Saatchi & Saatchi? They'll probably get more business because the dipshit MBAs will think that "there's no such thing as bad publicity."
I had forgotten the existence of the Toyota Matrix until I read this article.
When it comes to brand recognition, there IS no such thing as bad publicity. Brand association, on the other hand...
I'll be buying a commuter car in the next year. I was leaning toward a small Honda anyway -- but this gives me one more reason to not buy a Toyota.
That said, when it comes down to it, it'll be about prices and reviews anyway. And if this article helped me remember that Toyota offers a commuter car, then the PR campaign worked.
A fishing expedition? Looking for leaks, press contacts and members. The planting of logger.
At first I thought it was a haiku, but then I counted syllables.
Momentary confusion on what you meant by "the planting of logger"... for some reason I thought it had something to do with environmental activists in the PacNW. Must be past my bedtime.
Anyway, I've cleaned up your haiku:
Email - leaky boat A fishing expedition Planted keylogger
Oh, the pain of being labeled informative when going for funny.
Please don't take my advice on using enemas, I don't really know how to properly administer one, and I'd hate for someone to get soiled or hurt based on a tongue-in-cheek post I made.
These weren't great or particularly cutthroat men, but instead lucky men.
I disagree 100%. I'm not as familiar with Rockefeller as I am with Carnegie, but Carnegie's business savvy, work ethic, and disregard for others were the three things that enabled him to become extremely wealthy (I assume you mean Andrew). See the Frick incident in Braddock PA (Carnegie's man Frick had armed guards bust a strike that was in protest of a wage reduction. 12 were killed in the process). See also the issue of pollution in Pittsburgh and Carnegie's acknowledgment and dismissal of the health problems caused by it.
What separates men like Carnegie from others who you might refer to as "unlucky" is that Carnegie took a hard line, and stuck to it, damage to others be damned.
As for Rockefeller, I think you're way off base there, too. Ida Tarbell's "The History of the Standard Oil Company" would be a good read for you. Of course, after that was published, Rockefeller engaged in a "Public Relations" effort to unsully his name -- no really -- the man Rockefeller hired to do it coined the phrase we all know and love.
What separates men like Rockefeller and Carnegie from the less-successful tycoons is indefatigable attention to money, and indefatigable disconcern with the plight of those they needed to trample over in order to amass their wealth. Luck played very little part.
I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I work at a hedge fund. Want to know my return? I have made on average 25% per anum for the past 5 years.
Easy claim to make. I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I sit in a lounge chair on the beach. I have averaged over 5000% return per anum for the past 5 years.
Seriously, though... break it down by years for us. There has not been a single fund that has returned 200% over the last five years (which is what you are claiming -- 1.25^5 == 3.05). If that's really the return you've made over the last five years, then I know some people who will want to talk with you about opportunities. Especially considering hedge funds averaged losses in the teens last year, with young funds having a stdev of about 6.5% (from an category-leading loss of only 11%).
Your numbers are too good to be true, quite honestly, unless you are taking the same kind of single-asset high-risk positions that you are complaining about.
blockquote>How am I doing this year? As of 22:00 CET today, I am up 29% from Jan 2008! So in other words with the S&P at 1367 on Jan 2008, you would be at 1763, or out performing the S&P market by 60%! Don't even ask how much I am making this year.
This is a banner year for hedge funds, best in over a decade. And your "how am I doing this year" starts in Jan 08? Huh? Should start in Jan 09.
At any rate, I really doubt your numbers. No one has had consistent returns like that over the past five years. Are you weighting by amount invested, by chance? Because then your losses appear smaller, due to the hemmorhaging of cash from hedge funds last year.
From the spear, the longbow, musket, and machine gun... The intent and purpose was to give your side the benefit of being able to put the enema at "arms length" (so to say) and put you on the side less likely to die.
FWIW, you don't need to put the enema a full arms' length up there. Just a couple inches past the sphincter will do fine. If you want to try for arms' length, go right ahead -- it's your bowels, after all... I just suggest using extra lube in that case.
No offense, but lame response. I was hoping someone more clever than me (or perhaps just more sufficiently into their caffeine regimen for the day) could write a humorous response in the form of the original joke.
Well, seems like I'm disappointed, so I'll just have to do it myself:
me@slashdot > --gamemode
SLASHGAME: YOU ARE STANDING IN A FIELD
SLASHGAME: LOOK SOUTH
SLASHGAME: YOU SEE AN ANONYMOUS COWARD
SLASHGAME: WALK SOUTH
SLASHGAME: THE ANONYMOUS COWARD GREETS YOU BY SAYING "FUCK YOU NINTENDO"
SLASHGAME: INVENTORY
SLASHGAME: YOU HAVE 2 COOKIES
SLASHGAME: QUERY COOKIES
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #1 IS COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #2 IS COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: DROP COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: YOU DROP THE COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD PICKS UP COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD GROWS AN IRONIC MULLET.
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD BUYS NEW SUNGLASSES FROM A STREET VENDOR.
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD BUYS VINTAGE DUDS FOR MORE THAN THE PRICE OF NEW DUDS, WHILE PRETENDING HE INHERITED THEM FROM A DEAD UNCLE. NO REALLY. I'VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN. THOUGH MAYBE HE JUST PRETENDS HE GOT THEM AT THE SALVATION ARMY.
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD EFFECTS AN AFFECTED ATTITUDE
SLASHGAME: HIPSTER ANONYMOUS COWARD GREETS YOU BY SAYING "FUCK MICROSOFT. I AM BETTER THAN YOU. ALL HAIL HE OF THE IMPECCABLE STYLE AND SAVAGE SAVVY, STEVE JOBS"
SLASHGAME: EXIT
me@slashdot >
There. I feel better now, in a slightly slimey sort of way. I just wish my humor gland was operating a little better these days. I'm just not feeling the creativity and cleverness anymore. And now I'm just blabbing to overcome the lameness filter.
The Zune HD has a Tegra too. NVIDIA wasn't gonna die until the Zune HD got discontinued or got a different chipset.
MS could have stockpiled the chips, right? A one-off batch of a million chips in a warehouse somewhere would last them for, what, 30 years of Zune sales?
Between a huge shelf full of canned tomatoes, the large stack of ripe ones in the fridge, or the two paper grocery bags each half full of green tomatoes picked before the frost....
Don't you find the texture to be absolutely destroyed by refrigeration? Sure, if you're going to cook them down, keep them in the fridge -- but for eating raw or lightly cooked... IMO, the fridge kills tomatoes. Turns em into mush.
Or do you have some kind of mystic tomato-refrigeration technique you could share?
Conjecture on your part, based upon your observations and your personal interpretation of those observations. Whether or not he (or I) ever die is a distant mystery to you and doesn't matter; you should be more concerned with your fate.
See, perspective and philosophy is fun to play with. And my reply to your post is as inane in irrelevant to the subject matter as your reply to the parent was.
There is no need to think, for the faith in He of the Tangled Forkful answers all questions.
As was revealed by Him unto Mario and Luigi in the Antipasti Course of the Second Dinner:
Heed ye, all matter is composed of meatballs, and those meatballs shall only be composed of veal, pork, and beef; for these are the building blocks of all matter that matters. Those that believe in fundamental particles other than these shall be dismissed from the Table, and cast out from my house, as heretics of the first degree.
Lest ye of little faith doubt my powers, I shall rain used pasta water upon these enemies and drown their works in failure. Verily, this is the Truth.
Ramen.
Clearly "rain used pasta water upon these enemies" is a metaphor for his sabotage of both the supercollider in the US and the supercollider at CERN. It can't really be any clearer than that.
When one is funding the roads, one is giving a direct benefit to the public as a whole.
Oh? Are you sure about that? I used to take mass transit for everything when I live in the city. Any benefit I got was indirect. Furthermore, there is a massive downside to oversubsidization of roads and undersubsidization of mass transit... and those wo do not drive get to face part of the downside without direct benefit.
When we are talking about adding value to your personal home with me picking up most or all of the cost, then I get upset. The utility to me personally for this happening is minuscule. If it the preponderance of the benefit goes to one person, then that one person should pay for it.
That's an algebra game -- and we can both play it. If 100,000 people take advantage of the subsidy, the marginal utility to you of the subsidizations may be bigger in aggregate than the cost to you in taxes due to less demand for grid electricity, fossil fuels, etc. Hard to calculate, harder to prove, but for some number of subsidizations, this may be true. Particularly once economies of scale and technological advances kick in and now you can purchase, install, and run a solar system for less than the utility you receive from it (in theory, this is the purpose of the subsidy).
I think we have abstracted money (which in itself is an abstract concept) to the point that no one gets that resources are not infinite. If a project is not worth doing without government subsidy, then it is economically not viable. Sometimes, gov't should offer subsidies to kick start a program. But solar is far past that point.
So are you in favor of public funding of highways? Or do you think that this subsidy for commuters and the freight industry means that they are not economically viable?
How about corn farming? It's obviously not economically viable, since it requires subsidization.
I undertsand whre you're coming from. But out of all the screwed-up things getting subsidized, something with societal benefits like solar power (reduced pollution & dependence on fossil fuel) should be low on your list for bitching about. Bitch about corn subsidies. Bitch about bridges to nowhere. But don't bitch about alternative energy... because, ironically, eliminating alt energy subsidies because you're concerned about future generations is likely to make things worse for those generations.
And while I can agree that there should be some sort of cap, when that cap means that I can never possibly take out the amount that I put in, then that means that I'm subsidizing other citizens when they are unemployed, and that makes even less sense.
It's not personal insurance. It's societal insurance. You get a benefit from the subsidization of other workers, even if it's marginal aan largely unseen. If it weren't for the UI premiums you pay in, maybe you wouldn't have a job (because UI is one of the things that keeps the economy moving).
Unless we just up and admit that USA is Socialism.
FWIW, I think we have some small socialist aspects... and I believe we need more. Oh, I know I'll get downmodded by the rabid capitalists here for that.
I kind of understand why 'socialism' has become a dirty word (the ties to teh evil communists!1!) but really, can't we get over it and realize that there are aspects of socialism that make good sense from both an economic and humanistic point of view?
If I took the number my company bills out my labor for, it's about 4 times my salary, but that's just because of the way of accounting. Lawyers aren't paying 75% of their rate to overhead.
That's not "just because of the way of accounting". Let's assume your company makes, oh, a nice thick 25% net margin. This means they are clearing in profit the same that you are getting paid (if they are billing out at 400% your pay). This also means that their overhead is twice your salary. I don't know what you get paid... but overheads for legal firms are surely higher than what you're paying. Do you have an admin assistant? Your own office/cube, or do you work at a client site? Never mind that the margin to the owners of your company is likely smaller than the margin a lawyer pays to the partners of the firm (the lawyer is being dangled partnership-in-the-future as part of their compensation. You are not).
You're grossly uninformed of what a starting lawyer gets paid. Median pay for a lawyer 9 months post-graduation (only counting those with jobs) in 2005 was $60,000. That's not enough income to buy a 1-bedroom condo in many parts of the country.
Maybe you're thinking of mid-career lawyers in private practice as partners or in business law in senior management. That's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of early-career lawyers who are struggling to pay off student loans, driving a 10-year-old Honda Civic or Ford Escort, and sharing a shitty apartment in a college town or their state capital (this is generally what young lawyers are like in my experience).
It boils down to this: there is a need for personal responsibility. But there is also a need for a social safety net. And despite what you believe, most young lawyers are not rolling in dough.
You can save money no matter how much you make. Saying "I don't make enough to save" is bullshit. People who make under 20k per year. In most areas you can rent for around $500 per month - it may be a shithole but it's a place to live (in some areas $500 gets you a damn fine apartment). That's about $6k per year. You can eat well for about $20-25 per week if you buy the right foods, which ads up to around $1000 per year for food. If you wanted to live on ramen you could cut that down to under $250 per year, but I don't advise it, you'll be malnourished in short order. Give another $3000 per year for things like laundry, clothes (you ARE buying cheap walmart clothes instead of those designer jeans, right?) and other miscelaneous expenses, and you've got $10,000 per year that a person making $20,000 per year can save. Even with minimum wage you can still save $3k per year. Anybody can get a minimum wage job, even in this economy. Most anybody can manage a second, part time job as well.
Dude, you need to have your eyes opened, forcefully if need be.
You think there are minimum-wage jobs available everywhere, for anyone? You're delusional.
Oh, you're too sick to come into work today? That's twice this year. You're fired.
Let's look at this realistically:
$20,000 a year is approximately 1700 a month. Rent: $500. Utilities: $50 (and that's generously low for most climes). Food: $100 (by your estimate -- I think it would be very hard for someone to have a proper diet at that price). Transportation costs (car, mass transit, etc): $100-200 (again, generously low estimate). Laundry, clothes, etc: $250 (by your estimate, and let's also assume this includes entertainment). Right there that's over $1000, but let's just say that the $1000 a month is all that's spent. So your hypothetical earner has $700 left over each month to save. But uh-oh... the car breaks down. There's $X to fix it, or $Y to buy another beater. And uh-oh, he has a toothache. That's $100-600 for an extraction (depending on type of tooth, etc). Meanwhile $750 is tied up in a deposit on the shithole apartment. And now a parent dies and you need to fly to wherever, there's another few hundred.
Open your eyes. Living on $20000 a year is a miserable existence, and one bad-luck-event from abject poverty. Forget raising kids at that income. There is no reason why, in a modern society, we cannot provide for those less fortunate. Note that unemployment insurance has a time limit... so it's not some kind of permanent welfare.
How about we get rid of the ridiculous salaries at the high end, where board-members vote to pay their executives huge amounts of cash (knowing full well that the favor is returned by the board of the company where they are the CxO)? Where top executives get bonuses for laying workers off? This is
the attitude that keeps poor people poor (and getting poorer) and rich people rich (and getting richer)
I agree that there needs to be a higher level of personal responsibility. But here's the thing: You're living in a dreamworld if you think that a social safety net is not a good thing. Consumer spending is very important to the entire economy, and if you have no safety net, then even those who have been saving get screwed. This is one of the lessons of the Great Depression.
You want to know why the poor get poorer and the rich get richer? Because the poor have almost no power to climb the economic ladder. It's a myth that people can bootstrap themselves into the wealthy classes. The only way to do so is to take great risks... and for every success story you read about, there are countless failures.
I know, I'm digressing, but social mobility is a joke when there is no safety net.
Um, I know three lawyers off the top of my head: one charges $250/hour in Denver, another $130/hour near Denver, the other $400/hour in Houston.
That hourly rate includes all their overhead.
It's not like the lawyer that bills out at $250/hr is clearing $250/hr. Once you factor in their overheard, it's much, much less. And what if they aren't billing 40 hours a week?
Sure, abuse happens. But I know a programmer who was getting paid $125 an hour and had *zero* overhead to pay and is currently collecting unemployment. I'd bet my house that he cleared more than the lawyer who was billing out a $250/hr.
Should someone making $120,000 a year collect unemployment if they are laid off? I don't know -- probably not -- $120,000 a year sounds like a lot, right?. Except a lot of those schlubs have $2500/mo mortgage payments on a 3-BR house. And their net pay (assuming spouse & 2 kids) is something like $95,000 -- around $8k a month. Car, mortgage, insurance, food, utilities, clothes, saving for college, saving for retirement... all the sudden, that $8k is gone. Setting aside cash for a 12-month cushion? Not so easy.
I think everyone should be eligible for unemployment regardless of income prior to unemployment. Just cap the amount they can receive equally. An unemployed line-order cook should get the same unemployment as an unemployed lawyer. If the lawyer wants to live a nice lifestyle while they are unemployed, they should have saved. Otherwise they can live at the subsistence level like the poor.
I wonder if selling used games and videos on ebay constitutes income?
No, that's capital gains.
It needs to be reported, but not as regular income. And as you mentioned, it was at a loss (but probably not, once depreciation is figured in). If you're moving a lot of stuff, hire a tax accountant. Sounds like you're just moving a few odds-and-ends... in which case, check with your state unemployment office. You can always call anonymously...
Senior editors, in turn, are pressured by accounting to cater to the perspective of major advertisers. Nothing new here. Please. Accounting has a bad enough rep already... no need to sully it with ridiculous claims.
If you really do all kinds of investigation, and are so emphatic about fact-checking and bias, then perhaps you should take a look in the mirror.
Just wanted to point out that your message is inconsistent with what you actually wrote. This is why most bloggers should be considered poor sources. Even when they write things that are partially true, the lack of editorial oversight lets gaffes like yours get into "print".
I'm not disagreeing with your point... I worked in print publishing, and I know how the game is played. However, you need to be especially careful with what you write if you're going to cite inaccuracy and bias as problems with traditional journalism.
I know it's been a few days, and likely you'll not read this post. But I hope you do, because I think you're being very short-sighted.
If you are willing to knowingly screw yourself and the candidate by not hiring the best candidate for the sole purpose of "sticking it" to the recruiter by not allowing him a commission, you're an idiot.
No. There is no shortage of applicants in the job market, and *if* that applicant is truly the best candidate, it makes very little difference. The second-best candidate is likely very, very close in ability, etc. The gain I get from hiring the best candidate (assuming, again, that person is the best candidate) is likely smaller than the damage I (and others) suffer due to the dishonesty of the recruiter.
What you do is cancel your contract with the recruiter, citing a breach, and hire the candidate anyway. Refuse payment, essentially. If you have a contract then they are in breach of it, if you don't then it was volunteer anyway.
Good idea. Then when they bring my company to small claims court (and that's assuming I'm lucky enough for it to be just small claims court) my company needs to pat for legal representation. No thanks.
Any lawyer will advise you to not hire the applicant, even if you do cite breach of contract, because you'd be increasing exposure to legal action.
The best option is to terminate the contract, based on the breach, and not do any business with that recruiter or their candidates. If the candidate didn't properly vet their recruiter... it's too bad for them. I feel sorry for them, but it's just not worth the risk to hire them. Maybe they'll learn something from it and learn to vet their recruiters.
Lost wages due to non-hiring due to the discrepancy. Non-hire damages used a lot in discrimination suits. Problem is that you'd have hard time proving this, as you'd need the cooperation of the (non)hiring company to make depositions and possibly testify.
Also, there is loss of reputation, which is much harder to quantify.
The problem is not that they claimed the person was "better at their job then they really are" the problem is that their actions resulted in the person being seen as dishonest.
Obviously, you should fire them if they look overly hungry and there is no one else for them to eat.
Unfortunately, I am cursed with a very large head. I would need to fire them if they looked hungry at all, no matter who else was in the room.
I'd post a link to the obligatory Far Side cartoon where a man with a ginormous head approaches a headhunter village (thus stepping into headhunter lore forever), thereby telling all you "obligatory xkcd" kids to get off my damn lawn, but I can't find a damn link to it. Maybe it's here under the onion on my belt...
Slashdot Mirror
I had forgotten the existence of the Toyota Matrix until I read this article.
When it comes to brand recognition, there IS no such thing as bad publicity. Brand association, on the other hand...
I'll be buying a commuter car in the next year. I was leaning toward a small Honda anyway -- but this gives me one more reason to not buy a Toyota.
That said, when it comes down to it, it'll be about prices and reviews anyway. And if this article helped me remember that Toyota offers a commuter car, then the PR campaign worked.
At first I thought it was a haiku, but then I counted syllables.
Momentary confusion on what you meant by "the planting of logger"... for some reason I thought it had something to do with environmental activists in the PacNW. Must be past my bedtime.
Anyway, I've cleaned up your haiku:
Email - leaky boat
A fishing expedition
Planted keylogger
Oh, the pain of being labeled informative when going for funny.
Please don't take my advice on using enemas, I don't really know how to properly administer one, and I'd hate for someone to get soiled or hurt based on a tongue-in-cheek post I made.
I disagree 100%. I'm not as familiar with Rockefeller as I am with Carnegie, but Carnegie's business savvy, work ethic, and disregard for others were the three things that enabled him to become extremely wealthy (I assume you mean Andrew). See the Frick incident in Braddock PA (Carnegie's man Frick had armed guards bust a strike that was in protest of a wage reduction. 12 were killed in the process). See also the issue of pollution in Pittsburgh and Carnegie's acknowledgment and dismissal of the health problems caused by it.
What separates men like Carnegie from others who you might refer to as "unlucky" is that Carnegie took a hard line, and stuck to it, damage to others be damned.
As for Rockefeller, I think you're way off base there, too. Ida Tarbell's "The History of the Standard Oil Company" would be a good read for you. Of course, after that was published, Rockefeller engaged in a "Public Relations" effort to unsully his name -- no really -- the man Rockefeller hired to do it coined the phrase we all know and love.
What separates men like Rockefeller and Carnegie from the less-successful tycoons is indefatigable attention to money, and indefatigable disconcern with the plight of those they needed to trample over in order to amass their wealth. Luck played very little part.
Easy claim to make. I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I sit in a lounge chair on the beach. I have averaged over 5000% return per anum for the past 5 years.
Seriously, though... break it down by years for us. There has not been a single fund that has returned 200% over the last five years (which is what you are claiming -- 1.25^5 == 3.05). If that's really the return you've made over the last five years, then I know some people who will want to talk with you about opportunities. Especially considering hedge funds averaged losses in the teens last year, with young funds having a stdev of about 6.5% (from an category-leading loss of only 11%).
Your numbers are too good to be true, quite honestly, unless you are taking the same kind of single-asset high-risk positions that you are complaining about.
blockquote>How am I doing this year? As of 22:00 CET today, I am up 29% from Jan 2008! So in other words with the S&P at 1367 on Jan 2008, you would be at 1763, or out performing the S&P market by 60%! Don't even ask how much I am making this year.
This is a banner year for hedge funds, best in over a decade. And your "how am I doing this year" starts in Jan 08? Huh? Should start in Jan 09.
At any rate, I really doubt your numbers. No one has had consistent returns like that over the past five years. Are you weighting by amount invested, by chance? Because then your losses appear smaller, due to the hemmorhaging of cash from hedge funds last year.
FWIW, you don't need to put the enema a full arms' length up there. Just a couple inches past the sphincter will do fine. If you want to try for arms' length, go right ahead -- it's your bowels, after all... I just suggest using extra lube in that case.
No offense, but lame response. I was hoping someone more clever than me (or perhaps just more sufficiently into their caffeine regimen for the day) could write a humorous response in the form of the original joke.
Well, seems like I'm disappointed, so I'll just have to do it myself:
me@slashdot > --gamemode
SLASHGAME: YOU ARE STANDING IN A FIELD
SLASHGAME: LOOK SOUTH
SLASHGAME: YOU SEE AN ANONYMOUS COWARD
SLASHGAME: WALK SOUTH
SLASHGAME: THE ANONYMOUS COWARD GREETS YOU BY SAYING "FUCK YOU NINTENDO"
SLASHGAME: INVENTORY
SLASHGAME: YOU HAVE 2 COOKIES
SLASHGAME: QUERY COOKIES
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #1 IS COOKIE WITH POWER OF SU
SLASHGAME: COOKIE #2 IS COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: DROP COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: YOU DROP THE COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD PICKS UP COOKIE OF APPLE POWER
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD GROWS AN IRONIC MULLET.
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD BUYS NEW SUNGLASSES FROM A STREET VENDOR.
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD BUYS VINTAGE DUDS FOR MORE THAN THE PRICE OF NEW DUDS, WHILE PRETENDING HE INHERITED THEM FROM A DEAD UNCLE. NO REALLY. I'VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN. THOUGH MAYBE HE JUST PRETENDS HE GOT THEM AT THE SALVATION ARMY.
SLASHGAME: ANONYMOUS COWARD EFFECTS AN AFFECTED ATTITUDE
SLASHGAME: HIPSTER ANONYMOUS COWARD GREETS YOU BY SAYING "FUCK MICROSOFT. I AM BETTER THAN YOU. ALL HAIL HE OF THE IMPECCABLE STYLE AND SAVAGE SAVVY, STEVE JOBS"
SLASHGAME: EXIT
me@slashdot >
There. I feel better now, in a slightly slimey sort of way. I just wish my humor gland was operating a little better these days. I'm just not feeling the creativity and cleverness anymore. And now I'm just blabbing to overcome the lameness filter.
MS could have stockpiled the chips, right? A one-off batch of a million chips in a warehouse somewhere would last them for, what, 30 years of Zune sales?
I keed, I keed. But seriously...
Ok, very funny. Snorting embarrassingly funny.
But I have to know... it's killing me...
What does the cookie with the power of apple do?
Don't you find the texture to be absolutely destroyed by refrigeration? Sure, if you're going to cook them down, keep them in the fridge -- but for eating raw or lightly cooked... IMO, the fridge kills tomatoes. Turns em into mush.
Or do you have some kind of mystic tomato-refrigeration technique you could share?
Conjecture on your part, based upon your observations and your personal interpretation of those observations. Whether or not he (or I) ever die is a distant mystery to you and doesn't matter; you should be more concerned with your fate.
See, perspective and philosophy is fun to play with. And my reply to your post is as inane in irrelevant to the subject matter as your reply to the parent was.
There is no need to think, for the faith in He of the Tangled Forkful answers all questions.
As was revealed by Him unto Mario and Luigi in the Antipasti Course of the Second Dinner:
Ramen.
Clearly "rain used pasta water upon these enemies" is a metaphor for his sabotage of both the supercollider in the US and the supercollider at CERN. It can't really be any clearer than that.
Oh? Are you sure about that? I used to take mass transit for everything when I live in the city. Any benefit I got was indirect. Furthermore, there is a massive downside to oversubsidization of roads and undersubsidization of mass transit... and those wo do not drive get to face part of the downside without direct benefit.
That's an algebra game -- and we can both play it. If 100,000 people take advantage of the subsidy, the marginal utility to you of the subsidizations may be bigger in aggregate than the cost to you in taxes due to less demand for grid electricity, fossil fuels, etc. Hard to calculate, harder to prove, but for some number of subsidizations, this may be true. Particularly once economies of scale and technological advances kick in and now you can purchase, install, and run a solar system for less than the utility you receive from it (in theory, this is the purpose of the subsidy).
Move along citizen. Go to work. Go home and watch your TV and play your video games. Here are some sporting competitions for your amusement.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
So are you in favor of public funding of highways? Or do you think that this subsidy for commuters and the freight industry means that they are not economically viable?
How about corn farming? It's obviously not economically viable, since it requires subsidization.
I undertsand whre you're coming from. But out of all the screwed-up things getting subsidized, something with societal benefits like solar power (reduced pollution & dependence on fossil fuel) should be low on your list for bitching about. Bitch about corn subsidies. Bitch about bridges to nowhere. But don't bitch about alternative energy... because, ironically, eliminating alt energy subsidies because you're concerned about future generations is likely to make things worse for those generations.
It's not personal insurance. It's societal insurance. You get a benefit from the subsidization of other workers, even if it's marginal aan largely unseen. If it weren't for the UI premiums you pay in, maybe you wouldn't have a job (because UI is one of the things that keeps the economy moving).
FWIW, I think we have some small socialist aspects... and I believe we need more. Oh, I know I'll get downmodded by the rabid capitalists here for that.
I kind of understand why 'socialism' has become a dirty word (the ties to teh evil communists!1!) but really, can't we get over it and realize that there are aspects of socialism that make good sense from both an economic and humanistic point of view?
That's not "just because of the way of accounting". Let's assume your company makes, oh, a nice thick 25% net margin. This means they are clearing in profit the same that you are getting paid (if they are billing out at 400% your pay). This also means that their overhead is twice your salary. I don't know what you get paid... but overheads for legal firms are surely higher than what you're paying. Do you have an admin assistant? Your own office/cube, or do you work at a client site? Never mind that the margin to the owners of your company is likely smaller than the margin a lawyer pays to the partners of the firm (the lawyer is being dangled partnership-in-the-future as part of their compensation. You are not).
You're grossly uninformed of what a starting lawyer gets paid. Median pay for a lawyer 9 months post-graduation (only counting those with jobs) in 2005 was $60,000. That's not enough income to buy a 1-bedroom condo in many parts of the country.
Maybe you're thinking of mid-career lawyers in private practice as partners or in business law in senior management. That's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of early-career lawyers who are struggling to pay off student loans, driving a 10-year-old Honda Civic or Ford Escort, and sharing a shitty apartment in a college town or their state capital (this is generally what young lawyers are like in my experience).
It boils down to this: there is a need for personal responsibility. But there is also a need for a social safety net. And despite what you believe, most young lawyers are not rolling in dough.
In Nevada. If you were to move elsewhere, though, you might be surprised.
(Might be. I personally don't know... I just think that perspectives might be a bit skewed in Nevada due to Vegas).
Dude, you need to have your eyes opened, forcefully if need be.
You think there are minimum-wage jobs available everywhere, for anyone? You're delusional.
Oh, you're too sick to come into work today? That's twice this year. You're fired.
Let's look at this realistically:
$20,000 a year is approximately 1700 a month. Rent: $500. Utilities: $50 (and that's generously low for most climes). Food: $100 (by your estimate -- I think it would be very hard for someone to have a proper diet at that price). Transportation costs (car, mass transit, etc): $100-200 (again, generously low estimate). Laundry, clothes, etc: $250 (by your estimate, and let's also assume this includes entertainment). Right there that's over $1000, but let's just say that the $1000 a month is all that's spent. So your hypothetical earner has $700 left over each month to save. But uh-oh... the car breaks down. There's $X to fix it, or $Y to buy another beater. And uh-oh, he has a toothache. That's $100-600 for an extraction (depending on type of tooth, etc). Meanwhile $750 is tied up in a deposit on the shithole apartment. And now a parent dies and you need to fly to wherever, there's another few hundred.
Open your eyes. Living on $20000 a year is a miserable existence, and one bad-luck-event from abject poverty. Forget raising kids at that income. There is no reason why, in a modern society, we cannot provide for those less fortunate. Note that unemployment insurance has a time limit... so it's not some kind of permanent welfare.
How about we get rid of the ridiculous salaries at the high end, where board-members vote to pay their executives huge amounts of cash (knowing full well that the favor is returned by the board of the company where they are the CxO)? Where top executives get bonuses for laying workers off? This is
I agree that there needs to be a higher level of personal responsibility. But here's the thing: You're living in a dreamworld if you think that a social safety net is not a good thing. Consumer spending is very important to the entire economy, and if you have no safety net, then even those who have been saving get screwed. This is one of the lessons of the Great Depression.
You want to know why the poor get poorer and the rich get richer? Because the poor have almost no power to climb the economic ladder. It's a myth that people can bootstrap themselves into the wealthy classes. The only way to do so is to take great risks... and for every success story you read about, there are countless failures.
I know, I'm digressing, but social mobility is a joke when there is no safety net.
That hourly rate includes all their overhead.
It's not like the lawyer that bills out at $250/hr is clearing $250/hr. Once you factor in their overheard, it's much, much less. And what if they aren't billing 40 hours a week?
Sure, abuse happens. But I know a programmer who was getting paid $125 an hour and had *zero* overhead to pay and is currently collecting unemployment. I'd bet my house that he cleared more than the lawyer who was billing out a $250/hr.
Should someone making $120,000 a year collect unemployment if they are laid off? I don't know -- probably not -- $120,000 a year sounds like a lot, right?. Except a lot of those schlubs have $2500/mo mortgage payments on a 3-BR house. And their net pay (assuming spouse & 2 kids) is something like $95,000 -- around $8k a month. Car, mortgage, insurance, food, utilities, clothes, saving for college, saving for retirement... all the sudden, that $8k is gone. Setting aside cash for a 12-month cushion? Not so easy.
I think everyone should be eligible for unemployment regardless of income prior to unemployment. Just cap the amount they can receive equally. An unemployed line-order cook should get the same unemployment as an unemployed lawyer. If the lawyer wants to live a nice lifestyle while they are unemployed, they should have saved. Otherwise they can live at the subsistence level like the poor.
No, that's capital gains.
It needs to be reported, but not as regular income. And as you mentioned, it was at a loss (but probably not, once depreciation is figured in). If you're moving a lot of stuff, hire a tax accountant. Sounds like you're just moving a few odds-and-ends... in which case, check with your state unemployment office. You can always call anonymously...
No. There is no shortage of applicants in the job market, and *if* that applicant is truly the best candidate, it makes very little difference. The second-best candidate is likely very, very close in ability, etc. The gain I get from hiring the best candidate (assuming, again, that person is the best candidate) is likely smaller than the damage I (and others) suffer due to the dishonesty of the recruiter.
Good idea. Then when they bring my company to small claims court (and that's assuming I'm lucky enough for it to be just small claims court) my company needs to pat for legal representation. No thanks.
Any lawyer will advise you to not hire the applicant, even if you do cite breach of contract, because you'd be increasing exposure to legal action.
The best option is to terminate the contract, based on the breach, and not do any business with that recruiter or their candidates. If the candidate didn't properly vet their recruiter... it's too bad for them. I feel sorry for them, but it's just not worth the risk to hire them. Maybe they'll learn something from it and learn to vet their recruiters.
Lost wages due to non-hiring due to the discrepancy. Non-hire damages used a lot in discrimination suits. Problem is that you'd have hard time proving this, as you'd need the cooperation of the (non)hiring company to make depositions and possibly testify.
Also, there is loss of reputation, which is much harder to quantify.
The problem is not that they claimed the person was "better at their job then they really are" the problem is that their actions resulted in the person being seen as dishonest.
Unfortunately, I am cursed with a very large head. I would need to fire them if they looked hungry at all, no matter who else was in the room.
I'd post a link to the obligatory Far Side cartoon where a man with a ginormous head approaches a headhunter village (thus stepping into headhunter lore forever), thereby telling all you "obligatory xkcd" kids to get off my damn lawn, but I can't find a damn link to it. Maybe it's here under the onion on my belt...