I was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and am very familiar with the Jennings area. My old roommate was a graduate of Jennings high-school, in fact.
That area definitely qualifies as one of the poorer districts in St. Louis and I can absolutely see how basics like ensuring students are fed helps with the learning process.
That said? I think there usually is a combination of problems with these schools, including mis-use of funds by faculty and general corruption, plus the fact that sometimes they really DO have a lot of "bad teachers". (When you're in what's considered a high crime neighborhood with poverty and students who don't want to be there, it's not conducive to attracting quality teachers.)
I don't think there's a "magic bullet" solution for any of this. IMO, going the private school route means the private school likely provides a little higher quality education and better learning environment, with the trade-off that they're less likely to make a real effort to help the lowest performers succeed. I'm pretty sure that the teachers' union is a big contributor to the failures we see in the public school sector, by contrast -- yet public schools do seem like the most efficient way to round up everyone in the correct age range and give them an education, regardless of financial situation or anything else.
Never mind the other people who replied, suggesting this would be questioned as a fraudulent charge-back.... If, indeed, the credit card and bank let it go through as a valid charge-back? What happens next is Apple flags your Apple ID as blacklisted. That means every single app, song or video you ever purchased using it is now essentially trapped, associated with a dead ID that you can't use to ever install anything else again on a device.
Since there's no method to transfer purchases between Apple ID's, you'd probably have to start over with a new ID and re-buy everything you had before that you wanted to still use.
Honestly, I dislike in-app purchasing, but accept that it's something there is a market for. (Otherwise, I think it would go away.) As others said, you just have to be really careful when you loan your device to someone else like one of your kids. Sign out of your account first if you think there's any chance they could spend money on things under your login,
I appreciate the concern and suggestion, but I don't think that's an issue where I work. Maybe someday, when we have a different group of people managing I.T. But the thing is, we *do* come in on a regular basis and take care of anything from server or network upgrades to making sure a new hire has a computer configured and ready to go for them on their desk when they come in, in the morning.
The outsourced I.T. guy who lives 5,000 miles away can't be expected to agree to pop in on a Saturday afternoon while everyone's out of the office, to upgrade some of the hardware,or to be on site when they're having an important videoconference, just in case anything goes wrong.
We're trying to strike a balance between providing personal service and providing organized, FAIR service. It's really not fair that one person can jump over 5 other people who waited longer for help, just because he or she was in a position to come in to your office and drop a laptop on your desk, demanding an immediate solution.
First, let me say I love how replies such as your were made as an anonymous coward. You're not willing to sign your name to the fact you called me an "ignorant twat" or anything else, I guess?
But yes, HISTORY determines the PRESENT and the FUTURE. Otherwise, why bother studying it at all? There's NO instance you can find where new technology caused a net loss of jobs over the long run. None!
The ONLY possible case I can see this happening would be a future where we started building robots/androids with A.I. so good, they effectively acted like substitutes for real humans. At that point, each one you put into service is like having another baby in the population. So yes, THAT might create more competition for available jobs. But we're FAR from that point. In fact, it may never happen if you ask some technologists.
I'm doing the flexible work schedule thing myself, right now, to an extent. (Essentially, I work for a company that would ideally like me to stay in the office from 9-6PM every Monday through Friday -- but I've always pushed back against that, since so much of the I.T. support and maintenance I do can be done just as well from a computer at home over the VPN. I live 50+ miles from the office and the commute can really start to wear you down after a while.)
I have a great boss who is understanding, but other "higher ups" in the company are occasionally a little less understanding, if they feel they should get instant attention and help by just walking in and asking for it. We've started "reprogramming" people's expectations in that regard by implementing a ticket system it's pretty much mandatory to use. If you walk by and ask for help, we ask if you put in a ticket.....
As long as that's used, I get pop up alerts on my mobile devices the minute new tickets are put in and we can prioritize things pretty efficiently and get back to people from wherever we are. So I've sort of self-imposed a routine where I try to come into the office 2-3 days per week and work from home the others. The problem with these flexible schedules, though, is they require some discipline on YOUR part as the employee. People who need your help have NO idea if you're in the middle of trying to get a quick haircut, or putting gas in your car, or grabbing a late lunch, or ?? So yes, it requires some juggling if you're going to try to use your "not in the office" time to get other tasks done while taking support calls and doing your job. And doubly so if the flexible schedule includes the idea you'll work at least some of your hours as "off hours" vs. the 9-5 or 9-6 that others are in the office.
It really sounds to me like many of the people experiencing higher stress levels with all of this are unable to pull themselves away once they've put in their fair share of time? I guarantee if you work odd hours, you'll hear that phone beeping and see instant messages flying with people who just want to ask you a quick question, or need a quick password reset, or have a crisis where something crashed..... You have to remember that if you were working normal hours in the office, you'd be home and oblivious to all of that until the next morning, so pretend it's the same situation. Otherwise, it will slowly make you crazy.
I agree that it's depressing that someone like Trump can do so well in the polls, saying the things he says. But at the same time, I don't quite understand the relevancy of the points you listed here?
*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag
America has a long history of encouraging people to get/keep a job. Traditionally, it's been the honorable thing to do, if one wants to be a productive member of society and not mooch of of the labor of others. Technology ALWAYS winds up changing around the type of labor worth paying humans to do. Historically though, it also winds up increasing the total number of available jobs. (For example, just think how many new careers were created with the advent of television. Think how many new jobs were created by the personal computer.) There is always some pain during periods of transition -- but people are remarkably good at adapting, if we're pushed up against a wall and forced to do so. We lost a LOT of jobs in manufacturing to the Chinese and others -- but there are still plenty of things to be done. Might need a little training or education to do them, but it's possible.
*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch
I disagree with this assertion. Most people I know consider poverty a real problem. But the idea that government forcibly taking a portion of everyone's income to help these people out bothers me. Charity, by definition, is voluntary. If you can't comprehend or accept this, you may as well advocate all the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something.
*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.
Perhaps so, but can you blame them? Big pickup trucks aren't cheap. How will people be compensated for the loss of use of expensive vehicles they purchased, if you decide they're no longer allowed due to the climate change issues they help cause? The truth is, we don't yet have better solutions for the need for cars and trucks on our roads, or else we'd already all be using them.
*Nobody wants to give up their silly pea-shooter in case of Government aggression even if the government has much better toys that would make very light work of someone toting the said pea-shooter
This VASTLY oversimplifies things. People want guns for personal protection against other ever-day people who might initiate acts of violence. They also want guns for sport. Many of my friends enjoy going to a shooting range on weekends, and one even enjoys making his own ammo in his basement. When it comes to even government, situations vary. If we're talking about some sort of war against the government? Then, no... a fighter jet or tank is going to outmatch your rifle or handgun. But what about the no-knock warrants served in the middle of the night? The courts have upheld instances where police officers were shot by homeowners in these situations. The police knowing people could be armed helps level the playing field so they're kept honest.
*Nobody complains about the government pissing away trillions of the aforementioned toys while people starve and die of curable illnesses.
Sure they do! ALL the time. But you can throw dollar after dollar at a disease and still not have a cure. Often, money isn't really the primary barrier to solutions. We've had groups collecting billions of dollars over decades to find a cure for cancer but still no cure to be seen.
As another Macbook 12" user (and I even have the higher spec model), I agree with the grumbling. But it really depends on what you do with your computer. The Macbook really struggled when I tried to use Windows 7 Pro inside OS X in a VM, and after a while I even got a high temperature warning popping up, suggesting I close some applications because it was throttling back the CPU speed to keep it from overheating.
I also find it just takes noticeably longer to launch apps like Microsoft Outlook 2016 than it does on a recent model Macbook Air 13" or Macbook Pro.
If you're primarily using a web browser, or perhaps the iWork apps or iTunes, it performs perfectly fine, and yes, MS Office works fine too (just slower launch times and a little more sluggish opening Excel spreadsheets than other Macs I'm used to).
Bottom line? If you haven't spent much time working with higher end machines, you'll probably be satisfied enough with the Core-M CPUs. Otherwise, you'll quickly feel it's less powerful than an i5 or i7.
Yeah, but I don't think you're being totally fair about the new movie's story line either?
1. The storm trooper who "kicks Kylo's ass" was actually pretty much put into a coma at the end of the confrontation, so I wouldn't exactly say he won.
2. There's still a lot we don't know about the new characters, but there are some really strong arguments out there that Rey is going to turn out to be Obi Wan Kenobi's daughter. That would explain why she figures out how to use the Force so quickly. (She's using the same Jedi mind trick that Kenobi used on the Stormtroopers back in Episode 4. Nobody else in the movies ever used the Force in that manner. And the light saber that she eventually has to take to Skywalker? That was Obi Wan's light saber before he gave it to Luke. So it's an interesting way of having two generations of Kenobi's calling Luke to fight.)
3. I think it did actually improve on the original trilogy in the way it handled cut scenes. The original was borderline annoying with the way it did cuts back and forth between planets, while trying to tell several sub-stories at the same time.
When you sold Star Wars to Disney for $4 billion, you washed your hands of the franchise.
I think George has the right to critique the new movies, just as much as anyone else does. But at this point, he really has no reason to be upset that people aren't asking for his creative input.
Truthfully, I think the original Star Wars movies were as much a happy accident as anything else. Nobody knew they'd be a success, originally. And Mark Hamill was so unsure it was a good move signing up to play Luke Skywalker (Starwalker, originally), he signed on to play a role on the Eight is Enough TV show at the same time. They would have made him leave the Star Wars franchise, under contract, if he didn't have that car accident and spend time in the hospital, just as shooting began on Eight is Enough.
I give George credit where it's due -- for bringing the whole concept to life as a movie in the first place, and for being wise enough to get 100% of the royalties on the toys and other products. But the more I read about all of it, the more I realize he isn't very good at script-writing and has a real problem knowing when to delegate and get "hands off" with things. His explanation of viewing movies as fluid, evolving, "never finished" things is pretty ridiculous too. Sorry, buddy... When the last frame is filmed and edited, the movie is finished. The idea it's good to keep messing around with it after the fact, re-releasing it with minor changes? That just dilutes the original story and frustrates people who want to show the next person the same thing they always watched.
Actually, the arguments that PV solar, as currently deployed in the USA, are largely a "government boondoggle" and "highly inefficient" are two really valid accusations with merit.
IMO, like so many things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I invested in PV solar for my own house, at considerable expense. So no, I'm not a "hater" of the technology. But the only reason you see so much solar adoption right now is the artificial construct the government created to sweeten the economics of doing so.
Right now, the company that installed my panels, as well as many of their competitors, are campaigning aggressively to make sure the Federal tax break for solar doesn't expire by the end of 2015, as it was originally scheduled to do. That's because it amounts to a full 1/3rd. of your total installation cost that's received back as a tax credit. People like me who buy one of these systems typically do so with the help of a "bridge loan" that's given for an amount roughly equivalent to this tax credit, with 0% interest for 1 year. The "plan" is, you'll use the loan to help cover the up-front cost of your installation, and then pay the bridge loan off before any interest is due on it, using your Federal tax refund you get the next year.
Some states give back $1,000 or more, as well, as part of a solar rebate program or state tax credit. Typically, these rebates have a few hoops to jump through to qualify, including providing proof that you paid off the cost of your PV solar installation in full.
If these credits disappear, the typical consumer who buys one of these systems is looking at shelling out approximately $34,000 for a system that might not even offset more than 60-70% or so of their total electric usage. At that point, it really becomes a questionable purchase. Because yes, they can probably run numbers and projections in Excel and crank out a spreadsheet that shows it will save you tens of thousands of dollars over its 25-30 year average lifespan. But a LOT can happen in 25+ years. Will you be living in the same place? Will a new technology come along that drives the kilowatt hour cost of electricity way down? Will the system's inverter(s) fail outside of warranty (or the company who made them goes out of business), adding thousands to your total cost of operation?
Oh, and surely some people will bring up the additional "money maker" for having solar... the solar reclamation credits (SRECs) issued in some states. Well, again, these are more artificial government constructs because they simply penalized the power companies in those states for not producing above a certain percentage of power from "green sources". In turn, the power companies get to purchase these SRECs to make up for their shortfalls, and that money goes back to people with PV solar installations, based on how much power the systems generate per quarter.
I receive the SRECs in my state, and I'd say a typical check is around the $450-525 range. So sure, nice to receive those and they help make a better economic case for purchasing the system. But there's no guarantee what an SREC will be worth down the road. The more people who install solar, the more people there are generating SRECs in that state, and there are only so many a power company needs to buy to be compliant. Early adopters of solar typically got the best deal with SRECs, back when they were worth a lot more than today.
Technically, the author of the original article is probably right. C3P0 *was* a pretty annoying robot, and I remember having the realization that he grated on my nerves a bit the last time I re-watched the original Star Wars episode 4 too.
And sure, the quality of the costumes of the aliens aren't all that impressive by today's standards.
But I wonder how many other movies, cartoons or TV shows he remembered fondly as a kid but didn't ever re-watch as an adult? Because wow, if you do that with some of them I personally loved as a kid, it's brutal how awful they really are. (I grew up liking shows like "Super Friends" in the 70's -- and that's a GREAT example of a cartoon best left as a childhood memory and not EVER revisited!)
I think with the original Star Wars series though? I've gone into it with expectations adjusted for the era. Before Star Wars, there were hardly ANY movies dealing with aliens or outer space that weren't completely cheesy! Viewed through that filter, I find it stands up pretty well today as some of the best film-making of the 70's dealing with the genre. Those cool blaster sounds? They came up with banging on steel tension wires holding up telephone poles to get those! They didn't have all the computer and CGI tech. we take for granted today to pull any cool sound desired out of a hat. And new technology had to be developed just to film Star Wars, with cameras running along wires and so forth.
Not only that, but the first time I re-watched Star Wars as a young adult, I remember being really shocked/impressed by the complete lack of cursing in the films. That became such a "staple" for any movie with action and explosions in it, it seemed strangely missing from Star Wars. But that's part of the beauty of it. Nobody needed to drop an F bomb to get the point across that someone was scared or tense or angry. It was all kept very clean and kid-friendly without becoming sappy.
I do I.T. support for a company that's heavily involved with the hotel and travel industry, and just got back from the annual company meeting. One of the discussion topics given to a panel of experts there was the impact of AirBnB. The consensus was that it ranges from "not a concern at all" to "relatively helpful to business".
While admitting that the details depend a lot on which city you're talking about, there was definitely the opinion that in many good markets for the hotel industry, they have no problems achieving maximum (or near maximum) occupancy whenever corporate events come to town, or it's "tourist season" in the area. That's really what these guys live for. (It's not such a big deal if your big corporate hotel is relatively empty sometimes, if it rakes in big bucks for 3 months each summer, plus every 3-5 days or so in a row that some big convention is in town, and a few other key times of year like New Years' Eve or the Thanksgiving holiday.)
The smaller hotels/motels that are really worried about Johnny Q. Public who wants the cheapest room deal possible, and would happily go the AirBnB route to save a few more bucks are in a completely different category. In other words, AirBnB competes with the seedy family-owned motels more than the big corporate chains like Marriott.
No, in all cases I've seen, the Chromebooks are owned by the school and issued out to the kids when needed in certain classes. The schools aren't demanding the kids buy Chromebooks themselves to use for classwork outside of school.
I'm not really seeing a lot of cynics questioning his sincerity at wanting to do something good with his money that outlasts his time on the planet. I think MANY people with a lot of money start considering these options, because you really can't take it with you. And it's a little depressing sometimes seeing the inanely stupid things wealth goes to in poorly thought out wills.
Where I think people have valid reason to question him is with the whole "foundation" angle. Many people take issue with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation already, because it seems to have certain agendas it pushes (Common Core math in education, for example). Whether or not you feel these changes are overall positives in society -- they're still controversial ones. And plenty of other foundations have some questionable goings-on surrounding them. (For example, the fairly popular "Autism Speaks" organization has come under a lot of criticism for trying to implement changes that single out the Autistic, rather than helping them blend in with everybody else in daily life.)
All things considered, I think there are other ways the uber-wealthy have spent their money upon death that benefited the masses with less controversy. (Anyone funding a new museum or planetarium or other place of learning, open to the general public, would be one example.)
The first part of this article makes sense. The concept of accepting a career job with one employer, who you stay with through retirement, is pretty much over. (If nothing else, I think most people realize that doing so is a non-optimal decision, even when it's technically possible to do it.) For example, I used to work for a small manufacturing company doing I.T. for them. Honestly, I think there was a good chance I could have opted to stay there until either I retired, or until the company shut down. But swirling around in all of that was the fact that the owner of the business was at retirement age himself, and the other business partners were rumored to not have enough money to pony up to buy him out. On more than one occasion, I saw prospective buyers touring the facility, even though nothing came of it. Given that PLUS the economic downturn where half the staff was laid off, and I was forced to take a pay cut for a while -- I thought the smart move was to go elsewhere.
I have no doubt THAT trend will continue. Businesses will become more "fluid" in the whole hiring/firing process, as they realize it's a way to stay more competitive and efficient. (There's really nothing efficient about hanging onto your staff for decades when many of them are burnt out and just doing the minimum to hang on until their retirement day comes and they can collect a pension. Meanwhile, if you nudge those people out and force them to job hunt again, it pushes them out of their "comfort zone" they were coasting by in. Maybe it's "tough love" in a sense, but they're quite likely to do more useful work that justifies what they're getting paid when they land the next job.) And employees tend not to want to BE those people either. Many will take a look in the mirror and realize they're not that fulfilled staying where they're at for so long, and will voluntarily seek out something more challenging or simply something different that "changes things up" a bit and keeps it fresh.
All that is a BIG leap from assuming it means the future involves working a half-dozen "micro jobs" at once! That might be ONE way to earn a living for people who want to go about it like that. Plenty of online sites enable it as a possibility. (Even simply combing the "odd jobs" section of Craigslist, one can regularly find projects that last anywhere from 1 day to a few weeks. Software developers can do the same on sites designed to pair up available coders with people seeking to pay certain amounts for certain projects.) That doesn't negate the fact that there's huge value in retaining a steady, long-term workforce.
I'm a proponent of usually building your own gaming PC rig, BUT the fact is, the whole warranty thing is dicey at best these days, regardless of buying individual components and building it yourself.
For example, I bought a high-end video card made by Gigabyte last year. Right out of the box, it would freeze up the PC or cause a random reboot within 2-5 minutes of playing anything using 3D graphics. Just running standard 2D applications though, it'd run fine all day long. Everyone told me I needed a bigger/better power supply, or I needed to take off the heat-sink and fan, add better heatsink compound and re-seat it, or I just needed to try other versions of the ATI drivers, or I had an overheating problem because my case wasn't cooling well enough..... I forked out some $'s for a great power supply, and nope -- same issue. Also tried a few different driver versions but clearly that wasn't the answer. So after wasting all of that time + money, I requested an RMA from Gigabyte and sent it back in.
Well, Gigabyte sat on my card for about 3 months, meaning I had a non-working system that whole time while I waited for it. When I finally got it back one day? It looked like nobody even touched it. It just had a note in the box stating the RMA had been "processed" - with no explanation of it defects were actually found. I tried it out, and same issue!
Ultimately, I wound up trading it plus $100 cash to another computer enthusiast for his nVidia 3D card. (He wanted to tinker with re-flashing the BIOS on it and so forth, to see if he could get it going, and he didn't like his nVidia GTX series card for some reason.) Last I heard, he had to RMA the card again and is in the same boat I was in originally, where there's no word on when it'll get repaired/replaced and Gigabyte is just sitting on it again.
Given my whole fiasco? I almost surely would have been better off buying a pre-built PC, so a failure like this would have hopefully been resolved by swapping out my whole computer or troubleshooting it and replacing the defective card, minus all that uncertainty about power supply wattage/type and so on.
I still prefer the customization made possible only by building your own PC. With cases alone, there are SO many options.... But I'm not completely down on the idea of getting a good pre-made system from a known reputable vendor either.
Actually, people quite regularly ask/. for legal advice from what I've seen here over the years. And IMO, why not? It's not like anyone with any sense wouldn't consult a real attorney first if they were really going to take something to court. But I figure they're just putting out "feelers". Some people on here probably are lawyers by profession and others probably went through legal battles already over similar issues. It's useful to get a rough idea of it you have a case worth making the effort to find a good attorney for and pursue.
I think you're on to something, but the "trick" is finding a company that understands that method of working.
I work in I.T. for a business that primarily hires creative professionals and they often express the same attitude. They can't just clock in and out during "regular business hours" and drop things on a dime when it's time to go home. The company realized this at some point though, so everything is designed around that framework. The office itself has a lot of "meeting spaces" where groups can pow-wow to hash things out, rather than the feeling you're "supposed" to sit at your cubicle or in your office with a door shut most of the time. It's accepted and encouraged to use videoconferencing software whenever you like to schedule meetings with your co-workers, and working from home, the local Starbucks, or wherever suits your fancy is fine in those circumstances. Nobody really cares when you show up in the morning or go home at night if you're in one of those departments. They focus on the feedback from clients. Are they impressed/happy? Were the deadlines met? Those are the metrics for determining if you're getting your job done. Of course, this doesn't really work without good project management in place. You *do* have to have someone wrangling the herd and making sure Joe has item X done and submitted to you by X date, so Tim and Mary and use it to develop item Y by the next deadline.
If you try to work this way inside an environment that doesn't cater to it, I think you burn yourself out eventually -- or at least get shortchanged, when the majority only sees or gives merit to the 9-5, Mon/Fri block of time they see you occupying a space in a chair.
Anyone I know working those types of hours is doing it for a lot more than just a paycheck. I knew a lot of people, when I was younger, who did it too. But for them, it was like, "Hey... I finished school and now I don't really have any other commitments. At work, I mingle with a group of co-workers just like it was when I was in school, and I'm finally earning money in the real world, working my way up this whole corporate ladder thing."
Priorities tend to change as soon as you get serious with a significant other, followed by marriage and possibly kids.
Yeah... that comment made me laugh. Naming Helen Fitz's as a good example of nightlife or even a "fun place to go" in St. Louis? Wow.... If that's the case, it just reaffirms why I left!
Seriously, I remember YEARS ago getting totally mistreated in that establishment. My buddies and I went in for some food and drinks, and this security guy on a power trip got mad because he thought my friend pushed somebody in a line that had formed, as you went past the front entrance. (The place always gets too crowded like that, so people are standing all over the place - instead of just occupying seats at the bar or at tables. People stand around uncomfortably, trying to watch whatever game is on an overhead TV until they can find a better place to stand or sit.) So anyway, this guard shoves the butt end of a Brinkman flashlight into my friend's back to get his attention, rather than just saying something first. My friend, reflexively, spins around, about to fight someone (wouldn't you?). He realizes, immediately, it was just a security guy at that point and tries to ask what's going on but the guard goes into "bad ass mode" as soon as my friend spun around quickly, and tries to throw us all out. We had words with the manager but were essentially told they don't care if we ever come back again or not, and they're not going to make any effort to make us happy.
There's really NOTHING special about that place anyway. Just another overcrowded sports bar with an Irish theme for the sake of having a theme.
I used to really like Lemmon's bar, further down on Watson Rd. as you got into S. City, but I see it closed not too long ago; a victim of all the Bosnians who took over that part of town and ruined it with street gangs.
Really? I was born and raised in St. Louis. Spent almost 40 years of my life there working in tech. And I'm really glad I got out. Same sentiment many of my tech-savvy friends had too when they left.
I'll grant you that for a city its size, it does have affordable housing, and it's VERY good at offering family-friendly attractions.
But beyond that, it's in decline in many ways. First, you have only a few major employers there who employ the bulk of the I.T. workers there. One is the Busch brewery, who ever since getting taken over by InBev, let go of a whole bunch of full-time I.T. workers, preferring to use contractors (often of the H1B variety). Before that, they scaled back much of the advertising/marketing they used to do. (I had friends who lost good jobs there as graphics artists and the like, when they eliminated the "creative services" division.)
Another is Boeing, who IMO really just took over McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis so they could eliminate them as a competitor. There's been a slow shuttering of buildings on that campus ever since the takeover. They still employ a lot of people, but I'd say Boeing is much more interested in work they're doing in places like Seattle at this point.
It also has the HQ for Emerson Corporation, although it happens to be located right next to Ferguson. Luckily for them, they've always been walled in like a fortress, so I doubt the rioters ever had a chance of damaging anything of value in there. But needless to say, a job there means you're traveling through questionable neighborhoods every day for work. Not a lot of pleasant places to go out to lunch or what-not, out there, either.
If you remember the "glory days" of St. Louis, you'll also note that the riverfront is TERRIBLE compared to what it used to be. Ever since the casino went in on the landing and started buying up adjacent properties, it killed the nightlife down there. The riverfront used to be a popular destination that had moored ships and barges of all types, including a floating McDonalds riverboat, an old aircraft carrier you could walk around on, and riverboats (Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn) that actually did riverboat cruises/tours daily. One place let you take helicopter rides too. It also had a wax museum, a coin-op arcade game museum, a cool magic store, and many other neat shops that are all gone today.
I'm sure there are a lot of random opportunities out there, but my experience is, many are tough to find and fleeting. Many I.T. people wind up working in manufacturing for a struggling business someplace in the city for wages below the average, or working in medical I.T. - which is kind of its own beast, with a unique set of challenges and problems. It's not for everybody....
Even if it was possible to computerize the job of the CEO and have flawless efficiency processing reports and interpreting data? There's the expectation that a business have a human being at the top to talk to for negotiations.
Say another company wants to propose an arrangement to work together with them to produce a new product or provide a service. Do you really think it will suffice to submit the request to a computer system for processing and an ultimate yes or no decision? No way.
The company wasn't created in the first place because some computer software decided to form it. It took a human being (or a whole group of them) with some kind of vision and desire to fill a perceived void in the marketplace. These individuals aren't going to step aside to let a computer system call all the shots.
What MAY happen eventually is such computer software will act as the executive assistant, providing recommendations of what to do in a given scenario, or summaries of what reports really mean for the company.
I'm way too old to directly relate, but I work with plenty of people in the millennial generation and can still remember what life was like for me in my 20's.
Off-hand, I can see the attraction for a certain segment of the population, but don't know that I'd call it a "trend" just yet? In a way, this reminds me of those restaurants (most often the Japanese Steakhouses) where they purposely seat you at a table next to a number of strangers. Some people really enjoy the encouragement to socialize it creates, but others simply find it uncomfortable and even if they had a good time trying it once, aren't eager to repeat it.
Just because the younger generation likes to stay in constant contact/communication via the Internet doesn't necessarily mean they desire the same thing in daily life, out in the real world. IMO, a lot of people who constantly chat online are the same ones who aren't that comfortable in traditional social situations. The Internet is their social outlet BECAUSE they don't find it so easy to casually chat with random people if they're placed in the same room with them and have to be judged by their clothing choices, facial expressions, etc.
With the 20-somethings I encounter at work, I see a lot of them pairing up as roommates with friends, but not so much interested in communal living arrangements.
At some point, you reach a limit where you can't download more than a certain amount because your transfer rate makes it impossible to exceed it.
(EG. Whether I have 50 people sharing a 6mbit DSL circuit or just 1 person on it, we're collectively only going to be able to pull down 6mbits of data per second, maximum, multiplied by the number of seconds in one billing period.)
Especially as the transfer rates sold with broadband plans increase, it's arguable that the massive amount of data possible to download in a month is far greater than what's reasonable to allow for the price paid.... BUT that argument has a few holes in it too. (Most providers start ignoring caps or "soft limits" where you're throttled down in speed past a certain data xfer threshold, as long as you pay for the fastest tiers of service!)
I never really expected that I was getting truly "unlimited service" on any of the data plans I paid for which advertised it. IMO - that was always just marketing hype, kind of like those "unbreakable" combs, mirrors, and other odds and ends they sell. What I *expected* for my money was a service that charged me a reasonable price to cover my typical/average use of the plan, with the understanding that the times I might do heavy data transfers were offset by the times I don't do much but still pay as much as others who do.
Although scientists don't have a great track record of predicting the end of "peak oil"... it does seem to me that we're on track to phase out the burning of fossil fuels as a primary means of energy production.
Without any legislative interference, we're going to find "supply and demand" will dictate a change of course in coming decades, if localized pollution issues don't dictate it in some cases first.
What we DO know is that the major oil companies have been investing larger and larger amounts of money to drill ever further off-shore. That's not something that makes ANY financial sense at all, given the risks + cost, except for the fact they're not finding much "low hanging fruit" anymore with easier to drill locations. The new thing of extracting oil from shale deposits gave them a new supply source too -- but how long is that really going to last, especially as we move towards safer, more reliable versions of nuclear power plants?
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I was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and am very familiar with the Jennings area. My old roommate was a graduate of Jennings high-school, in fact.
That area definitely qualifies as one of the poorer districts in St. Louis and I can absolutely see how basics like ensuring students are fed helps with the learning process.
That said? I think there usually is a combination of problems with these schools, including mis-use of funds by faculty and general corruption, plus the fact that sometimes they really DO have a lot of "bad teachers". (When you're in what's considered a high crime neighborhood with poverty and students who don't want to be there, it's not conducive to attracting quality teachers.)
I don't think there's a "magic bullet" solution for any of this. IMO, going the private school route means the private school likely provides a little higher quality education and better learning environment, with the trade-off that they're less likely to make a real effort to help the lowest performers succeed. I'm pretty sure that the teachers' union is a big contributor to the failures we see in the public school sector, by contrast -- yet public schools do seem like the most efficient way to round up everyone in the correct age range and give them an education, regardless of financial situation or anything else.
Never mind the other people who replied, suggesting this would be questioned as a fraudulent charge-back.... If, indeed, the credit card and bank let it go through as a valid charge-back? What happens next is Apple flags your Apple ID as blacklisted. That means every single app, song or video you ever purchased using it is now essentially trapped, associated with a dead ID that you can't use to ever install anything else again on a device.
Since there's no method to transfer purchases between Apple ID's, you'd probably have to start over with a new ID and re-buy everything you had before that you wanted to still use.
Honestly, I dislike in-app purchasing, but accept that it's something there is a market for. (Otherwise, I think it would go away.) As others said, you just have to be really careful when you loan your device to someone else like one of your kids. Sign out of your account first if you think there's any chance they could spend money on things under your login,
I appreciate the concern and suggestion, but I don't think that's an issue where I work. Maybe someday, when we have a different group of people managing I.T. But the thing is, we *do* come in on a regular basis and take care of anything from server or network upgrades to making sure a new hire has a computer configured and ready to go for them on their desk when they come in, in the morning.
The outsourced I.T. guy who lives 5,000 miles away can't be expected to agree to pop in on a Saturday afternoon while everyone's out of the office, to upgrade some of the hardware,or to be on site when they're having an important videoconference, just in case anything goes wrong.
We're trying to strike a balance between providing personal service and providing organized, FAIR service. It's really not fair that one person can jump over 5 other people who waited longer for help, just because he or she was in a position to come in to your office and drop a laptop on your desk, demanding an immediate solution.
First, let me say I love how replies such as your were made as an anonymous coward. You're not willing to sign your name to the fact you called me an "ignorant twat" or anything else, I guess?
But yes, HISTORY determines the PRESENT and the FUTURE. Otherwise, why bother studying it at all?
There's NO instance you can find where new technology caused a net loss of jobs over the long run. None!
The ONLY possible case I can see this happening would be a future where we started building robots/androids with A.I. so good, they effectively acted like substitutes for real humans. At that point, each one you put into service is like having another baby in the population. So yes, THAT might create more competition for available jobs. But we're FAR from that point. In fact, it may never happen if you ask some technologists.
I'm doing the flexible work schedule thing myself, right now, to an extent. (Essentially, I work for a company that would ideally like me to stay in the office from 9-6PM every Monday through Friday -- but I've always pushed back against that, since so much of the I.T. support and maintenance I do can be done just as well from a computer at home over the VPN. I live 50+ miles from the office and the commute can really start to wear you down after a while.)
I have a great boss who is understanding, but other "higher ups" in the company are occasionally a little less understanding, if they feel they should get instant attention and help by just walking in and asking for it. We've started "reprogramming" people's expectations in that regard by implementing a ticket system it's pretty much mandatory to use. If you walk by and ask for help, we ask if you put in a ticket.....
As long as that's used, I get pop up alerts on my mobile devices the minute new tickets are put in and we can prioritize things pretty efficiently and get back to people from wherever we are. So I've sort of self-imposed a routine where I try to come into the office 2-3 days per week and work from home the others. The problem with these flexible schedules, though, is they require some discipline on YOUR part as the employee. People who need your help have NO idea if you're in the middle of trying to get a quick haircut, or putting gas in your car, or grabbing a late lunch, or ?? So yes, it requires some juggling if you're going to try to use your "not in the office" time to get other tasks done while taking support calls and doing your job. And doubly so if the flexible schedule includes the idea you'll work at least some of your hours as "off hours" vs. the 9-5 or 9-6 that others are in the office.
It really sounds to me like many of the people experiencing higher stress levels with all of this are unable to pull themselves away once they've put in their fair share of time? I guarantee if you work odd hours, you'll hear that phone beeping and see instant messages flying with people who just want to ask you a quick question, or need a quick password reset, or have a crisis where something crashed..... You have to remember that if you were working normal hours in the office, you'd be home and oblivious to all of that until the next morning, so pretend it's the same situation. Otherwise, it will slowly make you crazy.
I agree that it's depressing that someone like Trump can do so well in the polls, saying the things he says.
But at the same time, I don't quite understand the relevancy of the points you listed here?
*Everyone must have a job even if the things you're good at have been replaced by bots or outsourced to the Chinese. If you don't have a job you are derided as a scumbag
America has a long history of encouraging people to get/keep a job. Traditionally, it's been the honorable thing to do, if one wants to be a productive member of society and not mooch of of the labor of others. Technology ALWAYS winds up changing around the type of labor worth paying humans to do. Historically though, it also winds up increasing the total number of available jobs. (For example, just think how many new careers were created with the advent of television. Think how many new jobs were created by the personal computer.) There is always some pain during periods of transition -- but people are remarkably good at adapting, if we're pushed up against a wall and forced to do so. We lost a LOT of jobs in manufacturing to the Chinese and others -- but there are still plenty of things to be done. Might need a little training or education to do them, but it's possible.
*Tremendous poverty, everyone brushes it under the table because everybody is so opposed to the idea of people getting a free lunch
I disagree with this assertion. Most people I know consider poverty a real problem. But the idea that government forcibly taking a portion of everyone's income to help these people out bothers me. Charity, by definition, is voluntary. If you can't comprehend or accept this, you may as well advocate all the poor holding up everyone else at gunpoint whenever they need something.
*Nobody wants to give up driving their big automatic pickup to work, even if it can be proven they are causing global warming.
Perhaps so, but can you blame them? Big pickup trucks aren't cheap. How will people be compensated for the loss of use of expensive vehicles they purchased, if you decide they're no longer allowed due to the climate change issues they help cause? The truth is, we don't yet have better solutions for the need for cars and trucks on our roads, or else we'd already all be using them.
*Nobody wants to give up their silly pea-shooter in case of Government aggression even if the government has much better toys that would make very light work of someone toting the said pea-shooter
This VASTLY oversimplifies things. People want guns for personal protection against other ever-day people who might initiate acts of violence. They also want guns for sport. Many of my friends enjoy going to a shooting range on weekends, and one even enjoys making his own ammo in his basement. When it comes to even government, situations vary. If we're talking about some sort of war against the government? Then, no... a fighter jet or tank is going to outmatch your rifle or handgun. But what about the no-knock warrants served in the middle of the night? The courts have upheld instances where police officers were shot by homeowners in these situations. The police knowing people could be armed helps level the playing field so they're kept honest.
*Nobody complains about the government pissing away trillions of the aforementioned toys while people starve and die of curable illnesses.
Sure they do! ALL the time. But you can throw dollar after dollar at a disease and still not have a cure. Often, money isn't really the primary barrier to solutions. We've had groups collecting billions of dollars over decades to find a cure for cancer but still no cure to be seen.
As another Macbook 12" user (and I even have the higher spec model), I agree with the grumbling. But it really depends on what you do with your computer. The Macbook really struggled when I tried to use Windows 7 Pro inside OS X in a VM, and after a while I even got a high temperature warning popping up, suggesting I close some applications because it was throttling back the CPU speed to keep it from overheating.
I also find it just takes noticeably longer to launch apps like Microsoft Outlook 2016 than it does on a recent model Macbook Air 13" or Macbook Pro.
If you're primarily using a web browser, or perhaps the iWork apps or iTunes, it performs perfectly fine, and yes, MS Office works fine too (just slower launch times and a little more sluggish opening Excel spreadsheets than other Macs I'm used to).
Bottom line? If you haven't spent much time working with higher end machines, you'll probably be satisfied enough with the Core-M CPUs. Otherwise, you'll quickly feel it's less powerful than an i5 or i7.
Yeah, but I don't think you're being totally fair about the new movie's story line either?
1. The storm trooper who "kicks Kylo's ass" was actually pretty much put into a coma at the end of the confrontation, so I wouldn't exactly say he won.
2. There's still a lot we don't know about the new characters, but there are some really strong arguments out there that Rey is going to turn out to be Obi Wan Kenobi's daughter. That would explain why she figures out how to use the Force so quickly. (She's using the same Jedi mind trick that Kenobi used on the Stormtroopers back in Episode 4. Nobody else in the movies ever used the Force in that manner. And the light saber that she eventually has to take to Skywalker? That was Obi Wan's light saber before he gave it to Luke. So it's an interesting way of having two generations of Kenobi's calling Luke to fight.)
3. I think it did actually improve on the original trilogy in the way it handled cut scenes. The original was borderline annoying with the way it did cuts back and forth between planets, while trying to tell several sub-stories at the same time.
When you sold Star Wars to Disney for $4 billion, you washed your hands of the franchise.
I think George has the right to critique the new movies, just as much as anyone else does. But at this point, he really has no reason to be upset that people aren't asking for his creative input.
Truthfully, I think the original Star Wars movies were as much a happy accident as anything else. Nobody knew they'd be a success, originally. And Mark Hamill was so unsure it was a good move signing up to play Luke Skywalker (Starwalker, originally), he signed on to play a role on the Eight is Enough TV show at the same time. They would have made him leave the Star Wars franchise, under contract, if he didn't have that car accident and spend time in the hospital, just as shooting began on Eight is Enough.
I give George credit where it's due -- for bringing the whole concept to life as a movie in the first place, and for being wise enough to get 100% of the royalties on the toys and other products. But the more I read about all of it, the more I realize he isn't very good at script-writing and has a real problem knowing when to delegate and get "hands off" with things. His explanation of viewing movies as fluid, evolving, "never finished" things is pretty ridiculous too. Sorry, buddy... When the last frame is filmed and edited, the movie is finished. The idea it's good to keep messing around with it after the fact, re-releasing it with minor changes? That just dilutes the original story and frustrates people who want to show the next person the same thing they always watched.
Actually, the arguments that PV solar, as currently deployed in the USA, are largely a "government boondoggle" and "highly inefficient" are two really valid accusations with merit.
IMO, like so many things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I invested in PV solar for my own house, at considerable expense. So no, I'm not a "hater" of the technology. But the only reason you see so much solar adoption right now is the artificial construct the government created to sweeten the economics of doing so.
Right now, the company that installed my panels, as well as many of their competitors, are campaigning aggressively to make sure the Federal tax break for solar doesn't expire by the end of 2015, as it was originally scheduled to do. That's because it amounts to a full 1/3rd. of your total installation cost that's received back as a tax credit. People like me who buy one of these systems typically do so with the help of a "bridge loan" that's given for an amount roughly equivalent to this tax credit, with 0% interest for 1 year. The "plan" is, you'll use the loan to help cover the up-front cost of your installation, and then pay the bridge loan off before any interest is due on it, using your Federal tax refund you get the next year.
Some states give back $1,000 or more, as well, as part of a solar rebate program or state tax credit. Typically, these rebates have a few hoops to jump through to qualify, including providing proof that you paid off the cost of your PV solar installation in full.
If these credits disappear, the typical consumer who buys one of these systems is looking at shelling out approximately $34,000 for a system that might not even offset more than 60-70% or so of their total electric usage. At that point, it really becomes a questionable purchase. Because yes, they can probably run numbers and projections in Excel and crank out a spreadsheet that shows it will save you tens of thousands of dollars over its 25-30 year average lifespan. But a LOT can happen in 25+ years. Will you be living in the same place? Will a new technology come along that drives the kilowatt hour cost of electricity way down? Will the system's inverter(s) fail outside of warranty (or the company who made them goes out of business), adding thousands to your total cost of operation?
Oh, and surely some people will bring up the additional "money maker" for having solar ... the solar reclamation credits (SRECs) issued in some states. Well, again, these are more artificial government constructs because they simply penalized the power companies in those states for not producing above a certain percentage of power from "green sources". In turn, the power companies get to purchase these SRECs to make up for their shortfalls, and that money goes back to people with PV solar installations, based on how much power the systems generate per quarter.
I receive the SRECs in my state, and I'd say a typical check is around the $450-525 range. So sure, nice to receive those and they help make a better economic case for purchasing the system. But there's no guarantee what an SREC will be worth down the road. The more people who install solar, the more people there are generating SRECs in that state, and there are only so many a power company needs to buy to be compliant. Early adopters of solar typically got the best deal with SRECs, back when they were worth a lot more than today.
Technically, the author of the original article is probably right. C3P0 *was* a pretty annoying robot, and I remember having the realization that he grated on my nerves a bit the last time I re-watched the original Star Wars episode 4 too.
And sure, the quality of the costumes of the aliens aren't all that impressive by today's standards.
But I wonder how many other movies, cartoons or TV shows he remembered fondly as a kid but didn't ever re-watch as an adult? Because wow, if you do that with some of them I personally loved as a kid, it's brutal how awful they really are. (I grew up liking shows like "Super Friends" in the 70's -- and that's a GREAT example of a cartoon best left as a childhood memory and not EVER revisited!)
I think with the original Star Wars series though? I've gone into it with expectations adjusted for the era. Before Star Wars, there were hardly ANY movies dealing with aliens or outer space that weren't completely cheesy! Viewed through that filter, I find it stands up pretty well today as some of the best film-making of the 70's dealing with the genre. Those cool blaster sounds? They came up with banging on steel tension wires holding up telephone poles to get those! They didn't have all the computer and CGI tech. we take for granted today to pull any cool sound desired out of a hat. And new technology had to be developed just to film Star Wars, with cameras running along wires and so forth.
Not only that, but the first time I re-watched Star Wars as a young adult, I remember being really shocked/impressed by the complete lack of cursing in the films. That became such a "staple" for any movie with action and explosions in it, it seemed strangely missing from Star Wars. But that's part of the beauty of it. Nobody needed to drop an F bomb to get the point across that someone was scared or tense or angry. It was all kept very clean and kid-friendly without becoming sappy.
I do I.T. support for a company that's heavily involved with the hotel and travel industry, and just got back from the annual company meeting. One of the discussion topics given to a panel of experts there was the impact of AirBnB. The consensus was that it ranges from "not a concern at all" to "relatively helpful to business".
While admitting that the details depend a lot on which city you're talking about, there was definitely the opinion that in many good markets for the hotel industry, they have no problems achieving maximum (or near maximum) occupancy whenever corporate events come to town, or it's "tourist season" in the area. That's really what these guys live for. (It's not such a big deal if your big corporate hotel is relatively empty sometimes, if it rakes in big bucks for 3 months each summer, plus every 3-5 days or so in a row that some big convention is in town, and a few other key times of year like New Years' Eve or the Thanksgiving holiday.)
The smaller hotels/motels that are really worried about Johnny Q. Public who wants the cheapest room deal possible, and would happily go the AirBnB route to save a few more bucks are in a completely different category. In other words, AirBnB competes with the seedy family-owned motels more than the big corporate chains like Marriott.
No, in all cases I've seen, the Chromebooks are owned by the school and issued out to the kids when needed in certain classes. The schools aren't demanding the kids buy Chromebooks themselves to use for classwork outside of school.
I'm not really seeing a lot of cynics questioning his sincerity at wanting to do something good with his money that outlasts his time on the planet. I think MANY people with a lot of money start considering these options, because you really can't take it with you. And it's a little depressing sometimes seeing the inanely stupid things wealth goes to in poorly thought out wills.
Where I think people have valid reason to question him is with the whole "foundation" angle. Many people take issue with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation already, because it seems to have certain agendas it pushes (Common Core math in education, for example). Whether or not you feel these changes are overall positives in society -- they're still controversial ones. And plenty of other foundations have some questionable goings-on surrounding them. (For example, the fairly popular "Autism Speaks" organization has come under a lot of criticism for trying to implement changes that single out the Autistic, rather than helping them blend in with everybody else in daily life.)
All things considered, I think there are other ways the uber-wealthy have spent their money upon death that benefited the masses with less controversy. (Anyone funding a new museum or planetarium or other place of learning, open to the general public, would be one example.)
The first part of this article makes sense. The concept of accepting a career job with one employer, who you stay with through retirement, is pretty much over. (If nothing else, I think most people realize that doing so is a non-optimal decision, even when it's technically possible to do it.) For example, I used to work for a small manufacturing company doing I.T. for them. Honestly, I think there was a good chance I could have opted to stay there until either I retired, or until the company shut down. But swirling around in all of that was the fact that the owner of the business was at retirement age himself, and the other business partners were rumored to not have enough money to pony up to buy him out. On more than one occasion, I saw prospective buyers touring the facility, even though nothing came of it. Given that PLUS the economic downturn where half the staff was laid off, and I was forced to take a pay cut for a while -- I thought the smart move was to go elsewhere.
I have no doubt THAT trend will continue. Businesses will become more "fluid" in the whole hiring/firing process, as they realize it's a way to stay more competitive and efficient. (There's really nothing efficient about hanging onto your staff for decades when many of them are burnt out and just doing the minimum to hang on until their retirement day comes and they can collect a pension. Meanwhile, if you nudge those people out and force them to job hunt again, it pushes them out of their "comfort zone" they were coasting by in. Maybe it's "tough love" in a sense, but they're quite likely to do more useful work that justifies what they're getting paid when they land the next job.) And employees tend not to want to BE those people either. Many will take a look in the mirror and realize they're not that fulfilled staying where they're at for so long, and will voluntarily seek out something more challenging or simply something different that "changes things up" a bit and keeps it fresh.
All that is a BIG leap from assuming it means the future involves working a half-dozen "micro jobs" at once! That might be ONE way to earn a living for people who want to go about it like that. Plenty of online sites enable it as a possibility. (Even simply combing the "odd jobs" section of Craigslist, one can regularly find projects that last anywhere from 1 day to a few weeks. Software developers can do the same on sites designed to pair up available coders with people seeking to pay certain amounts for certain projects.) That doesn't negate the fact that there's huge value in retaining a steady, long-term workforce.
I'm a proponent of usually building your own gaming PC rig, BUT the fact is, the whole warranty thing is dicey at best these days, regardless of buying individual components and building it yourself.
For example, I bought a high-end video card made by Gigabyte last year. Right out of the box, it would freeze up the PC or cause a random reboot within 2-5 minutes of playing anything using 3D graphics. Just running standard 2D applications though, it'd run fine all day long. Everyone told me I needed a bigger/better power supply, or I needed to take off the heat-sink and fan, add better heatsink compound and re-seat it, or I just needed to try other versions of the ATI drivers, or I had an overheating problem because my case wasn't cooling well enough..... I forked out some $'s for a great power supply, and nope -- same issue. Also tried a few different driver versions but clearly that wasn't the answer. So after wasting all of that time + money, I requested an RMA from Gigabyte and sent it back in.
Well, Gigabyte sat on my card for about 3 months, meaning I had a non-working system that whole time while I waited for it. When I finally got it back one day? It looked like nobody even touched it. It just had a note in the box stating the RMA had been "processed" - with no explanation of it defects were actually found. I tried it out, and same issue!
Ultimately, I wound up trading it plus $100 cash to another computer enthusiast for his nVidia 3D card. (He wanted to tinker with re-flashing the BIOS on it and so forth, to see if he could get it going, and he didn't like his nVidia GTX series card for some reason.) Last I heard, he had to RMA the card again and is in the same boat I was in originally, where there's no word on when it'll get repaired/replaced and Gigabyte is just sitting on it again.
Given my whole fiasco? I almost surely would have been better off buying a pre-built PC, so a failure like this would have hopefully been resolved by swapping out my whole computer or troubleshooting it and replacing the defective card, minus all that uncertainty about power supply wattage/type and so on.
I still prefer the customization made possible only by building your own PC. With cases alone, there are SO many options.... But I'm not completely down on the idea of getting a good pre-made system from a known reputable vendor either.
Actually, people quite regularly ask /. for legal advice from what I've seen here over the years. And IMO, why not? It's not like anyone with any sense wouldn't consult a real attorney first if they were really going to take something to court. But I figure they're just putting out "feelers". Some people on here probably are lawyers by profession and others probably went through legal battles already over similar issues. It's useful to get a rough idea of it you have a case worth making the effort to find a good attorney for and pursue.
I think you're on to something, but the "trick" is finding a company that understands that method of working.
I work in I.T. for a business that primarily hires creative professionals and they often express the same attitude. They can't just clock in and out during "regular business hours" and drop things on a dime when it's time to go home. The company realized this at some point though, so everything is designed around that framework. The office itself has a lot of "meeting spaces" where groups can pow-wow to hash things out, rather than the feeling you're "supposed" to sit at your cubicle or in your office with a door shut most of the time. It's accepted and encouraged to use videoconferencing software whenever you like to schedule meetings with your co-workers, and working from home, the local Starbucks, or wherever suits your fancy is fine in those circumstances. Nobody really cares when you show up in the morning or go home at night if you're in one of those departments. They focus on the feedback from clients. Are they impressed/happy? Were the deadlines met? Those are the metrics for determining if you're getting your job done. Of course, this doesn't really work without good project management in place. You *do* have to have someone wrangling the herd and making sure Joe has item X done and submitted to you by X date, so Tim and Mary and use it to develop item Y by the next deadline.
If you try to work this way inside an environment that doesn't cater to it, I think you burn yourself out eventually -- or at least get shortchanged, when the majority only sees or gives merit to the 9-5, Mon/Fri block of time they see you occupying a space in a chair.
Anyone I know working those types of hours is doing it for a lot more than just a paycheck. I knew a lot of people, when I was younger, who did it too. But for them, it was like, "Hey... I finished school and now I don't really have any other commitments. At work, I mingle with a group of co-workers just like it was when I was in school, and I'm finally earning money in the real world, working my way up this whole corporate ladder thing."
Priorities tend to change as soon as you get serious with a significant other, followed by marriage and possibly kids.
Yeah... that comment made me laugh. Naming Helen Fitz's as a good example of nightlife or even a "fun place to go" in St. Louis? Wow.... If that's the case, it just reaffirms why I left!
Seriously, I remember YEARS ago getting totally mistreated in that establishment. My buddies and I went in for some food and drinks, and this security guy on a power trip got mad because he thought my friend pushed somebody in a line that had formed, as you went past the front entrance. (The place always gets too crowded like that, so people are standing all over the place - instead of just occupying seats at the bar or at tables. People stand around uncomfortably, trying to watch whatever game is on an overhead TV until they can find a better place to stand or sit.) So anyway, this guard shoves the butt end of a Brinkman flashlight into my friend's back to get his attention, rather than just saying something first. My friend, reflexively, spins around, about to fight someone (wouldn't you?). He realizes, immediately, it was just a security guy at that point and tries to ask what's going on but the guard goes into "bad ass mode" as soon as my friend spun around quickly, and tries to throw us all out. We had words with the manager but were essentially told they don't care if we ever come back again or not, and they're not going to make any effort to make us happy.
There's really NOTHING special about that place anyway. Just another overcrowded sports bar with an Irish theme for the sake of having a theme.
I used to really like Lemmon's bar, further down on Watson Rd. as you got into S. City, but I see it closed not too long ago; a victim of all the Bosnians who took over that part of town and ruined it with street gangs.
Really? I was born and raised in St. Louis. Spent almost 40 years of my life there working in tech. And I'm really glad I got out. Same sentiment many of my tech-savvy friends had too when they left.
I'll grant you that for a city its size, it does have affordable housing, and it's VERY good at offering family-friendly attractions.
But beyond that, it's in decline in many ways. First, you have only a few major employers there who employ the bulk of the I.T. workers there. One is the Busch brewery, who ever since getting taken over by InBev, let go of a whole bunch of full-time I.T. workers, preferring to use contractors (often of the H1B variety). Before that, they scaled back much of the advertising/marketing they used to do. (I had friends who lost good jobs there as graphics artists and the like, when they eliminated the "creative services" division.)
Another is Boeing, who IMO really just took over McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis so they could eliminate them as a competitor. There's been a slow shuttering of buildings on that campus ever since the takeover. They still employ a lot of people, but I'd say Boeing is much more interested in work they're doing in places like Seattle at this point.
It also has the HQ for Emerson Corporation, although it happens to be located right next to Ferguson. Luckily for them, they've always been walled in like a fortress, so I doubt the rioters ever had a chance of damaging anything of value in there. But needless to say, a job there means you're traveling through questionable neighborhoods every day for work. Not a lot of pleasant places to go out to lunch or what-not, out there, either.
If you remember the "glory days" of St. Louis, you'll also note that the riverfront is TERRIBLE compared to what it used to be. Ever since the casino went in on the landing and started buying up adjacent properties, it killed the nightlife down there. The riverfront used to be a popular destination that had moored ships and barges of all types, including a floating McDonalds riverboat, an old aircraft carrier you could walk around on, and riverboats (Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn) that actually did riverboat cruises/tours daily. One place let you take helicopter rides too. It also had a wax museum, a coin-op arcade game museum, a cool magic store, and many other neat shops that are all gone today.
I'm sure there are a lot of random opportunities out there, but my experience is, many are tough to find and fleeting. Many I.T. people wind up working in manufacturing for a struggling business someplace in the city for wages below the average, or working in medical I.T. - which is kind of its own beast, with a unique set of challenges and problems. It's not for everybody....
Even if it was possible to computerize the job of the CEO and have flawless efficiency processing reports and interpreting data? There's the expectation that a business have a human being at the top to talk to for negotiations.
Say another company wants to propose an arrangement to work together with them to produce a new product or provide a service. Do you really think it will suffice to submit the request to a computer system for processing and an ultimate yes or no decision? No way.
The company wasn't created in the first place because some computer software decided to form it. It took a human being (or a whole group of them) with some kind of vision and desire to fill a perceived void in the marketplace. These individuals aren't going to step aside to let a computer system call all the shots.
What MAY happen eventually is such computer software will act as the executive assistant, providing recommendations of what to do in a given scenario, or summaries of what reports really mean for the company.
I'm way too old to directly relate, but I work with plenty of people in the millennial generation and can still remember what life was like for me in my 20's.
Off-hand, I can see the attraction for a certain segment of the population, but don't know that I'd call it a "trend" just yet? In a way, this reminds me of those restaurants (most often the Japanese Steakhouses) where they purposely seat you at a table next to a number of strangers. Some people really enjoy the encouragement to socialize it creates, but others simply find it uncomfortable and even if they had a good time trying it once, aren't eager to repeat it.
Just because the younger generation likes to stay in constant contact/communication via the Internet doesn't necessarily mean they desire the same thing in daily life, out in the real world. IMO, a lot of people who constantly chat online are the same ones who aren't that comfortable in traditional social situations. The Internet is their social outlet BECAUSE they don't find it so easy to casually chat with random people if they're placed in the same room with them and have to be judged by their clothing choices, facial expressions, etc.
With the 20-somethings I encounter at work, I see a lot of them pairing up as roommates with friends, but not so much interested in communal living arrangements.
At some point, you reach a limit where you can't download more than a certain amount because your transfer rate makes it impossible to exceed it.
(EG. Whether I have 50 people sharing a 6mbit DSL circuit or just 1 person on it, we're collectively only going to be able to pull down 6mbits of data per second, maximum, multiplied by the number of seconds in one billing period.)
Especially as the transfer rates sold with broadband plans increase, it's arguable that the massive amount of data possible to download in a month is far greater than what's reasonable to allow for the price paid .... BUT that argument has a few holes in it too. (Most providers start ignoring caps or "soft limits" where you're throttled down in speed past a certain data xfer threshold, as long as you pay for the fastest tiers of service!)
I never really expected that I was getting truly "unlimited service" on any of the data plans I paid for which advertised it. IMO - that was always just marketing hype, kind of like those "unbreakable" combs, mirrors, and other odds and ends they sell. What I *expected* for my money was a service that charged me a reasonable price to cover my typical/average use of the plan, with the understanding that the times I might do heavy data transfers were offset by the times I don't do much but still pay as much as others who do.
Although scientists don't have a great track record of predicting the end of "peak oil" ... it does seem to me that we're on track to phase out the burning of fossil fuels as a primary means of energy production.
Without any legislative interference, we're going to find "supply and demand" will dictate a change of course in coming decades, if localized pollution issues don't dictate it in some cases first.
What we DO know is that the major oil companies have been investing larger and larger amounts of money to drill ever further off-shore. That's not something that makes ANY financial sense at all, given the risks + cost, except for the fact they're not finding much "low hanging fruit" anymore with easier to drill locations. The new thing of extracting oil from shale deposits gave them a new supply source too -- but how long is that really going to last, especially as we move towards safer, more reliable versions of nuclear power plants?