At a major corporation, I do not have access to those options. I'm not even an administrator of my own PC any more. Perhaps one of our three grossly overworked Tech guys can set that up.
It needs to come that way from the vendor, or it is not going to happen.
but cool to know it exists and might some day happen.
These days*, my typical day starts the second I sit down at the PC.
I work for 15 to 30 minutes dealing with fresh issues and then I get up and get coffee/take a break/etc.
I know of no way to cause PC's to power on automatically currently widely in use but your point there is a good one. The proposed solution, and my experience with it in the past is that it only includes turning off PC's, not turning them on for me.
---
* when I was a developer the hit would be even worse. I would work until I get ready to walk out the door since the last 2 hours of the day were easily the most productive (no meetings). Then I would leave eclipse open with many windows, perspectives, perhaps even running programs in debug mode. When I walked in the door the next morning, I usually had a couple ideas to code. Both the act of closing down my working state and restarting my working state would greatly exceed 5 minutes.
Even now, just a supervisor and no longer a developer, I have a lot of programs open. Let's see. Infopath Messenger Outlook Excel Project Two internet explorers for internal sites Ticket Entry/Tracking system and Firefox.
I can't start these programs until the system settles down. It starts a virus scanner, a printout tracker (yea, a new bit of fascism), maps a ton of drives, runs various network scripts.
Our guys make a little bit more than $700 a week too.
[Attractive] Women [under 40] think that they have more bargaining power than men, and that they can wield this power more effectively by pretending they don't realize they have it. [Those] Women are correct in their thinking [until they get fat, grow old, become unable to have sex for health reasons, etc.]
There are more things to watch and listen to than I have time for.
I just now got around to The Big Bang Theory, almost 2 years late. I missed several movies in the theaters. I didn't find out about Blue October until they were several years old. I'm following a half dozen book series. A new game comes out every few months. I just finished plowing through 1500 pages of Questionable Content webcomic (awesome!) and I haven't come close to finishing "Lucid TV" and "Cyanide and Happiness". Plus 9 chickweed lane, pearls before swine, House, Bleach, Heroes (caught up in a big 20 episode marathon), Lost (a year behind-- kinda waiting to see if folks say it has a good ending), Haven't seen an episode of "Rescue Me". I'm way behind on Jack Benny episodes, The Six Shooter, I'm only on season two of Andy Griffith. I haven't even started Gunsmoke. I finally have caught up on most of the Jokes on "Raw Dog" on XM. There was the Elton John/Billy Joel Concert.. and several other concerts coming around this summer. Plus several plays locally. The list is endless. Looking forward to Star Trek and the last two Harry Potter films. And the avengers movie. And the Wolverine Movie.
I can't keep up. There will be some great stuff that I will never see.
At any given time, there are at least 1,000 girls and women in any given major city (more in some) doing this by their own choice.
The three I've known personally (oddly enough- meeting one through an online Mmorg) said they loved it- they enjoyed the feeling of power it gave them over men and the way they felt special (being put on a jet to fly to another city). A fourth one who never came out and said she was, but who really was (just had a closed clientele of a couple dozen guys) got off on the love, adoration, money and the feeling of power taking men from other women.
I would say that all of them were pretty screwed up in the head. But over half the people I know (including me) are screwed up in some way.
They clearly didn't hate it. The only thing they hated was that they had gotten older and were losing to younger girls.
I'm sure there are times that it is a job. And any job has days you don't want to go to work.
There have been multiple weeks where I hated my job- I'm sure its the same for professional ladies.
But mainly it seems like the end game is terrible. Once you hit 50ish, you have completely inappropriate values for a closed relationship and you lack the looks to keep the game going any more. Of course... not much different than a programmer- once we hit 50, a lot of us get the sack for a "young, dynamic" idiot willing to work 60 hours a week "to get experience".
Back in the day when we were on 2400 modems, you had 60 minutes per day to play your moves. One person was just walking all over everyone and we could not figure out how the hell he was doing it.
The trick was this.
We were playing at 7pm to 1am-- and if you lost your login, you were screwed and not getting on again until after 1am. As the battles displayed many lines, it could take 4 or 5 minutes for the game to transmit all the results to you... line by line.
battle result battle result battle result... 70 or 80 more intererations - taking about 10 seconds each line. battle result battle result battle result
He was playing from 3am to 6am.
He would drop carrier and the huge battles would be resolved instantly - dumping at max speed to the local console.
Then he would call back in 30 seconds later. He was effectively getting 90 to 150 minutes play per day.
It drove us insane and the game master who was a friend of ours never gave us a hint until the game was over. I think his userid was Drexel.
This is sort of like the macro players to day who figure out how to push a button, walk away and have their character fight and level up while they are asleep.
Why does Rowling need $8 a book when she makes a billion bucks? Why does a successful rock band need $19 a CD when they make hundreds of millions?
---
More to the point of the story.
If prices are cheap, you can buy other offerings from more publishers. If prices are high, purchasing one $50 game, means you are not purchasing 2 to 29 other games.
If you can make a good game and make $100k a year off it selling it for $1 to 200k users (1/2 going to costs and middlemen) then why do you have to squeeze out lots of other potential games by sucking up a person's entire disposable income.
The evidence is there (an absolute flood of entertainment that no one can keep up with) that the creative industry doesn't need any more encouragement to produce creative works.
Sexuality ranges from 100% opposite sex attraction to 100% same sex attraction to 100% dominant to 100% submissive to 100% yada yada yada (race, boobs, ass, red head, blonde, fat, thin). There are many, many axis which sexuality turns on and each of them varies from 0% to 100%. If you are only lightly attracted to the same sex or only attracted to the same sex under particular circumstances, then it can be a choice under certain circumstances. One of the most comfortably gay guys I ever knew (from a painting class I took with him) was married for 8 years and had a couple kids. Clearly, he wasn't gay but was bisexual- but it was a lot simpler for him to just be one or the other socially.
Society doesn't tend to support bisexuality very well unless you are a hot female.
and for what it is worth, the policy seems a bit extreme for Amazon to have gone to without warning. It really puts their position as a neutral retailer in jeopardy. Christians, hindus, gays, straights, etc. could all buy books from Amazon as long as they are not politicized-- it's just a question availability and inexpensive price.
My problem with Amazon, Walmart, and many other similar stores is that ultimately they are bad for me as a consumer. I get better prices on 80% of the merchandise-- and the other 20% of merchandise I lose the ability to purchase at all. The small pet store with the barley dog food goes out of business- but pedigree is $1.00 instead of $1.10 at Walmart.
Ultimately, we as consumers are slitting our own throats by buying from the Amazons and Walmarts. The little stores need that extra dime in order to keep providing the specialty products the big stores will not offer. In some cases, you go from 10 to 15 (or more) different varieties of a product to *three*. All the diverse products were profitable- but the three were the most profitable.
The MMO choice is completely insane as a business decision.
They cater to the 1% of their audience that uses the most resources while driving away the 99% of their audience that uses almost no resources.
And the solution is easy.
No content that takes over 30 minutes per step. If you want it to require 16 hours, make it 32 steps (collect 8 chunks 4 times to combine to get 4 pieces to combine to get the item).
Same for raids- make them in 30 minute battle chunks. You can save your state and come back to it later.
Instances helped.
No mmorgs for me until I retire. Probably not then, but only if I was retired to I even see any point in playing a mmorg.
Even back before Legends, Moxen were going for $200.
My MTG acquaintances broke down into those who were buying rares to build power decks and those who could not-- and those who made the game their life and were spending 4 hours a night vs those who played every friday.
A few of them, basically played themselves out of our group. Some people swore to not play with them period.
OTH, we had a large successful 2+ year long "closed circle".
We each got 1 deck to start with. You played that deck out of the box.
After a game, a booster was opened and the loser got first pick- with picks being round robin. You didn't get cards for two player duels. They were just for fun. We probably spent about $30 a friday on boosters, had a dozen people playing continuously for about 4 hours. Had a blast.
So I guess that I mean both-- large amounts of $10+ cards, plus people playing 20 hours a week who then try to drop into a casual group and rack up some ego points.
People lose sight of the fact that you are playing a game as one of many activities you share with your friends and as a way to make friends.
For some people, the only thing they see is the game. In sports, bridge, etc. various handicap systems exist - the handicap system for MTG was supposed to be the ante (lose the use of a card and possibly lose the card to an opponent) which is pretty harsh. They really needed something weaker-- such as starting with fewer lives or more lives, adding a certain number of "dead" cards to your deck (unless it is rainbow anyway).
For example, each time you win, the opponent gets to add a card of their choice to your deck. Once you lose, you can take out one card.
At my company we used to switch between computers once a month to confirm if there was an emergency we could do so quickly. It always went so smoothly that they finally decided it was a waste of time and they would do it annually.
So about after about a 11 month break, they tried it again and the experience went so badly that they said they would not switch again unless it was a real emergency.
A lawyer working 60 hours a week, buys a 600 hour character and a million gold for 5 hours of income. or A student, retired, or independently wealthy person who plays 60 hours a week? Always gets the best non-instanced content first (sometimes blocking it for over a year to other users).
---
The game company sells levels, gear, experience for money. or The game company sets up quests so you if you can be logged on continuously for 14 to 24 hours you have a 100% chance of success. If you can log on 24 hours in 2 hour chunks, there is a good chance you will *never* finish the quest (25 to 30%)
---
Who is more skillful The person who can log on at 1pm, get the best camps, play for 12 hours straight, and reach the new level cap in a week? The person who uses a cheating macro program that lets them see what loot the monsters are carrying and where the monsters are even when their characters are "blind"?
---
None of these are fair. I applaud the efforts by the game companies to make a game fair.
But morality is such that mmorg gamers would feel it was fair to be able to buy extra cards in poker or to get the best hands because they could show up earlier than the other players, or win merely by virtue of being able to stay at the table for 18 hours straight.
---
Games have rules. The rules for chess, checkers, acquire, dominion, hell even D&D, are not based on "the person with the most money or time wins". When people try to play MTG and other CCG's like a money game, they quickly lose the ability to play with ordinary players and get stuck in their own brackets even at tournaments.
That would be a good argument except that we have examples from many areas around the world where much cheaper internet with much higher capacities are available.
Now sure- you could suggest that japan or korea are small. But so are new york and most other major metropolitan areas.
It is extremely clear that we are being ripped off big time.
It may go into city coffers as bribes/fees, or it may be going straight in the pocket of the back bone providers, or perhaps the monopolistic city ISP's.
But it is clear we are being ripped off because we have many counter examples of the same thing being done better, faster, AND cheaper all around the world.
There are a lot of executives who have college age to thirty year old girl (and boy) friends (often mistresses).
These executives pay way over $13,000 a year to these girls but the IRS has no issue with them. I'm pretty sure it is now happening between rich females and their boy (/girl) friends.
Housing, free cars, jewelry, free trips, lavish meals and even large amounts of direct cash. But no one tries to tax those relationships.
I'm not sure you could legally define the reason why the IRS tags the stripper girls but like "art", they know a problem when they see it.
Key parts seem to be that they get a lot of money (probably 6 figures), they don't ever actually go on dates with the guys, and that there are a lot of guys- not just one or two guys. Plus the stripping is presented as a service.
You could probably get the lavish meals, and have the guys directly pay the landlord for rent and the car payment but since the money goes into the girl's hands it crosses some kind of line.
It has java but is replacing the HTML with a Flex front end. And there is talk of going ot Air after that.
It makes no sense to me (Flex and Air look to be solid- but there is the issue of having a staff with 7 or 8 different skill sets to support an application).
When bad things happen, the problem is a rope, wall, tree trunk- no one can see the real problem so a $$$ outside contractor has to be brought in. And sometimes even they struggle for weeks and it turns out to be some obscure console setting in one of the layers.
At my company, all the time, the salesperson says "this new system will solve all your problems-will take 12 months to implement max, and be very cheap to maintain!!!"
And the executives bite on it every time.
And lately, everything is going to "end of life". Excuse me? Cobol, RPG, and Java don't seem to go to end of life. I'm sure there are others.
It's really hard when you finish a 2 year project (should have been 1 in salesman land), roll it out and debug production issues over the next year, and then 2 years later, it is "end of life".
I guess it's good to keep me employed but it seems kinda dumb.
"Wierd.. slasdot requires a wait... "It's been THREE minutes" --- at work it varies -- sometimes at 16 seconds it lets you posts while other times it takes the full minute.
If you have a relationship with a girl and she takes her clothes off and you give her thousands of dollars a year, it's not taxable. Even if you were in a multiple spouse household, it would still be true (multiple guys supporting her).
Without the "relationship" (one date? you don't have to be living together in the same house), it's taxable.
I've been polyandrous for a few years in my life. It was nice. Tho it never reached the level of a "tribe", we had a stable group of people in different houses around the city that had multiple partners but were closed to ourselves. The difference between polyandry and cheating is whether folks know about it or not.
Polyandry is rare and if I addressed all the rare groups, my list would have been 5 pages long.
I think polyandry was great. It's not stable long term but without oppressive support from society sticking people in bad relationships, neither are common relationships. Most men have a lot more jealousy issues than they can handle.
Slashdot Mirror
At a major corporation, I do not have access to those options. I'm not even an administrator of my own PC any more.
Perhaps one of our three grossly overworked Tech guys can set that up.
It needs to come that way from the vendor, or it is not going to happen.
but cool to know it exists and might some day happen.
Point in fact,
I've always been attracted to women 2-5 years above my age. Even my first wife was a year older than me.
But the female "power" curve shifts rapidly based on age and attractiveness.
I mean to say what I said.
A 26 year old has a lot more sexual power to apply than a 50 year old female.
A male with a good job, in good shape, has a lot more power to apply.
The female advantage disappears in the 40's. They can stay home alone or they can stop being picky.
by that time most guys do not care to put up with women's shit any more.
Except
we've seen articles where the companies require employees to boot up their PC *before* they can count as being "on the clock".
and when I get to work, I need to reply immediately--- THEN I can take a coffee break.
These days*, my typical day starts the second I sit down at the PC.
I work for 15 to 30 minutes dealing with fresh issues and then I get up and get coffee/take a break/etc.
I know of no way to cause PC's to power on automatically currently widely in use but your point there is a good one. The proposed solution, and my experience with it in the past is that it only includes turning off PC's, not turning them on for me.
---
* when I was a developer the hit would be even worse. I would work until I get ready to walk out the door since the last 2 hours of the day were easily the most productive (no meetings). Then I would leave eclipse open with many windows, perspectives, perhaps even running programs in debug mode. When I walked in the door the next morning, I usually had a couple ideas to code. Both the act of closing down my working state and restarting my working state would greatly exceed 5 minutes.
Even now, just a supervisor and no longer a developer, I have a lot of programs open. Let's see.
Infopath
Messenger
Outlook
Excel
Project
Two internet explorers for internal sites
Ticket Entry/Tracking system
and Firefox.
I can't start these programs until the system settles down. It starts a virus scanner, a printout tracker (yea, a new bit of fascism), maps a ton of drives, runs various network scripts.
Our guys make a little bit more than $700 a week too.
Whoops. Dang it. I meant $700 a week.
Well, reduce the time to 4 minutes and the math works out.
Basic point- I leave my PC at home on, because when I sit down, I want it to work immediately.
For my work PC that has a lot more network drive mapping, scripts, etc. to load before I can start working, the payoff is even bigger.
Now...
What is the cost of 4000 employees for 5 minutes of lost productivity?
If you are paying your employees only $800 a week, that's $100 a day, or $12 per hour, or a measly dollar lost $1.
So your cost is only $4,000 per day.
For 200 work days per year that would only be $800,000 in lost productivity.
To save $75,000.
Of course, most IT employees make a little bit over $800 a week.
[Attractive] Women [under 40] think that they have more bargaining power than men, and that they can wield this power more effectively by pretending they don't realize they have it. [Those] Women are correct in their thinking [until they get fat, grow old, become unable to have sex for health reasons, etc.]
There are more things to watch and listen to than I have time for.
I just now got around to The Big Bang Theory, almost 2 years late. .. and several other concerts coming around this summer. Plus several plays locally. The list is endless. Looking forward to Star Trek and the last two Harry Potter films. And the avengers movie. And the Wolverine Movie.
I missed several movies in the theaters.
I didn't find out about Blue October until they were several years old.
I'm following a half dozen book series.
A new game comes out every few months.
I just finished plowing through 1500 pages of Questionable Content webcomic (awesome!) and I haven't come close to finishing "Lucid TV" and "Cyanide and Happiness".
Plus 9 chickweed lane, pearls before swine, House, Bleach, Heroes (caught up in a big 20 episode marathon), Lost (a year behind-- kinda waiting to see if folks say it has a good ending), Haven't seen an episode of "Rescue Me". I'm way behind on Jack Benny episodes, The Six Shooter, I'm only on season two of Andy Griffith. I haven't even started Gunsmoke. I finally have caught up on most of the Jokes on "Raw Dog" on XM. There was the Elton John/Billy Joel Concert
I can't keep up. There will be some great stuff that I will never see.
At any given time, there are at least 1,000 girls and women in any given major city (more in some) doing this by their own choice.
The three I've known personally (oddly enough- meeting one through an online Mmorg) said they loved it- they enjoyed the feeling of power it gave them over men and the way they felt special (being put on a jet to fly to another city). A fourth one who never came out and said she was, but who really was (just had a closed clientele of a couple dozen guys) got off on the love, adoration, money and the feeling of power taking men from other women.
I would say that all of them were pretty screwed up in the head. But over half the people I know (including me) are screwed up in some way.
They clearly didn't hate it. The only thing they hated was that they had gotten older and were losing to younger girls.
I'm sure there are times that it is a job. And any job has days you don't want to go to work.
There have been multiple weeks where I hated my job- I'm sure its the same for professional ladies.
But mainly it seems like the end game is terrible. Once you hit 50ish, you have completely inappropriate values for a closed relationship and you lack the looks to keep the game going any more. Of course... not much different than a programmer- once we hit 50, a lot of us get the sack for a "young, dynamic" idiot willing to work 60 hours a week "to get experience".
True story about Trade Wars.
Back in the day when we were on 2400 modems, you had 60 minutes per day to play your moves. One person was just walking all over everyone and we could not figure out how the hell he was doing it.
The trick was this.
We were playing at 7pm to 1am-- and if you lost your login, you were screwed and not getting on again until after 1am. As the battles displayed many lines, it could take 4 or 5 minutes for the game to transmit all the results to you... line by line.
battle result ... 70 or 80 more intererations - taking about 10 seconds each line.
battle result
battle result
battle result
battle result
battle result
He was playing from 3am to 6am.
He would drop carrier and the huge battles would be resolved instantly - dumping at max speed to the local console.
Then he would call back in 30 seconds later. He was effectively getting 90 to 150 minutes play per day.
It drove us insane and the game master who was a friend of ours never gave us a hint until the game was over. I think his userid was Drexel.
This is sort of like the macro players to day who figure out how to push a button, walk away and have their character fight and level up while they are asleep.
If it has a propulsion system, it can be delayed- most likely at a very low cost.
Sails: Grapeshot
Prop: Cables/Nets
Either: Toss a cable to one side of the ship and tow it in circles.
Exactly.
Why does Rowling need $8 a book when she makes a billion bucks?
Why does a successful rock band need $19 a CD when they make hundreds of millions?
---
More to the point of the story.
If prices are cheap, you can buy other offerings from more publishers.
If prices are high, purchasing one $50 game, means you are not purchasing 2 to 29 other games.
If you can make a good game and make $100k a year off it selling it for $1 to 200k users (1/2 going to costs and middlemen) then why do you have to squeeze out lots of other potential games by sucking up a person's entire disposable income.
The evidence is there (an absolute flood of entertainment that no one can keep up with) that the creative industry doesn't need any more encouragement to produce creative works.
Bingo.
Sexuality ranges from 100% opposite sex attraction to 100% same sex attraction to 100% dominant to 100% submissive to 100% yada yada yada (race, boobs, ass, red head, blonde, fat, thin). There are many, many axis which sexuality turns on and each of them varies from 0% to 100%. If you are only lightly attracted to the same sex or only attracted to the same sex under particular circumstances, then it can be a choice under certain circumstances. One of the most comfortably gay guys I ever knew (from a painting class I took with him) was married for 8 years and had a couple kids. Clearly, he wasn't gay but was bisexual- but it was a lot simpler for him to just be one or the other socially.
Society doesn't tend to support bisexuality very well unless you are a hot female.
and for what it is worth, the policy seems a bit extreme for Amazon to have gone to without warning. It really puts their position as a neutral retailer in jeopardy. Christians, hindus, gays, straights, etc. could all buy books from Amazon as long as they are not politicized-- it's just a question availability and inexpensive price.
My problem with Amazon, Walmart, and many other similar stores is that ultimately they are bad for me as a consumer.
I get better prices on 80% of the merchandise-- and the other 20% of merchandise I lose the ability to purchase at all.
The small pet store with the barley dog food goes out of business- but pedigree is $1.00 instead of $1.10 at Walmart.
Ultimately, we as consumers are slitting our own throats by buying from the Amazons and Walmarts. The little stores need that extra dime in order to keep providing the specialty products the big stores will not offer. In some cases, you go from 10 to 15 (or more) different varieties of a product to *three*. All the diverse products were profitable- but the three were the most profitable.
You know the crazy thing...
The MMO choice is completely insane as a business decision.
They cater to the 1% of their audience that uses the most resources while driving away the 99% of their audience that uses almost no resources.
And the solution is easy.
No content that takes over 30 minutes per step. If you want it to require 16 hours, make it 32 steps (collect 8 chunks 4 times to combine to get 4 pieces to combine to get the item).
Same for raids- make them in 30 minute battle chunks. You can save your state and come back to it later.
Instances helped.
No mmorgs for me until I retire. Probably not then, but only if I was retired to I even see any point in playing a mmorg.
Even back before Legends, Moxen were going for $200.
My MTG acquaintances broke down into those who were buying rares to build power decks and those who could not-- and those who made the game their life and were spending 4 hours a night vs those who played every friday.
A few of them, basically played themselves out of our group. Some people swore to not play with them period.
OTH, we had a large successful 2+ year long "closed circle".
We each got 1 deck to start with.
You played that deck out of the box.
After a game, a booster was opened and the loser got first pick- with picks being round robin. You didn't get cards for two player duels. They were just for fun.
We probably spent about $30 a friday on boosters, had a dozen people playing continuously for about 4 hours. Had a blast.
So I guess that I mean both-- large amounts of $10+ cards, plus people playing 20 hours a week who then try to drop into a casual group and rack up some ego points.
People lose sight of the fact that you are playing a game as one of many activities you share with your friends and as a way to make friends.
For some people, the only thing they see is the game. In sports, bridge, etc. various handicap systems exist - the handicap system for MTG was supposed to be the ante (lose the use of a card and possibly lose the card to an opponent) which is pretty harsh. They really needed something weaker-- such as starting with fewer lives or more lives, adding a certain number of "dead" cards to your deck (unless it is rainbow anyway).
For example, each time you win, the opponent gets to add a card of their choice to your deck. Once you lose, you can take out one card.
Agreed.
At my company we used to switch between computers once a month to confirm if there was an emergency we could do so quickly. It always went so smoothly that they finally decided it was a waste of time and they would do it annually.
So about after about a 11 month break, they tried it again and the experience went so badly that they said they would not switch again unless it was a real emergency.
Which is fair..
A lawyer working 60 hours a week, buys a 600 hour character and a million gold for 5 hours of income.
or
A student, retired, or independently wealthy person who plays 60 hours a week? Always gets the best non-instanced content first (sometimes blocking it for over a year to other users).
---
The game company sells levels, gear, experience for money.
or
The game company sets up quests so you if you can be logged on continuously for 14 to 24 hours you have a 100% chance of success.
If you can log on 24 hours in 2 hour chunks, there is a good chance you will *never* finish the quest (25 to 30%)
---
Who is more skillful
The person who can log on at 1pm, get the best camps, play for 12 hours straight, and reach the new level cap in a week?
The person who uses a cheating macro program that lets them see what loot the monsters are carrying and where the monsters are even when their characters are "blind"?
---
None of these are fair. I applaud the efforts by the game companies to make a game fair.
But morality is such that mmorg gamers would feel it was fair to be able to buy extra cards in poker or to get the best hands because they could show up earlier than the other players, or win merely by virtue of being able to stay at the table for 18 hours straight.
---
Games have rules. The rules for chess, checkers, acquire, dominion, hell even D&D, are not based on "the person with the most money or time wins".
When people try to play MTG and other CCG's like a money game, they quickly lose the ability to play with ordinary players and get stuck in their own brackets even at tournaments.
It's pretty disgusting.
That would be a good argument except that we have examples from many areas around the world where much cheaper internet with much higher capacities are available.
Now sure- you could suggest that japan or korea are small. But so are new york and most other major metropolitan areas.
It is extremely clear that we are being ripped off big time.
It may go into city coffers as bribes/fees, or it may be going straight in the pocket of the back bone providers, or perhaps the monopolistic city ISP's.
But it is clear we are being ripped off because we have many counter examples of the same thing being done better, faster, AND cheaper all around the world.
There are a lot of executives who have college age to thirty year old girl (and boy) friends (often mistresses).
These executives pay way over $13,000 a year to these girls but the IRS has no issue with them. I'm pretty sure it is now happening between rich females and their boy (/girl) friends.
Housing, free cars, jewelry, free trips, lavish meals and even large amounts of direct cash. But no one tries to tax those relationships.
I'm not sure you could legally define the reason why the IRS tags the stripper girls but like "art", they know a problem when they see it.
Key parts seem to be that they get a lot of money (probably 6 figures), they don't ever actually go on dates with the guys, and that there are a lot of guys- not just one or two guys. Plus the stripping is presented as a service.
You could probably get the lavish meals, and have the guys directly pay the landlord for rent and the car payment but since the money goes into the girl's hands it crosses some kind of line.
Our company is headed away from C# already.
It has java but is replacing the HTML with a Flex front end. And there is talk of going ot Air after that.
It makes no sense to me (Flex and Air look to be solid- but there is the issue of having a staff with 7 or 8 different skill sets to support an application).
When bad things happen, the problem is a rope, wall, tree trunk- no one can see the real problem so a $$$ outside contractor has to be brought in. And sometimes even they struggle for weeks and it turns out to be some obscure console setting in one of the layers.
At my company, all the time, the salesperson says "this new system will solve all your problems-will take 12 months to implement max, and be very cheap to maintain!!!"
And the executives bite on it every time.
And lately, everything is going to "end of life". Excuse me? Cobol, RPG, and Java don't seem to go to end of life. I'm sure there are others.
It's really hard when you finish a 2 year project (should have been 1 in salesman land), roll it out and debug production issues over the next year, and then 2 years later, it is "end of life".
I guess it's good to keep me employed but it seems kinda dumb.
"Wierd.. slasdot requires a wait... "It's been THREE minutes" --- at work it varies -- sometimes at 16 seconds it lets you posts while other times it takes the full minute.
wow. someone actually recognizes me and thinks I write smart posts.
Thank you.
I'll have to think about how to illuminate my post later-- off to a craw fish party right now.
If you have a relationship with a girl and she takes her clothes off and you give her thousands of dollars a year, it's not taxable.
Even if you were in a multiple spouse household, it would still be true (multiple guys supporting her).
Without the "relationship" (one date? you don't have to be living together in the same house), it's taxable.
But if doing it makes you happy, then do you have the right to pursue that happiness?
I've been polyandrous for a few years in my life. It was nice. Tho it never reached the level of a "tribe", we had a stable group of people in different houses around the city that had multiple partners but were closed to ourselves. The difference between polyandry and cheating is whether folks know about it or not.
Polyandry is rare and if I addressed all the rare groups, my list would have been 5 pages long.
I think polyandry was great. It's not stable long term but without oppressive support from society sticking people in bad relationships, neither are common relationships. Most men have a lot more jealousy issues than they can handle.