What an interesting problem! Perhaps somebody should tell the anthropologists about it? Maybe they can come up with some sort of taxonomy, i propose a division of Really Smart Man to distinguish us from the Little Thinking Man that came before us.
Sarcasm noted... but really, I personally would call all members of the genus Homo "Humans" - right back to Homo Habilis or earlier if we identify an earlier member. Other's might only consider Homo Sapiens to be "Humans" or some might limit it further to only Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
It's not a question for anthropologists, as it's a matter of definition only - anthropologists really don't care if you call Homo Habilis "human" or not - they've got their useful definitions (of which "human" isn't one).
Of all humans who have ever lived, only 93% have died.
Do you happen to have stats for that?
I once read a statement that was quite obviously false, "There are more people alive today than have ever died" (implying <50% have died). I then saw a reply from somebody who disproved this quite simply, but at no point did they reach any kind of figure for the actual percentage.
I guess the biggest problem in reaching a number is at what point you start calling our ancestors "human" vs "pre-human".
I think it was probably always like that, it's just that people didn't gripe about it.
Personally, I was born during the last bit of the Carter administration in 1980, and it irritates me to be retroactively moved to a generation that has little in common with me. I may be marginally Gen-X, but none of my friends had cell phones in high school, a few of them had beepers. And most of the kids I went to class with didn't have the internet at home.
Not that I have anything against Gen-Y or the millenials, but realistically, I was born when all 5 Beatles were still alive and there was some question that I might require a smallpox vaccination.
I was born in August of '79, so I'm just a little older than you. When I was in high school, about 25% of the kids had cellphones. Internet at home was rare since I'm from a small city in the arse end of New Zealand, but almost everyone had computers and modems to call the local BBSs. Internet access did start becoming more popular with the masses towards the end of my high-school years though. My own first internet connection was a shell account through a uni in another town from around '91 if I recall correctly. The BBSs were however more interesting to me, as most had Fidonet feeds and there was more of immediate relevance easily available to me.
I'd never really heard the terms "Gen-X" and "Gen-Y" until much later in to twenties. I've never really been sure where I'm supposed to fit; but for the most part, I think it's probably something that can only truly be applied to particular cultural areas. Maybe now that the world is more connected and it's easier for culture to spread around, the cultural areas we apply these terms to may expand; but for "Gen-X" and earlier especially, it seems to me that it applies differently in different places.
That's a great point and something I don't think a lot of Europeans appreciate, the geographical size and income variance across the US. Using a cost of living calculator, living in NYC is 2x the price of living where I am now. Not 10% more, or even 50% -- it costs TWICE as much.
Absolutely... however it's worth noting that this kind of discrepancy also exists in Europe and even within a single country such as Germany. The cost of living in Munich is at least 1.5x the cost of living here in Hannover, which itself isn't the cheapest place to live. I can easily imagine a 2x increase between locations.
It is worth factoring in certain other things though. I've visited the US on several occasions, although sadly never had a chance to spend a longer time there. From what I saw though, if I lived (and worked) in Manhattan, I probably wouldn't want/need a car; whereas if I lived in Los Angeles, I wouldn't want to be without it. That makes a significant different from a cost of living perspective as well - even if my apartment costs a lot more in Manhattan, not having the running costs of a car MIGHT make up for that.
Same thing goes here in Germany. Here in Hannover, a car is 'nice to have' but not totally required. If I lived in Burgdorf, I'd HAVE to have a car. If I lived (and worked) in Berlin, I probably wouldn't have the desire to have one at all.
The other thing I've wondered is, what is our cost relative income? We may pay more, but we make more -- but do we normalize based on per capita income?
Those kinds of things are very difficult to judge, because you're only looking at the comparative cost of one metric.
I live and work in Hannover, Germany. According to various "how much should I earn" websites, my income (as a senior software developer) is in direct exchange rates similar to the average income for a senior software developer in the US. The US is a big country with quite a lot of variance, so I suspect the average for a software developer in New York City or San Francisco is probably somewhat higher than the national average, whereas a developer in a smaller lesser known city probably is a little below the national average.
My internet is significantly cheaper than most of the US. My standard groceries are similar to small town USA. My power and petrol are significantly more expensive than almost everywhere in the US. My apartment rent is similar in price to most metro areas of the US excluding the outlier "expensive" and "cheap" places. Were I to buy/rent a house however, it would be significantly higher than most places in the US.
Per capita income in also not a good normalisation in many cases. Some countries have quite a flat distribution where the "rich" vs the "poor" is much closer; whereas others have huge discrepancies. When talking about internet speed/quality/cost and trying to judge the real picture, this is important as in countries with a flatter distribution will have a much higher percentage of people that can easily afford it than those with a wider range of incomes.
That bugs you? I routinely reject code check-ins that don't have every member, param, and return type documented. All public members must also include a sample code block as well in the documentation flower box above the method signature.
70% documentation is around the sweet spot for my developers and it will remain that way as long as I run the group.
While 70% sounds a little on the high side to me, I can accept that and generally agree. The problem is when the code comments don't actually document/explain anything, as in my example. A comment that literally says, "increments i" for the line i++; brings no value whatsoever and only serves to get in the way of me reading and trying to understand it. If it said something like, "increment the counter" I'd be much happier (although I'd still probably consider it excessive if it was a blatantly obvious counter in a loop or so)
there are some who write gobs of horrid code with sparse comments like// here be dragons.
What really gets to me is when I deal with code that is 70% comments, but it's all along the lines of:
/* The following function increments i and then calls the other function when it matches x */
IncrementAndCheckI() {
i++;/* increments i */
if(i==x) {/* checks if i is now the same as x */
CallOtherFunc(i);/* call the other function with i as a parameter */
}
}
What's most disturbing is that I see this really quite regularly. Damn near every line is commented, and yet none of it tells me ANYTHING useful about what the code is supposed to be doing or why.
I see this FAR more often from university educated programmers than I do from self-taught hackers.
I used to live in Chicago, which has a much better public transportation system. There, I was able to get up at 5:30 in the morning and make it to work on time via a 10 minute walk, a 50 minute bus ride, a 45 minute train ride and another 10 minute walk. Or I could drive, in which case, it was a 40 minute drive and a 10 minute walk.
That really is still shockingly bad. Public transport should not take twice as long to get to your destination as driving, and if that's considered "much better" than another location, it's a clear sign of why so many people in those places are against using it.
Here in Hannover, Germany, I can drive to work in about 35 to 45 minutes depending on traffic and the lights. Via public transport, it takes around 45 minutes consistently. Admittedly, I still almost always drive, since I carry a heavy bag to and from work each day and really don't like the idea of lugging it around any more than I have to.
Rather expensive for a useful dose though... To quote from that page (emphasis mine):
A 7-day administration of SR9009 (100 mg/kg , i.p., b.i.d.) causes a significant weight and fat loss in C57BL6 mice with concomitant reduction in plasma glucose and free fatty acid levels, and alters circadian pattern.
So, 100mg/kg at $149 per 25mg, comes to $596 per kg; or around $350000 for a typical person taking a one week course...
Obviously, after the research is done, if it's a marketable product, they'll sell it significantly cheaper than this; but at these prices, there's no realistic way for any normal person to buy it in quantities that will have a useful/noticeable effect on them (which is also probably deliberate since they make quite a point of stating it's not intended for use in people).
Sure, but there are plenty of professional athletes that compete without the help of drugs.
Unless you count water, sugar, protein and other "normal food" substances. These things all give a competitive edge to athletes over those people who choose to abstain from them... really, what's the difference?
Umm... I'd prefer a home testing set that allows me to do it when I want it and report directly to my doc by going there.
Now explain again the need for a networked toilet.
Honestly, I wouldn't. I'd prefer something inbetween the two ideas... one that notifies me automatically when something is detected and asks if it should be reported to my doctor.
Doing it manually is something that I just wouldn't do through a combination of laziness and forgetfulness. I'd most likely miss out on finding a disease in the early stages before it's symptomatic and is still easily treatable. One day, I'm going to die of something; but if it's something that "if caught earlier, would have been treatable" (as with very many things), I'm going to be pissed off that I didn't know until it was too late.
Traditionally (at least in the west), a wedding ring was meant to cost one month's wages.
A car typically costs around 6 month's wages (or more)
A house used to be 3 years' salary (though with mortgage bubbles, it's common for a mortgage to be anything up to 10x salary)
Interesting, I hadn't seen or heard of these figures before, but a quick Google search reveals you're right in many Western cultures.
From the looks of it, I underpaid for wedding ring (about 0.5 months salary); slightly overpaid for car (around 7 months salary); and don't own a house.
So the claimed "experts" have no idea if the meaning of the languages were changed with such subleties by gestures? You can't know a thing is so without having experienced the thing.
You can't know anything at all, but you get in to the realm of pointless philosophical mental masturbation if you don't start accepting some things as being fundamentally true.
Also, as someone that has experienced psychedelic substances (quite a lot), it's also probably worth mentioning that just because your senses tell you something, that doesn't necessarily make it any more real than what reasoning can deduce.
How can one claim expertise in a subject one has never experienced?
Through the process of studying it from afar. According to the summary she is apparently an "expert in the terrains of Venus, Mars, and Titan". She probably knows a LOT about geology, atmospheric physics, chemistry, and other fields related to planetary terrains; and then learned domain specific things about what we can infer from those bodies from what we've been able to see. Going there would probably help a great deal in cementing or altering some beliefs, but it's not necessary for being an expert on the subject.
It's really no different to someone being an "expert on historical linguistics" (a hobby of mine, but I don't claim to be an expert personally). While no-one can claim to know with 100% certainty the history of any language without having used a time machine to examine the subtle changes to it throughout time, we can make some pretty good assumptions that are highly likely to approximate the reality very closely.
NASA is almost completely irrelevant in the modern world.
While I agree that they're becoming significantly less relevant for their 'traditional' activities (which are probably better left to the fledgling private industry) as a pure science organisation, I think they still have plenty left to offer.
There's bugger all that NASA has done with it's massive budgets.
The problem is that they don't have massive budgets. They've got tiny budgets for what we expect of them, and especially in the context of budgets that are thrown at far less valuable endeavours.
You are correct. The Department of Labor specifies what an "Exempt" employee is, and 95% of people who are categorized as exempt by their employer do not fall under the classification of exempt as defined by the Department of labor.
It's probably also worth mentioning though that not being in the US, any classifications the US Department of Labor may or may not make isn't exactly relevant to me.
Different countries have different laws; but in the majority that I know of, most salaried employees still have a concept of overtime and will get either additional pay or time in lieu for their work over and above their standard working hours.
>If you're under the impression that a 15 kWh battery that can deliver 100+ kW of power is fit only to be junked, then you couldn't spell clue if you fronted the C and L.
When your range goes from 80 miles to 55 miles per charge, yet your still trying to commute 60 miles to work. then the value of the 15kWhr battery is not much to you any more. If a gasoline mpg goes from 40 to 30 over 20 years, and you have to fill up every week instead of once every week and a half, it still has value (even if the cost of gas went up considerably during the time, it is still functional at least.)
I would simply submit that if your commute is 60 miles, you perhaps shouldn't buy this vehicle... If your commute is however a more common ten to twenty miles each way (twenty to forty miles total), the car will be quite fine for the job even after that rather drastic loss in miles per charge.
Just like every other salaried employee who doesn't make any more money when it's crunch time and you have to pull 10-12 hour days to get shit done. It's called a job description, and being paid for the job (get plane from A to B) instead of the time (you were in airports/planes from 9 AM to 8 PM.)
Actually not all salaried employees have to do overtime with no additional compensation.
I'm a salaried employee with a fixed number of working hours per week.
If I work overtime as a matter of normal business (which I generally almost always do), I can take it off later in lieu - generally I get about one to two weeks extra holiday per year by doing this.
If I am asked to work overtime by management, I can choose to either take it off later in lieu or ask for additional paid compensation, which is determined by dividing my salary by the "standard" number of work hours in the year (and a specific multiplier if it's "night", "weekend" or "public holiday").
I'm with AC, what happened with HR? I think everyone would like to hear a story where HR benefited the employees and not themselves.
In the company I work for, our HR recently started an initiative to make salary scales and schemes more transparent and fair. We're a very large organisation that has evolved from one very large merger around a decade ago and very many acquisitions both before and since then.
Because of this growth, we've generally had a lot of people with different pay schemes and structures in place, sometimes even with vastly different incomes and benefits for the exact same jobs.
This prompted the idea to try and make everything more fair and even by implementing a new system. Doing so, they could've gone a few different ways - including some ways that would not have been in the employees best interests at all. What they've done however is something I'm extremely impressed with.
All new employees will be under the new system. Existing employees are given an offer to migrate in to the new system (for generally very similar or only slightly more pay than currently), however they can decline to do so and remain on their existing structure if they so choose. The new structure is based on "job families" and "job levels" whereby each job family describes (very generally) a type of work, and the job levels define the seniority/experience/complexity within that family. Each job level (regardless of family) has a specific pay scale associated with it and so while you can't know exactly what a co-worker is earning, you can know they are within a particular range.
Should an existing employee who did not choose to go in to the new structure change job in the future, they'll change in to the new structure when they do so (essentially like a new hire for that job; but of course taking their existing experience/skills/etc within the company in to account). Beyond this, the ability to discuss the position within the new structure is also not only allowed but also encouraged so that every employee feels they have been put in to the family and level that truly fits their work. The members of my team for example were all put in to a job family that I feel doesn't fit the real work that we do, so I've asked for a meeting with HR tomorrow to get them in to the job family that I feel fits better (technically the same "level" so no difference in pay; but better options for advancement in the future and just generally a better fit for the actual job). I don't foresee it being a big problem for this change (but who knows, maybe I'll reply to this post tomorrow with an angry rant... let's see!)
So overall, I'm pretty happy with the way HR has handled this process and applaud them for doing it in a way that no employee is going to feel short changed or in a worse situation because of it.
And some multinationals continued those business relationships between 1939 and 1945, or nominally severed the relationship with their subsidiaries in those countries and then collected the profits after the war.
And just think, without WW2, Fanta would never have been developed! What kind of a world would that be?
Just so long as testing takes into account the fact the the end user will probably have a much lower spec machine/screen/connection (& won't have root/admin access). It might work great on a developers machine, but be a steaming dogpile for the intended user!
Absolutely... but that's what QE/QA phases are for. Our testing guys are pretty good at finding all those kinds of performance/environment/rights issues especially - but especially over the last few years, I'm happy to say my team is pretty good at not producing them to begin with as well though.
This is something that is all too commonly ignored. When you're talking about the cost of equipment, it's worth keeping in mind whom it's for and what the relative value is. Abstracting the parent's statement a bit, if a dev is getting paid $x per week; the new equipment costs $x; and it will increase their productivity by more than the equivalent of one week over the lifetime of the equipment, it makes no sense NOT to buy it.
All the devs in my group have the highest quality equipment I could get them for exactly this reason - they type faster and more comfortably on good keyboards; they can see more at once on large high-resolution displays; and they don't have to wait for the computer to swap stuff in and out all the time by having a nice high amount of RAM. The equipment wasn't cheap, but when compared to the productivity gains by having it vs not having it, it was more financially sensible to have it (as well as the added benefit of not having devs that hate their work equipment; making for a happier, nicer workplace overall)
I don't know the US details, but in general, all of the items you mentioned are very good here in Germany... I would be interested to hear how the US compares.
How about citizenship for the descendants of immigrants?
I'm a dual national of New Zealand and Australia living in Germany. My wife is German. Our daughter holds all three nationalities and none of the countries takes issue with that.
From what I understand, if my wife were not German either, I or her would have to have been here eight years or hold permanent residence (i.e. actually have immigrated rather than being a 'long term visitor') in order for our child to get German citizenship at birth. If neither is the case, the child is not German at birth, however can choose to apply for citizenship once they meet the same requirements as anyone else (generally just living here for long enough; so if the parents do end up being permanent residents or of course apply for citizenship themselves, the child will likely become German)
Equal protection: if my skin color is different from the majority population's and someone harasses you, do the police bother to prosecute? How about if I'm gay? (Again, the US has spotty quality here, but name a country that does better.) What happens when I apply for a job, try to rent an apartment, etc?
Here in Germany, there is some level of racism by a minority against Turkish people and occasionally Arabic people; however it's generally not very bad (not as bad as for example, what I saw against pretty much any "non-perfectly-white foreigner" in Australia). The law states equal protection and rights for all and there are official channels/procedures in place that can be followed if you believe you have been unfairly discriminated against. These do get used from time to time and the penalties are harsh. Police are very thorough about making sure they do not discriminate as the punishments for them are extremely harsh if they are found guilty of doing so.
I've never seen anyone have a problem with jobs or apartments other than when they don't speak the language, and that's more of a practical matter than a discriminatory one (if the job requires German, you can't really do it... and if your landlord doesn't speak the same language as you, it's a bit hard to both sign a rental agreement or conduct general affairs with them (not impossible; but it's probably easier to find a landlord that does have a common language with you))
There is extremely little to no discrimination against people based on sexual preference or activity as far as I've seen (even in a fairly 'reserved' pub I used to go to, there was a fairly flamboyant gay man that used to hang out there as well and no-one took issue with it at all (except when he got very drunk and a little 'hands-on'; but then it was more or less just telling him sternly that his advances were not welcome - really no different to the same behaviour by straight people)).
Religious freedom: can I convert to Islam? How about Scientology? Can I promote my religion in public? Or what if I'm an atheist and don't want to pay a tithe to the local church/mosque/temple?
Germany does have an archaic and stupid system of paying a church tax. However if you declare yourself to be an atheist (or a religion other than the ones they've got processes in place for) there is no church tax due. I am an atheist and pay nothing to any religious group.
You are free to 'officially' convert to any religion you wish that is formally recognised as a religion. Even in such cases that your religion is not formally recognised, you are welcome to practice your beliefs at home; you just can't be officially recognised as that religion by the state (and why should you care unless you religion dictates that you do something otherwise illegal?).
Rights of the accused: how long can I be held without charges? What access do I have to evidence against
She did get an interview but the cards were already on the table. Needless to say she didnt get the job - The moral of that one - have a sensible email address when you are applying for jobs ! If you have an "interesting" home life , keep it seperate from your work life.
Why on earth was it a problem for you/others doing the hiring? You said you were hiring her as a developer... if it was for a web developer job, I would've been more interested in the code of the website rather than the content.
If a potential hire for my team has a personal site about drugs, kinky sex, fascination with fecal matter, or any other 'out of the ordinary' behaviour, it doesn't bother me in the slightest as long as it doesn't affect their work (e.g. a blog that talks about how they like to get stoned before going to work; or how they love shit so much, they smear it on their bodies under their clothes while at work (would be very distracting/disgusting for others they come in to contact with in the workplace and therefore make them worse at their job); etc). When I'm hiring, what's important is "Will they be able to do the job I need them to do better than the other potential candidates?", if yes, I hire them.
Personally, my only concern with the situation that you describe would be that other people might get less work done around her if they're busy fantasising all the time after they find out. But that wouldn't be HER problem, it would be THEIRS.
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What an interesting problem! Perhaps somebody should tell the anthropologists about it? Maybe they can come up with some sort of taxonomy, i propose a division of Really Smart Man to distinguish us from the Little Thinking Man that came before us.
Sarcasm noted... but really, I personally would call all members of the genus Homo "Humans" - right back to Homo Habilis or earlier if we identify an earlier member. Other's might only consider Homo Sapiens to be "Humans" or some might limit it further to only Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
It's not a question for anthropologists, as it's a matter of definition only - anthropologists really don't care if you call Homo Habilis "human" or not - they've got their useful definitions (of which "human" isn't one).
Life has a mortality rate of 100%
Of all humans who have ever lived, only 93% have died.
Do you happen to have stats for that?
I once read a statement that was quite obviously false, "There are more people alive today than have ever died" (implying <50% have died). I then saw a reply from somebody who disproved this quite simply, but at no point did they reach any kind of figure for the actual percentage.
I guess the biggest problem in reaching a number is at what point you start calling our ancestors "human" vs "pre-human".
I think it was probably always like that, it's just that people didn't gripe about it.
Personally, I was born during the last bit of the Carter administration in 1980, and it irritates me to be retroactively moved to a generation that has little in common with me. I may be marginally Gen-X, but none of my friends had cell phones in high school, a few of them had beepers. And most of the kids I went to class with didn't have the internet at home.
Not that I have anything against Gen-Y or the millenials, but realistically, I was born when all 5 Beatles were still alive and there was some question that I might require a smallpox vaccination.
I was born in August of '79, so I'm just a little older than you. When I was in high school, about 25% of the kids had cellphones. Internet at home was rare since I'm from a small city in the arse end of New Zealand, but almost everyone had computers and modems to call the local BBSs. Internet access did start becoming more popular with the masses towards the end of my high-school years though. My own first internet connection was a shell account through a uni in another town from around '91 if I recall correctly. The BBSs were however more interesting to me, as most had Fidonet feeds and there was more of immediate relevance easily available to me.
I'd never really heard the terms "Gen-X" and "Gen-Y" until much later in to twenties. I've never really been sure where I'm supposed to fit; but for the most part, I think it's probably something that can only truly be applied to particular cultural areas. Maybe now that the world is more connected and it's easier for culture to spread around, the cultural areas we apply these terms to may expand; but for "Gen-X" and earlier especially, it seems to me that it applies differently in different places.
That's a great point and something I don't think a lot of Europeans appreciate, the geographical size and income variance across the US. Using a cost of living calculator, living in NYC is 2x the price of living where I am now. Not 10% more, or even 50% -- it costs TWICE as much.
Absolutely... however it's worth noting that this kind of discrepancy also exists in Europe and even within a single country such as Germany. The cost of living in Munich is at least 1.5x the cost of living here in Hannover, which itself isn't the cheapest place to live. I can easily imagine a 2x increase between locations.
It is worth factoring in certain other things though. I've visited the US on several occasions, although sadly never had a chance to spend a longer time there. From what I saw though, if I lived (and worked) in Manhattan, I probably wouldn't want/need a car; whereas if I lived in Los Angeles, I wouldn't want to be without it. That makes a significant different from a cost of living perspective as well - even if my apartment costs a lot more in Manhattan, not having the running costs of a car MIGHT make up for that.
Same thing goes here in Germany. Here in Hannover, a car is 'nice to have' but not totally required. If I lived in Burgdorf, I'd HAVE to have a car. If I lived (and worked) in Berlin, I probably wouldn't have the desire to have one at all.
The other thing I've wondered is, what is our cost relative income? We may pay more, but we make more -- but do we normalize based on per capita income?
Those kinds of things are very difficult to judge, because you're only looking at the comparative cost of one metric.
I live and work in Hannover, Germany. According to various "how much should I earn" websites, my income (as a senior software developer) is in direct exchange rates similar to the average income for a senior software developer in the US. The US is a big country with quite a lot of variance, so I suspect the average for a software developer in New York City or San Francisco is probably somewhat higher than the national average, whereas a developer in a smaller lesser known city probably is a little below the national average.
My internet is significantly cheaper than most of the US. My standard groceries are similar to small town USA. My power and petrol are significantly more expensive than almost everywhere in the US. My apartment rent is similar in price to most metro areas of the US excluding the outlier "expensive" and "cheap" places. Were I to buy/rent a house however, it would be significantly higher than most places in the US.
Per capita income in also not a good normalisation in many cases. Some countries have quite a flat distribution where the "rich" vs the "poor" is much closer; whereas others have huge discrepancies. When talking about internet speed/quality/cost and trying to judge the real picture, this is important as in countries with a flatter distribution will have a much higher percentage of people that can easily afford it than those with a wider range of incomes.
That bugs you? I routinely reject code check-ins that don't have every member, param, and return type documented. All public members must also include a sample code block as well in the documentation flower box above the method signature.
70% documentation is around the sweet spot for my developers and it will remain that way as long as I run the group.
While 70% sounds a little on the high side to me, I can accept that and generally agree. The problem is when the code comments don't actually document/explain anything, as in my example. A comment that literally says, "increments i" for the line i++; brings no value whatsoever and only serves to get in the way of me reading and trying to understand it. If it said something like, "increment the counter" I'd be much happier (although I'd still probably consider it excessive if it was a blatantly obvious counter in a loop or so)
there are some who write gobs of horrid code with sparse comments like // here be dragons.
What really gets to me is when I deal with code that is 70% comments, but it's all along the lines of:
IncrementAndCheckI() {
i++;
if(i==x) {
CallOtherFunc(i);
}
}
What's most disturbing is that I see this really quite regularly. Damn near every line is commented, and yet none of it tells me ANYTHING useful about what the code is supposed to be doing or why.
I see this FAR more often from university educated programmers than I do from self-taught hackers.
I used to live in Chicago, which has a much better public transportation system. There, I was able to get up at 5:30 in the morning and make it to work on time via a 10 minute walk, a 50 minute bus ride, a 45 minute train ride and another 10 minute walk. Or I could drive, in which case, it was a 40 minute drive and a 10 minute walk.
That really is still shockingly bad. Public transport should not take twice as long to get to your destination as driving, and if that's considered "much better" than another location, it's a clear sign of why so many people in those places are against using it.
Here in Hannover, Germany, I can drive to work in about 35 to 45 minutes depending on traffic and the lights. Via public transport, it takes around 45 minutes consistently. Admittedly, I still almost always drive, since I carry a heavy bag to and from work each day and really don't like the idea of lugging it around any more than I have to.
Like anything else, you can just buy it over the internet:
http://www.millipore.com/catalogue/item/554726-25MG?cid=bios-C-epdf-1032-1302-RC
Rather expensive for a useful dose though... To quote from that page (emphasis mine):
A 7-day administration of SR9009 ( 100 mg/kg , i.p., b.i.d.) causes a significant weight and fat loss in C57BL6 mice with concomitant reduction in plasma glucose and free fatty acid levels, and alters circadian pattern.
So, 100mg/kg at $149 per 25mg, comes to $596 per kg; or around $350000 for a typical person taking a one week course...
Obviously, after the research is done, if it's a marketable product, they'll sell it significantly cheaper than this; but at these prices, there's no realistic way for any normal person to buy it in quantities that will have a useful/noticeable effect on them (which is also probably deliberate since they make quite a point of stating it's not intended for use in people).
Sure, but there are plenty of professional athletes that compete without the help of drugs.
Unless you count water, sugar, protein and other "normal food" substances. These things all give a competitive edge to athletes over those people who choose to abstain from them... really, what's the difference?
Umm... I'd prefer a home testing set that allows me to do it when I want it and report directly to my doc by going there.
Now explain again the need for a networked toilet.
Honestly, I wouldn't. I'd prefer something inbetween the two ideas... one that notifies me automatically when something is detected and asks if it should be reported to my doctor.
Doing it manually is something that I just wouldn't do through a combination of laziness and forgetfulness. I'd most likely miss out on finding a disease in the early stages before it's symptomatic and is still easily treatable. One day, I'm going to die of something; but if it's something that "if caught earlier, would have been treatable" (as with very many things), I'm going to be pissed off that I didn't know until it was too late.
Traditionally (at least in the west), a wedding ring was meant to cost one month's wages.
A car typically costs around 6 month's wages (or more)
A house used to be 3 years' salary (though with mortgage bubbles, it's common for a mortgage to be anything up to 10x salary)
Interesting, I hadn't seen or heard of these figures before, but a quick Google search reveals you're right in many Western cultures.
From the looks of it, I underpaid for wedding ring (about 0.5 months salary); slightly overpaid for car (around 7 months salary); and don't own a house.
Yes, but are you a cunning linguist?
My wife seems to think so ;)
Having linguistics as a hobby tends to lend itself to using that joke rather often...
So the claimed "experts" have no idea if the meaning of the languages were changed with such subleties by gestures? You can't know a thing is so without having experienced the thing.
You can't know anything at all, but you get in to the realm of pointless philosophical mental masturbation if you don't start accepting some things as being fundamentally true.
Also, as someone that has experienced psychedelic substances (quite a lot), it's also probably worth mentioning that just because your senses tell you something, that doesn't necessarily make it any more real than what reasoning can deduce.
How can one claim expertise in a subject one has never experienced?
Through the process of studying it from afar. According to the summary she is apparently an "expert in the terrains of Venus, Mars, and Titan". She probably knows a LOT about geology, atmospheric physics, chemistry, and other fields related to planetary terrains; and then learned domain specific things about what we can infer from those bodies from what we've been able to see. Going there would probably help a great deal in cementing or altering some beliefs, but it's not necessary for being an expert on the subject.
It's really no different to someone being an "expert on historical linguistics" (a hobby of mine, but I don't claim to be an expert personally). While no-one can claim to know with 100% certainty the history of any language without having used a time machine to examine the subtle changes to it throughout time, we can make some pretty good assumptions that are highly likely to approximate the reality very closely.
NASA is almost completely irrelevant in the modern world.
While I agree that they're becoming significantly less relevant for their 'traditional' activities (which are probably better left to the fledgling private industry) as a pure science organisation, I think they still have plenty left to offer.
There's bugger all that NASA has done with it's massive budgets.
The problem is that they don't have massive budgets. They've got tiny budgets for what we expect of them, and especially in the context of budgets that are thrown at far less valuable endeavours.
You are correct. The Department of Labor specifies what an "Exempt" employee is, and 95% of people who are categorized as exempt by their employer do not fall under the classification of exempt as defined by the Department of labor.
It's probably also worth mentioning though that not being in the US, any classifications the US Department of Labor may or may not make isn't exactly relevant to me.
Different countries have different laws; but in the majority that I know of, most salaried employees still have a concept of overtime and will get either additional pay or time in lieu for their work over and above their standard working hours.
>If you're under the impression that a 15 kWh battery that can deliver 100+ kW of power is fit only to be junked, then you couldn't spell clue if you fronted the C and L.
When your range goes from 80 miles to 55 miles per charge, yet your still trying to commute 60 miles to work. then the value of the 15kWhr battery is not much to you any more. If a gasoline mpg goes from 40 to 30 over 20 years, and you have to fill up every week instead of once every week and a half, it still has value (even if the cost of gas went up considerably during the time, it is still functional at least.)
I would simply submit that if your commute is 60 miles, you perhaps shouldn't buy this vehicle... If your commute is however a more common ten to twenty miles each way (twenty to forty miles total), the car will be quite fine for the job even after that rather drastic loss in miles per charge.
Just like every other salaried employee who doesn't make any more money when it's crunch time and you have to pull 10-12 hour days to get shit done. It's called a job description, and being paid for the job (get plane from A to B) instead of the time (you were in airports/planes from 9 AM to 8 PM.)
Actually not all salaried employees have to do overtime with no additional compensation.
I'm a salaried employee with a fixed number of working hours per week.
If I work overtime as a matter of normal business (which I generally almost always do), I can take it off later in lieu - generally I get about one to two weeks extra holiday per year by doing this.
If I am asked to work overtime by management, I can choose to either take it off later in lieu or ask for additional paid compensation, which is determined by dividing my salary by the "standard" number of work hours in the year (and a specific multiplier if it's "night", "weekend" or "public holiday").
I'm with AC, what happened with HR? I think everyone would like to hear a story where HR benefited the employees and not themselves.
In the company I work for, our HR recently started an initiative to make salary scales and schemes more transparent and fair. We're a very large organisation that has evolved from one very large merger around a decade ago and very many acquisitions both before and since then.
Because of this growth, we've generally had a lot of people with different pay schemes and structures in place, sometimes even with vastly different incomes and benefits for the exact same jobs.
This prompted the idea to try and make everything more fair and even by implementing a new system. Doing so, they could've gone a few different ways - including some ways that would not have been in the employees best interests at all. What they've done however is something I'm extremely impressed with.
All new employees will be under the new system. Existing employees are given an offer to migrate in to the new system (for generally very similar or only slightly more pay than currently), however they can decline to do so and remain on their existing structure if they so choose. The new structure is based on "job families" and "job levels" whereby each job family describes (very generally) a type of work, and the job levels define the seniority/experience/complexity within that family. Each job level (regardless of family) has a specific pay scale associated with it and so while you can't know exactly what a co-worker is earning, you can know they are within a particular range.
Should an existing employee who did not choose to go in to the new structure change job in the future, they'll change in to the new structure when they do so (essentially like a new hire for that job; but of course taking their existing experience/skills/etc within the company in to account). Beyond this, the ability to discuss the position within the new structure is also not only allowed but also encouraged so that every employee feels they have been put in to the family and level that truly fits their work. The members of my team for example were all put in to a job family that I feel doesn't fit the real work that we do, so I've asked for a meeting with HR tomorrow to get them in to the job family that I feel fits better (technically the same "level" so no difference in pay; but better options for advancement in the future and just generally a better fit for the actual job). I don't foresee it being a big problem for this change (but who knows, maybe I'll reply to this post tomorrow with an angry rant... let's see!)
So overall, I'm pretty happy with the way HR has handled this process and applaud them for doing it in a way that no employee is going to feel short changed or in a worse situation because of it.
And some multinationals continued those business relationships between 1939 and 1945, or nominally severed the relationship with their subsidiaries in those countries and then collected the profits after the war.
And just think, without WW2, Fanta would never have been developed! What kind of a world would that be?
Just so long as testing takes into account the fact the the end user will probably have a much lower spec machine/screen/connection (& won't have root/admin access). It might work great on a developers machine, but be a steaming dogpile for the intended user!
Absolutely... but that's what QE/QA phases are for. Our testing guys are pretty good at finding all those kinds of performance/environment/rights issues especially - but especially over the last few years, I'm happy to say my team is pretty good at not producing them to begin with as well though.
Mod parent informative.
This is something that is all too commonly ignored. When you're talking about the cost of equipment, it's worth keeping in mind whom it's for and what the relative value is. Abstracting the parent's statement a bit, if a dev is getting paid $x per week; the new equipment costs $x; and it will increase their productivity by more than the equivalent of one week over the lifetime of the equipment, it makes no sense NOT to buy it.
All the devs in my group have the highest quality equipment I could get them for exactly this reason - they type faster and more comfortably on good keyboards; they can see more at once on large high-resolution displays; and they don't have to wait for the computer to swap stuff in and out all the time by having a nice high amount of RAM. The equipment wasn't cheap, but when compared to the productivity gains by having it vs not having it, it was more financially sensible to have it (as well as the added benefit of not having devs that hate their work equipment; making for a happier, nicer workplace overall)
I don't know the US details, but in general, all of the items you mentioned are very good here in Germany... I would be interested to hear how the US compares.
How about citizenship for the descendants of immigrants?
I'm a dual national of New Zealand and Australia living in Germany. My wife is German. Our daughter holds all three nationalities and none of the countries takes issue with that.
From what I understand, if my wife were not German either, I or her would have to have been here eight years or hold permanent residence (i.e. actually have immigrated rather than being a 'long term visitor') in order for our child to get German citizenship at birth. If neither is the case, the child is not German at birth, however can choose to apply for citizenship once they meet the same requirements as anyone else (generally just living here for long enough; so if the parents do end up being permanent residents or of course apply for citizenship themselves, the child will likely become German)
Equal protection: if my skin color is different from the majority population's and someone harasses you, do the police bother to prosecute? How about if I'm gay? (Again, the US has spotty quality here, but name a country that does better.) What happens when I apply for a job, try to rent an apartment, etc?
Here in Germany, there is some level of racism by a minority against Turkish people and occasionally Arabic people; however it's generally not very bad (not as bad as for example, what I saw against pretty much any "non-perfectly-white foreigner" in Australia). The law states equal protection and rights for all and there are official channels/procedures in place that can be followed if you believe you have been unfairly discriminated against. These do get used from time to time and the penalties are harsh. Police are very thorough about making sure they do not discriminate as the punishments for them are extremely harsh if they are found guilty of doing so.
I've never seen anyone have a problem with jobs or apartments other than when they don't speak the language, and that's more of a practical matter than a discriminatory one (if the job requires German, you can't really do it... and if your landlord doesn't speak the same language as you, it's a bit hard to both sign a rental agreement or conduct general affairs with them (not impossible; but it's probably easier to find a landlord that does have a common language with you))
There is extremely little to no discrimination against people based on sexual preference or activity as far as I've seen (even in a fairly 'reserved' pub I used to go to, there was a fairly flamboyant gay man that used to hang out there as well and no-one took issue with it at all (except when he got very drunk and a little 'hands-on'; but then it was more or less just telling him sternly that his advances were not welcome - really no different to the same behaviour by straight people)).
Religious freedom: can I convert to Islam? How about Scientology? Can I promote my religion in public? Or what if I'm an atheist and don't want to pay a tithe to the local church/mosque/temple?
Germany does have an archaic and stupid system of paying a church tax. However if you declare yourself to be an atheist (or a religion other than the ones they've got processes in place for) there is no church tax due. I am an atheist and pay nothing to any religious group.
You are free to 'officially' convert to any religion you wish that is formally recognised as a religion. Even in such cases that your religion is not formally recognised, you are welcome to practice your beliefs at home; you just can't be officially recognised as that religion by the state (and why should you care unless you religion dictates that you do something otherwise illegal?).
Rights of the accused: how long can I be held without charges? What access do I have to evidence against
She did get an interview but the cards were already on the table. Needless to say she didnt get the job - The moral of that one - have a sensible email address when you are applying for jobs ! If you have an "interesting" home life , keep it seperate from your work life.
Why on earth was it a problem for you/others doing the hiring? You said you were hiring her as a developer... if it was for a web developer job, I would've been more interested in the code of the website rather than the content.
If a potential hire for my team has a personal site about drugs, kinky sex, fascination with fecal matter, or any other 'out of the ordinary' behaviour, it doesn't bother me in the slightest as long as it doesn't affect their work (e.g. a blog that talks about how they like to get stoned before going to work; or how they love shit so much, they smear it on their bodies under their clothes while at work (would be very distracting/disgusting for others they come in to contact with in the workplace and therefore make them worse at their job); etc). When I'm hiring, what's important is "Will they be able to do the job I need them to do better than the other potential candidates?", if yes, I hire them.
Personally, my only concern with the situation that you describe would be that other people might get less work done around her if they're busy fantasising all the time after they find out. But that wouldn't be HER problem, it would be THEIRS.