of changing jobs.. my job search was relatively quick as there are a lot of programmer positions open. The fact is that 8/10 are less than I'm willing to accept, and yet, still there's still lots of lowball positions out there. I was recently contacted about taking a position near Seattle, for quite a bit less than what I make in Phoenix... It costs about 15K/year more to live in Seattle than Phoenix, and 20-40K/year more to live in the SF Bay area. I'm happy to look at jobs in the hotter spots (Phoenix actually has a great pay:cost-of-living ratio), but only for better pay than the equivalent to what I make here... There's close to 0% unemployment for software development... the salaries being offered are still no more than what I was making at the end 1999. What this means is I am making a lot less today 3-5%/year for a 13 years.
From my experience, and those I've worked with, I'm well inside the top 1% of my peer group. Very few managers understand the difference in output from one developer vs. another if it meets the minimum requirements, and it means even less for contracted workers. I get the economics of it, it still doesn't correlate with any supposed shortage of workers, and that wages would go up if that were the case.
It's called saving, or getting less of a phone... if you can't afford it outright, you should probably wait. A $600 phone (really a $300-400 up-priced) and a $90-140/month plan for two years is a *lot* more than a $100-150 phone on a $50/month plan. It's called living within your means, and people really need to f*ckng figure this out.
Don't get me wrong here, I don't like predatory practices at all, but people need to take responsibility for how they make their purchasing decisions... this isn't anything like the typical company store in the mining towns of the old west. Just like not buying a bigass house with a $3k/month mortgage if you can't really afford it.
Not sure about that.. I always went for 780+ though... I will say that the lower end AMD boards are significantly lower in price than anything that can run an i7.. I recently went from a first gen i7 to an 8350, and am pretty happy.. I need parallel ability more than single-core performance, and it's far better than the i3/i5 options in the same price range for my needs. It's not *that* much faster than my i7 was, and if it weren't for stability issues, I wouldn't have upgraded.
In the value segment, and in multi-threaded workstations AMD is pretty competitive. I've gone both ways though.. I just wish AMD had more to offer.. I think the pricing currently is not progressing well at all because of the lack of competition on the high end.
The lock in is really the millions of dollars in development time in integrating all the MS tools around their own business processes. I've managed to replace a subset of our systems with newer options, but still the majority is.Net + SQL, and will continue to be so for years to come. This is in a small shop, let alone a larger corporation that has some Java, some.Net, very little *other* and possible some crufty mainframe/sas/peoplesoft integrations.
As much as I honestly don't care for Java development, I have to agree.. giving me a browser plugin that the vast majority of sites don't legitimately use along with the runtime that's needed to make desktop/background apps run is nutty. At this point I'm avoiding Java apps all together, since I just don't want to deal with the hassle.
.Net and Java are old and busted, over-engineered slow, bulky crap these days... A lot of the dynamic stuff like Python and NodeJS get you where you're going, maybe a tiny bit slower in some cases, but much less development overhead.
I took a political quiz recently for fun, which pegged me as Democrat (I guess D & R were the only two outcomes)... which is funny, because I'm pretty solid in Libertarian ideals. Which also tends to be socially liberal, and conservative on other issues.
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Well, we have the power grid for security and infrastructure reasons... we could also have a water grid (water pipelines from areas with more rain/flooding to areas that are more arid (AZ,NM,TX,UT) with more sun. The southwest is a much better place to use solar.. and ergo a good place to separate water for hydrogen fuel. Not the most efficient energy conversion, but actual storage ability is a big benefit. This hydrogen can then be transported where needed throughout the country.
Critical investments into such a project would require research into desalinization techniques, as well as safe processes for hydrogen storage and transportation. Additionally actually running water pipelines across the country could be the largest construction project since the interstate highways.
If I were a billionaire, this is where my investments would be targeting... Expecting the project to take 20-30 years to complete, but offering a huge amount of return, with enough cooperation.
Speak for yourself... I've been capped as far as income for well over a decade now. It doesn't go nearly as far today as in 2000... In 2000 I had a fair amount of extra money to play with... now I just pay my bills with not nearly the same left... my bills are pretty much the same.. except food, gas, utilities etc. are more. Fuel going up more still, will definitely impact.
On the flip side, I think that fossil fuels should be preserved not for the environment, but because getting vehicles off the ground and into space takes a combustible fuel source (for the foreseeable future). Anything we do on earth can be adapted to other fuel sources... getting off the planet is another story.
Are you now, or have you ever been associated with the communist party?
Are you now, or have you ever been associated with the communist party..?
I see here that you went to a party where over 10% of those in attendance were muslim. I also see here that you were at another even where 15% in attendance were clearly muslim. Note: that this is now part of your public record... Have a nice day.
Sorry we don't employ suspected terrorists.
Well, my current play with Simple Mobile is $50/month.. and I was with Boost before that for around the same price... When I looked at handsets/plans for T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon... most similar plans were anywhere from $90-140/month from what I was looking at. I got divorced a couple years ago, and decided to switch to prepay through mvno's at that time. Much less expensive, and though I use a higher end smart phone, there are lesser phones available.
If you've actually shopped around comparing the MVNO's (Simple Mobile, Boost, etc) vs. the main carriers with subsidized phones, you'd find my statement pretty accurate, but since you seem to be unable to look into anything on your own, you can take your attitude and shove it back up your rectum.
I'd be in favor of a well organized guild for software developers... not strictly a Union per-se, but a guild that binds together similar to a union, but seniority in status is not based strictly on years in the guild.
Nice... that being salary bidding. EX: someone offering 120k/year for an H1B would get in before someone bidding 60K
I'd like to see a $120K/year (top 10%) base salary floor for H1-B workers... if there *really* such a dire shortage, then that would be a prevailing salary.. with re-evaluation every 5 years to whatever the average pay of the top 85th percentile.
But rarely does a position for a great engineer pay even 25% more than what a similar position for a mediocre engineer does.
Having a shortage of high-IQ people is laughable as IQ is derived from the average for a test group. 100 is average and probably 90% of people are within 10% above, or below depending on the test... the bell curve is pretty high. Falling outside this range is rare, and genius or retarded levels more rare. There will in general always be x% of geniuses in the population. The problem is raising the average population to higher levels, which simply isn't happening and our educational system seems ill-prepared to do. My great grandmother was a school teacher.. I once looked through some of her older course books. Her 5th grade english textbook was harder than anything I had to take in HS.
... in the real world, there are winners and losers.
Communication (reading/writing) are the core of learning... if you can reason, read and write, you can learn anything else. We've drifted away from this. I've never been particularly good with language and grammar. I don't enjoy reading novels, I prefer technical books. That said, it's the single biggest shortcoming in current K-12 education in this country today. Basic math skills are nearly equally important... everything else, a young, curious mind can and will learn on their own.
Too much time is spent on things that are either becoming more intuitive or will change greatly. I would love to see K-4 spend about 1/3-1/2 their in-class time on reading/writing exercises. At the higher grades, around 3rd, introduce more math concepts, and in the HS age, then introduce more specialized choices. With the sheer size of schools in more urban/suburban areas, it would be great to actually segment children based on behavior and performance. You keep up, or get left behind... not "everyone is special"
I'm in the middle of changing jobs.. my job search was relatively quick as there are a lot of programmer positions open. The fact is that 8/10 are less than I'm willing to accept, and yet, still there's still lots of lowball positions out there. I was recently contacted about taking a position near Seattle, for quite a bit less than what I make in Phoenix... It costs about 15K/year more to live in Seattle than Phoenix, and 20-40K/year more to live in the SF Bay area. I'm happy to look at jobs in the hotter spots (Phoenix actually has a great pay:cost-of-living ratio), but only for better pay than the equivalent to what I make here... There's close to 0% unemployment for software development... the salaries being offered are still no more than what I was making at the end 1999. What this means is I am making a lot less today 3-5%/year for a 13 years.
From my experience, and those I've worked with, I'm well inside the top 1% of my peer group. Very few managers understand the difference in output from one developer vs. another if it meets the minimum requirements, and it means even less for contracted workers. I get the economics of it, it still doesn't correlate with any supposed shortage of workers, and that wages would go up if that were the case.
Or *gasp* make due with a lesser phone on a less expensive mvno for a few months, and save the difference to get the phone you really want outright...
It's called saving, or getting less of a phone... if you can't afford it outright, you should probably wait. A $600 phone (really a $300-400 up-priced) and a $90-140/month plan for two years is a *lot* more than a $100-150 phone on a $50/month plan. It's called living within your means, and people really need to f*ckng figure this out.
Don't get me wrong here, I don't like predatory practices at all, but people need to take responsibility for how they make their purchasing decisions... this isn't anything like the typical company store in the mining towns of the old west. Just like not buying a bigass house with a $3k/month mortgage if you can't really afford it.
Thank you... I would love to get a dedicated 4K display, but the cost is still a bit prohibitive.
Not sure about that.. I always went for 780+ though... I will say that the lower end AMD boards are significantly lower in price than anything that can run an i7.. I recently went from a first gen i7 to an 8350, and am pretty happy.. I need parallel ability more than single-core performance, and it's far better than the i3/i5 options in the same price range for my needs. It's not *that* much faster than my i7 was, and if it weren't for stability issues, I wouldn't have upgraded.
In the value segment, and in multi-threaded workstations AMD is pretty competitive. I've gone both ways though.. I just wish AMD had more to offer.. I think the pricing currently is not progressing well at all because of the lack of competition on the high end.
Except, there are clearly provisions to amend/change the constitution... so do it.
The lock in is really the millions of dollars in development time in integrating all the MS tools around their own business processes. I've managed to replace a subset of our systems with newer options, but still the majority is .Net + SQL, and will continue to be so for years to come. This is in a small shop, let alone a larger corporation that has some Java, some .Net, very little *other* and possible some crufty mainframe/sas/peoplesoft integrations.
I thought it was all the abstracted interfaces and "Enterprise" grade design patterns that make software harder to maintain.
As much as I honestly don't care for Java development, I have to agree.. giving me a browser plugin that the vast majority of sites don't legitimately use along with the runtime that's needed to make desktop/background apps run is nutty. At this point I'm avoiding Java apps all together, since I just don't want to deal with the hassle.
.Net and Java are old and busted, over-engineered slow, bulky crap these days... A lot of the dynamic stuff like Python and NodeJS get you where you're going, maybe a tiny bit slower in some cases, but much less development overhead.
Write once, run anywhere*
* where available, void where prohibited, quantities limited, some restrictions may apply, batteries not included.
Paddle Shift FTW!!!
Damn.. now I'm torn... buying rpi now supports the evil technology empire... :-(
We are now no longer the knights who say Metro... we are now the knights who say Window 8-style UI.
I took a political quiz recently for fun, which pegged me as Democrat (I guess D & R were the only two outcomes)... which is funny, because I'm pretty solid in Libertarian ideals. Which also tends to be socially liberal, and conservative on other issues.
Funny, Windows 7 was the first version I wasn't compelled to revert to another desktop environment (used to love litestep).