I'm just going to point out that the public schools in poor districts who supposedly "never got Internet yet" OR are supposedly in real need of reduced cost Internet broadband because they can't afford to pay the "going rate" for it are, indeed, PUBLIC schools.
When you hear about our failing school systems and those pushing to allow tax dollars to fund sending their kids to private alternatives via a voucher system of some sort -- this is a good example of why. Any government run public school that's so bad off, it still hasn't even obtained Internet access is a FAILURE. It doesn't need subsidized broadband to fix it. It need to be completely gutted and overhauled! Tax dollars pay for everything it does already. If that's not sufficient to pay its bills for things like its Internet connection, then it's not really viable.
I think savings is important wherever you can find it. The fact that Federal govt. spends such amazingly huge amounts of our money (and it *is* our money, after all -- since it comes from taxes) shouldn't mean they can ignore wasteful spending on a small scale.
I'm not exactly a Trump supporter, but things are so polarized right now, I hear nothing but negative talk about pretty much any decision the guy makes in office. In reality? I see no value in making visitor logs immediately available for anybody who decided to visit the White House? I would expect they'd have a bit tighter security than to just make that info openly available, actually. So Obama, IMO, went about that the wrong way.
As you as you start talking about "all times favorites", I think the well known movies like Star Wars come to mind for most of us. I agree with another poster that the first Matrix movie was also top-notch. That one bothers me though, only because the sequels derailed some of the things I liked best about the original. Basically, they took the story to different places I didn't think benefited it and I would have been happier if parts 2 and 3 were never made at all.
One of the low budget sci-fi flicks I really enjoyed, though, was "The Cube". In fact, the limited resources and "unknowns" used as actors and actresses add to the enjoyment because IMO, the whole cast did an amazing job and it's intriguing how so much suspense could be created with a backdrop that's typically just empty white rooms.
I don't think that theory really explains what's happening, although it's a clever idea. There's still just as much use for a long lead-in to talk over, today, as there ever was. Even in the world of streaming, you have a lot of streaming radio that still uses DJs talking between songs. Sirius/XM satellite radio, for example, is doing a lot of business offering a streaming version of the same stations you traditionally paid to listen to over the satellite transmissions.
Most likely, this trend just shows the importance of catching the listener's ear ASAP, so they don't click on to the next track without giving it a chance.
If you think about it, at least with rock music, there was an awful lot of it with long intros that were little more than some synthesizer chords held down or synth noises that an artist thought sounded kind of cool. It helped ensure they could fill both sides of a cassette tape or L.P. enough time so buyers felt like they got their money's worth - but that's not such a concern these days. (I believe Def Leppard's Pyromania is even an example of adding this "filler" at the end of the album... with that long repeating sound effect after the "Don't Shoot Shotgun" song? That was done occasionally too.)
I mean when it comes to money, it doesn't have any real meaning to a computer A.I. It does, however, mean pretty much everything to human beings directly involved in the market, in trading, and in the business of trying to generate maximum wealth.
That ensures that A.I. will never be allowed to spin out of control to create the "nightmare scenarios" one can create in their imagination.
It will only be implemented as far as it is able to assist people in performing the tasks they wish to perform manually anyway.
First, the U.S. is a Democratic Republic, NOT a nation with a monarchy, a dictatorship, Communist rule, or Socialism. That puts it in a rather unique position as far as having a government structure that encourages less taxation and more self-reliance. (Not interested in trying to start the whole "which is better?" debate here... but just stating facts. I'd expect these other types of governance to impose higher taxes because they focus on the people working for the greater good of the whole, with government at the center, orchestrating things. In America, government is, at least in theory, "by the people, for the people" and exists to only do the basic tasks outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.)
Second, taxation in America is all spread out. The list of taxes is huge, and comes at the local and state level as much as at the Federal level. I'm no expert on the subject,but I'm confident that in many nations on their survey, taxation is much more centralized. In America, I can't even pay a cellphone or land line phone bill without getting hit with a list of various "nickle and dime" taxes for my municipality, city and state, followed by the Federally imposed ones like the FUSF (money they force you to pay to subsidize cheaper telecommunications offerings for the poor).
I'm not going to say I have strong evidence to disagree with your observations about farmers. But I do live in an area that's still largely rural, in Western Maryland. And my interactions with them (including doing some computer service work for a couple of them) tells me they're not very different from anyone else trying to remain successful, running their own small business.
Last I checked on tractor pricing, John Deere products suitable for farm use weren't exactly inexpensive, as it is. You really believe they're selling all of these tractors at or below their cost to build them? I'd like to see some evidence to back that claim up.....
I'm sure that this is just an attempt for the industry to find a new avenue to monetize its products -- seeing how far they can push the boundaries before the law pushes back. The auto industry would *love* to impose the same rules on every car and truck it sells -- but that change would impact so many people (including hundreds of thousands of independent garages, auto parts dealers, etc.) - it can't realistically enforce it right now.
Picking a relative niche market like farm tractor sales is a better strategy. John Deere knows that #1. it has enough market share so farmers can't go to that many alternatives to avoid them, and #2. it sells a product that's not just purchased for pleasure or convenience. The success of an entire season's crop is at stake.
Besides, it wasn't always this way. Not all that long ago, a John Deere tractor had no such software lock because the technology to implement it didn't even exist yet. Did you suddenly see tractor prices drop sharply when they decided to start subsidizing them with this forced maintenance?
I attended a 2 year community college and worked towards an Associates' in Communication Arts. Came pretty close to getting it, with something like 8 credit hours left. But I was down to the classes I was least motivated to take, and an opportunity came along to help a guy I met who was taking a stab at getting a computer reseller shop going. So I dropped out and started working with him.
It sounds like I'm just trying to justify my decision and bash college if I say, "It was the best thing I could have done!"... but in hindsight, I truly believe it was. I learned a great deal about PC hardware, building custom PC desktops and servers from the ground up. And because I wasn't just doing it on my own as a hobby, I got to work with a lot of high-end gear that was outside my own budget, and even got to blow a couple of things up when I made mistakes. (The shop owner didn't always pay me for my time because at that point, he couldn't afford to. So he was ok with having to "eat" the cost of a few screw-ups for the sake of my learning.) He let me try to get a side business going with a friend of mine, doing computer repair and consulting work, while running things out of his shop, too. That didn't go anywhere -- but at least it was more experience and cost me very little.
After that, I worked for various places as a computer "bench tech" -- mostly because of people I knew who already had jobs there and who vouched for me and my skills. That, in turn, led to my first real full-time corporate I.T. job in PC support as part of a small team. And I've worked in I.T. in various capacities ever since, including a stint running an actually successful on-site service and consulting business.
In all of my years of doing I.T. - I can honestly say that almost all of the best, brightest and most motivated individuals I ran across in the field were also folks who didn't have college degrees. I can think of one exception, but he majored in French and never took any computer-related college courses.
I'm not sure what to think of this Fast Company article Slashdot is referencing? It sounds pretty ridiculous if the only reason businesses are FINALLY trying to hire more non-degreed I.T. folks is some mission to get more "diversity". They've missed 25 or 30 years of opportunities to hire brilliant people if they've been tossing out resumes and job applications this whole time because the college degree was really a requirement for them.
But the kicker is, until recently, there really WAS little diversity among people interested in computers and tech! Degree or no degree -- the people who got hooked on this stuff years ago and invested decades of their lives learning it tended to be a pretty homogeneous group. The biggest change I see with the younger generation today is this idea that being weird is "the new cool". Pre-teens are some of the goofiest people around, and many embrace or at least have a "working knowledge" of all manner of sci-fi, fantasy, Japanese anime, and misc. oddities in anything from clothing and hairstyles to mannerisms and language. Plenty of females of any race or nationality are playing games like Minecraft. Smartphones are everywhere and teach everyone to have a familiarity with web services and Internet connectivity that was only the realm of a niche group in the past.
It might be the first time in history where you can actually start FINDING people other than white males from middle to upper-middle class backgrounds who have a real interest and skills in computers and tech.
Problem is.... the H1B program is really only valuable to a company that plans on abusing it.
If you're a typical small or mid-sized business with a need for technical employees, it doesn't make sense to try to hire foreigners who have thick accents / language barriers, as well as a work history that's often a total "unknown" (since you can't just skim a resume and get an idea of their skills and knowledge based on who they worked for previously -- because you're likely not that familiar with any foreign firms they worked for).
I've worked my whole life in I.T. and know for a fact there are plenty of Americans with solid expertise in various parts of the field. I can barely imagine a scenario where nobody in America is competent in what's needed, while someone from over in India is just who they need? It's all about getting budget priced labor and nothing more.
At the end of the day, sure -- we're all human beings and have similar wants, needs, and hopes / desires. You can make an appeal to emotions about someone, anywhere in the world, who is in an unfortunate situation. But most of those are the result of the government their country is ruled by. America, for all of its faults, is still pretty good about ensuring its citizens enjoy a top-tier lifestyle. That doesn't mean we "owe" it to everyone else on the planet who'd like to come here and get in on the action.
I live in the DC metro area, but both in DC and in "provincial backwaters" like Chicago, there have been problems for YEARS with cabbies not wanting to take credit cards. Sure, they technically CLAIM they can do so. But check out how often they lie and tell you the card reader is broken/down, in an attempt to get cash instead.
Oh, and BTW -- another big problem with cabs? They like to refuse to pick you up if they know your destination crosses a state line. Happens all the time with folks who live in Virginia but want to take a cab to DC and back. The cab will happily bring them to DC, because they know they can easily pick up another fare there. But they'll find every excuse to refuse to take you back home again afterwards if it means they're going to end up in some suburb of VA.
I.T. people probably don't believe you because your scenario isn't that plausible.
There's going to be a big shake-up in the labor market thanks to advances in automation -- but that automation is going to be marketed, serviced and programmed/developed by people with I.T. skills.
A whole lot of automation is going to heavily rely on network connectivity, too. That means your Internet providers and people maintaining the wired or wireless networks are still going to be in high demand.
People need to be flexible enough to learn new skills and adapt, but that's always been true.
What a twisted, absolutely incorrect way to summarize libertarian ideals!
I can't fathom why so many people think the superior way to handle things is living in a society where you've arbitrarily handed pretty much unlimited power to a group of "elites" in a central government -- who you agree to hand over a large percentage of your earnings to via taxation, and then get to "beg, plead and petition" them to spend the money in ways you agree with (which they may or may not do).
Wages as numbers are arbitrary. All that ultimately matters about a wage is how much buying power it gives a person in the economy they're surrounded by. That's why these pushes to demand a "$15 minimum wage" and so on are doomed to fail in the long-run. What happens is, you use the force of law to dictate that suddenly, everybody has to pay at least this certain amount of money, no matter WHAT you've hired a person to do. In at least SOME situations, the people being employed weren't doing labor worth that much money to the employer. So adjustments WILL be made to compensate. Either they'll make do with FEWER employees, or they'll raise prices of whatever they sell, or they'll cut back on some costly benefits they used to offer. What they WON'T do is just accept the fact that it's "good business" to overpay everyone they hired to do the most menial types of work they needed to get done. Initially, when you mandate a big bump in pay - it's an improvement for those receiving it. That's only because the market takes time to compensate for it. Give it a year or two though, and that $15/hr. will be buying everyone less than it used to. Essentially, you created enough inflation to make the $15/hr. worth about what the previous minimum wage was worth to them.
Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The market ALWAYS sets wages. Government simply interferes and breaks the functionality of the free marketplace whenever it tries to regulate them. If you have a skill that's difficult to find and in high demand, you WILL earn a lot of money with that skill if you match it up with an employer who needs it. Government's meddling in "minimum wage" enforcement has zero bearing on that fact.
Sure, the law is "more complicated" than just stating a person is "not an employee". But I don't see how Uber drivers can be construed as employees/staff? I know plenty of people who decided they'd do some driving for Uber, and among other things, there's no requirement you actually perform a specific job for Uber. You're free to accept or reject all opportunities that pop up on your phone. You can work as much or as little as you like.
Libertarian corporate experiments are amazingly GOOD for society, and unfortunately, government regulation and taxation usually keeps them from popping up nearly as often as they should.
Uber actually raised the bar for traditional taxi cabs and their cartel they had going.... Whether Uber dies now for other reasons is irrelevant. Thanks to Uber, most city cabs I've run across will now accept major credit cards, and a growing number have apps to hail rides (no more 19th. century flailing of arms and whistling necessary!).
I'm seeing Lyft learning from Uber's mis-steps and predict they'll do well in their place, if Uber can't turn things around for their own business.
I understand that I "bought and paid for a 60kw system" but the fact remains that when I did so, I wound up driving around with a 75kw capable battery in the car that I'm not getting the full use of. It's capable of giving me more driving range. Only an artificial software restriction holds it back.
I agree it may be a situation where it's cheaper than the alternative of dealing with 2 different physical batteries to have to stock and swap into cars where an owner wants to upgrade the capacity. But I think it also means it invites the aftermarket to find other ways to unlock the full potential.
Reminds me of Chevy, where in years past, they always made sure a given Camaro SS produced less HP with the same engine they put in the Corvette. Camaro owners could turn to the custom tuning market to rectify that and make their engine produce the full output it was really capable of, and many did.
The fact that the ability to hold more of a charge is something merely unlocked via a costly software update means Tesla sold you a 75kWh capable battery all along but gimped it artificially.
From the strict sense of "getting X when you pay Y amount", that makes perfect sense. (Tesla is essentially giving you a price break on a Model S60 or 60D by selling you the same car they normally charge a higher price for, and letting you pay the difference when you want to unlock that extra charging capacity.)
BUT.... when I buy something as expensive as a new car? I guess I expect all the physical equipment I get in it to fully function. Tesla is treating all of this like a computer on wheels that you buy and do various software upgrades to.
From Tesla's standpoint, I can't imagine they're actually losing money on every S60 or 60D sold, with the hopes those owners will eventually buy the software upgrade that forces them to pay back the rest of what the car was actually worth. The fact they offered these tells me that they can, indeed, sell the car at a reasonable profit with the 75kWh battery in it, but at the S60 or 60D price. Then, the rest is pure profit when those customers opt for the upgrade.
In the auto industry, the usual situation is -- any time a manufacturer artificially holds back some capability of a vehicle, the aftermarket finds ways to offer relatively low-cost ways to remove those restrictions. (Custom tuning of factory ECUs and transmission control units is a HUGE business.)
I'm wondering when we'll start seeing performance shops offering their own, cheaper unlock/re-flashes for Teslas?
... but I thought I just read an article a week or two ago about a huge electronics recycler who it turns out wasn't really doing much recycling of old CRTs after all. They had warehouses chock full of old televisions and computer CRTs.
I can see where maybe a 29" CRT is an odd size that's difficult to source. But I would think you could reuse a working CRT tube out of a television or monitor for a game cabinet in many cases?
Exactly.... I don't call for an Uber because I'm looking forward to a long chat with the driver. But it's terrible service when they can't even communicate well enough to figure out where I want to go, or how to pick us up.
I had that experience in Rockville, MD recently when a group of us got tired of waiting on a MARC commuter train that had major delays. I called for an Uber but the driver who accepted it was unable to locate us. I could see him circling the vicinity on the map in the app, but he wasn't turning down the right side road to enter the "park and ride" lot where we were waiting. He called my cell at some point, trying to ask where we were, but it was impossible communicating that to him. He got frustrated and canceled our ride.
There's some truth to the "low wages" situation with the community colleges, but that's not the whole story.... At the one out here, for example? You automatically get 3 weeks of paid vacation, plus a generous sick leave policy and plenty of holidays off work. Additionally, they really don't do a 40 hour work week. It's more like 36. That's something they really don't advertise as well as they probably should when doing hiring -- so people calculate the pay rate incorrectly, basing it on 40 hour weeks, and decide it pays too low.
At the end of the day, it's a good job for someone who values having some more free time over working a maximum number of hours, but getting compensated for all of it.
I think the original posted is absolutely correct, in his comment that, "I've observed that the average age is definitely older, and people have been here forever. Lots of my co-workers are stuck in their ways, and they have an attitude about their job + entitlements that only a person with no recent private sector work experience would have."
My wife work in I.T. for a local community college and has observed the same thing. The head of networking has been there for YEARS. His area of expertise was Novell Netware, which is utterly obsolete today. Ever since he was forced to move to support Windows networks and servers, he's done nothing but screw things up and hold back needed change. (He won't implement basic security precautions because he keeps saying they aren't necessary. In reality, he's probably not confident he can implement any of them properly and doesn't want to be bothered to learn.)
Another guy on the team was continually pushing updates out to systems that broke them, and then just going home, shrugging and saying, "Oops.... Oh well.... something to figure out later." Professors had to cancel classes in some cases, due to his negligence. Yet did they fire him? No! They just moved him to another area for a while, and now he's back, making the same mistakes again!
I agree that a lot of the recent "Trump talk" about bringing back manufacturing is just speech to make an audience happy. But it doesn't have to all be nonsense either. You can see by how many foreign auto-makers chose to put assembly plants in the U.S. that it can make good financial sense. (Not long ago, the whole "Buy American!" thing meant bashing companies like Toyota, Hyundai and Kia -- yet today, they're employing lots of American workers and putting the vehicles together here that we buy here. Saves a lot of money in costs to ship them over from Japan or S. Korea.)
No, there's not any point in trying to bring manufacturing here that's little more than slave labor, like sewing together dress shirts or jeans. But there's a whole lot of more advanced manufacturing of physically large objects that makes sense to do in America.
The only real problem we had with PG County is the relatively poor public schools there. That was a definite consideration for us, with 3 school-age kids. If we had to pay to put them all in private schools, that would make the savings vanish....
He has a point, but there's much more that's contributing to the death of radio. One of radio's big problems, IMO, is the sound quality. Standard FM is noticeably poorer sounding than a CD, or even a compressed MP3 at a decent bitrate. Reception fades in and out and you get static while driving around, etc.
The "solution" was almost worse than the problem, though.... "HD" FM radio. The way it's usually implemented, broadcasters split up its bandwidth so they could have "HD1" and "HD2" alternative stations along-side the primary one. That means there's no analog signal "backup" for any of them but the primary one. So if you're listening to one of the alternates and your signal gets too weak, it just drops out completely. And that happens a LOT because it's tough to pick them up very well when you have tall city buildings partially blocking the signal, or when you live a little too far from the transmitting tower. And if it's the primary station you've got tuned in, you hear the annoying switching back and forth between better and much worse sound quality as it locks onto the digital signal and falls back to the analog again.
I was born and raised in the midwest, and while everyone around me was convinced it was a dead-end hellhole, lacking in any sense of "style" or appreciation for the arts -- the time I spent in California convinced me that was so untrue.
I mean, one thing you will find in the midwest is a larger percentage of folks who aren't highly educated by formal institutions. If you're used to living in an area with far more college grads running around, it can be off-putting. But if you get to know these people better -- they're often far more substantial folks with real concerns and aspirations. They may laugh at the idea of ordering a coffee being more than deciding if you want cream and sugar or not -- but chances are good they have real skills doing useful things the CA crowd has to pay someone else to do for them.
But IMO, it's really nice living someplace where people don't *care* if your clothing choices are just practical and reasonably priced, vs. spending 5x more to chase after trends, and it's something you grow to really appreciate when your neighbors want to look out for each other and volunteer to help you when they see you working on something.
In CA, I just ran into a lot of people who invested WAY too much time in superficial stuff they collectively deemed important. My friends from CA who came to visit me in the midwest couldn't stop complaining about such things as stores that closed by 9 or 10PM instead of being open 24 hours a day. You know? These things really aren't a big problem for everyone who gets used to the concept of things having schedules that don't just cater to your whims....
I've visited the Bay area and saw just enough to know I'll never even consider accepting a job out there. Like you say, it's crazy expensive, and I know that with a family (3 kids), there's NO way it would make any sense at all -- even if someone was paying me a lot more than I'm really worth.
I just don't get why so many people continue to try to do it? Out of all the careers a person could do, I.T. is probably one of the most "portable". If you can get a decent broadband connection where you're at, you can do a whole LOT of work for an employer from there, wherever "there" happens to be.
With the slew of stories coming out of the Silicon Valley area about how oppressive employers tend to be towards women and in many cases, towards ALL of their workforce? I just wonder how much long it will be before it drives talent AWAY from there in droves and smart companies start hiring them in facilities in far lower-cost parts of the country.
Whenever I was out there and asked people why they continued to struggle so much to live in CA, the answers I got were, IMO, pretty inadequate. Usually such things as a love of the weather out there... which is nice, granted -- but seriously? You'd deal with that hyper-inflated cost of living and everything else just for some more sunny days?
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I'm just going to point out that the public schools in poor districts who supposedly "never got Internet yet" OR are supposedly in real need of reduced cost Internet broadband because they can't afford to pay the "going rate" for it are, indeed, PUBLIC schools.
When you hear about our failing school systems and those pushing to allow tax dollars to fund sending their kids to private alternatives via a voucher system of some sort -- this is a good example of why. Any government run public school that's so bad off, it still hasn't even obtained Internet access is a FAILURE. It doesn't need subsidized broadband to fix it. It need to be completely gutted and overhauled! Tax dollars pay for everything it does already. If that's not sufficient to pay its bills for things like its Internet connection, then it's not really viable.
Oh, so $70,000 is meaningless to you?
I think savings is important wherever you can find it. The fact that Federal govt. spends such amazingly huge amounts of our money (and it *is* our money, after all -- since it comes from taxes) shouldn't mean they can ignore wasteful spending on a small scale.
I'm not exactly a Trump supporter, but things are so polarized right now, I hear nothing but negative talk about pretty much any decision the guy makes in office. In reality? I see no value in making visitor logs immediately available for anybody who decided to visit the White House? I would expect they'd have a bit tighter security than to just make that info openly available, actually. So Obama, IMO, went about that the wrong way.
As you as you start talking about "all times favorites", I think the well known movies like Star Wars come to mind for most of us. I agree with another poster that the first Matrix movie was also top-notch. That one bothers me though, only because the sequels derailed some of the things I liked best about the original. Basically, they took the story to different places I didn't think benefited it and I would have been happier if parts 2 and 3 were never made at all.
One of the low budget sci-fi flicks I really enjoyed, though, was "The Cube". In fact, the limited resources and "unknowns" used as actors and actresses add to the enjoyment because IMO, the whole cast did an amazing job and it's intriguing how so much suspense could be created with a backdrop that's typically just empty white rooms.
I don't think that theory really explains what's happening, although it's a clever idea.
There's still just as much use for a long lead-in to talk over, today, as there ever was. Even in the world of streaming, you have a lot of streaming radio that still uses DJs talking between songs. Sirius/XM satellite radio, for example, is doing a lot of business offering a streaming version of the same stations you traditionally paid to listen to over the satellite transmissions.
Most likely, this trend just shows the importance of catching the listener's ear ASAP, so they don't click on to the next track without giving it a chance.
If you think about it, at least with rock music, there was an awful lot of it with long intros that were little more than some synthesizer chords held down or synth noises that an artist thought sounded kind of cool. It helped ensure they could fill both sides of a cassette tape or L.P. enough time so buyers felt like they got their money's worth - but that's not such a concern these days. (I believe Def Leppard's Pyromania is even an example of adding this "filler" at the end of the album ... with that long repeating sound effect after the "Don't Shoot Shotgun" song? That was done occasionally too.)
I mean when it comes to money, it doesn't have any real meaning to a computer A.I. It does, however, mean pretty much everything to human beings directly involved in the market, in trading, and in the business of trying to generate maximum wealth.
That ensures that A.I. will never be allowed to spin out of control to create the "nightmare scenarios" one can create in their imagination.
It will only be implemented as far as it is able to assist people in performing the tasks they wish to perform manually anyway.
That really ignores a few basic points.
First, the U.S. is a Democratic Republic, NOT a nation with a monarchy, a dictatorship, Communist rule, or Socialism. That puts it in a rather unique position as far as having a government structure that encourages less taxation and more self-reliance. (Not interested in trying to start the whole "which is better?" debate here... but just stating facts. I'd expect these other types of governance to impose higher taxes because they focus on the people working for the greater good of the whole, with government at the center, orchestrating things. In America, government is, at least in theory, "by the people, for the people" and exists to only do the basic tasks outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.)
Second, taxation in America is all spread out. The list of taxes is huge, and comes at the local and state level as much as at the Federal level. I'm no expert on the subject,but I'm confident that in many nations on their survey, taxation is much more centralized. In America, I can't even pay a cellphone or land line phone bill without getting hit with a list of various "nickle and dime" taxes for my municipality, city and state, followed by the Federally imposed ones like the FUSF (money they force you to pay to subsidize cheaper telecommunications offerings for the poor).
I'm not going to say I have strong evidence to disagree with your observations about farmers. But I do live in an area that's still largely rural, in Western Maryland. And my interactions with them (including doing some computer service work for a couple of them) tells me they're not very different from anyone else trying to remain successful, running their own small business.
Last I checked on tractor pricing, John Deere products suitable for farm use weren't exactly inexpensive, as it is. You really believe they're selling all of these tractors at or below their cost to build them? I'd like to see some evidence to back that claim up.....
I'm sure that this is just an attempt for the industry to find a new avenue to monetize its products -- seeing how far they can push the boundaries before the law pushes back. The auto industry would *love* to impose the same rules on every car and truck it sells -- but that change would impact so many people (including hundreds of thousands of independent garages, auto parts dealers, etc.) - it can't realistically enforce it right now.
Picking a relative niche market like farm tractor sales is a better strategy. John Deere knows that #1. it has enough market share so farmers can't go to that many alternatives to avoid them, and #2. it sells a product that's not just purchased for pleasure or convenience. The success of an entire season's crop is at stake.
Besides, it wasn't always this way. Not all that long ago, a John Deere tractor had no such software lock because the technology to implement it didn't even exist yet. Did you suddenly see tractor prices drop sharply when they decided to start subsidizing them with this forced maintenance?
I attended a 2 year community college and worked towards an Associates' in Communication Arts. Came pretty close to getting it, with something like 8 credit hours left. But I was down to the classes I was least motivated to take, and an opportunity came along to help a guy I met who was taking a stab at getting a computer reseller shop going. So I dropped out and started working with him.
It sounds like I'm just trying to justify my decision and bash college if I say, "It was the best thing I could have done!" ... but in hindsight, I truly believe it was. I learned a great deal about PC hardware, building custom PC desktops and servers from the ground up. And because I wasn't just doing it on my own as a hobby, I got to work with a lot of high-end gear that was outside my own budget, and even got to blow a couple of things up when I made mistakes. (The shop owner didn't always pay me for my time because at that point, he couldn't afford to. So he was ok with having to "eat" the cost of a few screw-ups for the sake of my learning.) He let me try to get a side business going with a friend of mine, doing computer repair and consulting work, while running things out of his shop, too. That didn't go anywhere -- but at least it was more experience and cost me very little.
After that, I worked for various places as a computer "bench tech" -- mostly because of people I knew who already had jobs there and who vouched for me and my skills. That, in turn, led to my first real full-time corporate I.T. job in PC support as part of a small team. And I've worked in I.T. in various capacities ever since, including a stint running an actually successful on-site service and consulting business.
In all of my years of doing I.T. - I can honestly say that almost all of the best, brightest and most motivated individuals I ran across in the field were also folks who didn't have college degrees. I can think of one exception, but he majored in French and never took any computer-related college courses.
I'm not sure what to think of this Fast Company article Slashdot is referencing? It sounds pretty ridiculous if the only reason businesses are FINALLY trying to hire more non-degreed I.T. folks is some mission to get more "diversity". They've missed 25 or 30 years of opportunities to hire brilliant people if they've been tossing out resumes and job applications this whole time because the college degree was really a requirement for them.
But the kicker is, until recently, there really WAS little diversity among people interested in computers and tech! Degree or no degree -- the people who got hooked on this stuff years ago and invested decades of their lives learning it tended to be a pretty homogeneous group. The biggest change I see with the younger generation today is this idea that being weird is "the new cool". Pre-teens are some of the goofiest people around, and many embrace or at least have a "working knowledge" of all manner of sci-fi, fantasy, Japanese anime, and misc. oddities in anything from clothing and hairstyles to mannerisms and language. Plenty of females of any race or nationality are playing games like Minecraft. Smartphones are everywhere and teach everyone to have a familiarity with web services and Internet connectivity that was only the realm of a niche group in the past.
It might be the first time in history where you can actually start FINDING people other than white males from middle to upper-middle class backgrounds who have a real interest and skills in computers and tech.
Problem is.... the H1B program is really only valuable to a company that plans on abusing it.
If you're a typical small or mid-sized business with a need for technical employees, it doesn't make sense to try to hire foreigners who have thick accents / language barriers, as well as a work history that's often a total "unknown" (since you can't just skim a resume and get an idea of their skills and knowledge based on who they worked for previously -- because you're likely not that familiar with any foreign firms they worked for).
I've worked my whole life in I.T. and know for a fact there are plenty of Americans with solid expertise in various parts of the field. I can barely imagine a scenario where nobody in America is competent in what's needed, while someone from over in India is just who they need? It's all about getting budget priced labor and nothing more.
At the end of the day, sure -- we're all human beings and have similar wants, needs, and hopes / desires. You can make an appeal to emotions about someone, anywhere in the world, who is in an unfortunate situation. But most of those are the result of the government their country is ruled by. America, for all of its faults, is still pretty good about ensuring its citizens enjoy a top-tier lifestyle. That doesn't mean we "owe" it to everyone else on the planet who'd like to come here and get in on the action.
I live in the DC metro area, but both in DC and in "provincial backwaters" like Chicago, there have been problems for YEARS with cabbies not wanting to take credit cards. Sure, they technically CLAIM they can do so. But check out how often they lie and tell you the card reader is broken/down, in an attempt to get cash instead.
Oh, and BTW -- another big problem with cabs? They like to refuse to pick you up if they know your destination crosses a state line. Happens all the time with folks who live in Virginia but want to take a cab to DC and back. The cab will happily bring them to DC, because they know they can easily pick up another fare there. But they'll find every excuse to refuse to take you back home again afterwards if it means they're going to end up in some suburb of VA.
I.T. people probably don't believe you because your scenario isn't that plausible.
There's going to be a big shake-up in the labor market thanks to advances in automation -- but that automation is going to be marketed, serviced and programmed/developed by people with I.T. skills.
A whole lot of automation is going to heavily rely on network connectivity, too. That means your Internet providers and people maintaining the wired or wireless networks are still going to be in high demand.
People need to be flexible enough to learn new skills and adapt, but that's always been true.
What a twisted, absolutely incorrect way to summarize libertarian ideals!
I can't fathom why so many people think the superior way to handle things is living in a society where you've arbitrarily handed pretty much unlimited power to a group of "elites" in a central government -- who you agree to hand over a large percentage of your earnings to via taxation, and then get to "beg, plead and petition" them to spend the money in ways you agree with (which they may or may not do).
Wages as numbers are arbitrary. All that ultimately matters about a wage is how much buying power it gives a person in the economy they're surrounded by. That's why these pushes to demand a "$15 minimum wage" and so on are doomed to fail in the long-run. What happens is, you use the force of law to dictate that suddenly, everybody has to pay at least this certain amount of money, no matter WHAT you've hired a person to do. In at least SOME situations, the people being employed weren't doing labor worth that much money to the employer. So adjustments WILL be made to compensate. Either they'll make do with FEWER employees, or they'll raise prices of whatever they sell, or they'll cut back on some costly benefits they used to offer. What they WON'T do is just accept the fact that it's "good business" to overpay everyone they hired to do the most menial types of work they needed to get done. Initially, when you mandate a big bump in pay - it's an improvement for those receiving it. That's only because the market takes time to compensate for it. Give it a year or two though, and that $15/hr. will be buying everyone less than it used to. Essentially, you created enough inflation to make the $15/hr. worth about what the previous minimum wage was worth to them.
Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The market ALWAYS sets wages. Government simply interferes and breaks the functionality of the free marketplace whenever it tries to regulate them. If you have a skill that's difficult to find and in high demand, you WILL earn a lot of money with that skill if you match it up with an employer who needs it. Government's meddling in "minimum wage" enforcement has zero bearing on that fact.
Sure, the law is "more complicated" than just stating a person is "not an employee". But I don't see how Uber drivers can be construed as employees/staff?
I know plenty of people who decided they'd do some driving for Uber, and among other things, there's no requirement you actually perform a specific job for Uber. You're free to accept or reject all opportunities that pop up on your phone. You can work as much or as little as you like.
Libertarian corporate experiments are amazingly GOOD for society, and unfortunately, government regulation and taxation usually keeps them from popping up nearly as often as they should.
Uber actually raised the bar for traditional taxi cabs and their cartel they had going.... Whether Uber dies now for other reasons is irrelevant. Thanks to Uber, most city cabs I've run across will now accept major credit cards, and a growing number have apps to hail rides (no more 19th. century flailing of arms and whistling necessary!).
I'm seeing Lyft learning from Uber's mis-steps and predict they'll do well in their place, if Uber can't turn things around for their own business.
I understand that I "bought and paid for a 60kw system" but the fact remains that when I did so, I wound up driving around with a 75kw capable battery in the car that I'm not getting the full use of. It's capable of giving me more driving range. Only an artificial software restriction holds it back.
I agree it may be a situation where it's cheaper than the alternative of dealing with 2 different physical batteries to have to stock and swap into cars where an owner wants to upgrade the capacity. But I think it also means it invites the aftermarket to find other ways to unlock the full potential.
Reminds me of Chevy, where in years past, they always made sure a given Camaro SS produced less HP with the same engine they put in the Corvette. Camaro owners could turn to the custom tuning market to rectify that and make their engine produce the full output it was really capable of, and many did.
The fact that the ability to hold more of a charge is something merely unlocked via a costly software update means Tesla sold you a 75kWh capable battery all along but gimped it artificially.
From the strict sense of "getting X when you pay Y amount", that makes perfect sense. (Tesla is essentially giving you a price break on a Model S60 or 60D by selling you the same car they normally charge a higher price for, and letting you pay the difference when you want to unlock that extra charging capacity.)
BUT .... when I buy something as expensive as a new car? I guess I expect all the physical equipment I get in it to fully function. Tesla is treating all of this like a computer on wheels that you buy and do various software upgrades to.
From Tesla's standpoint, I can't imagine they're actually losing money on every S60 or 60D sold, with the hopes those owners will eventually buy the software upgrade that forces them to pay back the rest of what the car was actually worth. The fact they offered these tells me that they can, indeed, sell the car at a reasonable profit with the 75kWh battery in it, but at the S60 or 60D price. Then, the rest is pure profit when those customers opt for the upgrade.
In the auto industry, the usual situation is -- any time a manufacturer artificially holds back some capability of a vehicle, the aftermarket finds ways to offer relatively low-cost ways to remove those restrictions. (Custom tuning of factory ECUs and transmission control units is a HUGE business.)
I'm wondering when we'll start seeing performance shops offering their own, cheaper unlock/re-flashes for Teslas?
... but I thought I just read an article a week or two ago about a huge electronics recycler who it turns out wasn't really doing much recycling of old CRTs after all. They had warehouses chock full of old televisions and computer CRTs.
I can see where maybe a 29" CRT is an odd size that's difficult to source. But I would think you could reuse a working CRT tube out of a television or monitor for a game cabinet in many cases?
Exactly.... I don't call for an Uber because I'm looking forward to a long chat with the driver. But it's terrible service when they can't even communicate well enough to figure out where I want to go, or how to pick us up.
I had that experience in Rockville, MD recently when a group of us got tired of waiting on a MARC commuter train that had major delays. I called for an Uber but the driver who accepted it was unable to locate us. I could see him circling the vicinity on the map in the app, but he wasn't turning down the right side road to enter the "park and ride" lot where we were waiting. He called my cell at some point, trying to ask where we were, but it was impossible communicating that to him. He got frustrated and canceled our ride.
There's some truth to the "low wages" situation with the community colleges, but that's not the whole story.... At the one out here, for example? You automatically get 3 weeks of paid vacation, plus a generous sick leave policy and plenty of holidays off work. Additionally, they really don't do a 40 hour work week. It's more like 36. That's something they really don't advertise as well as they probably should when doing hiring -- so people calculate the pay rate incorrectly, basing it on 40 hour weeks, and decide it pays too low.
At the end of the day, it's a good job for someone who values having some more free time over working a maximum number of hours, but getting compensated for all of it.
I think the original posted is absolutely correct, in his comment that, "I've observed that the average age is definitely older, and people have been here forever. Lots of my co-workers are stuck in their ways, and they have an attitude about their job + entitlements that only a person with no recent private sector work experience would have."
My wife work in I.T. for a local community college and has observed the same thing. The head of networking has been there for YEARS. His area of expertise was Novell Netware, which is utterly obsolete today. Ever since he was forced to move to support Windows networks and servers, he's done nothing but screw things up and hold back needed change. (He won't implement basic security precautions because he keeps saying they aren't necessary. In reality, he's probably not confident he can implement any of them properly and doesn't want to be bothered to learn.)
Another guy on the team was continually pushing updates out to systems that broke them, and then just going home, shrugging and saying, "Oops.... Oh well.... something to figure out later." Professors had to cancel classes in some cases, due to his negligence. Yet did they fire him? No! They just moved him to another area for a while, and now he's back, making the same mistakes again!
I agree that a lot of the recent "Trump talk" about bringing back manufacturing is just speech to make an audience happy. But it doesn't have to all be nonsense either.
You can see by how many foreign auto-makers chose to put assembly plants in the U.S. that it can make good financial sense. (Not long ago, the whole "Buy American!" thing meant bashing companies like Toyota, Hyundai and Kia -- yet today, they're employing lots of American workers and putting the vehicles together here that we buy here. Saves a lot of money in costs to ship them over from Japan or S. Korea.)
No, there's not any point in trying to bring manufacturing here that's little more than slave labor, like sewing together dress shirts or jeans. But there's a whole lot of more advanced manufacturing of physically large objects that makes sense to do in America.
The only real problem we had with PG County is the relatively poor public schools there. That was a definite consideration for us, with 3 school-age kids. If we had to pay to put them all in private schools, that would make the savings vanish....
He has a point, but there's much more that's contributing to the death of radio.
One of radio's big problems, IMO, is the sound quality. Standard FM is noticeably poorer sounding than a CD, or even a compressed MP3 at a decent bitrate. Reception fades in and out and you get static while driving around, etc.
The "solution" was almost worse than the problem, though.... "HD" FM radio. The way it's usually implemented, broadcasters split up its bandwidth so they could have "HD1" and "HD2" alternative stations along-side the primary one. That means there's no analog signal "backup" for any of them but the primary one. So if you're listening to one of the alternates and your signal gets too weak, it just drops out completely. And that happens a LOT because it's tough to pick them up very well when you have tall city buildings partially blocking the signal, or when you live a little too far from the transmitting tower. And if it's the primary station you've got tuned in, you hear the annoying switching back and forth between better and much worse sound quality as it locks onto the digital signal and falls back to the analog again.
I was born and raised in the midwest, and while everyone around me was convinced it was a dead-end hellhole, lacking in any sense of "style" or appreciation for the arts -- the time I spent in California convinced me that was so untrue.
I mean, one thing you will find in the midwest is a larger percentage of folks who aren't highly educated by formal institutions. If you're used to living in an area with far more college grads running around, it can be off-putting. But if you get to know these people better -- they're often far more substantial folks with real concerns and aspirations. They may laugh at the idea of ordering a coffee being more than deciding if you want cream and sugar or not -- but chances are good they have real skills doing useful things the CA crowd has to pay someone else to do for them.
But IMO, it's really nice living someplace where people don't *care* if your clothing choices are just practical and reasonably priced, vs. spending 5x more to chase after trends, and it's something you grow to really appreciate when your neighbors want to look out for each other and volunteer to help you when they see you working on something.
In CA, I just ran into a lot of people who invested WAY too much time in superficial stuff they collectively deemed important. My friends from CA who came to visit me in the midwest couldn't stop complaining about such things as stores that closed by 9 or 10PM instead of being open 24 hours a day. You know? These things really aren't a big problem for everyone who gets used to the concept of things having schedules that don't just cater to your whims ....
I've visited the Bay area and saw just enough to know I'll never even consider accepting a job out there. Like you say, it's crazy expensive, and I know that with a family (3 kids), there's NO way it would make any sense at all -- even if someone was paying me a lot more than I'm really worth.
I just don't get why so many people continue to try to do it? Out of all the careers a person could do, I.T. is probably one of the most "portable". If you can get a decent broadband connection where you're at, you can do a whole LOT of work for an employer from there, wherever "there" happens to be.
With the slew of stories coming out of the Silicon Valley area about how oppressive employers tend to be towards women and in many cases, towards ALL of their workforce? I just wonder how much long it will be before it drives talent AWAY from there in droves and smart companies start hiring them in facilities in far lower-cost parts of the country.
Whenever I was out there and asked people why they continued to struggle so much to live in CA, the answers I got were, IMO, pretty inadequate. Usually such things as a love of the weather out there ... which is nice, granted -- but seriously? You'd deal with that hyper-inflated cost of living and everything else just for some more sunny days?