3) It is not illegal in India to claim you're someone you're not unless it infringes the cast system.
This is the most surprising part of your post for me. I knew that India has lots of fraud, and I knew that they have a strong caste system. But I did not realize that fraud is seen as a lesser crime than disturbing the caste system. It explains quite a lot about the way many indian people behave.
Do yourself a favor and skip going to *another* bank... They're ALL pig-fuckers... Credit unions are the way to go.. The wife and I have had our accounts in one credit union or another for the past 30 years. I'd had mine in one prior to us hooking up in 1985, and she'd had her account in one also, so when we got hitched, we moved them to one credit union. I have ONE exception, where I have a self-managed IRA with USAA Bank, but they're one of the VERY few good banks...
If you happen to be in Illinois or Wisconsin, Consumers CU is very good. They currently pay 3.09% interest on checking accounts for the first $10k of balance if you meet some very reasonable criteria. You can get an even higher rate if you meet some stricter conditions (use their credit card so many times/month, etc). They also refund ATM fees from other banks. Their customer service is basically average, and their website is slightly clunky, and they won't write loans for states other than Illinois (I think), but it is a great place to keep a checking/debit account.
1: Suntrust is deeply, deeply underwater. Texas Ratio of 17+. That means if they went under right now, their creditors, including depositors, would get 5 cents on the dollar. This is a company deeply affected by the subprime mortgage racket, literally they paid a billion bucks to the justice department to settle foreclosing on people's homes they didn't own or have titles to. It is a company that needs to fail and it's current and previous management needs to be imprisoned.
http://www.bankregdata.com/all...http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...
2: This is not just a desperation move, it's almost certainly a move made by an Indian manager, coming from India, where there are no worker protections, and this kind of deal is going to result in a huge class-action lawsuit after a few months or so of "on-call" support. If you are reading this and from sun-trust, call lawyers, get contacts lists NOW, and strategize to get as much money as humanly possible from these scum. Make sure to discuss pressing whatever criminal charges you can as well, make sure to muck up the case where they are assuredly mucking up black-letter FSLA laws. Make sure the world knows if you're an IT manager from Sun-trust that you cannot manage a department competently.
3: Now that I know you are off-shoring IT and are badly underwater, I also know you are probably off-shoring accounting. The problem here for the bank is when the new serfs start stealing things; there's no downside since the Indians don't go to jail since they're remote, and they have all the motive in the world. If you have stock get it out NOW!.
Your post is a bit racist but this explains why they sold my loan. I had an auto loan with them arranged by the dealership (I negotiated the rate down to market rates). I have excellent credit, never a late payment, and my interest rate was fair to them (market rate basically). 3 months after writing that loan, they sold my loan to CSC Logic / aka BB&T, and it seems that I am not the only one they did this to. The paperwork involved for me was a nightmare and I will never use a big bank for a loan again. When your loan is sold, it is rarely to an outfit with good customer service. It's sold to the "highest bidder" which generally means they have low margins and don't spend money on customer service. I couldn't understand why SunTrust would sell my very safe loan, but now it makes sense- they need cash NOW. I'm going to buy a bottle of Don Julio 1942 and drink it on the day they go bust.
No one's discriminating by age, just by salary requirements. This is a natural consequence.
This is completely untrue.
I'm 56. I applied for a position developing cutting edge deployment methodology with a startup using open source toolsets I have extensive experience with and have contributed to. I dropped my salary requirement 35% because (1) I don't have to make top salary, and (2) I expected that the markers on my resume would be worth more in the long run than any other job I would have held at this stage in my career.
I had several phone screenings and then interviews and feedback was extremely positive.
As soon as I walked into the building to interview in person the tone and attitude changed. I have grey hair. I've had grey hair since I was 32.
What I'm told is they are looking for "fit", or "cultural fit". The reality is they are looking for and screening against a type, and part of that type is mid-twenties to mid-thirties. I usually get hired because my qualifications are fucking outstanding. And because there is at least one outlier - someone also with grey hair.
With any luck, all of us outliers, we can band together and start looking for "cultural fit".
You are probably in support of that other bullshit spawned by the tech sector, ethical altruism...
If grey hair is your problem, then dye it? Don't assume that cosmetic products are just for ladies. If companies are hiring partly on appearances, why wouldn't you try to look closer to their expectation?
It's unfortunate that companies can get away with these illegal hiring practices. Individuals can't really fight against them. The only move an individual has is to game the system they have set up. If that means dyeing my hair and wearing makeup to an interview to look 10 years younger, that's what I would do.
We are all constantly selling ourselves. Slacking off in the personal appearances department is almost equivalent to not keeping up with industry knowledge. That doesn't mean it is "right", but that's the way it is.
What they are reciprocating with is their presence, personality, and conversations with you. If these people are really that boring that these are meaningless then you're right to not invite them over.
But, you aren't applying this to an individual but, instead, to a general group that has less money than you. You're ignoring intangibles an individual can bring and focusing on objects and money. The problem isn't them, it is you.
You're making some very general statements for someone that wasn't there.
In many cultures, guests are expected to bring a token gift. My wife belongs to such a culture. Her friends belong to the same culture. When we go to their house, we bring something small and not expensive. It is a symbol that we were thinking of them and being polite. If you read my first post, you should be able to pick up on this theme. I don't care about what they bring. I care that they were polite enough to bring *something*. It's called a token gift because it is a token (symbol) of appreciation.
My brother does this. He pays for meals but I find it awkward because he'll use his tip as a bludgeon. If service is bad, he'll not only refuse to tip but will sometimes refuse to ever set foot in the place again. If you're good, you might get a fifty dollar tip on a ten dollar pizza.
I don't think he's trying to impress me, or not primarily. I think it's a Darwinian thing where he's trying to improve the breed by punishing and rewarding.
Too bad this only underscores a sense that he is the puppetmaster managing and directing all his servants, passing judgement upon them because that's his duty. Put like that it sounds like the most extreme entitled assholery.
I'm poor, and I'm capable of getting bad service and thinking 'oh well, guess I'd better do some kind of tip, not like I'm special and there to throw my weight around. Maybe they were just having a crap day'. I guess if I was rich I would be more likely to assume I was there to pass out punishments and rewards.
"Rubbing it in your face" might be preferable because it implies someone posturing and doing a dominance behavior thing. This 'improving the breed' stuff, it's like dominance is already so completely assumed that the only remaining question is how you manage your slaves. And it seems to sneak into the behavior of relatively rational, non-evil people.
That's a bit extreme but it points to a hole in the American restaurant system- Most restaurants don't train their staff very well and then shift many of the disadvantages of this onto their staff. Using money as a way to give feedback is a terrible system. In many civilized countries, staff are actually trained to provide good service and held to those standards by the management. Some restaurants in the USA do this, but I think they are relatively rare. Mostly service staff are on their own as far as self-improvement and figuring out how to do a better job. Many servers never connect the dots. If everyone is tipping 18-20% there's too much noise in the data to know if the server did a bad job or if the customer was just an asshole. At least that's the way I see it.
Someone else who is also a billionaire – they don't want anything from you!
Anyone who claims that has no understanding of the psychology of the majority of billionaires. See Carly Fiorina and her 'good friend' Steve Jobs for an example. If you're a billionaire, then other billionaires are the ones that have the most of what you value and therefore the best targets. Stealing from the poor is far more effort - you need to steal from loads of them.
Not just billionaires, problems can happen between people with any wealth gap. I'm nearing the point where interacting with people on the lower end of the income ladder than me is just irritating. Frequently they want something from me and give me basically nothing in return. They come to my apartment, want to use the pool, eat my food, drink my beer, and bring nothing. No food, no beer, nada. I know their situation- they're poor. I don't expect much. Just give me a gesture of appreciation. When you go to someone's house, you should bring a gift. A 6-pack of midgrade beer or a $10 bottle of "bargain" wine, a small nugget of weed, a homemade appetizer or something. It's just common curtesy. Even some macaroni and cheese would be very cheap but perfectly acceptable! If they really can't spare a dollar, I'd be perfectly happy with some wildflowers picked up from side of the road.
You would be surprised how many of my guests fail to bring anything at all. My friendships with people of lower income don't end because of wealth differences. They end because frequently, the other lower income person doesn't reciprocate in any way. Sometimes I wonder if this inconsiderate behavior is partly responsible for their poverty.
It's far easier to convince a a kid with a still-crisp CS degree (and way too much student loan debt) to work 90 stressful hours a week for a pittance.
It's much harder to convince someone with sufficient experience and a family to do that... life is way too short to become the personal bitch of some IPO-seeking asshole.
The experienced worker doesn't need to work 90 hours a week. I have about 10 years experience. Almost every task that hits my desk has at least some similarities to something that I have done before. If the answer is in a book, I know which books on my shelf might have the answer. Maybe I did a similar calculation before. Perhaps I had a job that has similar elements and things went wrong- I can plan for those problems and avoid them.
The kid is going to charge into the jungle and step in a bear trap, and then spend a lot of time getting out of the trap. The experienced worker is going to snipe from the hills, clean up after themselves, and spend the evening doing something else. I'm not sure what I would do if I put in 90 hours a week. I would have to pick up at least 2 other people's jobs to fill the time.
There is a different device which attaches to a tooth and communicates wirelessly to a microphone. It's another option for people scared of a screw sticking out of their skull.
Digital hearing aids are much better than analog ones. I tried the analog type and it was awful, like listening to an 8-track soaked in molasses in a hot car for the summer.
This is why I don't want any implants. I'm fine with external like headband bone conduction hearing aids. I finally switched to digital and geez it sucks compared to analog. I don't like this filtering and stuff in digital that causes (whistling/feedback)s, autochanging the volume, etc. Companies are trying to get rid of analog.:(
I have an implanted bond conduction device. If you are going to stick with the bond conduction hearing aids, you really should get the titanium abutment implant. I tried the headband for a little while but it was largely useless. The implanted abutment makes a huge difference in clarity and reduced feedback. I only have feedback when put it on/take it off or try to wear a hat that sits too low. The volume modification actually works well for me, if you don't like it, your audiologist can tweak it or turn it off entirely, at least with my device. I use the Oticon Medical Ponto rather than the Cochlear branded devices.
Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Good! Money is not the ideal mechanism for selecting candidates and giving them visibility, but it sure beats party machines.
No, it is actually bad. Money seems to turn quite a lot of people crazy when they have enough of it. We are now in a situation where some candidates are actually polling at 0. Yes, 0, meaning nobody voted for them at all. Yet they still are in the race and get media exposure. The vast majority of real people don't care for the person, or their policies, or both, yet they can still keep on going like a zombie candidate because some crazy rich fool is voting with his wallet, and his wallet matters much more than yours or mine.
Make the electric car charging stations the absolute furthest spot in the lot. Why should electric car charging spots get priority behind the handicap spots as the closest parking spaces?
T-mobile (and many various MVNO's) have unlimited data plans. They don't have an unlimited 4G data plan, but advertising as having unlimited data is perfectly correct based on how their plans work. They neither charge nor cut off your data if you exceed the 4G allowance.
Obviously, it's important for a test to always be uniform. If you tried to test cars under "realistic" driving conditions the tests would all be different.
Realistic driving conditions are variations in temperature, terrain, traffic flow, etc.
Realistic driving conditions vary based on the habits of the driver.
Realistic driving conditions vary based on the condition of the car over time.
Maybe instead of ballyhooing these tests, we should apply common sense to them. Maybe we should see them as a group of data points and not a limits, guarantees, or absolutes?
Best way would be-
1. Place devices in 1000 or so vehicles, all over the country, in different settings (urban, rural, suburb) with drivers of all different ages. Measure accelerator position, speed, brake pedal position, exterior temperature, interior temperature, AC/heating load, etc.
2. Come up with some average of this sample. The average becomes the emissions regimen, and the vehicle is exercised by computer control to match this average.
3. Emissions/MPG are based on the vehicle matching these average conditions. Cars could have a "data export" feature for individual users to export their data from the car and then import it to a 3rd party website. A government could run this, or a private company similar to Fuelly could do it. Data could be sliced and diced and you could compare "your" driving habits to others. Correction charts could be automatically generated for all sorts of things such as exterior temperature, speed, etc. If you aren't getting the advertised MPG/emissions, you could have some data to possibly understand why not.
It seems to me that $50K would buy a lot of insurance, and that's a significant sum of money to sit around in a savings account accruing approximately no interest.
The GP specifically mentioned a surety bond on file with the DMV. A surety bond is not a cash bond. In fact, it somewhat resembles insurance.
Surety bonds basically work like this- I go to my bank and say I want a surety bond for $10,000. The bank checks my financial situation and says "ok, DJ245 has enough assets, he could easilly come up with $10,000 if he needed to". I pay my bank a small fee (around 1-2% of the bond amount) and they basically write a letter that says "DJ245 can come up with $10,000 if he has to. If he can't, then we will pay it on his behalf and then we (the bank) will be responsible for making him pay us".
The fee to make the surety bond is nonrefundable. It is not the same thing as having a bunch of money in an account accruing no interest. A surety bond is a promise that payment will occur no matter what happens. That promise is based on verifying assets of the 1st party, and a guarantee that a 3rd party will pay if the 1st party can not.
Intel also labels chips that are certified to run at different clock speeds with different part numbers, even if they were from the same design and even from the same wafer.
The big difference is that Intel charges different prices for chips with different performance. Given 2 otherwise identical chips, one made with a 14nm process and one with a 16nm process, the 14nm chip will outperform the 16nm chip every time on thermals and power draw. Intel would charge a higher price for the 14nm chip- it is superior in a measurable way. That's not unreasonable. Apple charges the same price for both and it's up to the luck of the draw which one you get.
Intel and AMD sometimes do have "good" and "great" versions of the same chip under the same model number, but most people neither notice nor care (overclockers being the exception). 2 phones which are supposedly identical with a 25% difference in battery life is something that many people are going to notice, however. They should have realized this during testing and either fixed the problem or offered 2 different SKU's at slightly different price points.
It's almost impossible to compare because figures for the externalized costs of coal and gas are very hard to calculate. It's difficult to evaluate the value of health and a human life, or how much damage can be attributed to energy production and not other things.
In any case, as wind gets cheaper its capacity factor is rocketing up too.
Wind's capacity factor is basically stagnant. In the US, most utilities have agreements that they have to buy all available wind production before they can purchase electricity produced by other sources. Capacity factor is simply the yearly actual output divided by the yearly theoretical nameplate output. Since wind power must be purchased, the capacity factors we are seeing in wind represent about the maximum possible. Only maintenance outages or no wind will reduce the capacity factor of a wind farm. Wind capacity factors average of about 30%, but of course it varies depending on how good a location the wind farm is in.
A 30% capacity factor means that you need to build about 3x the number of turbines compared to other technologies. You also need to have backup sources which sit idle when the wind is blowing. That costs a lot of money per kw-hr since backup plants have significant fixed costs but can only recoup these costs when they operate.
Um, Puritanism is the State Religion in the USA. They offer platitudes about separation of Church and State, but all the evidence points in the other direction.
If drugs were illegal in the U.S. merely for puritanical reasons, why would they also be illegal in places like China, North Korea or Vietnam? The religion they all have in common is statism.
The reason for outlawing them is simple: You belong to the state, and if you're taking illegal drugs, you're not being a productive member of society. If you're selling illegal drugs, you're not contributing to the welfare of the state in the form of taxes. It all goes back to statism. Of course, most statists don't like to admit this.
Saying this as a pro-legalization Christian who also doesn't like puritanism/legalism/statism...
Marijuana is not illegal in North Korea. You can buy weed in the supermarket in most areas of North Korea. It is illegal in Pyongyang only, and the reason for that is primarily because it is seen as "a drug for the lower classes". They also don't want to become known as a marijuana haven. Given all their other reputation issues, they don't want the "Amsterdam" reputation also. Although the only thing they have to worry about is most likely that their weed is very weak.
Meth is also seen as an acceptable drug in the DPRK and is legal everywhere. It is even frequently given as a gift to influence party/business officials.
Drugs in the US are mainly illegal for racist reasons. Harr Anslinger is almost singlehandedly responsible for the illegality of weed in the US. Most of the arguments he used are obvious lies, racist arguments, or obvious racist lies.
So the takeaway is, Steve Jobs was a raging piece of s***. We already knew that. I'm glad that, despite him skating his way to the top of the transplant list due to his wealth and influence, he still died. F*** that a**hole.
Yeah, it's definitely a dick move. The company I work for has been growing at 20-50 percent per year for the last 5 years or so. And we are in a very mature industry (steam turbine repair). We try to treat both our customers, contractors, and vendors with respect and every deal like part of a long relationship. We do a lot of work for several of our direct competitors for this reason.
It's sad to see that the largest companies on the planet can't seem to function that way too.
Scale, son, scale matters. The EPA is charged with overseeing a lot of very different technologies, any one of which COULD be reverse engineered with enough time, money, and the right kind of people. To presume the EPA can do this across an entire industry much less over several industries is silly.
I was speaking about the other manufacturers.
1. VW makes a miraculous new engine. Other engine manufacturer's can understand how it burns so clean.
2. Other manufacturer's apparently didn't buy one and examine it to see how it works. Or they did, but failed to fully understand how it passed emissions
H1b employees also get displaced by TCS/Infosys. Their official policy is 85% offshore and 15% on shore employees. The onshore 15% exists mostly for co-ordination. An H1b employee's CTC is always higher by at least by 1.5x times to locals. Recently my friend who is on h1b was forced to look for another h1b sponsor because the company A signed a partnership agreement with TCS. TCS provided 3 sysadmins for his replacement but they were not upto the mark as expected by A because TCS's sysadmin's won't know scripting. This H1b guy was forced to train the TCS guys(10 of them) in perl scripting. He did that too but then they quit TCS for better salary and work hours. A new PM from TCS would come onshore every 1.5 to 2 years and he would question why they are employing a h1b guy for 2x the cost of an L1B. In the mean time the h1b guy's extension process etc. would be delayed. He used to be in lot of stress, they would still be search for an replacement and apply for the extension on the last week/day of original h1b expiry and then too they will provide 1 yr extension. Frustrated he quit for another company B. The same story has started to repeat at company B now.
There is another category of visas called L1A and L1B(intra company transfer visa) where prevailing wages doesn't have to be shown and qualifications are not a factor. Almost 95% of the TCS onsite guys had either L1A or L1B and they were getting 60k for a 110k job position and their taxes found some loop hole and they were hardly paying any taxes, that is around 4k. The h1b guy was getting 85k and his vendor the rest. CTC was around 140k to the company. L1A visa is also eligible for immediate green card processing under "multinational manager"(eb1) category. The master degree H1b guys on an average wait for 10 years(talking Indian), the bachelor degree holders wait for 20 or more years. L1A guys just 3 to 6 months. For a foreign student he has to become a scientist(Phd + papers etc) to qualify for the equivalent category as "multinational manager". Some "multinational managers" are just 10+3(diploma) qualified. Last year there were around 500 eb1 gc applications(search 485 inventory on google). This year already 13000 eb1 applications have been received. H1b guys are under the Eb2 and Eb3 green card quotas. So companies have figured out the L1 loop hole and bringing in the 15% onsite workers as managers. That explains the huge jump in eb1 category. So the foreign scientists/Phds are unhappy too. The L1As get green cards in 6 months and then are not counted as foreign workers, qualifying the company as less than 30% dependent on foreign workers. Thus they import for L1As. So I would say, the anger is misdirected towards H1b instead of L1x visas.
Looks like an informative story but I couldn't get through it due to the lack of line breaks, excessive abbreviations, and poor formatting.
I'm not trying to be an asshole, but when you write like this, it's awful difficult for others to follow.
Say that to the auto industry that drove almost everything overseas. Right now, the IT industry is having it bad. Unionizing under the current paradigm would be WORSE!. It would be like "fuck it, ALL IT goes overseas, and the US as a nation is but a client purchasing all IT services overseas. There's nothing than can stop that happening now, but unionizing would definitely hasten that to occur.
I'm all about getting organized and having proper representation as a single unified voice to be heard, but unionizing as it's currently known as isn't the answer.
The main reason unions have a bad reputation is because most of them create piles of rules, obligations, exceptions, and sometimes oppose a meritocracy. Companies hate dealing with these things. A union with simplified and specific rules and works in the best interest of everyone would be a great thing. Whether or not that is possible to create such a union is left as an exercise to psychology majors.
Slashdot Mirror
3) It is not illegal in India to claim you're someone you're not unless it infringes the cast system.
This is the most surprising part of your post for me. I knew that India has lots of fraud, and I knew that they have a strong caste system. But I did not realize that fraud is seen as a lesser crime than disturbing the caste system. It explains quite a lot about the way many indian people behave.
Do yourself a favor and skip going to *another* bank... They're ALL pig-fuckers... Credit unions are the way to go.. The wife and I have had our accounts in one credit union or another for the past 30 years. I'd had mine in one prior to us hooking up in 1985, and she'd had her account in one also, so when we got hitched, we moved them to one credit union. I have ONE exception, where I have a self-managed IRA with USAA Bank, but they're one of the VERY few good banks...
If you happen to be in Illinois or Wisconsin, Consumers CU is very good. They currently pay 3.09% interest on checking accounts for the first $10k of balance if you meet some very reasonable criteria. You can get an even higher rate if you meet some stricter conditions (use their credit card so many times/month, etc). They also refund ATM fees from other banks. Their customer service is basically average, and their website is slightly clunky, and they won't write loans for states other than Illinois (I think), but it is a great place to keep a checking/debit account.
1: Suntrust is deeply, deeply underwater. Texas Ratio of 17+. That means if they went under right now, their creditors, including depositors, would get 5 cents on the dollar. This is a company deeply affected by the subprime mortgage racket, literally they paid a billion bucks to the justice department to settle foreclosing on people's homes they didn't own or have titles to. It is a company that needs to fail and it's current and previous management needs to be imprisoned. http://www.bankregdata.com/all... http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...
2: This is not just a desperation move, it's almost certainly a move made by an Indian manager, coming from India, where there are no worker protections, and this kind of deal is going to result in a huge class-action lawsuit after a few months or so of "on-call" support. If you are reading this and from sun-trust, call lawyers, get contacts lists NOW, and strategize to get as much money as humanly possible from these scum. Make sure to discuss pressing whatever criminal charges you can as well, make sure to muck up the case where they are assuredly mucking up black-letter FSLA laws. Make sure the world knows if you're an IT manager from Sun-trust that you cannot manage a department competently.
3: Now that I know you are off-shoring IT and are badly underwater, I also know you are probably off-shoring accounting. The problem here for the bank is when the new serfs start stealing things; there's no downside since the Indians don't go to jail since they're remote, and they have all the motive in the world. If you have stock get it out NOW! .
Your post is a bit racist but this explains why they sold my loan. I had an auto loan with them arranged by the dealership (I negotiated the rate down to market rates). I have excellent credit, never a late payment, and my interest rate was fair to them (market rate basically). 3 months after writing that loan, they sold my loan to CSC Logic / aka BB&T, and it seems that I am not the only one they did this to. The paperwork involved for me was a nightmare and I will never use a big bank for a loan again. When your loan is sold, it is rarely to an outfit with good customer service. It's sold to the "highest bidder" which generally means they have low margins and don't spend money on customer service. I couldn't understand why SunTrust would sell my very safe loan, but now it makes sense- they need cash NOW. I'm going to buy a bottle of Don Julio 1942 and drink it on the day they go bust.
Great catch. It's really a shame nobody noticed this earlier. The discussion could have been a lot more interesting.
No one's discriminating by age, just by salary requirements. This is a natural consequence.
This is completely untrue.
I'm 56. I applied for a position developing cutting edge deployment methodology with a startup using open source toolsets I have extensive experience with and have contributed to. I dropped my salary requirement 35% because (1) I don't have to make top salary, and (2) I expected that the markers on my resume would be worth more in the long run than any other job I would have held at this stage in my career.
I had several phone screenings and then interviews and feedback was extremely positive.
As soon as I walked into the building to interview in person the tone and attitude changed. I have grey hair. I've had grey hair since I was 32.
What I'm told is they are looking for "fit", or "cultural fit". The reality is they are looking for and screening against a type, and part of that type is mid-twenties to mid-thirties. I usually get hired because my qualifications are fucking outstanding. And because there is at least one outlier - someone also with grey hair.
With any luck, all of us outliers, we can band together and start looking for "cultural fit".
You are probably in support of that other bullshit spawned by the tech sector, ethical altruism...
If grey hair is your problem, then dye it? Don't assume that cosmetic products are just for ladies. If companies are hiring partly on appearances, why wouldn't you try to look closer to their expectation?
It's unfortunate that companies can get away with these illegal hiring practices. Individuals can't really fight against them. The only move an individual has is to game the system they have set up. If that means dyeing my hair and wearing makeup to an interview to look 10 years younger, that's what I would do.
We are all constantly selling ourselves. Slacking off in the personal appearances department is almost equivalent to not keeping up with industry knowledge. That doesn't mean it is "right", but that's the way it is.
What they are reciprocating with is their presence, personality, and conversations with you. If these people are really that boring that these are meaningless then you're right to not invite them over.
But, you aren't applying this to an individual but, instead, to a general group that has less money than you. You're ignoring intangibles an individual can bring and focusing on objects and money. The problem isn't them, it is you.
You're making some very general statements for someone that wasn't there.
In many cultures, guests are expected to bring a token gift. My wife belongs to such a culture. Her friends belong to the same culture. When we go to their house, we bring something small and not expensive. It is a symbol that we were thinking of them and being polite. If you read my first post, you should be able to pick up on this theme. I don't care about what they bring. I care that they were polite enough to bring *something*. It's called a token gift because it is a token (symbol) of appreciation.
My brother does this. He pays for meals but I find it awkward because he'll use his tip as a bludgeon. If service is bad, he'll not only refuse to tip but will sometimes refuse to ever set foot in the place again. If you're good, you might get a fifty dollar tip on a ten dollar pizza.
I don't think he's trying to impress me, or not primarily. I think it's a Darwinian thing where he's trying to improve the breed by punishing and rewarding.
Too bad this only underscores a sense that he is the puppetmaster managing and directing all his servants, passing judgement upon them because that's his duty. Put like that it sounds like the most extreme entitled assholery.
I'm poor, and I'm capable of getting bad service and thinking 'oh well, guess I'd better do some kind of tip, not like I'm special and there to throw my weight around. Maybe they were just having a crap day'. I guess if I was rich I would be more likely to assume I was there to pass out punishments and rewards.
"Rubbing it in your face" might be preferable because it implies someone posturing and doing a dominance behavior thing. This 'improving the breed' stuff, it's like dominance is already so completely assumed that the only remaining question is how you manage your slaves. And it seems to sneak into the behavior of relatively rational, non-evil people.
That's a bit extreme but it points to a hole in the American restaurant system- Most restaurants don't train their staff very well and then shift many of the disadvantages of this onto their staff. Using money as a way to give feedback is a terrible system. In many civilized countries, staff are actually trained to provide good service and held to those standards by the management. Some restaurants in the USA do this, but I think they are relatively rare. Mostly service staff are on their own as far as self-improvement and figuring out how to do a better job. Many servers never connect the dots. If everyone is tipping 18-20% there's too much noise in the data to know if the server did a bad job or if the customer was just an asshole. At least that's the way I see it.
Someone else who is also a billionaire – they don't want anything from you!
Anyone who claims that has no understanding of the psychology of the majority of billionaires. See Carly Fiorina and her 'good friend' Steve Jobs for an example. If you're a billionaire, then other billionaires are the ones that have the most of what you value and therefore the best targets. Stealing from the poor is far more effort - you need to steal from loads of them.
Not just billionaires, problems can happen between people with any wealth gap. I'm nearing the point where interacting with people on the lower end of the income ladder than me is just irritating. Frequently they want something from me and give me basically nothing in return. They come to my apartment, want to use the pool, eat my food, drink my beer, and bring nothing. No food, no beer, nada. I know their situation- they're poor. I don't expect much. Just give me a gesture of appreciation. When you go to someone's house, you should bring a gift. A 6-pack of midgrade beer or a $10 bottle of "bargain" wine, a small nugget of weed, a homemade appetizer or something. It's just common curtesy. Even some macaroni and cheese would be very cheap but perfectly acceptable! If they really can't spare a dollar, I'd be perfectly happy with some wildflowers picked up from side of the road.
You would be surprised how many of my guests fail to bring anything at all. My friendships with people of lower income don't end because of wealth differences. They end because frequently, the other lower income person doesn't reciprocate in any way. Sometimes I wonder if this inconsiderate behavior is partly responsible for their poverty.
It's far easier to convince a a kid with a still-crisp CS degree (and way too much student loan debt) to work 90 stressful hours a week for a pittance.
It's much harder to convince someone with sufficient experience and a family to do that... life is way too short to become the personal bitch of some IPO-seeking asshole.
The experienced worker doesn't need to work 90 hours a week. I have about 10 years experience. Almost every task that hits my desk has at least some similarities to something that I have done before. If the answer is in a book, I know which books on my shelf might have the answer. Maybe I did a similar calculation before. Perhaps I had a job that has similar elements and things went wrong- I can plan for those problems and avoid them.
The kid is going to charge into the jungle and step in a bear trap, and then spend a lot of time getting out of the trap. The experienced worker is going to snipe from the hills, clean up after themselves, and spend the evening doing something else. I'm not sure what I would do if I put in 90 hours a week. I would have to pick up at least 2 other people's jobs to fill the time.
There is a different device which attaches to a tooth and communicates wirelessly to a microphone. It's another option for people scared of a screw sticking out of their skull.
Digital hearing aids are much better than analog ones. I tried the analog type and it was awful, like listening to an 8-track soaked in molasses in a hot car for the summer.
This is why I don't want any implants. I'm fine with external like headband bone conduction hearing aids. I finally switched to digital and geez it sucks compared to analog. I don't like this filtering and stuff in digital that causes (whistling/feedback)s, autochanging the volume, etc. Companies are trying to get rid of analog. :(
I have an implanted bond conduction device. If you are going to stick with the bond conduction hearing aids, you really should get the titanium abutment implant. I tried the headband for a little while but it was largely useless. The implanted abutment makes a huge difference in clarity and reduced feedback. I only have feedback when put it on/take it off or try to wear a hat that sits too low. The volume modification actually works well for me, if you don't like it, your audiologist can tweak it or turn it off entirely, at least with my device. I use the Oticon Medical Ponto rather than the Cochlear branded devices.
May be China should just give pop vote to the people.
Why? The US doesn't have a popular vote for the most important positions. The people can't be trusted.
Good! Money is not the ideal mechanism for selecting candidates and giving them visibility, but it sure beats party machines.
No, it is actually bad. Money seems to turn quite a lot of people crazy when they have enough of it. We are now in a situation where some candidates are actually polling at 0. Yes, 0, meaning nobody voted for them at all. Yet they still are in the race and get media exposure. The vast majority of real people don't care for the person, or their policies, or both, yet they can still keep on going like a zombie candidate because some crazy rich fool is voting with his wallet, and his wallet matters much more than yours or mine.
Make the electric car charging stations the absolute furthest spot in the lot. Why should electric car charging spots get priority behind the handicap spots as the closest parking spaces?
Because electric cables and trenching cost money.
T-Mobiles 'unlimited' isn't.
T-mobile (and many various MVNO's) have unlimited data plans. They don't have an unlimited 4G data plan, but advertising as having unlimited data is perfectly correct based on how their plans work. They neither charge nor cut off your data if you exceed the 4G allowance.
Obviously, it's important for a test to always be uniform. If you tried to test cars under "realistic" driving conditions the tests would all be different.
Realistic driving conditions are variations in temperature, terrain, traffic flow, etc.
Realistic driving conditions vary based on the habits of the driver.
Realistic driving conditions vary based on the condition of the car over time.
Maybe instead of ballyhooing these tests, we should apply common sense to them. Maybe we should see them as a group of data points and not a limits, guarantees, or absolutes?
Best way would be-
1. Place devices in 1000 or so vehicles, all over the country, in different settings (urban, rural, suburb) with drivers of all different ages. Measure accelerator position, speed, brake pedal position, exterior temperature, interior temperature, AC/heating load, etc.
2. Come up with some average of this sample. The average becomes the emissions regimen, and the vehicle is exercised by computer control to match this average.
3. Emissions/MPG are based on the vehicle matching these average conditions. Cars could have a "data export" feature for individual users to export their data from the car and then import it to a 3rd party website. A government could run this, or a private company similar to Fuelly could do it. Data could be sliced and diced and you could compare "your" driving habits to others. Correction charts could be automatically generated for all sorts of things such as exterior temperature, speed, etc. If you aren't getting the advertised MPG/emissions, you could have some data to possibly understand why not.
It seems to me that $50K would buy a lot of insurance, and that's a significant sum of money to sit around in a savings account accruing approximately no interest.
The GP specifically mentioned a surety bond on file with the DMV. A surety bond is not a cash bond. In fact, it somewhat resembles insurance.
Surety bonds basically work like this- I go to my bank and say I want a surety bond for $10,000. The bank checks my financial situation and says "ok, DJ245 has enough assets, he could easilly come up with $10,000 if he needed to". I pay my bank a small fee (around 1-2% of the bond amount) and they basically write a letter that says "DJ245 can come up with $10,000 if he has to. If he can't, then we will pay it on his behalf and then we (the bank) will be responsible for making him pay us".
The fee to make the surety bond is nonrefundable. It is not the same thing as having a bunch of money in an account accruing no interest. A surety bond is a promise that payment will occur no matter what happens. That promise is based on verifying assets of the 1st party, and a guarantee that a 3rd party will pay if the 1st party can not.
Intel also labels chips that are certified to run at different clock speeds with different part numbers, even if they were from the same design and even from the same wafer.
The big difference is that Intel charges different prices for chips with different performance. Given 2 otherwise identical chips, one made with a 14nm process and one with a 16nm process, the 14nm chip will outperform the 16nm chip every time on thermals and power draw. Intel would charge a higher price for the 14nm chip- it is superior in a measurable way. That's not unreasonable. Apple charges the same price for both and it's up to the luck of the draw which one you get.
Intel and AMD sometimes do have "good" and "great" versions of the same chip under the same model number, but most people neither notice nor care (overclockers being the exception). 2 phones which are supposedly identical with a 25% difference in battery life is something that many people are going to notice, however. They should have realized this during testing and either fixed the problem or offered 2 different SKU's at slightly different price points.
It's almost impossible to compare because figures for the externalized costs of coal and gas are very hard to calculate. It's difficult to evaluate the value of health and a human life, or how much damage can be attributed to energy production and not other things.
In any case, as wind gets cheaper its capacity factor is rocketing up too.
Wind's capacity factor is basically stagnant. In the US, most utilities have agreements that they have to buy all available wind production before they can purchase electricity produced by other sources. Capacity factor is simply the yearly actual output divided by the yearly theoretical nameplate output. Since wind power must be purchased, the capacity factors we are seeing in wind represent about the maximum possible. Only maintenance outages or no wind will reduce the capacity factor of a wind farm. Wind capacity factors average of about 30%, but of course it varies depending on how good a location the wind farm is in.
A 30% capacity factor means that you need to build about 3x the number of turbines compared to other technologies. You also need to have backup sources which sit idle when the wind is blowing. That costs a lot of money per kw-hr since backup plants have significant fixed costs but can only recoup these costs when they operate.
Um, Puritanism is the State Religion in the USA. They offer platitudes about separation of Church and State, but all the evidence points in the other direction.
If drugs were illegal in the U.S. merely for puritanical reasons, why would they also be illegal in places like China, North Korea or Vietnam? The religion they all have in common is statism.
The reason for outlawing them is simple: You belong to the state, and if you're taking illegal drugs, you're not being a productive member of society. If you're selling illegal drugs, you're not contributing to the welfare of the state in the form of taxes. It all goes back to statism. Of course, most statists don't like to admit this.
Saying this as a pro-legalization Christian who also doesn't like puritanism/legalism/statism...
Marijuana is not illegal in North Korea. You can buy weed in the supermarket in most areas of North Korea. It is illegal in Pyongyang only, and the reason for that is primarily because it is seen as "a drug for the lower classes". They also don't want to become known as a marijuana haven. Given all their other reputation issues, they don't want the "Amsterdam" reputation also. Although the only thing they have to worry about is most likely that their weed is very weak.
Meth is also seen as an acceptable drug in the DPRK and is legal everywhere. It is even frequently given as a gift to influence party/business officials.
Drugs in the US are mainly illegal for racist reasons. Harr Anslinger is almost singlehandedly responsible for the illegality of weed in the US. Most of the arguments he used are obvious lies, racist arguments, or obvious racist lies.
The system might be limited by roof space or other considerations. I can very easily imagine many types of houses where it would be a problem.
So the takeaway is, Steve Jobs was a raging piece of s***. We already knew that. I'm glad that, despite him skating his way to the top of the transplant list due to his wealth and influence, he still died. F*** that a**hole.
Yeah, it's definitely a dick move. The company I work for has been growing at 20-50 percent per year for the last 5 years or so. And we are in a very mature industry (steam turbine repair). We try to treat both our customers, contractors, and vendors with respect and every deal like part of a long relationship. We do a lot of work for several of our direct competitors for this reason.
It's sad to see that the largest companies on the planet can't seem to function that way too.
Scale, son, scale matters. The EPA is charged with overseeing a lot of very different technologies, any one of which COULD be reverse engineered with enough time, money, and the right kind of people. To presume the EPA can do this across an entire industry much less over several industries is silly.
I was speaking about the other manufacturers.
1. VW makes a miraculous new engine. Other engine manufacturer's can understand how it burns so clean.
2. Other manufacturer's apparently didn't buy one and examine it to see how it works. Or they did, but failed to fully understand how it passed emissions
H1b employees also get displaced by TCS/Infosys. Their official policy is 85% offshore and 15% on shore employees. The onshore 15% exists mostly for co-ordination. An H1b employee's CTC is always higher by at least by 1.5x times to locals. Recently my friend who is on h1b was forced to look for another h1b sponsor because the company A signed a partnership agreement with TCS. TCS provided 3 sysadmins for his replacement but they were not upto the mark as expected by A because TCS's sysadmin's won't know scripting. This H1b guy was forced to train the TCS guys(10 of them) in perl scripting. He did that too but then they quit TCS for better salary and work hours. A new PM from TCS would come onshore every 1.5 to 2 years and he would question why they are employing a h1b guy for 2x the cost of an L1B. In the mean time the h1b guy's extension process etc. would be delayed. He used to be in lot of stress, they would still be search for an replacement and apply for the extension on the last week/day of original h1b expiry and then too they will provide 1 yr extension. Frustrated he quit for another company B. The same story has started to repeat at company B now. There is another category of visas called L1A and L1B(intra company transfer visa) where prevailing wages doesn't have to be shown and qualifications are not a factor. Almost 95% of the TCS onsite guys had either L1A or L1B and they were getting 60k for a 110k job position and their taxes found some loop hole and they were hardly paying any taxes, that is around 4k. The h1b guy was getting 85k and his vendor the rest. CTC was around 140k to the company. L1A visa is also eligible for immediate green card processing under "multinational manager"(eb1) category. The master degree H1b guys on an average wait for 10 years(talking Indian), the bachelor degree holders wait for 20 or more years. L1A guys just 3 to 6 months. For a foreign student he has to become a scientist(Phd + papers etc) to qualify for the equivalent category as "multinational manager". Some "multinational managers" are just 10+3(diploma) qualified. Last year there were around 500 eb1 gc applications(search 485 inventory on google). This year already 13000 eb1 applications have been received. H1b guys are under the Eb2 and Eb3 green card quotas. So companies have figured out the L1 loop hole and bringing in the 15% onsite workers as managers. That explains the huge jump in eb1 category. So the foreign scientists/Phds are unhappy too. The L1As get green cards in 6 months and then are not counted as foreign workers, qualifying the company as less than 30% dependent on foreign workers. Thus they import for L1As. So I would say, the anger is misdirected towards H1b instead of L1x visas.
Looks like an informative story but I couldn't get through it due to the lack of line breaks, excessive abbreviations, and poor formatting.
I'm not trying to be an asshole, but when you write like this, it's awful difficult for others to follow.
Say that to the auto industry that drove almost everything overseas. Right now, the IT industry is having it bad. Unionizing under the current paradigm would be WORSE!. It would be like "fuck it, ALL IT goes overseas, and the US as a nation is but a client purchasing all IT services overseas. There's nothing than can stop that happening now, but unionizing would definitely hasten that to occur.
I'm all about getting organized and having proper representation as a single unified voice to be heard, but unionizing as it's currently known as isn't the answer.
The main reason unions have a bad reputation is because most of them create piles of rules, obligations, exceptions, and sometimes oppose a meritocracy. Companies hate dealing with these things. A union with simplified and specific rules and works in the best interest of everyone would be a great thing. Whether or not that is possible to create such a union is left as an exercise to psychology majors.