Sadly, it pretty much is standard operating procedure anymore. I recall a quote about the justice system where somebody said that plea bargains aren't just a part of the justice system, they ARE the justice system. It isn't hard to see why that is. It takes time and money to schedule a judge, assemble a pool of potential jurors, select 12 from that pool to be on the jury, hold the trail to determine guilt, and then hold another court session for sentencing. The criminal justice system would quickly grind to a halt if every alleged criminal got a jury trial even if that is his/her constitutional right. I don't like the over-reliance on plea bargaining either, but that is the reality of what the criminal justice system has become.
Keep in mind these are 14 felony *charges*, not convictions. Prosecutors always go for the maximum they can charge so defendants can plea-bargain down to something more reasonable. Although a court date is set, it will probably be settled in a plea bargain and never go to a jury trial. Given how it's the kid's first offense and the lesser gravity of the "crimes" (altering grades is less serious than stealing money, copyright infringement, or NSA documents), the actual convictions will probably be plea bargained down to misdemeanors and the kid will probably be slapped with a hefty fine (which his parents will be on the hook for, as he is a minor), do some non-trivial community service time, and have restrictions placed on his internet access for a period of time (maybe 1-2 years). Worst case: the prosecutor is an overzealous asshole and wants to make an example of the kid. If so, the poor kid's life is seriously f**ked.
Which one? The guy's been married *five* times. If you're referring to Linda Hamilton, then yeah. Cameron (now 63), dumped wife #3 Kathryn Bigelow (now 66) for wife #4 Linda Hamilton (now 61) who was then dumped for wife #5 Suzy Amis (now 56).
James Cameron is certainly right in that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences certainly has treated the sci-fi genre poorly. Remember, in 2004 The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King massive Oscar sweep included Best Picture so if an epic fantasy movie can win then a sci-fi movie can too. So there's proof that, with the right story and high quality film, the Academy's prejudice against a genre can be overcome. I'm sure that in the near future a sci-fi movie will receive Best Picture.
As for James Cameron himself, I lost my respect for him a long time ago. His most popular sci-fi films are derivative of other works (Terminator 2 was a ripoff of Cyborg 2087 and Avatar was just repackaged Dances with Wolves). I think Cameron is trying to maintain relevance (he's been out of the limelight since 2009's Avatar) by getting some attention with his obvious virtue signalling about gender equality.
Yeah this isn't exactly a big surprise when you give the topic a few seconds of thought. To incentivize employee retention, companies often raise paid vacation time. My previous employer raised paid vacation time to 3 weeks after 5 years, 4 weeks after 12 years, and 5 weeks after 18 years. During that time, pay increased at about 3% annually. So more senior employees get higher wages and increased paid vacation time. No big surprise there.
The problem for employees is that "paid vacation" is really something of a fraud. It's baked into your salary and you're just claiming the amount you're due when you request time off. Don't believe me? Try asking your boss for unpaid time off and see how far you'll get. "Paid vacation" is really just another shackle employers use to keep you on the job. But if workers can have an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) that's independent of employers, why couldn't they also have a vacation account that's also independent? I've been a dividend investor for nearly 10 years and my dividend income could, in theory, buy my vacation time (I say "in theory" because in practice, my employer limited vacation time to one's allotted paid vacation time. No unpaid vacation time!). When limited to 4 weeks' paid vacation and capable of buying 8 weeks of time, I began to see "paid vacation" for the bullshit it truly is. If paid vacations were eliminated, employees could invest money into their own vacation fund and have true paid vacations. The only flaw I see with this idea is that younger workers would only afford very very little vacation time and older workers would have a boatload of accrued vacation time.
I don't have a FB account and get along just fine without it. However, I do see the value in having a social networking platform for friends and family. Since I already pay for hosting of a couple sites already, I'm thinking of rolling my own little social network site. It wouldn't cost me anything except for a domain name and the software is free (Open Source Social Network or BuddyPress).
Dropping Facebook because you've *finally* clued in to their business model and it bothers you, or being just another grandstander whose virtue signalling his moral indignation with Facebook. Either way, you've just shot yourself in the foot. As the old saying goes: it's better to remain silent and have others think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
IPOs are tightly regulated by the SEC for many years. ICOs are scarcely regulated and are the current "hot thing" for speculators. Is anybody truly surprised by this? Of course ICOs will bring out scammers who prey on people hungry for "the next Bitcoin." This is to be as expected as flies drawn to a steaming pile of dung.
I suspect the respondents were just being smart asses with their Alexa and Siri answers. As for me, about the only women tech leaders that immediately come to my mind are Sheryl Sandberg (mainly because of her Lean In book, as prior to that I heard very little of her), Meg Whitman (former eBay CEO), Carly Fiorina (formerly of HP), and Marissa Mayer (formerly of Yahoo).
There's many more women tech/business leaders that, by accident or by design, just don't get the limelight. A few that immediately come to mind:
Glynne Shotwell (SpaceX)
Ginny Rometty (IBM)
Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) Note: Given that she was accused of defrauding investors Holmes isn't exactly a good example, but for a brief time she was quite the media darling.
I'm sure there's many others, but those are the only ones that I can immediately think of.
I'm not sure why some women tech leaders don't get much media attention. I suspect one reason is the political bias of journalists, who want to push the idea of the tech industry being a "good ol' boys club" and women tech executives run counter to that narrative so the general public is unaware of the progress that women have made (and more progress certainly needs to be made, but it won't happen overnight as much as feminists want it to).
Early retirement. The FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement is a very tiny but growing portion of the jobless, People in their 20s, after just a few years of working and observing their seniors, realize just what the next 40+ years gets them. Between laughably little vacation time, wage stagnation, corporate bullshit, and the whole time (which is irreplaceable) for money thing it's no wonder more and more people want to get off the hamster wheel.
Once I started earning non-trivial passive income a few years ago, my perspective on jobs would never be the same again. I'm a long ways from achieving FI, but simply being on the path of FI has put me on a much stronger financial footing and has given me many more options. And having options is real power.
When Vista initially came out it was rife with performance issues and other flaws that were astonishingly bad and it was clear that it had been released prematurely. So I can understand the initial hate. But after SP1, its initial problems were corrected and SP2 made further fixes and minor improvements. I used Vista as my main PC's OS for nearly 8 years and I was quite satisfied with its performance and capability. So why the continued Vista hate so long after SP1?
Face swapping in porn vids is a cute trick, but it doesn't take a genius to see the implications of this technology, especially when combined with synthetic voice technology being able to accurately impersonate anybody's voice with just a 1 minute sample. If you thought Photoshop fakery for political gain was bad (for example, the darkened pic of OJ on the cover of Time or the fake John Kerry/Jane Fonda pic from the 2004 election), we're now on the verge of a new era of video fakery for spreading lies, disinformation, and smear campaigns. It used to be said that "pictures never lie" but Photoshop put an end to that (yes, I know photo manipulation has been practiced for decades in the analog age, but it was generally beyond the capability of the average person). With video, the best one could do was to use clever editing to discredit somebody (as happened to Shirley Sherrod). Not anymore. Now anybody can make a scandalous video. If these deepfakes can be done by one person with a desktop PC, what can an organization with deep pockets accomplish?
I doubt video face swapping will do any more "harm and hurt" (oh I'm sure the celeb women who have been deepfaked are in pain and agony right now...) than the years of being photoshop face swapped.
How your comment got modded to "Insightful" is beyond me. The sheer financial ignorance you display is breathtaking. As an investor/shareholder, my goal is to have my money work for me in the form of assets that produce passive income as well as grow in value. It's a safe bet that your grandparents' investments are helping to finance their retirement and your parents are investing to help support their future retirement. Instead of spewing tired old communist garbage, educate yourself about personal finance and how business works.
The famous statement "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (incorrectly attributed to Voltaire) has always been the best summary of the principle and right of free speech. Given the sad state of civics education in the past three decades, we're seeing the result of this failure to learn this basic idea. When we put "feels" above principle, we get garbage like NEMESIS that ignores the far left crackpots and singles out the far right crackpots. People really need to listen to their elders' take on free speech and democracy and not be a sucker.
I've always wondered why people always get their undies in a twist and hyperventilate over Hitler and Nazi Germany but are indifferent to Imperial Japan, Stalin's Soviet Russia, Mao's Red China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and other horrible tyrants and noxious ideologies. Are people so conditioned to automatically respond to anything Nazi related? Hitler may be the worst of the bunch, but Stalin and Mao were the 20th century's top contenders for "Worst Tyranny Ever." What
I haven't switched because I've stuck with Firefox as my main browser. Sure, I have installs of Edge, Chrome, and Vivaldi on my main PC but Firefox is where I do most of my web surfing.
I have really looked forward to the release of Firefox 57, and took it for a spin once the portable version came out. I am VERY impressed. It launches faster, uses 90% less memory than Firefox 56, and the UI changes are no big deal. Overall, I'm very pleased with 57 and once NoScript supports 57 I'll upgrade 56 and be completely on board with 57. Thanks Mozilla! I know Quantum was a herculean project (developing an all new browser engine from the ground up is no trivial endeavor), but the results are clearly worth it.
Yes, in the near-term the transition to Web Extensions will have its difficulties and some extensions will fail to make the transition. But does anybody expect XUL and Gecko to be supported forever? Gecko has been around since Netscape 6's release in November 2000! It's OLD and Firefox's performance severely lagged behind newer browsers. If it was to remain relevant and reverse its decline in market share, Mozilla had to kill Gecko/XUL and develop a better engine and extensions framework.
To the critics: Hey, I get it. Change can be a scary thing. Fortunately, nobody is forcing you to use 57 and options abound. Go ahead and use other Firefox derivative browsers (Pale Moon, Water Fox, etc.) or whatever other browser that floats your boat (Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Brave, etc.). Hell, if you're feeling particularly nostalgic for the "good old days," then go with SeaMonkey and surf the web like it's 2001 all over again.
As for me, I considered switching from Firefox, as its performance became increasingly worse (1200 MB of RAM just after initial launch! WTF?). But version 57 represents a new dawn for Firefox and I couldn't be more happy about this upgrade.
I didn't wise up about work until I reached my early 40s, so I am a bit of late bloomer. Until then I previously held a series of post-college crap jobs until I landed my first (and only) "real job" when I was 33. For the first few years I was enthusiastic and truly enjoyed the work. But enthusiasm slowly turned to ambivalence which then became disillusionment and finally active disengagement. I became the living embodiment of Wally, Dilbert's slacker co-worker, as I no longer gave a shit about the company and the job. Ultimately, I got laid off along with several others in my department and now I'm enjoying a phat severance package as well as making some money from my dividend investment portfolio.
My point is this: Don't work for the sake of working. You can always make more money but you can't make more time. Early retirement should be your overarching goal. It can be done, as many people have proven it. Just research FIRE (Financially Independent Retired Early) and your eyes will be opened to what's possible. When you no longer *need* to work and are in a position to do the work you *want* to do, the world becomes a lot more brighter.
Being a Gen-X'er, I bought into the life-script of go to college, get good grades, get a "real job" with good pay and benefits, work for 30+ years, and retire with a big nest egg. What they (society) doesn't tell you is that while the old rules worked fine for Joe and Jane Average 30-40 years ago, they don't work so well now. The ROI of an expensive college education is becoming increasingly questionable, given the current environment of wage stagnation, globalization, and automation technology.
Speaking for myself, despite the Great Recession and mediocre wages (the best I ever get is 3% annual raises), I have been moderately prosperous for the past 15 years. I haven't let "lifestyle inflation" cut into my savings rate, and I run a tight ship financially as I have no credit card debt and my only debt is a 30-year mortgage. In addition to my day job income, I average $700 per month from my dividend investing portfolio which is currently yielding approximately 10% annually. It has taken me 8 years of steady investing to get here, and I'm almost at the point where my dividend income can pay for my minimum monthly mortgage payment (should I so choose). Making money without trading one's time is a truly wonderful thing.
As for "side hustles" or moonlighting, I think it has become a necessary tool in overcoming wage stagnation. While I don't have a side-hustle, I am considering doing side work as a freelance writer to cultivate a third source of income and to have greater opportunities than what my day job can provide.
If you really want your eyes opened about how the game is played and how to use a different playbook to get ahead, then read the following books:
* Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
* The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
* The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
I agree that the workers should do more than just take it up the ass with a smile and a "Thank yuh massa!" By holding their severance package hostage, management has workers by the balls. Collective action would be the best way to send a clear message to management, but unfortunately, organizing people is damn tough, especially when livelihoods are on the line. IT workers are pretty much on their own. Government won't help. There's no union to help. In short, stop waiting for somebody to rescue you.
But here's some food for thought: What if people had a second or third source of income? Even if those alternate sources of income were much smaller than their day job's income, the balance of power would certainly change. I think it's imperative that workers cultivate alternate sources of income AKA side hustles.
Over the past 8 years I've been doing dividend investing and putting my money to work for me. Now I make an average of $700 every month for doing nothing (passive income FTW!!). This isn't enough to enable my financial independence, but it is enough to give me more options in life. Ultimately, having F*** You money should be any worker's long term goal.
Wow. You really came into this prepared. How long did it take you to research all this since the article appeared on Slashdot? Did you have some help tovarisch?
This is about Russia's current bad behavior, not the sins of the US. Nice try.
The bottom line is that Crimea is a semi-autonomous territory that is part of Ukraine and has been since it was legally given to Ukraine in 1954. Russia's annexation of Crimea has absolutely NO legal basis at all. The referendum was a farce, and everybody knows it.
Crimea is heavily dependent on Ukrainian tourism and resources (water and electricity being the most important). Kiev should take maximum advantage of that and exert massive economic pressure on the Crimean peninsula. Ban all Ukrainian tourism and strangle business transactions with red tape. Raise the price of electricity and water to the sky (and if necessary, phase out water and electricity completely. Let Russia pay for building new infrastructure to its new prize.)
With Crimea an economic drain and in combination with Western sanctions, Russia's economy will suffer as it hasn't suffered since the 90's. I'm sure the Russian public will appreciate this....
If Russia still refuses to surrender Crimea, then Ukraine should escalate to the next level and implement low-level guerrilla warfare. Ukraine has a proud history of partisan warfare. Operating in Crimea, a few dozen sniper teams and a few hundred special forces would send dozens of young Russian soldiers back to the motherland in zinc boxes every day. Unless Russia wants Crimea to turn into another prolonged conflict like Chechnya, Putin would be wise to let Crimea go and worry about the damage to the Russian economy and its relations with the world.
Because, financially, China has the West (especially the US) by the balls and everybody knows it. "If you're unhappy about our alleged cyberespionage, then you'll be even more unhappy when we buy fewer bonds or make fewer investments in your country."
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, it pretty much is standard operating procedure anymore. I recall a quote about the justice system where somebody said that plea bargains aren't just a part of the justice system, they ARE the justice system. It isn't hard to see why that is. It takes time and money to schedule a judge, assemble a pool of potential jurors, select 12 from that pool to be on the jury, hold the trail to determine guilt, and then hold another court session for sentencing. The criminal justice system would quickly grind to a halt if every alleged criminal got a jury trial even if that is his/her constitutional right. I don't like the over-reliance on plea bargaining either, but that is the reality of what the criminal justice system has become.
Keep in mind these are 14 felony *charges*, not convictions. Prosecutors always go for the maximum they can charge so defendants can plea-bargain down to something more reasonable. Although a court date is set, it will probably be settled in a plea bargain and never go to a jury trial. Given how it's the kid's first offense and the lesser gravity of the "crimes" (altering grades is less serious than stealing money, copyright infringement, or NSA documents), the actual convictions will probably be plea bargained down to misdemeanors and the kid will probably be slapped with a hefty fine (which his parents will be on the hook for, as he is a minor), do some non-trivial community service time, and have restrictions placed on his internet access for a period of time (maybe 1-2 years). Worst case: the prosecutor is an overzealous asshole and wants to make an example of the kid. If so, the poor kid's life is seriously f**ked.
Which one? The guy's been married *five* times. If you're referring to Linda Hamilton, then yeah. Cameron (now 63), dumped wife #3 Kathryn Bigelow (now 66) for wife #4 Linda Hamilton (now 61) who was then dumped for wife #5 Suzy Amis (now 56).
James Cameron is certainly right in that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences certainly has treated the sci-fi genre poorly. Remember, in 2004 The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King massive Oscar sweep included Best Picture so if an epic fantasy movie can win then a sci-fi movie can too. So there's proof that, with the right story and high quality film, the Academy's prejudice against a genre can be overcome. I'm sure that in the near future a sci-fi movie will receive Best Picture.
As for James Cameron himself, I lost my respect for him a long time ago. His most popular sci-fi films are derivative of other works (Terminator 2 was a ripoff of Cyborg 2087 and Avatar was just repackaged Dances with Wolves). I think Cameron is trying to maintain relevance (he's been out of the limelight since 2009's Avatar) by getting some attention with his obvious virtue signalling about gender equality.
Yeah this isn't exactly a big surprise when you give the topic a few seconds of thought. To incentivize employee retention, companies often raise paid vacation time. My previous employer raised paid vacation time to 3 weeks after 5 years, 4 weeks after 12 years, and 5 weeks after 18 years. During that time, pay increased at about 3% annually. So more senior employees get higher wages and increased paid vacation time. No big surprise there.
The problem for employees is that "paid vacation" is really something of a fraud. It's baked into your salary and you're just claiming the amount you're due when you request time off. Don't believe me? Try asking your boss for unpaid time off and see how far you'll get. "Paid vacation" is really just another shackle employers use to keep you on the job. But if workers can have an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) that's independent of employers, why couldn't they also have a vacation account that's also independent? I've been a dividend investor for nearly 10 years and my dividend income could, in theory, buy my vacation time (I say "in theory" because in practice, my employer limited vacation time to one's allotted paid vacation time. No unpaid vacation time!). When limited to 4 weeks' paid vacation and capable of buying 8 weeks of time, I began to see "paid vacation" for the bullshit it truly is. If paid vacations were eliminated, employees could invest money into their own vacation fund and have true paid vacations. The only flaw I see with this idea is that younger workers would only afford very very little vacation time and older workers would have a boatload of accrued vacation time.
I don't have a FB account and get along just fine without it. However, I do see the value in having a social networking platform for friends and family. Since I already pay for hosting of a couple sites already, I'm thinking of rolling my own little social network site. It wouldn't cost me anything except for a domain name and the software is free (Open Source Social Network or BuddyPress).
Dropping Facebook because you've *finally* clued in to their business model and it bothers you, or being just another grandstander whose virtue signalling his moral indignation with Facebook. Either way, you've just shot yourself in the foot. As the old saying goes: it's better to remain silent and have others think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
IPOs are tightly regulated by the SEC for many years. ICOs are scarcely regulated and are the current "hot thing" for speculators. Is anybody truly surprised by this? Of course ICOs will bring out scammers who prey on people hungry for "the next Bitcoin." This is to be as expected as flies drawn to a steaming pile of dung.
I suspect the respondents were just being smart asses with their Alexa and Siri answers. As for me, about the only women tech leaders that immediately come to my mind are Sheryl Sandberg (mainly because of her Lean In book, as prior to that I heard very little of her), Meg Whitman (former eBay CEO), Carly Fiorina (formerly of HP), and Marissa Mayer (formerly of Yahoo).
There's many more women tech/business leaders that, by accident or by design, just don't get the limelight. A few that immediately come to mind:
Glynne Shotwell (SpaceX)
Ginny Rometty (IBM)
Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) Note: Given that she was accused of defrauding investors Holmes isn't exactly a good example, but for a brief time she was quite the media darling.
I'm sure there's many others, but those are the only ones that I can immediately think of.
I'm not sure why some women tech leaders don't get much media attention. I suspect one reason is the political bias of journalists, who want to push the idea of the tech industry being a "good ol' boys club" and women tech executives run counter to that narrative so the general public is unaware of the progress that women have made (and more progress certainly needs to be made, but it won't happen overnight as much as feminists want it to).
Early retirement. The FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement is a very tiny but growing portion of the jobless, People in their 20s, after just a few years of working and observing their seniors, realize just what the next 40+ years gets them. Between laughably little vacation time, wage stagnation, corporate bullshit, and the whole time (which is irreplaceable) for money thing it's no wonder more and more people want to get off the hamster wheel.
Once I started earning non-trivial passive income a few years ago, my perspective on jobs would never be the same again. I'm a long ways from achieving FI, but simply being on the path of FI has put me on a much stronger financial footing and has given me many more options. And having options is real power.
When Vista initially came out it was rife with performance issues and other flaws that were astonishingly bad and it was clear that it had been released prematurely. So I can understand the initial hate. But after SP1, its initial problems were corrected and SP2 made further fixes and minor improvements. I used Vista as my main PC's OS for nearly 8 years and I was quite satisfied with its performance and capability. So why the continued Vista hate so long after SP1?
Face swapping in porn vids is a cute trick, but it doesn't take a genius to see the implications of this technology, especially when combined with synthetic voice technology being able to accurately impersonate anybody's voice with just a 1 minute sample. If you thought Photoshop fakery for political gain was bad (for example, the darkened pic of OJ on the cover of Time or the fake John Kerry/Jane Fonda pic from the 2004 election), we're now on the verge of a new era of video fakery for spreading lies, disinformation, and smear campaigns. It used to be said that "pictures never lie" but Photoshop put an end to that (yes, I know photo manipulation has been practiced for decades in the analog age, but it was generally beyond the capability of the average person). With video, the best one could do was to use clever editing to discredit somebody (as happened to Shirley Sherrod). Not anymore. Now anybody can make a scandalous video. If these deepfakes can be done by one person with a desktop PC, what can an organization with deep pockets accomplish?
I doubt video face swapping will do any more "harm and hurt" (oh I'm sure the celeb women who have been deepfaked are in pain and agony right now...) than the years of being photoshop face swapped.
How your comment got modded to "Insightful" is beyond me. The sheer financial ignorance you display is breathtaking. As an investor/shareholder, my goal is to have my money work for me in the form of assets that produce passive income as well as grow in value. It's a safe bet that your grandparents' investments are helping to finance their retirement and your parents are investing to help support their future retirement. Instead of spewing tired old communist garbage, educate yourself about personal finance and how business works.
The famous statement "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (incorrectly attributed to Voltaire) has always been the best summary of the principle and right of free speech. Given the sad state of civics education in the past three decades, we're seeing the result of this failure to learn this basic idea. When we put "feels" above principle, we get garbage like NEMESIS that ignores the far left crackpots and singles out the far right crackpots. People really need to listen to their elders' take on free speech and democracy and not be a sucker.
I've always wondered why people always get their undies in a twist and hyperventilate over Hitler and Nazi Germany but are indifferent to Imperial Japan, Stalin's Soviet Russia, Mao's Red China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and other horrible tyrants and noxious ideologies. Are people so conditioned to automatically respond to anything Nazi related? Hitler may be the worst of the bunch, but Stalin and Mao were the 20th century's top contenders for "Worst Tyranny Ever." What
I haven't switched because I've stuck with Firefox as my main browser. Sure, I have installs of Edge, Chrome, and Vivaldi on my main PC but Firefox is where I do most of my web surfing.
I have really looked forward to the release of Firefox 57, and took it for a spin once the portable version came out. I am VERY impressed. It launches faster, uses 90% less memory than Firefox 56, and the UI changes are no big deal. Overall, I'm very pleased with 57 and once NoScript supports 57 I'll upgrade 56 and be completely on board with 57. Thanks Mozilla! I know Quantum was a herculean project (developing an all new browser engine from the ground up is no trivial endeavor), but the results are clearly worth it.
Yes, in the near-term the transition to Web Extensions will have its difficulties and some extensions will fail to make the transition. But does anybody expect XUL and Gecko to be supported forever? Gecko has been around since Netscape 6's release in November 2000! It's OLD and Firefox's performance severely lagged behind newer browsers. If it was to remain relevant and reverse its decline in market share, Mozilla had to kill Gecko/XUL and develop a better engine and extensions framework.
To the critics: Hey, I get it. Change can be a scary thing. Fortunately, nobody is forcing you to use 57 and options abound. Go ahead and use other Firefox derivative browsers (Pale Moon, Water Fox, etc.) or whatever other browser that floats your boat (Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Brave, etc.). Hell, if you're feeling particularly nostalgic for the "good old days," then go with SeaMonkey and surf the web like it's 2001 all over again.
As for me, I considered switching from Firefox, as its performance became increasingly worse (1200 MB of RAM just after initial launch! WTF?). But version 57 represents a new dawn for Firefox and I couldn't be more happy about this upgrade.
I didn't wise up about work until I reached my early 40s, so I am a bit of late bloomer. Until then I previously held a series of post-college crap jobs until I landed my first (and only) "real job" when I was 33. For the first few years I was enthusiastic and truly enjoyed the work. But enthusiasm slowly turned to ambivalence which then became disillusionment and finally active disengagement. I became the living embodiment of Wally, Dilbert's slacker co-worker, as I no longer gave a shit about the company and the job. Ultimately, I got laid off along with several others in my department and now I'm enjoying a phat severance package as well as making some money from my dividend investment portfolio.
My point is this: Don't work for the sake of working. You can always make more money but you can't make more time. Early retirement should be your overarching goal. It can be done, as many people have proven it. Just research FIRE (Financially Independent Retired Early) and your eyes will be opened to what's possible. When you no longer *need* to work and are in a position to do the work you *want* to do, the world becomes a lot more brighter.
Being a Gen-X'er, I bought into the life-script of go to college, get good grades, get a "real job" with good pay and benefits, work for 30+ years, and retire with a big nest egg. What they (society) doesn't tell you is that while the old rules worked fine for Joe and Jane Average 30-40 years ago, they don't work so well now. The ROI of an expensive college education is becoming increasingly questionable, given the current environment of wage stagnation, globalization, and automation technology.
Speaking for myself, despite the Great Recession and mediocre wages (the best I ever get is 3% annual raises), I have been moderately prosperous for the past 15 years. I haven't let "lifestyle inflation" cut into my savings rate, and I run a tight ship financially as I have no credit card debt and my only debt is a 30-year mortgage. In addition to my day job income, I average $700 per month from my dividend investing portfolio which is currently yielding approximately 10% annually. It has taken me 8 years of steady investing to get here, and I'm almost at the point where my dividend income can pay for my minimum monthly mortgage payment (should I so choose). Making money without trading one's time is a truly wonderful thing.
As for "side hustles" or moonlighting, I think it has become a necessary tool in overcoming wage stagnation. While I don't have a side-hustle, I am considering doing side work as a freelance writer to cultivate a third source of income and to have greater opportunities than what my day job can provide.
If you really want your eyes opened about how the game is played and how to use a different playbook to get ahead, then read the following books:
* Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
* The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
* The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
I agree that the workers should do more than just take it up the ass with a smile and a "Thank yuh massa!" By holding their severance package hostage, management has workers by the balls. Collective action would be the best way to send a clear message to management, but unfortunately, organizing people is damn tough, especially when livelihoods are on the line. IT workers are pretty much on their own. Government won't help. There's no union to help. In short, stop waiting for somebody to rescue you.
But here's some food for thought: What if people had a second or third source of income? Even if those alternate sources of income were much smaller than their day job's income, the balance of power would certainly change. I think it's imperative that workers cultivate alternate sources of income AKA side hustles.
Over the past 8 years I've been doing dividend investing and putting my money to work for me. Now I make an average of $700 every month for doing nothing (passive income FTW!!). This isn't enough to enable my financial independence, but it is enough to give me more options in life. Ultimately, having F*** You money should be any worker's long term goal.
Gosh, such a paragon of virtue! When you're on your deathbed, I'm sure you won't feel even a tiny sliver of regret, will you??
Slashdot ran the same story back in in 2008. Seven years later, I'm still enjoying Cavendish bananas. Must be a slow news day.
Wow. You really came into this prepared. How long did it take you to research all this since the article appeared on Slashdot? Did you have some help tovarisch? This is about Russia's current bad behavior, not the sins of the US. Nice try. The bottom line is that Crimea is a semi-autonomous territory that is part of Ukraine and has been since it was legally given to Ukraine in 1954. Russia's annexation of Crimea has absolutely NO legal basis at all. The referendum was a farce, and everybody knows it. Crimea is heavily dependent on Ukrainian tourism and resources (water and electricity being the most important). Kiev should take maximum advantage of that and exert massive economic pressure on the Crimean peninsula. Ban all Ukrainian tourism and strangle business transactions with red tape. Raise the price of electricity and water to the sky (and if necessary, phase out water and electricity completely. Let Russia pay for building new infrastructure to its new prize.) With Crimea an economic drain and in combination with Western sanctions, Russia's economy will suffer as it hasn't suffered since the 90's. I'm sure the Russian public will appreciate this.... If Russia still refuses to surrender Crimea, then Ukraine should escalate to the next level and implement low-level guerrilla warfare. Ukraine has a proud history of partisan warfare. Operating in Crimea, a few dozen sniper teams and a few hundred special forces would send dozens of young Russian soldiers back to the motherland in zinc boxes every day. Unless Russia wants Crimea to turn into another prolonged conflict like Chechnya, Putin would be wise to let Crimea go and worry about the damage to the Russian economy and its relations with the world.
So that's where you've been hanging out since V, Serenity, and Firefly!!
Because, financially, China has the West (especially the US) by the balls and everybody knows it. "If you're unhappy about our alleged cyberespionage, then you'll be even more unhappy when we buy fewer bonds or make fewer investments in your country."