Hi there, I run my Windows Laptop with NT, 2000 and XP for more than a decade with no local firewalls or virus checkers (those are simply resources suckers).
I have Flash, Java and other plugins.
Never had any problem with viruses, and I apparently have good common sense to avoid the juice sites on the Internet or simply no interest in loading up my machine with all sorts of resource monsters.
But my machine gets slower and slower over time. My recommendation is re-install windows XP. It is even worth the money and order a replacement CD from MS and/or your hardware manufacturer, if (and only if) it is updated with the latest service packs. That saves you dozens of re-boots and many hours of watching the upgrades.
Best you re-format your disk too and re-install only what you really need, purging the gunk if virus or your garden variety resource monster gamlet, you just wanted to try out.
Good luck, and better use Linux. I never experienced such deterioration of performance on my Linux boxes. But then I don't use them as desktops much.
The only way this will work is if you make the site by invitation only and then it is not a good idea.
Think of "What you are trying to do?"
While I travel, no access to my local favorite site. When I move away, I can't participate in my local interest anymore. You force me to dis own my friends in this country, town.
If you want to keep it local, ask people for something that ties them to the group: Who do they know (let the person confirm), where do they live (don't need to publish that info), etc. But don't cut the greatest feature of the Internet (making the world a village).
Pushing some sort of added warranty plan is common place for a long time. Office Depot might be even more aggressive, but I have dealt with them for years by asking "Hmm, you make me think, why do I need this extended warranty. Are you telling me that the product is of such shoddy quality that it won't last very long? May be I should buy another product and/or elsewhere?"
So far all sales people, without exception, stopped pushing after that.:-))
The real solution to spam is individual sender signatures, because: * A mail server (ISP or IT or self owned) can never accurately decide what is SPAM for the recipient. * Signed e-mail allows the recipient to filter accordingly * Unknown senders can be assigned a trust score based on the network of trust and filtered accordingly * Keys can be bought form commercial vendors, but they don't have to * Mail lists can re-sign a message, so no forwarding problems there, just a bit of computation.
Do you sign you e-mail? Start today and make the world better. Once the signature is universal, even the ISP get rid of the 80% + useless SPAM, because it will be not profitable anymore. If the ISPs want to do something about it, give signature keys to your customers or sign the e-mail automatically with the customers key (by default).
Because, Verizon does not care what the e-mail claims to come from. It rate limits no questions asked. And Verizon does not tell you what the limit is.
And I don't see where it is stated, that a person can't communicate with a couple of hundred persons per e-mail, or a couple of thousands for that matter? Ever done a new baby announcement?
Your story seems like a bummer, but it is also an opportunity to do the right kind of looking for a job.
I envision, this is the kind of scenario you have to fear if you send a resume to HR of a company or even a recruiting sub contractor. They farm out a web screen to someone who has little interest other that fulfilling their daily work quota. To that person (or the computer algo replacing him./her) your interests do not matter much. So you land on the pile to ignore.
Luckily for you, the "post resume on.com or.com/careers" scheme has a success rate of 1 in 10,000, because they have so many "matching" resumes they need a quick and cheap way to select some quality one's. hence the outsourcing or delegating to a computer, and with the described handicap, your personal success rate might be worse.
The real world job finding success happens through networking. So go to your library (or the next online book store), look for the keywords "job networking" and "Informational interview" and really learn to play that game. That way your resume comes from a real person to a person in the company, and the Internet search is at least done by someone who has to answer to someone she knows personally (= higher chance of verifying that it is not you in that article). Also, you will enjoy it much more, because you learn from every network contact you make and your chances of success are more in the 1:100 range.
And never stop playing the networking game, even when you are happily employed. You might switch roles from time to time and refer contacts that are looking to open positions you are aware of.
the company that builds Humvees for the army are already planning to install them in its next version of the Humvee.
And I thought the greatest shock of all, the IED, would also eliminate the need for further energy to move forward.
We need a greener version of insurgents!:-) P.S.: My apologies for soldiers that might be offended by this joke. You have my respect for putting yourself in harms way.
Some people do not master basic statistics! I can't fathom how they can be promoted to the highest levels of business in large publicly traded companies.
While the average is a useful metrics, it is not an indication that everyone or even a typical user uses just that average. Just think for a moment, three applications is the bare minimum. You need already two, to make use of things like copy/paste.
Note that a universal OS like MS Windows already does eat lots of resources just to get warmed up. So running many applications will result in hitting the roof on resources pretty soon on something like a netbook. Why you need a cap on "apps started" is beyond me.
First to say, I'm oblivious to what the Fix-It tool is.
But I'd think I can download a fix, onto a machine that is not the target machine I want to fix. The tool itself should safely check if the fix is applicable, not the download.
we currently track 200+ external bugs across ~40 OSS projects
If the number of bugs tracked becomes that large, it might be time to pro-actively talk to management and find some budget to get those things fixed and the fixes contributed.
That would reduce the number of bugs and make the whole world a better place.
'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first â" and they won't state this â" then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
What nonsense is that? Someone does not understand that workers are humans with specific skills (and productivity levels and team work abilities). So just because you lay off people, it does not mean you go arbitrarily about it. You still want to retain the most qualified one's or the one's that are part of a team that can't just now be dismantled/disrupted or those who have been hired last for that matter. There go many more factors into the decision whom to lay off first. And I'm all for some social considerations, such as have a good reason to fire someone who worked for you for a long time or is the sole bread winner in its family.
As 10% staff reduction in all groups and departments is a dumb idea so is a H1-B visa holders first policy. At least from a business costs and efficiency standpoint.
If you think it actually through you could argue that it causes additional costs, which need to be reduced some place else, so it does potentially mean additional layoffs.
From experience, stay away from table PCs. Here is why:
* Handwriting recognition does not work (except for the single engineer that trained it, may be) * The pen usage on the screen is sloooow and crap, because you can only click, not right click, not shift click, not ctrl click, etc. Also no CTRL commands to enter like Ctrl+B, Ctrl+S, or Tab or Alt+Tab, etc. Tablet PC's are for single app usage only (may be filling out a form, like medical chart) and then they are inefficient. Tablet usage prohibits learning efficient computer use, a rather practical skill to have. It also prevents people from actually learning typing, which again is an important skill to learn. * There is no ergonomic way to use a tablet PC. They are too heavy still to hold in your hand or on your arm and displays are hard to read form a sitting angle you lay them on the desk. So you either strain your shoulder (and you hardly have space in a typical class room with a desk in front of you) or you crouch over it and strain your whole back and neck. Or you do strain your eyes to work against the glare and suboptimal viewing angle. * It locks you into exactly one OS (MS Windows for tablets), because Apple does not support it (despite that their 90's Newton was a trend setter and better at the recognition than the current MS Windows for Tablets) nor does Linux currently. Not to mention that thin client is also out the window as well.
In conclusion you spend extra dollars for teaching your students an un-ergonomic machine, and prevent them from learning the vital skills necessary to efficiently use computers.
Another well working job search tactic is "Informational Interview". It requires to network with anybody under the Sun and find people that are employed for a few years in your chosen area. Preferably they have advanced their career from contributor to team lead or manager or further.
Call them and ask them if they could spare 20 Min for an Informational Interview. Ask questions about their career, what, where they studied, how they got/started at their first job, how they advanced, what they see important in their field, what trends they see. Very important, never ever ask for a job outright (you are informing yourself about the field and not interviewing). Also do not forget to ask for more referrals (names) for informational interviews. Follow up with a hand written thank you note.
First it teaches you valuable skills (a plane communicating, networking, hard work,...) and insight and gets you talking to people you might not have met otherwise (may be someone you want to ask later te become a mentor). Second more often than not someone ponders the idea of you working for them.
This advice is very sound. Experience is what counts, and most employers are unwilling to even train you in anything that is important to their business but can be learned elsewhere, such as programming languages or frameworks such as hibernate or SQL.
However, I got by so far for many years, by demonstrating my ability to learn quickly. Even out of University my true answer to the age old question "How many programming languages have you programmed in?" seemed garish to me (I would have had to say 40+). So I resorted to "Any, if you give me two weeks time!" This regularly prompted a disbelieve by my counter part until I explained that my University training did enable me to define a language for a given problem space, its syntax, its semantics and writes a compiler for it. This enables me to pick up a new language/framework in a few weeks.
This kind of discussion did usually result in a second interview. So for you studies and your experience focus on stretching your abilities. It is not what you learn from the text book. It is the fact that it is really hard, that makes you a smarter guy/gal.
Also, besides tech skills you need a network of people that: A) Let you know of job openings (not recruiters) B) Recommend you for job openings C) Can give reference that you are the smart guy you claim you are. So keep in touch with anybody, you friends, your class mates (even those you can't stand), your professors, your colleagues ant the internship, you father's friends, your mother's friends, your sports pals, etc. Some of the best tools for this kind of keeping in touch are Plaxo, LinkedIn and the good old fashioned Greeting Card for the Season or better even a calendar full of birthday reminders and handwritten birthday notes. I know it is so 20th centuries, but jobs come from way back and so do some of the social grease that make the world work (for you).
Well, at best a list of customers that have not found the time/money/energy to replace SCO Unix. Because, for years it is clear that maintaining it will be paid dearly because of all those external cost for a major law suite.
Now the company is unable to pay its debtors, so there is not capital that might go with the "assets" when sold. This means the new investor will milk the old customer base for ongoing support. SCO users beware.
Well, that also means you now have to spend extra time to sell your ads, implement an Ad Serving Framework and deal with the advertisers complaints for invalid clicks. Takes a lot of fun right out of it.
There is a reason why something like AdSense is convenient and worth its money. I just wished it would be somewhat more competitive as a market.
Have you ever done any note taking on a touch screen? So far it proofed for me too painful most of the time.
My experience with the good old Apple Newton was the best ever. But only with the right signing alphabet. Still slow and the device was certainly underpowered. Hand writing recognition didn't work well.
The Palm III was usable with the gestures as well. My current Treo is a nice toy. For one hand usage of the phone I prefer the touch screen, but if I have two free hands, the keyboard is much faster, especially for alphanumeric entries. But ore than a list of keywords, I don't want to type on it.
Apple iPhone? I love the conversations with my friends that end in a dead iPhone user, because they touched the mute button with their cheek:-). The new touch phones with tactile feedback like the MacBoock TouchScreens seem to be an improvement at first play.
My current Gateway CX210X lasted about one week as a tablet PC. O.K., my hand writing is bad, but even entering text character by character did fail on the Windows software trying to guess the word after three characters (changing what was already correctly recognized, very frustrating) and un-usability of any correction algorithm. I should have spent my extra money on a Thinkpad or MacBook instead.
Note taking on a Netbook? It will simply fail because of the small screen, there is a reason why you use a letter size paper, instead of smaller size paper, for more than structured data like appointments or addresses. Why would that be different, on a device where the resolution is much less then a pen on paper?
Never the less for phone use and fast scrolling through (phone, contact, bookmark,...) lists and pages, the iPhone showed that a touch interface is quite usable. The pan and zoom motiosn are very intuitive as well.
The main problem I see remaining with touch screens is that a touch screen gets dirty fast, which restricts it readability and just makes it more strenuous to read from it.
There is a lot of (false) assuming in these numbers.
A desk, office, furniture can be shared between workers, if done intelligently, such as you work MO, Tu, your "counterpart" works Th, Fr and you both work We from home.
Part time workers that work less than the typical 40h work week can be more focused and productive, so a 40% reduction in time might be less than 40% in productivity. Not everybody is good at that, but especially in knowledge worker jobs, you don't only solve issues in the office nor do you spend all minutes in the office with relevant work. But if the culture is right (good information flow independent of the water cooler gossip model), results oriented rather than time oriented, team work (where people seek help and help freely those that need it at the current state of project work), then part time work does not make the difference. Also, if your work times fit the rest of your live, you are more motivated and less distracted by home life issues (No worry who picks up the children, if you make the post office in time, the package gets signed for, the repair man comes, etc.)
I'd think that a business with an across the board overhead of 300% for its employees is one you want to leave immediately (they either pay you too little or are going bankrupt pretty soon. The 2x factor is about the upper limit I'd think. Especially in IT where you typically don't have extremely low wages.
What I learned most from in my CS studies was to understand how a higher language (in my old days Pascal) translates into a machine readable form.
The basis to all this was the understanding a Van Neuman machine and We simplified actual Pascal Programs into a PascalSimplified dialect and then into assembler code. You can do the same with higher level concepts like OO or functional programming.
The beauty is that after that exercise you are ready for the next paradigm shift, which is about 5-7 years away. You can understand how it relates back to what you already know and do not start from scratch or fear the "new world."
To the best of my knowledge in Germany, you receive "Unemployment Insurance" for up to two years and it is really a separate pot from the tax collections. (Although the Government has put other administrative tasks on the back of this Insurance and does pay for its delivery).
Contrast that to the US, where congress collects unemployment taxes from businesses and rates go up if the business lays off people more frequently. The congress also regularly decides to pay unemployment benefits for longer periods, when the economy goes south and unemployment rises. Sometimes they enact it only for industries that are especially hard hit (like the IT industry after the 2000 bubble burst).
Welfare, I believer, you get indefinitely in Germany.
In the Third Reich this was called "Arbeitsdienst." A rather dark chapter of history. May be better we pay people to read their history books for a few hours a week.
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Hi there,
I run my Windows Laptop with NT, 2000 and XP for more than a decade with no local firewalls or virus checkers (those are simply resources suckers).
I have Flash, Java and other plugins.
Never had any problem with viruses, and I apparently have good common sense to avoid the juice sites on the Internet or simply no interest in loading up my machine with all sorts of resource monsters.
But my machine gets slower and slower over time. My recommendation is re-install windows XP. It is even worth the money and order a replacement CD from MS and/or your hardware manufacturer, if (and only if) it is updated with the latest service packs. That saves you dozens of re-boots and many hours of watching the upgrades.
Best you re-format your disk too and re-install only what you really need, purging the gunk if virus or your garden variety resource monster gamlet, you just wanted to try out.
Good luck, and better use Linux. I never experienced such deterioration of performance on my Linux boxes. But then I don't use them as desktops much.
Good luck
The only way this will work is if you make the site by invitation only and then it is not a good idea.
Think of "What you are trying to do?"
While I travel, no access to my local favorite site. When I move away, I can't participate in my local interest anymore. You force me to dis own my friends in this country, town.
If you want to keep it local, ask people for something that ties them to the group: Who do they know (let the person confirm), where do they live (don't need to publish that info), etc. But don't cut the greatest feature of the Internet (making the world a village).
Pushing some sort of added warranty plan is common place for a long time. Office Depot might be even more aggressive, but I have dealt with them for years by asking "Hmm, you make me think, why do I need this extended warranty. Are you telling me that the product is of such shoddy quality that it won't last very long? May be I should buy another product and/or elsewhere?"
So far all sales people, without exception, stopped pushing after that. :-))
Well, sometimes they simply have good offers. Limited selection but good deals.
This does not look at all like a BSD like license. IANAL.
BSD says nothing about Licensing Derivative Work (2), Revision of License (7), Termination of License (9), or Patents (10), and many more.
it would be interesting to see if the Open Source Initiative would accept this as an open license. In any case it is more license proliferation.
DKIM is helpful in some cases but not too many.
The real solution to spam is individual sender signatures, because:
* A mail server (ISP or IT or self owned) can never accurately decide what is SPAM for the recipient.
* Signed e-mail allows the recipient to filter accordingly
* Unknown senders can be assigned a trust score based on the network of trust and filtered accordingly
* Keys can be bought form commercial vendors, but they don't have to
* Mail lists can re-sign a message, so no forwarding problems there, just a bit of computation.
Do you sign you e-mail? Start today and make the world better. Once the signature is universal, even the ISP get rid of the 80% + useless SPAM, because it will be not profitable anymore. If the ISPs want to do something about it, give signature keys to your customers or sign the e-mail automatically with the customers key (by default).
You are not a Verizon customer, are you?
Because, Verizon does not care what the e-mail claims to come from. It rate limits no questions asked. And Verizon does not tell you what the limit is.
And I don't see where it is stated, that a person can't communicate with a couple of hundred persons per e-mail, or a couple of thousands for that matter? Ever done a new baby announcement?
Your story seems like a bummer, but it is also an opportunity to do the right kind of looking for a job.
I envision, this is the kind of scenario you have to fear if you send a resume to HR of a company or even a recruiting sub contractor. They farm out a web screen to someone who has little interest other that fulfilling their daily work quota. To that person (or the computer algo replacing him./her) your interests do not matter much. So you land on the pile to ignore.
Luckily for you, the "post resume on .com or .com/careers" scheme has a success rate of 1 in 10,000, because they have so many "matching" resumes they need a quick and cheap way to select some quality one's. hence the outsourcing or delegating to a computer, and with the described handicap, your personal success rate might be worse.
The real world job finding success happens through networking. So go to your library (or the next online book store), look for the keywords "job networking" and "Informational interview" and really learn to play that game. That way your resume comes from a real person to a person in the company, and the Internet search is at least done by someone who has to answer to someone she knows personally (= higher chance of verifying that it is not you in that article). Also, you will enjoy it much more, because you learn from every network contact you make and your chances of success are more in the 1:100 range.
And never stop playing the networking game, even when you are happily employed. You might switch roles from time to time and refer contacts that are looking to open positions you are aware of.
the company that builds Humvees for the army are already planning to install them in its next version of the Humvee.
And I thought the greatest shock of all, the IED, would also eliminate the need for further energy to move forward.
We need a greener version of insurgents! :-)
P.S.: My apologies for soldiers that might be offended by this joke. You have my respect for putting yourself in harms way.
Some people do not master basic statistics! I can't fathom how they can be promoted to the highest levels of business in large publicly traded companies.
While the average is a useful metrics, it is not an indication that everyone or even a typical user uses just that average. Just think for a moment, three applications is the bare minimum. You need already two, to make use of things like copy/paste.
Note that a universal OS like MS Windows already does eat lots of resources just to get warmed up. So running many applications will result in hitting the roof on resources pretty soon on something like a netbook. Why you need a cap on "apps started" is beyond me.
Isn't this a case of Fix-Your-Expectations?
First to say, I'm oblivious to what the Fix-It tool is.
But I'd think I can download a fix, onto a machine that is not the target machine I want to fix. The tool itself should safely check if the fix is applicable, not the download.
we currently track 200+ external bugs across ~40 OSS projects
If the number of bugs tracked becomes that large, it might be time to pro-actively talk to management and find some budget to get those things fixed and the fixes contributed.
That would reduce the number of bugs and make the whole world a better place.
'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first â" and they won't state this â" then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
What nonsense is that? Someone does not understand that workers are humans with specific skills (and productivity levels and team work abilities). So just because you lay off people, it does not mean you go arbitrarily about it. You still want to retain the most qualified one's or the one's that are part of a team that can't just now be dismantled/disrupted or those who have been hired last for that matter. There go many more factors into the decision whom to lay off first. And I'm all for some social considerations, such as have a good reason to fire someone who worked for you for a long time or is the sole bread winner in its family.
As 10% staff reduction in all groups and departments is a dumb idea so is a H1-B visa holders first policy. At least from a business costs and efficiency standpoint.
If you think it actually through you could argue that it causes additional costs, which need to be reduced some place else, so it does potentially mean additional layoffs.
From experience, stay away from table PCs. Here is why:
* Handwriting recognition does not work (except for the single engineer that trained it, may be)
* The pen usage on the screen is sloooow and crap, because you can only click, not right click, not shift click, not ctrl click, etc. Also no CTRL commands to enter like Ctrl+B, Ctrl+S, or Tab or Alt+Tab, etc. Tablet PC's are for single app usage only (may be filling out a form, like medical chart) and then they are inefficient. Tablet usage prohibits learning efficient computer use, a rather practical skill to have. It also prevents people from actually learning typing, which again is an important skill to learn.
* There is no ergonomic way to use a tablet PC. They are too heavy still to hold in your hand or on your arm and displays are hard to read form a sitting angle you lay them on the desk. So you either strain your shoulder (and you hardly have space in a typical class room with a desk in front of you) or you crouch over it and strain your whole back and neck. Or you do strain your eyes to work against the glare and suboptimal viewing angle.
* It locks you into exactly one OS (MS Windows for tablets), because Apple does not support it (despite that their 90's Newton was a trend setter and better at the recognition than the current MS Windows for Tablets) nor does Linux currently. Not to mention that thin client is also out the window as well.
In conclusion you spend extra dollars for teaching your students an un-ergonomic machine, and prevent them from learning the vital skills necessary to efficiently use computers.
Another well working job search tactic is "Informational Interview". It requires to network with anybody under the Sun and find people that are employed for a few years in your chosen area. Preferably they have advanced their career from contributor to team lead or manager or further.
Call them and ask them if they could spare 20 Min for an Informational Interview. Ask questions about their career, what, where they studied, how they got/started at their first job, how they advanced, what they see important in their field, what trends they see. Very important, never ever ask for a job outright (you are informing yourself about the field and not interviewing). Also do not forget to ask for more referrals (names) for informational interviews. Follow up with a hand written thank you note.
First it teaches you valuable skills (a plane communicating, networking, hard work, ...) and insight and gets you talking to people you might not have met otherwise (may be someone you want to ask later te become a mentor). Second more often than not someone ponders the idea of you working for them.
Show that you can word with others, ...
Show that you can OpenOffice with others, ...
Fixed that for you!
This advice is very sound. Experience is what counts, and most employers are unwilling to even train you in anything that is important to their business but can be learned elsewhere, such as programming languages or frameworks such as hibernate or SQL.
However, I got by so far for many years, by demonstrating my ability to learn quickly. Even out of University my true answer to the age old question "How many programming languages have you programmed in?" seemed garish to me (I would have had to say 40+). So I resorted to "Any, if you give me two weeks time!" This regularly prompted a disbelieve by my counter part until I explained that my University training did enable me to define a language for a given problem space, its syntax, its semantics and writes a compiler for it. This enables me to pick up a new language/framework in a few weeks.
This kind of discussion did usually result in a second interview. So for you studies and your experience focus on stretching your abilities. It is not what you learn from the text book. It is the fact that it is really hard, that makes you a smarter guy/gal.
Also, besides tech skills you need a network of people that: A) Let you know of job openings (not recruiters) B) Recommend you for job openings C) Can give reference that you are the smart guy you claim you are. So keep in touch with anybody, you friends, your class mates (even those you can't stand), your professors, your colleagues ant the internship, you father's friends, your mother's friends, your sports pals, etc. Some of the best tools for this kind of keeping in touch are Plaxo, LinkedIn and the good old fashioned Greeting Card for the Season or better even a calendar full of birthday reminders and handwritten birthday notes. I know it is so 20th centuries, but jobs come from way back and so do some of the social grease that make the world work (for you).
What are the assets of SCO?
Well, at best a list of customers that have not found the time/money/energy to replace SCO Unix. Because, for years it is clear that maintaining it will be paid dearly because of all those external cost for a major law suite.
Now the company is unable to pay its debtors, so there is not capital that might go with the "assets" when sold. This means the new investor will milk the old customer base for ongoing support. SCO users beware.
Well, that also means you now have to spend extra time to sell your ads, implement an Ad Serving Framework and deal with the advertisers complaints for invalid clicks. Takes a lot of fun right out of it.
There is a reason why something like AdSense is convenient and worth its money. I just wished it would be somewhat more competitive as a market.
Have you ever done any note taking on a touch screen? So far it proofed for me too painful most of the time.
My experience with the good old Apple Newton was the best ever. But only with the right signing alphabet. Still slow and the device was certainly underpowered. Hand writing recognition didn't work well.
The Palm III was usable with the gestures as well. My current Treo is a nice toy. For one hand usage of the phone I prefer the touch screen, but if I have two free hands, the keyboard is much faster, especially for alphanumeric entries. But ore than a list of keywords, I don't want to type on it.
Apple iPhone? I love the conversations with my friends that end in a dead iPhone user, because they touched the mute button with their cheek :-). The new touch phones with tactile feedback like the MacBoock TouchScreens seem to be an improvement at first play.
My current Gateway CX210X lasted about one week as a tablet PC. O.K., my hand writing is bad, but even entering text character by character did fail on the Windows software trying to guess the word after three characters (changing what was already correctly recognized, very frustrating) and un-usability of any correction algorithm. I should have spent my extra money on a Thinkpad or MacBook instead.
Note taking on a Netbook? It will simply fail because of the small screen, there is a reason why you use a letter size paper, instead of smaller size paper, for more than structured data like appointments or addresses. Why would that be different, on a device where the resolution is much less then a pen on paper?
Never the less for phone use and fast scrolling through (phone, contact, bookmark, ...) lists and pages, the iPhone showed that a touch interface is quite usable. The pan and zoom motiosn are very intuitive as well.
The main problem I see remaining with touch screens is that a touch screen gets dirty fast, which restricts it readability and just makes it more strenuous to read from it.
There is a lot of (false) assuming in these numbers.
A desk, office, furniture can be shared between workers, if done intelligently, such as you work MO, Tu, your "counterpart" works Th, Fr and you both work We from home.
Part time workers that work less than the typical 40h work week can be more focused and productive, so a 40% reduction in time might be less than 40% in productivity. Not everybody is good at that, but especially in knowledge worker jobs, you don't only solve issues in the office nor do you spend all minutes in the office with relevant work. But if the culture is right (good information flow independent of the water cooler gossip model), results oriented rather than time oriented, team work (where people seek help and help freely those that need it at the current state of project work), then part time work does not make the difference. Also, if your work times fit the rest of your live, you are more motivated and less distracted by home life issues (No worry who picks up the children, if you make the post office in time, the package gets signed for, the repair man comes, etc.)
I'd think that a business with an across the board overhead of 300% for its employees is one you want to leave immediately (they either pay you too little or are going bankrupt pretty soon. The 2x factor is about the upper limit I'd think. Especially in IT where you typically don't have extremely low wages.
What I learned most from in my CS studies was to understand how a higher language (in my old days Pascal) translates into a machine readable form.
The basis to all this was the understanding a Van Neuman machine and We simplified actual Pascal Programs into a PascalSimplified dialect and then into assembler code. You can do the same with higher level concepts like OO or functional programming.
The beauty is that after that exercise you are ready for the next paradigm shift, which is about 5-7 years away. You can understand how it relates back to what you already know and do not start from scratch or fear the "new world."
And what has all this to do with your sexuality or sexuality in general?
To the best of my knowledge in Germany, you receive "Unemployment Insurance" for up to two years and it is really a separate pot from the tax collections. (Although the Government has put other administrative tasks on the back of this Insurance and does pay for its delivery).
Contrast that to the US, where congress collects unemployment taxes from businesses and rates go up if the business lays off people more frequently. The congress also regularly decides to pay unemployment benefits for longer periods, when the economy goes south and unemployment rises. Sometimes they enact it only for industries that are especially hard hit (like the IT industry after the 2000 bubble burst).
Welfare, I believer, you get indefinitely in Germany.
Who did vote this "Insightful?"
In the Third Reich this was called "Arbeitsdienst." A rather dark chapter of history. May be better we pay people to read their history books for a few hours a week.