Short selling in itself isn't the problem. Stores do this all the time. Take your typical furniture store. You see a couch you like that they price at X, they take your money and promise delivery in 60 to 90 days. Meanwhile they keep selling that same model hoping to get enough orders that they can get a discount price or the manufacture lowers the price. Then just before the deadline they get the best deal they can and pocket the difference, or they take a loss if the model costs more or is delayed.
No, the problem with short selling stock is the stigma that it puts the company under. You don't want to invest in that company because a large share of their stock is held by people who are betting it will loose. I would actually like to see the full list of short sellers, the amount invested, and the terms of those deals. I have a suspicion that quite a bit of that money could be traced back to other auto manufactures, oil companies, car dealerships, repair shops, and anyone else who stand to loose their whole business because of electric cars.
Back to the story though, it would be serendipitous if Tesla took over a GM factory. Ie, Tesla did something GM couldn't do, build cars people want to drive.
Not quite. People were already Apple fans, but knock offs that were Apple Compatible (see Psystar) were luring away those who didn't bother to check the Apple pedigree. So Apple sued them into the ground and anyone else who dared to claim Apple Compatibility. Then then started the Apple Certified program which allowed vendors to make products that worked with Apple, but Apple still maintained the reigns over what it would allow and at what price point (yes even forcing vendors to raise prices to keep a perceived price point). Jobs was even quoted as saying that he wouldn't sell a product the company doesn't make a 50% profit on.
He did this by not focusing on the price, the product, or any offerings. He sold people dreams, the dream that owning his product would make you better. The dream that a phone, a mp3 player, or a laptop would make your life more meaningful.
It may come as shock, but your customers don't care about your product, service, company, or idea. They care about themselves--their hopes, dreams, and quality of life. Tell them how your product will improve their life and you'll have their attention. -- Steve Jobs
The sad and not so sad part of this is that these things are just a piles of metal, plastic, and sand. What you do with any pile of metal, plastic, and sand is way more important than the tool you use.
The difference between a $1000 phone and $200 phone purchases every other year is $1 per day. It is the difference between a small fry and a large fry at McDonalds.
Didn't you see that movie "Super Size Me"? First eating at a fast food place every day for two years is a bad idea, second upgrading fries every time is doubly so.
But if you break anything down into small re-occurring fees I could sell you a house for about $1 a day. The loan term would be a about a thousand years though, with interest.
P.S. your $800 spread would be more like $1.10 a day. Plus if you bought the cheaper phone and it broke, you could replace it 4 times for the same cost as your $1000 model!
Haven't seen it myself, but some people don't like the look of high frame rates for movies, apparently gives it an unnatural look.
I remember seeing the last Hobbit movie in the theater projected at a full 48fps. I remember thinking to myself the video looks odd, like a PBS re-enactment video shot in really hi-res. Yes it was smooth and clear, but it just seemed very unnerving and I was sucked out of the plot a few times because of this. I have since seen this on my tv at home at 24fps, much less distracting.
I have also been to people's house where they have the 120fps smoothing turned on and it too looks odd. The motion seems a bit jerky like its speeding up and slowing down. When I see someone walking with this turned on it looks like someone repeating the silly walk sketch form MP.
But they can telecommute. How about they record what they are going to say and upload it to the conference where it can be played later?
How about multiple meeting locations connected via video with special breakout rooms for one on one talks?
No, better to spend money and resources on planes, cars, and hotels while dining out at catered events to discuss how we are wasting resources. Makes perfect sense to me [eyes roll]!
These kinds of events, and even the Paris accords are just lip service. When politicians start selling their mansions to live in tiny houses, or sell their black limos and start driving Teslas, then I might believe them. Until then, I wouldn't give them the time of day.
Wow, let's look back one century to the grand year of 1918.
Top of the line car was a Studebaker Special Six, with a whopping 29.4 HP engine. Yep, that looks and performs like every car we drive today (actually I kind of like the design, wouldn't mind owning one myself).
Miles of paved road. I can't find any data back to 1918, but starting in 1960 the USA had about 1.2 million miles of roads, 2016 puts that about 2.7 million miles now.
Bridges, I can't find exact numbers per year, but I do see that at least 15 new bridges are built every year.
So yeah, I guess no Infrastructure construction or maintenance has happened since 1918! Seriously you must be deluding yourself! Bridges alone are built to last 50 years, which means that since 1918 if we didn't build any new ones or maintain any of them we should have no bridges 100 years later. I find that hard to believe as I crossed one just getting to work.
Word of advice, things change all the time. There are things you notice, like a new shopping mall, or new track of housing that goes up in less than a year. Then there are other things you don't notice, like the height of all the trees in your neighborhood that eventually grow so tall they snap power lines, the number of planes flying overhead, rivers cutting a grand canyon out of solid rock over millions of year. Just because things aren't changing rapidly around you doesn't mean it isn't happening. Old infrastructure is changing all the time, it just tends to look old because people want to keep it that way (take aluminum house wiring with new copper runs, gas lamps replaced by street lights, old cars with modern engines, retrofitted building with steel frames, historic roads with new reinforced beddings). Take a common item you probably see every day, the light bulb. Ten years ago the common type was probably an incandescent, 5 years ago most likely a CFL, now you will probably see LED bulbs. To the casual eye they all look the same.
PKE (Passive/Proximity Keyless Entry). You only need to be close for the doors to unlock and the push to start button to function, hence the Passive/Proximity part.
Hot-wiring a modern car would be expensive, time consuming, and very invasive as you need to replace the computer with a hacked one as it is looking for a key code. Without the computer the car just won't run as starting, timing, and other adjustments needed for the engine to fire right are made via the computer. Try switching the computer out in a parking lot full of people and somebody will catch on. It might work if you had a convincing tow truck so you looked legit. But still there is a pretty big chance that the owner would walk up on you doing this.
Older cars yes; use a screw driver with a t-bar to break the cylinder lock and unlock the wheel. Then find the +12v battery wire, and the on/run wire (dash should light up when connected to the +12v wire). Twist these together, then touch the starter wire to it and your off. I have one of these older cars and yes I've started it this way a few times (the electric plates in the key lock were broken and being a staving college student I couldn't afford a replacement at the time).
Think about it. You have one person in the parking lot finding cars with push button start. Stand close to the car, then have another person in the store with a booster walking past people till the car unlocks. Take car, ???, profit!
channel surfing is slow so when you switch a channel you have to wait a few seconds for each channel to display on the TV
DirectTv use to have Tivo branded boxes with multiple tuners, they were great. Switching channels was instantaneous, the guide was also instantaneous, and it was quick to find and record things for later watching. My only initial complaint was that broadcast networks would turn on the content protection flag for HD channels which prevented Tivo from recording them (which wasn't really a thing DirectTv could fix). However, DirectTv got in a fight with Tivo for patents and fees so they split and DirectTv started pimping out their Genie boxes which are as bad as you describe. Now AT&T owned DirectTv seems to be on a mission to mess with anyone owning one of those older boxes, they turned off all my DVR services (including access to all the shows I already recorded) for about three months. After which I canceled the service, and their DSL. I now have comcast for internet at 60Mbs, and 4K Roku with Sling (DVR and kids package) all for about $65 per month (less than half of what I paid DirectTv and I only pay for the channels I cared to watch).
I expected to miss watching live tv or the shows I recorded, but now I don't even care. Most channels on Sling have a back buffer of several hours so if I missed the live show I can still backup and watch it. Also channels like AMC, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, BBC, NickToons, and many others have catalogs of shows that you can bing watch anytime. So shows I never even use to watch because I didn't know when they were on or even existed, I've now watched entire seasons in just a few days. And there is a bunch of free stuff; like the Roku app that streams a few hundred movies and shows, VRV which streams a bunch of anime, and almost every network has a free app (all except CBS that is).
Most apps show what is live, but they also show catalogs of shows that you can watch anytime for free (with just the normal commercials injected). I find myself watching those catalogs and rarely watch anything live (the Macy's Day Parade is about all I've seen live in the last two months). So what DVR did for TV, streaming has done to DVR, it creates catalogs of shows you can watch anytime without knowing who made it or when it was on.
My only complaint with Roku so far, no mute button for the commercials (but it turns down the volume pretty quick). DirectTv under the helm of AT&T has gone from ok to horrible. It's almost like AT&T is on a mission to drive away customers.
They did offer me a $6 discount on my phone service to not cancel that. I guess without a land line how would scam callers be able to reach me?
Working at a CSU for about 5 years in the IT department I was able to gleen some insight into how the whole California University System works, financially.
Problems really start at the top. The Chancellor for 26 universities sets the budgets and target enrollments per campus. So right there you have someone who controls all the money but often never sets foot on a campus.
I know what your thinking, the Dean for each University is on top of their campus and it's needs. Well, no. See the Dean is there to raise as much cash for the University as they can, because the more they raise, the more they earn. How much you ask? At the University I attended (which was about middle of the pack for the 26) he earned about $300,000 in base pay, plus up to another $300,000 if he brought in the funds. To put this in perspective, the secretaries that worked for him earned maybe $30,000 with no chance for a bonus. So if you could just ignore the University and focus on getting funds from wealthy alumni to doubling your pay, would you?
Another problem, Calpers! A retirement program for the state of California that is usually 2.5/55 for CSU staff, which means that each year of service earns you 2.5% of your highest paid salary for life when you retire at 55. Sounds good, but people have found loop holes. For example, a Director was hired and started by earning about $80,000, not bad considering how much a secretary was paid. Then for the next couple of years their pay increased to about $90,000, still nothing wrong. Then in their fifth year, the pay jumped to about $150,000, in the sixth year about $280,000, in the seventh year their pay went down to about $120,000 and they left. Now they have 7 years at 2.5% or 17.5% of the highest pay, or about $49,000. So when they reach retirement age they will earn that amount for 7 years of service, until they die plus any other retirement they have money in (ie 4 grand a month for life for just 7 years of service). Also Calpers allows you to change jobs and add to existing years of service. So if that person goes to work anywhere else that has Calpers, they will add more years of service, still at the $280,000 amount. Ie if they take a job cleaning erasers at $5.00/hr and stick with it for a few years they add an extra $7,000 per year to their retirement pay. So the trick, get at least a year of obscene pay, then move on and retire like a king. (Compare that to someone who earns $80,000 consistently and works for 20 years would only get $40,000 at retirement, and each additional year would only add $2,000).
Next biggest problem, everything is budgeted for. Each major area of the University has Directors who guess how much they will spend on each category. A category is something small like: phone services, Internet services, heating/cooling, water, paper costs, legal costs, travel costs, yard maintenance, key cost, janitorial costs, paper towel costs, staple costs, paper clip cost, etc etc etc. Each department has about 1000 of these categories. At the start of the year each department has all these set buckets of money. Then as expenses come in they are paid out of a specific bucket. At the end of the year any funds left over in any bucket are given back. Well they would be, but departments usually go nuts in May and June to spend these down. Why, well lets say you had $5,000 for paper costs, but you only spent $3,000; you would have to give back $2,000 and next year your budget would only be $3,000 for next year automatically. So to prevent that in June you buy like crazy so you don't get your budget slashed. Why would they do this, see the first problem, the Chancellor only sees the tops of each departments budgets, not the details. So if you spend your budget wisely over the course of a year, or if you just panic spend at the end the Chancellor never sees that detail, only the final dollar amount.
The next problem, budgets themselves. You can't transfer money from one category to another without a ton of paper work and usually a year wait. So its bet
I use to get calls like this about 5 years ago. I answered one and when the person with a heavy India accent said "Hi, my name is Chuck." I knew that this person just lied to me and that everything they were about to tell me was also a lie. Being a bit bored I decided to play along. The following is an approximate script of what followed:
Chuck: I'm a Microsoft Technician and our servers have detected a virus on your computer.
Me: Really, which one?
Chuck: Lets start with your main Windows computer.
Me: What's Windows?
Chuck: How about we check the most recent computer you used.
Me: Ok, what should I check?
Chuck: Open up a command prompt and type the following [not sure of the details as I didn't care what he said anyway, but it looked like something to confirm a registry key existed].
Me: What's a command prompt?
Chuck: Ok, press both the windows key and the R key and type in "cmd" and press enter.
Me: What's a windows key?
Chuck: That is the key on the bottom row between the "Ctrl" and "Alt".
Me: Oh, I see it. Ok, the screen went blank and something is blinking at me!
Chuck: Now type [....] and press enter.
Me: Ok, it says something about it not being a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Chuck: Maybe you missed something try [...] again.
[At this point I decided to spice things up]
Me: Nope same thing. What virus did you detect as I downloaded a few the other day.
Chuck: [moment of silence], no sir let me assure you that you wouldn't do that.
Me: I believe I did, three viruses if I'm not mistaken.
Chuck: Sir there would be no reason for you to do that.
Me: But I did. I wanted to see how they worked.
Chuck: No sir, these were installed by visiting malicious web sites.
Me: Oh, those viruses, no I deleted those ones, but I did download a few off a site a friend sent me.
Chuck: No sir, there is no way you would download a virus.
Me: But I did. Was that wrong?
Chuck: Yes, and we need to remove those.
Me: But I wanted them.
Chuck: No sir, you don't want them.
Me: But I do.
Chuck: Nobody wants a virus on their computer.
Me: I know, thats why I downloaded a few.
Chuck: Nobody would want to put a virus on their computer.
Me: But I did.
Chuck: Let me help you remove these viruses.
Me: But I want them.
Chuck: We at Microsoft want your system to run without viruses.
Me: But its my computer. Can't I run what I want?
Chuck: No, running a virus is bad for your system.
Me: Doesn't seem like anything is bad.
Chuck: It slows down your computer.
Me: It seems like it is running faster than before.
Chuck: It isn't and we need to remove them.
[this was at least 10 minutes into the whole thing and I was getting bored and the guy wasn't taking a hint]
Me: Dude, I work in IT security. I know the scam. Microsoft would never call a customer to report a problem to them.
Chuck: [click]
I'm still not sure why the guy was so confident that a person would never download a virus on purpose. Either way it was months before I got another call which I hung up on after the initial lie.
Now I just let the calls go to the answering machine. People who want to get a hold of me usually say something. If I recognize the voice I'll pick up, else I'll just hit delete after they hang up.
What the flip do you need a Gigabit connection for? Most video streams need 5Megabit at the most, maybe 25Megabit for 4K video.
P.S. buy a good cable modem if you haven't already, the overall cost is much lower and your provider can't turn your hardware into a hot spot for your neighbors. As for people who worry about equipment failure; most new equipment has a 2 year warranty and will pay for itself in less than 10 months. So even if you bought new equipment every two years when the warranty failed your still ahead, plus you have all new equipment which you won't with Comcast (or any provider for that matter).
I'm defiantly not in a Rural area, I'm within about 2 miles of a California State University, but they "best" AT&T can do here is 1.5Mb download. The tech on the phone could only boost that to 1.8Mb if he really tried and it would error out frequently at that speed. So how in the heck are they going to do that for some place 20 miles out of town when they can't even provide that a few miles from their main branch?
Is this another hand out to telecommunication carriers because people are dropping phone and cable services?
I'm sure the state can easily come together, draft a law stating that wildfires are not allowed to produce bad air, then pass it into law. Done and done, no more bad air in California.
Anyone with sense limits the amount of money in their ATM / online banking accessible account to a small amount, like 15-20k, unless a large purchase is coming. This is a simple way to protect yourself.
[British Accent]Quite right you are my man. Unless Foofy needs a new rolls I try to limit my personal cashier boy to a similar small fund which they may withdraw from these mechanical money boxes. Least the less trustworthy boys have been known to drain a persons account to the point that one must take a public jet to the Alps instead our families private whirly birds.[/British Accent]
Really, you quantum entangled two particles, sent one miles away and observe the other one to detect a plane. Doesn't observing of the other particle change the state of the entangled particle sent away? Plus there is the whole what if that particle hits anything else on the way, say a rain drop?
Sounds like they have been watching too much Sci-Fi or they just wanted to call it Quantum Radar when its just really an narrow band radar.
What's next, they are working on a Reverse Quantum Phase Radar Interference Detector to detect when their Quantum Radar is jammed? (hopefully it's snozberries jam).
Slashdot Mirror
You ever heard of a guy going on a crazy alcohol binge - 1 glass a night, forever?
Yes but did you see the 68oz glass pitcher he was drinking it out of?
68oz Pitcher
Short selling in itself isn't the problem. Stores do this all the time. Take your typical furniture store. You see a couch you like that they price at X, they take your money and promise delivery in 60 to 90 days. Meanwhile they keep selling that same model hoping to get enough orders that they can get a discount price or the manufacture lowers the price. Then just before the deadline they get the best deal they can and pocket the difference, or they take a loss if the model costs more or is delayed.
No, the problem with short selling stock is the stigma that it puts the company under. You don't want to invest in that company because a large share of their stock is held by people who are betting it will loose. I would actually like to see the full list of short sellers, the amount invested, and the terms of those deals. I have a suspicion that quite a bit of that money could be traced back to other auto manufactures, oil companies, car dealerships, repair shops, and anyone else who stand to loose their whole business because of electric cars.
Back to the story though, it would be serendipitous if Tesla took over a GM factory. Ie, Tesla did something GM couldn't do, build cars people want to drive.
He did this by not focusing on the price, the product, or any offerings. He sold people dreams, the dream that owning his product would make you better. The dream that a phone, a mp3 player, or a laptop would make your life more meaningful.
It may come as shock, but your customers don't care about your product, service, company, or idea. They care about themselves--their hopes, dreams, and quality of life. Tell them how your product will improve their life and you'll have their attention. -- Steve Jobs
The sad and not so sad part of this is that these things are just a piles of metal, plastic, and sand. What you do with any pile of metal, plastic, and sand is way more important than the tool you use.
The difference between a $1000 phone and $200 phone purchases every other year is $1 per day. It is the difference between a small fry and a large fry at McDonalds.
Didn't you see that movie "Super Size Me"? First eating at a fast food place every day for two years is a bad idea, second upgrading fries every time is doubly so.
But if you break anything down into small re-occurring fees I could sell you a house for about $1 a day. The loan term would be a about a thousand years though, with interest.
P.S. your $800 spread would be more like $1.10 a day. Plus if you bought the cheaper phone and it broke, you could replace it 4 times for the same cost as your $1000 model!
We only burn witches, and the Catholic Church is clearly against witches.
Could I suggest being fed to the lions?
Haven't seen it myself, but some people don't like the look of high frame rates for movies, apparently gives it an unnatural look.
I remember seeing the last Hobbit movie in the theater projected at a full 48fps. I remember thinking to myself the video looks odd, like a PBS re-enactment video shot in really hi-res. Yes it was smooth and clear, but it just seemed very unnerving and I was sucked out of the plot a few times because of this. I have since seen this on my tv at home at 24fps, much less distracting.
I have also been to people's house where they have the 120fps smoothing turned on and it too looks odd. The motion seems a bit jerky like its speeding up and slowing down. When I see someone walking with this turned on it looks like someone repeating the silly walk sketch form MP.
But they can telecommute. How about they record what they are going to say and upload it to the conference where it can be played later?
How about multiple meeting locations connected via video with special breakout rooms for one on one talks?
No, better to spend money and resources on planes, cars, and hotels while dining out at catered events to discuss how we are wasting resources. Makes perfect sense to me [eyes roll]!
These kinds of events, and even the Paris accords are just lip service. When politicians start selling their mansions to live in tiny houses, or sell their black limos and start driving Teslas, then I might believe them. Until then, I wouldn't give them the time of day.
Wow, let's look back one century to the grand year of 1918.
Top of the line car was a Studebaker Special Six, with a whopping 29.4 HP engine. Yep, that looks and performs like every car we drive today (actually I kind of like the design, wouldn't mind owning one myself).
Miles of paved road. I can't find any data back to 1918, but starting in 1960 the USA had about 1.2 million miles of roads, 2016 puts that about 2.7 million miles now.
Bridges, I can't find exact numbers per year, but I do see that at least 15 new bridges are built every year.
So yeah, I guess no Infrastructure construction or maintenance has happened since 1918! Seriously you must be deluding yourself! Bridges alone are built to last 50 years, which means that since 1918 if we didn't build any new ones or maintain any of them we should have no bridges 100 years later. I find that hard to believe as I crossed one just getting to work.
Word of advice, things change all the time. There are things you notice, like a new shopping mall, or new track of housing that goes up in less than a year. Then there are other things you don't notice, like the height of all the trees in your neighborhood that eventually grow so tall they snap power lines, the number of planes flying overhead, rivers cutting a grand canyon out of solid rock over millions of year. Just because things aren't changing rapidly around you doesn't mean it isn't happening. Old infrastructure is changing all the time, it just tends to look old because people want to keep it that way (take aluminum house wiring with new copper runs, gas lamps replaced by street lights, old cars with modern engines, retrofitted building with steel frames, historic roads with new reinforced beddings). Take a common item you probably see every day, the light bulb. Ten years ago the common type was probably an incandescent, 5 years ago most likely a CFL, now you will probably see LED bulbs. To the casual eye they all look the same.
PKE (Passive/Proximity Keyless Entry). You only need to be close for the doors to unlock and the push to start button to function, hence the Passive/Proximity part.
Hot-wiring a modern car would be expensive, time consuming, and very invasive as you need to replace the computer with a hacked one as it is looking for a key code. Without the computer the car just won't run as starting, timing, and other adjustments needed for the engine to fire right are made via the computer. Try switching the computer out in a parking lot full of people and somebody will catch on. It might work if you had a convincing tow truck so you looked legit. But still there is a pretty big chance that the owner would walk up on you doing this.
Older cars yes; use a screw driver with a t-bar to break the cylinder lock and unlock the wheel. Then find the +12v battery wire, and the on/run wire (dash should light up when connected to the +12v wire). Twist these together, then touch the starter wire to it and your off. I have one of these older cars and yes I've started it this way a few times (the electric plates in the key lock were broken and being a staving college student I couldn't afford a replacement at the time).
Think about it. You have one person in the parking lot finding cars with push button start. Stand close to the car, then have another person in the store with a booster walking past people till the car unlocks. Take car, ???, profit!
It was a upgrade option I believe.
channel surfing is slow so when you switch a channel you have to wait a few seconds for each channel to display on the TV
DirectTv use to have Tivo branded boxes with multiple tuners, they were great. Switching channels was instantaneous, the guide was also instantaneous, and it was quick to find and record things for later watching. My only initial complaint was that broadcast networks would turn on the content protection flag for HD channels which prevented Tivo from recording them (which wasn't really a thing DirectTv could fix). However, DirectTv got in a fight with Tivo for patents and fees so they split and DirectTv started pimping out their Genie boxes which are as bad as you describe. Now AT&T owned DirectTv seems to be on a mission to mess with anyone owning one of those older boxes, they turned off all my DVR services (including access to all the shows I already recorded) for about three months. After which I canceled the service, and their DSL. I now have comcast for internet at 60Mbs, and 4K Roku with Sling (DVR and kids package) all for about $65 per month (less than half of what I paid DirectTv and I only pay for the channels I cared to watch).
I expected to miss watching live tv or the shows I recorded, but now I don't even care. Most channels on Sling have a back buffer of several hours so if I missed the live show I can still backup and watch it. Also channels like AMC, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, BBC, NickToons, and many others have catalogs of shows that you can bing watch anytime. So shows I never even use to watch because I didn't know when they were on or even existed, I've now watched entire seasons in just a few days. And there is a bunch of free stuff; like the Roku app that streams a few hundred movies and shows, VRV which streams a bunch of anime, and almost every network has a free app (all except CBS that is).
Most apps show what is live, but they also show catalogs of shows that you can watch anytime for free (with just the normal commercials injected). I find myself watching those catalogs and rarely watch anything live (the Macy's Day Parade is about all I've seen live in the last two months). So what DVR did for TV, streaming has done to DVR, it creates catalogs of shows you can watch anytime without knowing who made it or when it was on.
My only complaint with Roku so far, no mute button for the commercials (but it turns down the volume pretty quick). DirectTv under the helm of AT&T has gone from ok to horrible. It's almost like AT&T is on a mission to drive away customers.
They did offer me a $6 discount on my phone service to not cancel that. I guess without a land line how would scam callers be able to reach me?
Working at a CSU for about 5 years in the IT department I was able to gleen some insight into how the whole California University System works, financially.
Problems really start at the top. The Chancellor for 26 universities sets the budgets and target enrollments per campus. So right there you have someone who controls all the money but often never sets foot on a campus.
I know what your thinking, the Dean for each University is on top of their campus and it's needs. Well, no. See the Dean is there to raise as much cash for the University as they can, because the more they raise, the more they earn. How much you ask? At the University I attended (which was about middle of the pack for the 26) he earned about $300,000 in base pay, plus up to another $300,000 if he brought in the funds. To put this in perspective, the secretaries that worked for him earned maybe $30,000 with no chance for a bonus. So if you could just ignore the University and focus on getting funds from wealthy alumni to doubling your pay, would you?
Another problem, Calpers! A retirement program for the state of California that is usually 2.5/55 for CSU staff, which means that each year of service earns you 2.5% of your highest paid salary for life when you retire at 55. Sounds good, but people have found loop holes. For example, a Director was hired and started by earning about $80,000, not bad considering how much a secretary was paid. Then for the next couple of years their pay increased to about $90,000, still nothing wrong. Then in their fifth year, the pay jumped to about $150,000, in the sixth year about $280,000, in the seventh year their pay went down to about $120,000 and they left. Now they have 7 years at 2.5% or 17.5% of the highest pay, or about $49,000. So when they reach retirement age they will earn that amount for 7 years of service, until they die plus any other retirement they have money in (ie 4 grand a month for life for just 7 years of service). Also Calpers allows you to change jobs and add to existing years of service. So if that person goes to work anywhere else that has Calpers, they will add more years of service, still at the $280,000 amount. Ie if they take a job cleaning erasers at $5.00/hr and stick with it for a few years they add an extra $7,000 per year to their retirement pay. So the trick, get at least a year of obscene pay, then move on and retire like a king. (Compare that to someone who earns $80,000 consistently and works for 20 years would only get $40,000 at retirement, and each additional year would only add $2,000).
Next biggest problem, everything is budgeted for. Each major area of the University has Directors who guess how much they will spend on each category. A category is something small like: phone services, Internet services, heating/cooling, water, paper costs, legal costs, travel costs, yard maintenance, key cost, janitorial costs, paper towel costs, staple costs, paper clip cost, etc etc etc. Each department has about 1000 of these categories. At the start of the year each department has all these set buckets of money. Then as expenses come in they are paid out of a specific bucket. At the end of the year any funds left over in any bucket are given back. Well they would be, but departments usually go nuts in May and June to spend these down. Why, well lets say you had $5,000 for paper costs, but you only spent $3,000; you would have to give back $2,000 and next year your budget would only be $3,000 for next year automatically. So to prevent that in June you buy like crazy so you don't get your budget slashed. Why would they do this, see the first problem, the Chancellor only sees the tops of each departments budgets, not the details. So if you spend your budget wisely over the course of a year, or if you just panic spend at the end the Chancellor never sees that detail, only the final dollar amount.
The next problem, budgets themselves. You can't transfer money from one category to another without a ton of paper work and usually a year wait. So its bet
I use to get calls like this about 5 years ago. I answered one and when the person with a heavy India accent said "Hi, my name is Chuck." I knew that this person just lied to me and that everything they were about to tell me was also a lie. Being a bit bored I decided to play along. The following is an approximate script of what followed:
Chuck: I'm a Microsoft Technician and our servers have detected a virus on your computer.
Me: Really, which one?
Chuck: Lets start with your main Windows computer.
Me: What's Windows?
Chuck: How about we check the most recent computer you used.
Me: Ok, what should I check?
Chuck: Open up a command prompt and type the following [not sure of the details as I didn't care what he said anyway, but it looked like something to confirm a registry key existed].
Me: What's a command prompt?
Chuck: Ok, press both the windows key and the R key and type in "cmd" and press enter.
Me: What's a windows key?
Chuck: That is the key on the bottom row between the "Ctrl" and "Alt".
Me: Oh, I see it. Ok, the screen went blank and something is blinking at me!
Chuck: Now type [....] and press enter.
Me: Ok, it says something about it not being a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Chuck: Maybe you missed something try [...] again.
[At this point I decided to spice things up]
Me: Nope same thing. What virus did you detect as I downloaded a few the other day.
Chuck: [moment of silence], no sir let me assure you that you wouldn't do that.
Me: I believe I did, three viruses if I'm not mistaken.
Chuck: Sir there would be no reason for you to do that.
Me: But I did. I wanted to see how they worked.
Chuck: No sir, these were installed by visiting malicious web sites.
Me: Oh, those viruses, no I deleted those ones, but I did download a few off a site a friend sent me.
Chuck: No sir, there is no way you would download a virus.
Me: But I did. Was that wrong?
Chuck: Yes, and we need to remove those.
Me: But I wanted them.
Chuck: No sir, you don't want them.
Me: But I do.
Chuck: Nobody wants a virus on their computer.
Me: I know, thats why I downloaded a few.
Chuck: Nobody would want to put a virus on their computer.
Me: But I did.
Chuck: Let me help you remove these viruses.
Me: But I want them.
Chuck: We at Microsoft want your system to run without viruses.
Me: But its my computer. Can't I run what I want?
Chuck: No, running a virus is bad for your system.
Me: Doesn't seem like anything is bad.
Chuck: It slows down your computer.
Me: It seems like it is running faster than before.
Chuck: It isn't and we need to remove them.
[this was at least 10 minutes into the whole thing and I was getting bored and the guy wasn't taking a hint]
Me: Dude, I work in IT security. I know the scam. Microsoft would never call a customer to report a problem to them.
Chuck: [click]
I'm still not sure why the guy was so confident that a person would never download a virus on purpose. Either way it was months before I got another call which I hung up on after the initial lie.
Now I just let the calls go to the answering machine. People who want to get a hold of me usually say something. If I recognize the voice I'll pick up, else I'll just hit delete after they hang up.
You misread my statement. I have plenty of mosquitoes to SPARE.
I will still have enough to feed the bats, birds, and other animals that enjoy these tasty snacks.
You mean the one that flings poo at people over at the zoo? Not so sure I want that one to live actually.
I have plenty of mosquitoes to spare. Just give me and address and I'll mail you a few tubes full of them.
What the flip do you need a Gigabit connection for? Most video streams need 5Megabit at the most, maybe 25Megabit for 4K video.
P.S. buy a good cable modem if you haven't already, the overall cost is much lower and your provider can't turn your hardware into a hot spot for your neighbors. As for people who worry about equipment failure; most new equipment has a 2 year warranty and will pay for itself in less than 10 months. So even if you bought new equipment every two years when the warranty failed your still ahead, plus you have all new equipment which you won't with Comcast (or any provider for that matter).
Why defiant? So much attitude!
Did you not catch the living in a college town part?
Down with the man's rules! Down with the government! Down with everything!!!
I'm defiantly not in a Rural area, I'm within about 2 miles of a California State University, but they "best" AT&T can do here is 1.5Mb download. The tech on the phone could only boost that to 1.8Mb if he really tried and it would error out frequently at that speed. So how in the heck are they going to do that for some place 20 miles out of town when they can't even provide that a few miles from their main branch?
Is this another hand out to telecommunication carriers because people are dropping phone and cable services?
Just contact the CIA, I'm sure they have a few backups.
That . . . would . . . be . . . AWESOME! Please let it be true.
I'm sure the state can easily come together, draft a law stating that wildfires are not allowed to produce bad air, then pass it into law. Done and done, no more bad air in California.
Anyone with sense limits the amount of money in their ATM / online banking accessible account to a small amount, like 15-20k, unless a large purchase is coming. This is a simple way to protect yourself.
[British Accent]Quite right you are my man. Unless Foofy needs a new rolls I try to limit my personal cashier boy to a similar small fund which they may withdraw from these mechanical money boxes. Least the less trustworthy boys have been known to drain a persons account to the point that one must take a public jet to the Alps instead our families private whirly birds.[/British Accent]
Really, you quantum entangled two particles, sent one miles away and observe the other one to detect a plane. Doesn't observing of the other particle change the state of the entangled particle sent away? Plus there is the whole what if that particle hits anything else on the way, say a rain drop?
Sounds like they have been watching too much Sci-Fi or they just wanted to call it Quantum Radar when its just really an narrow band radar.
What's next, they are working on a Reverse Quantum Phase Radar Interference Detector to detect when their Quantum Radar is jammed? (hopefully it's snozberries jam).