A couple of years ago I had to take a driver re-education class because I got 3 speeding tickets over a 3 year period. This was after years of having no tickets. My state ditched the points system years earlier. So if you get 3 moving violations in that period of time you're sent to a class and pay $60. When you get 4 speeding tickets within that period, however, you're automatically subject to license suspension. This is regardless of the severity of the infraction.
In the class I attended there were people who had been there nearly 10 times. For some people it's turned into a minor inconvenience. The reason why they didn't get a suspended license, however, was because their violations were for things like going through red lights, not stopping at stop signs and the like. Essentially, anything other than speeding.
That irked me because I'd argue that some of the things these people had done is far more dangerous than speeding. But as the instructor argued, speeding is the biggest factor in accidents by an overwhelming margin. And I'm convinced that the statistics are incredibly misleading. Excessive speed can be considered a factor in almost every accident, but that doesn't make it a contributing factor.
For example, let's take an accident where a driver pulls into the passing lane in front of much faster traffic and gets rear-ended. American law enforcement would automatically fault the faster driver, the argument being that if they hadn't been going so fast they could have avoided the accident. But really, the fault belongs to the driver who didn't have good situational awareness and didn't use his mirrors prior to the lane change.
Americans seem to get caught up in what ifs. And that was what my instructor was obsessed about. If you drive more slowly you have more distance to react. But if relative speed is consistent and suitable for the road then actual speed is largely irrelevant. A far bigger problem in my mind is inadequate driver training, flagrant disregard for the rules, and aggressive driving. But all that is harder to enforce. Speeding is the low hanging fruit and so it gets all the attention. That's why people get their panties in a bunch about 85mph speed limits. If the road allows for it, why not?
Fuel economy is another story altogether. But I've always found it ironic that Europeans will drive around in cars with tiny displacement engines then take to the highways and drive with engines maxed out. Which means these cars are getting crap fuel economy. Of course, a big distinction between the US and Europe is that Europeans take the rules more seriously. They don't hog the passing lane. And they're more attentive to things around them. Also, vehicle inspections are far more stringent than they are in the US. All that contributes to safer highways even if the speeds are higher. That said, statistics show many American states compare favorably almost any European nation in terms of driver fatalities.
If the move to bigger wafers is driven strictly by increased efficiency there's no incentive to rush to adopt it. It's no different than rushing out to buy a marginally more fuel efficient car. It's going to take years to make up the difference in savings, if that ever even happens.
The move to 450mm wafers is a massive investment. Twelve years ago I had the opportunity to visit a new 300mm foundry for TSMC's big Taiwanese competitor UMC. The entire line was built around that size; everything from the cases that hold the wafers, to the tracks that transport them to the units that do the lithography. So you can't just swap out a production line. They'd almost certainly just build a new facility, which is not trivial in it's own right. But again, not much reason to bother if all it will enable you to do is get more units on one wafer.
And that isn't even accounting for the technical difficulties in simply making larger wafers. A lot of problems have already been addressed at the current sizes, but the bigger sizes introduces a host of new challenges. And when it comes down to it, there's 10-nanometer chips don't inherently require a bigger wafer.
Given the fact that foundries have ramped down production because of decreased demand there's even less incentive to go bigger.
I recall a few years ago reading about Boeing looking at a blended-wing/lifting body design, the X-48. They went as far as producing mock ups of the interior for passenger variants and found that travelers, for whatever reason, didn't like the configuration. This concept takes that layout and make it a whole lot worse with direction of seating changing in flight. Isn't it the same reason seats face forward instead of backwards despite being safer?
For the record, I think people can be rather stupid about that sort of thing considering windows are closed for 90% of the flight. I'm not sure how that arrangement wouldn't be anything but an improvement over being stuck inside a tube.
You want proven technology in an airplane because reliability and safety trumps all other concerns.
If you want to look at crude, outdated technology, take a look at the next school bus that goes by. But those manufacturers have no incentive to innovate because they get a nice, reliable income from the state. That is until a serious competitor comes along and offers something better and cleans their clocks. Then these guys will flock to the government for handouts.
That's a standard typographic convention. It's called a ligature. Most desktop publishing apps will even connect those letters; word certainly does it. It would look worse if they forced a space in there. And, it was present in the previous logo.
Logotypes don't always look right when blown up on screen, especially when subject to bad compression. I think the font looks great, someone obviously spent the time getting the logotype right.
I put countless hours into Wipeout HD and Fury, not to mention many of the Psygnosis games long before that. Growing up, I was enthralled by their distinctive visual style. So this news comes as a massive disappointment.
Unfortunately, I'm not terribly surprised. This was a long time coming; since Wipeout HD nothing has really come out of Studio Liverpool. It looks like their resources were diverted to projects at other divisions. So at the end of the day, what was the point of keeping them around? What was the point of even acquiring them? They probably would have thrived if they hadn't been under Sony's heel.
Sony seems to be having a hard time getting a grasp on modern gaming. They're afflicted by the same kinds of tendencies endemic in the Japanese gaming industry; they don't get the DLC model, they're stuck in long-winded development cycles and they seem to be struggling with modernizing gameplay. I'm not a fan of the countless Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto clones, but too many Japanese games feel a bit stale. And worst of all, Sony seems incapable of nurturing studios with real potential.
The problem with New Super Mario Bros is that nothing has fundamentally changed since the original series. The creative leap from the original to Super Mario Bros 3 was far greater than from SMB3 to NSMB. New Super Mario Bros essentially took concepts present in previous games and added some relatively minor twists. With the Wii game and now NSMB2 all Nintendo has done is take concepts already popular in countless other games. It shows that Nintendo have stopped leading; they're busy playing catchup.
Familiarity is good, but I would have liked a change of scenery. Mario's world is incredibly stagnant. Instead of rehashing the old games I would have preferred the introduction of new enemies. It would be neat to even see new interpretations of SMB2's villains. I admit that would also be a rehash, but I've always had a soft spot for that game's villains. Pokemon has managed to keep itself fresh by introducing a slew of new characters, creatures and gameplay elements. But at it's core it's still the same game.
One of the big things that bothers me about the new games is that they feel like a fan remake. The graphics have lost the clean vibrancy of SMB3. And let's not forget the richness of Yoshi's Island. I miss that. Those games were far more satisfying to look at than anything in the NSMB series. You could blame the move to 3D, but others have been more successful at preserve the feel of older games. I always expected that these games were going to progress to the point that it felt like playing a cartoon. Instead I'm left looking at what feels like sub par, mismatched 3D art.
It feels like Nintendo is afraid to take any risks and they're content with milking their franchises. I'm not sure how long they plan on keeping this up but it's all eventually going to catch up with them.
Having worked for years in an industry that is subject to a lot of overtime my conclusion is that far more often than not excessive overtime is not productive. When you're doing mindless, time-consuming work, sure it's not so much of a problem. Although, even then the frequency of mistakes seems to rise. But when you're doing anything that requires thought, overtime leads to significant problems. People who routinely work overtime inevitably end up more preoccupied with the fact that they're working late than on the task at hand, leading to sloppy work fraught with mistakes. It leads to a sense of helplessness, a feeling of never being able to catch up which in turn leads to high turnover rate.
Of course, there are always people who thrive in that kind of environment. I've worked with owners of smaller companies, guys like Horowitz who's entire lives are work. Their entire lives are preoccupied by work, and good for them because it's been one of the biggest contributors to their success. And from my observation that has been a very consistent theme in defining success. The ones I've come across who don't show that level of commitment have had a tendency to struggle or at least haven't been able to sustain their success. And the thing here is that a lot of these guys end up sacrificing personal lives and ruining relationships because of their obsession with work.
One of the more frustrating things with these guys is that they seem incapable of understanding that their own employees don't necessarily share the same drive. Why would they? They're not profiting directly from the success of the business like the owner or upper management might. Beyond hopes of pay increases or promotions, or threats of job loss, there's no incentive to work long hours. Secondly, some people simply don't care about work to the same extent these guys do. They have other priorities in their lives. So as long as they're productive workers, how long their workdays are is irrelevant.
Of course there's the other class of management which pretends they've got their work-life balance sorted out and end up doing neither well. "Katie" strikes me as one of those. I've come across too many managers who've managed to convince the company to work shortened workdays, or work from home once or twice a week. What that inevitably means is that they're unreachable, preoccupied with personal matters, unless they're a previously scheduled conference calls. Then on those calls it's evident they don't have a clue about what's going on but they make a big show of pretending they're on top of things. They're the sort of people who, when they do show up to work, spend entire days merely catching up. They're the sort of managers who make no crucial decisions, dump responsibilities on their subordinates but take all the credit for any success.
Sadly, these kind of people seem to comprise the bulk of corporate America. And I'm convinced that they're one of the main reasons why American companies are failing to innovate. These people don't want take risks, all they care about is keeping themselves employed. Corporate America is welfare for these people.
That may be the case in Europe, but in Asia, Starbucks is incredibly popular. I do have to admit, however, that walk into any Starbucks there and it's a near certainty that the place will be spotless and you'll get a good cup of coffee. Pathetically, the same cannot be said about a Starbucks in the US, even one situated in an upscale neighborhood.
What Samsung's engineers did was sensible and standard practice for anyone doing interface design. You do research, see what works, what doesn't and design accordingly. In some respects UX is a science. There's a lot of theory that comes into play; colors, shapes, relative sizing and positioning. It is inevitable that within certain environments there will be an ideal interface. I didn't look through the entire document, but what I did see seemed to simply point out flaws in Samsung's interface versus Apple's approach. The UX flaws I saw, things like overlapping windows or poorly designed button layouts, were legitimate problems.
It isn't like Samsung was trying to pass their own phone for an iPhone, as some Chinese companies are apt to do. They were simply studying the industry's current best practices. I can only imagine how badly crippled web development and design would be if it were subject to this kind of nonsense.
It's no different than a million other interfaces. Nearly all industrial machinery all features a bright red button for shut off. If Apple had come up with that I bet they'd start suing everyone in creation for replicating it. Even worse if they had come up with the molly-guard too.
Some people just happen to be in the right place at the right time. They're not necessarily the best at what they're doing, but they were able to capitalize on the opportunities when they arose. Many people wouldn't even notice the opportunity if it presented itself others cripple themselves with self doubt or stubbornness.
In my experience, having a pool of dependable contacts is the best path to success. If you weren't lucky enough to grow up in the right neighborhood or didn't attend one of the top universities that inevitable means you've got to leave a strong impression, in terms of work quality and personality, with whoever you interact with. Luck can be a factor, but I tend to find it works far more in the negative, health issues or downsizing, than in the positive. If you're going to take the self-made route you'd better be dedicated and prepared to work your ass off.
The thing that's always irked me about the entrepreneurial label is that people talk about these guys like they're innovators and risk takers. When they're starting from nothing that may be true. But someone who's already successful isn't necessarily any more creative than anyone else. The difference is they've got the money and connections to execute and promote their ideas. Floating a vague idea is enough for these guys to get backing. Your average person will dismiss most of their ideas because they don't have the time or resources to do anything with it, they get trained to tune out flights of fancy.
When that individual does hit upon something they're convinced will work they're put into a position where their whole lives are invested in it. The consequences of failure is far, far greater than it is for your average "entrepreneur". So they either have to commit to fruition or give up early. There's no implicit trust, which means that unlike an "entrepreneur" they have to prove that the idea works before anyone will back them.
I think the real problem is that some people actually believe that socialism would negate corporatism; if anything, it institutionalizes that kind of protectionism.
I have a friend who lives on Hawaii and his entire house is powered by solar.
Pushing the entire archipelago to wind or solar, however, is another story altogether. Doing it for an island with a population of 1400 is a far cry to doing it for 1.3 million spread across several islands.
What do you suggest? Clear cutting huge swaths of forest to install solar panels and wind turbines?
It's outrageous enough that you need to be a subscriber of their services and partner companies to watch anything online. But then they mislead you all the way in. They advertise it on tv and online make it seem like all you need to do is click on a feed and start watching. So despite having logins for three of their services I couldn't watch with any because I didn't have one of their crappy cable networks as part of those packages.
And to add insult to injury, coverage on NBC has been abysmal. Take last night's broadcast of women's gymnastics. There was no rhyme or reason to it. They showed a bunch of random events, several times not even waiting to show scores. They barely showed any of the competition, so who the hell knows why China ended up being so far behind, for example. They wasted too much time with goofy drama. And despite being so overly America centric, for whatever reason they spent the first hour in primetime broadcasting diving which featured no American even close to being in medal contention. And, last but not least, let's not forget the endless commercial interruptions.
It's pathetic and my interest in following the Olympics for anything to other than medal counts is quickly evaporating. NBC seems incapable of handling a broadcast of this scale. You'd think that for prerecorded broadcasts, with the massive staff devoted to the games that they'd do a better job of editing.
What confuses me is that the story says they're using speakers, meaning every player hears the sound at the same time. So where's the issue?
It seems that the speakers convey the sound of a guy with an actual gun further behind. But why aren't the players training themselves to react to the first sound, disregarding the real noise. More importantly, why the hell is there even a real gun out there if they've got the speakers? They couldn't have started using a prerecorded sound years ago?
It appears to me that the real story here is that these officials are so slavish to hopelessly outdated traditions that they'll continue sticking to them even long after it's become evident that it's detrimental. It reminds me of FIFA's long time refusal to accept replays or goal line technology.
Watching the videos deflated all of my excitement. Much of it was so cheesy that I initially thought it was the work of a special effects studio. As it stands it's not much more than a moving sculpture.
I can't help but think that someone could produce that actually works by cannibalizing a few small construction vehicles. But at the end of the day the thing is going to be so heavy and slow as to be pointless. It's a nice fantasy, but I think the future is more likely to be powered armor, a la Starship Troopers, than anything depicted in Gundam. Modern day weaponry already nullifies any advantage something like a Gundam unit could have possibly had. But a compact one-man shell with blast resistance might actually be an asset.
This brings a tear of joy to my eye... Finally, some overt examples of future technology. All that's left to fulfill my childhood vision of the future is flying cars, supersonic transports, torus-style space stations, and proper spacecraft (FTL optional but strongly encouraged).
The irony here is that it's the lowly workers sacrificing themselves. And the elderly at that. I notice that the termite queen isn't blowing herself up for anyone and, in fact, is hidden safely away in the colony while others do the hard work. So much for your arguments about the common good.
The problem I've found with those I've encountered who push communistic ideals, both personally and online, is that they tend to look down on the majority of the population as stupid. The masses are too dumb to appreciate the wonders communism will bestow on us all. They seem to maintain this attitude that they're one of the enlightened, one of the elites who will sit above the rest by virtue of pushing communism so fervently.
The sad fact is that the same scumbags screwing us right now would continue to be the ones screwing us if we switched to communism. Nothing changes except that you've institutionalized misery for the masses.
I find that suggestion amusing considering these stats released by the IRS:
Tax Bracket - % of Federal Income Tax Paid Top 1% - 36.73% Top 5% - 58.66% Top 10% - 70.47% Top 25% - 87.30% Top 50% - 97.75% Bottom 50% - 2.25%
The 50% mark is about $32,000 a year. 2009 was the most recent year I could find for this breakdown. According to Fact Check, the share of the total income received by the top 1% in 2005 was 18.1%.
So they're already paying a lot more than what you're suggesting. Perhaps what you mean is that they should be paying a lot more. Now, mind you, in Europe people pay far more in taxes and governments are struggling to sustain their social programs. And this is without the kind of defense budgets the US maintains. In Asia (Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) tax rates are generally lower than in the US at all levels, corporate tax included, and they do reasonably well. They're facing problems too but they aren't nearly as serious as those facing the US or Europe. So the problem isn't simply one of just taxing people more. That's making the same mistake as believing that throwing money at any problem will automatically fix it.
The problem I have with the system in the US isn't tax rates. It's all the loopholes that enable people to get out of what they should be paying. But I'm also not so naive as to believe that more taxes will solve anything. You're still relying on the government to spend that money wisely. As Europe has demonstrated, that's not likely to happen.
The reason people in poverty have more children is in the hope that one of them will rise out of that misery, and at the very least grow to adulthood and have children of their own. But a most of their problems are a consequence of government corruption, not a true lack of food or medicine.
Most developed Asian nations, generally still more densely populated, are seeing fertility rates barely above 1. Hell, even China is starting to see the impact of population decline and has been experiencing the consequences of it's one-child policy. Europe has also seen marked population decline, especially if you don't count immigration. I think the US is one of the exceptions, where the more affluent population continues to have more than multiple children. And even then, it's hard to argue that we have any kind of population problem.
I'm not sure why the stories of a population explosion persist when it's long since been shown that it's not going to happen.
I've seen a number of posts talking about how American CEOs would never do such a thing. I'd really like to know where this sort of self-deprecating delusion originates. Common sense alone would dictate that this has had to have happened more than once in US. Searching on Google brings up a wall of spam, linking to the same Lenovo story. But look elsewhere and you'll see plenty of stories of CEOs paying out very generous benefits to all employees, or forgoing on payment of any kind during tough times.
And while this guy was very generous, many, if not most, Chinese executives pay their employees crap. In fact, a lot of Chinese workers, when they have a choice, find employment at foreign-owned companies because they know they're going to earn better pay under less demanding conditions. Surveys have shown that even those in more professional fields prefer working for foreign organizations. Chinese companies are generally known for being quite oppressive, but when people are desperate for a job they'll take anything. In my experience Lenovo thing is a fluke and the company probably has something to gain from it.
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A couple of years ago I had to take a driver re-education class because I got 3 speeding tickets over a 3 year period. This was after years of having no tickets. My state ditched the points system years earlier. So if you get 3 moving violations in that period of time you're sent to a class and pay $60. When you get 4 speeding tickets within that period, however, you're automatically subject to license suspension. This is regardless of the severity of the infraction.
In the class I attended there were people who had been there nearly 10 times. For some people it's turned into a minor inconvenience. The reason why they didn't get a suspended license, however, was because their violations were for things like going through red lights, not stopping at stop signs and the like. Essentially, anything other than speeding.
That irked me because I'd argue that some of the things these people had done is far more dangerous than speeding. But as the instructor argued, speeding is the biggest factor in accidents by an overwhelming margin. And I'm convinced that the statistics are incredibly misleading. Excessive speed can be considered a factor in almost every accident, but that doesn't make it a contributing factor.
For example, let's take an accident where a driver pulls into the passing lane in front of much faster traffic and gets rear-ended. American law enforcement would automatically fault the faster driver, the argument being that if they hadn't been going so fast they could have avoided the accident. But really, the fault belongs to the driver who didn't have good situational awareness and didn't use his mirrors prior to the lane change.
Americans seem to get caught up in what ifs. And that was what my instructor was obsessed about. If you drive more slowly you have more distance to react. But if relative speed is consistent and suitable for the road then actual speed is largely irrelevant. A far bigger problem in my mind is inadequate driver training, flagrant disregard for the rules, and aggressive driving. But all that is harder to enforce. Speeding is the low hanging fruit and so it gets all the attention. That's why people get their panties in a bunch about 85mph speed limits. If the road allows for it, why not?
Fuel economy is another story altogether. But I've always found it ironic that Europeans will drive around in cars with tiny displacement engines then take to the highways and drive with engines maxed out. Which means these cars are getting crap fuel economy. Of course, a big distinction between the US and Europe is that Europeans take the rules more seriously. They don't hog the passing lane. And they're more attentive to things around them. Also, vehicle inspections are far more stringent than they are in the US. All that contributes to safer highways even if the speeds are higher. That said, statistics show many American states compare favorably almost any European nation in terms of driver fatalities.
If the move to bigger wafers is driven strictly by increased efficiency there's no incentive to rush to adopt it. It's no different than rushing out to buy a marginally more fuel efficient car. It's going to take years to make up the difference in savings, if that ever even happens.
The move to 450mm wafers is a massive investment. Twelve years ago I had the opportunity to visit a new 300mm foundry for TSMC's big Taiwanese competitor UMC. The entire line was built around that size; everything from the cases that hold the wafers, to the tracks that transport them to the units that do the lithography. So you can't just swap out a production line. They'd almost certainly just build a new facility, which is not trivial in it's own right. But again, not much reason to bother if all it will enable you to do is get more units on one wafer.
And that isn't even accounting for the technical difficulties in simply making larger wafers. A lot of problems have already been addressed at the current sizes, but the bigger sizes introduces a host of new challenges. And when it comes down to it, there's 10-nanometer chips don't inherently require a bigger wafer.
Given the fact that foundries have ramped down production because of decreased demand there's even less incentive to go bigger.
I recall a few years ago reading about Boeing looking at a blended-wing/lifting body design, the X-48. They went as far as producing mock ups of the interior for passenger variants and found that travelers, for whatever reason, didn't like the configuration. This concept takes that layout and make it a whole lot worse with direction of seating changing in flight. Isn't it the same reason seats face forward instead of backwards despite being safer?
For the record, I think people can be rather stupid about that sort of thing considering windows are closed for 90% of the flight. I'm not sure how that arrangement wouldn't be anything but an improvement over being stuck inside a tube.
You want proven technology in an airplane because reliability and safety trumps all other concerns.
If you want to look at crude, outdated technology, take a look at the next school bus that goes by. But those manufacturers have no incentive to innovate because they get a nice, reliable income from the state. That is until a serious competitor comes along and offers something better and cleans their clocks. Then these guys will flock to the government for handouts.
The innovation is in getting viewers to watch the same thing over and over again.
That's a standard typographic convention. It's called a ligature. Most desktop publishing apps will even connect those letters; word certainly does it. It would look worse if they forced a space in there. And, it was present in the previous logo.
Logotypes don't always look right when blown up on screen, especially when subject to bad compression. I think the font looks great, someone obviously spent the time getting the logotype right.
I put countless hours into Wipeout HD and Fury, not to mention many of the Psygnosis games long before that. Growing up, I was enthralled by their distinctive visual style. So this news comes as a massive disappointment.
Unfortunately, I'm not terribly surprised. This was a long time coming; since Wipeout HD nothing has really come out of Studio Liverpool. It looks like their resources were diverted to projects at other divisions. So at the end of the day, what was the point of keeping them around? What was the point of even acquiring them? They probably would have thrived if they hadn't been under Sony's heel.
Sony seems to be having a hard time getting a grasp on modern gaming. They're afflicted by the same kinds of tendencies endemic in the Japanese gaming industry; they don't get the DLC model, they're stuck in long-winded development cycles and they seem to be struggling with modernizing gameplay. I'm not a fan of the countless Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto clones, but too many Japanese games feel a bit stale. And worst of all, Sony seems incapable of nurturing studios with real potential.
The problem with New Super Mario Bros is that nothing has fundamentally changed since the original series. The creative leap from the original to Super Mario Bros 3 was far greater than from SMB3 to NSMB. New Super Mario Bros essentially took concepts present in previous games and added some relatively minor twists. With the Wii game and now NSMB2 all Nintendo has done is take concepts already popular in countless other games. It shows that Nintendo have stopped leading; they're busy playing catchup.
Familiarity is good, but I would have liked a change of scenery. Mario's world is incredibly stagnant. Instead of rehashing the old games I would have preferred the introduction of new enemies. It would be neat to even see new interpretations of SMB2's villains. I admit that would also be a rehash, but I've always had a soft spot for that game's villains. Pokemon has managed to keep itself fresh by introducing a slew of new characters, creatures and gameplay elements. But at it's core it's still the same game.
One of the big things that bothers me about the new games is that they feel like a fan remake. The graphics have lost the clean vibrancy of SMB3. And let's not forget the richness of Yoshi's Island. I miss that. Those games were far more satisfying to look at than anything in the NSMB series. You could blame the move to 3D, but others have been more successful at preserve the feel of older games. I always expected that these games were going to progress to the point that it felt like playing a cartoon. Instead I'm left looking at what feels like sub par, mismatched 3D art.
It feels like Nintendo is afraid to take any risks and they're content with milking their franchises. I'm not sure how long they plan on keeping this up but it's all eventually going to catch up with them.
Having worked for years in an industry that is subject to a lot of overtime my conclusion is that far more often than not excessive overtime is not productive. When you're doing mindless, time-consuming work, sure it's not so much of a problem. Although, even then the frequency of mistakes seems to rise. But when you're doing anything that requires thought, overtime leads to significant problems. People who routinely work overtime inevitably end up more preoccupied with the fact that they're working late than on the task at hand, leading to sloppy work fraught with mistakes. It leads to a sense of helplessness, a feeling of never being able to catch up which in turn leads to high turnover rate.
Of course, there are always people who thrive in that kind of environment. I've worked with owners of smaller companies, guys like Horowitz who's entire lives are work. Their entire lives are preoccupied by work, and good for them because it's been one of the biggest contributors to their success. And from my observation that has been a very consistent theme in defining success. The ones I've come across who don't show that level of commitment have had a tendency to struggle or at least haven't been able to sustain their success. And the thing here is that a lot of these guys end up sacrificing personal lives and ruining relationships because of their obsession with work.
One of the more frustrating things with these guys is that they seem incapable of understanding that their own employees don't necessarily share the same drive. Why would they? They're not profiting directly from the success of the business like the owner or upper management might. Beyond hopes of pay increases or promotions, or threats of job loss, there's no incentive to work long hours. Secondly, some people simply don't care about work to the same extent these guys do. They have other priorities in their lives. So as long as they're productive workers, how long their workdays are is irrelevant.
Of course there's the other class of management which pretends they've got their work-life balance sorted out and end up doing neither well. "Katie" strikes me as one of those. I've come across too many managers who've managed to convince the company to work shortened workdays, or work from home once or twice a week. What that inevitably means is that they're unreachable, preoccupied with personal matters, unless they're a previously scheduled conference calls. Then on those calls it's evident they don't have a clue about what's going on but they make a big show of pretending they're on top of things. They're the sort of people who, when they do show up to work, spend entire days merely catching up. They're the sort of managers who make no crucial decisions, dump responsibilities on their subordinates but take all the credit for any success.
Sadly, these kind of people seem to comprise the bulk of corporate America. And I'm convinced that they're one of the main reasons why American companies are failing to innovate. These people don't want take risks, all they care about is keeping themselves employed. Corporate America is welfare for these people.
That may be the case in Europe, but in Asia, Starbucks is incredibly popular. I do have to admit, however, that walk into any Starbucks there and it's a near certainty that the place will be spotless and you'll get a good cup of coffee. Pathetically, the same cannot be said about a Starbucks in the US, even one situated in an upscale neighborhood.
What Samsung's engineers did was sensible and standard practice for anyone doing interface design. You do research, see what works, what doesn't and design accordingly. In some respects UX is a science. There's a lot of theory that comes into play; colors, shapes, relative sizing and positioning. It is inevitable that within certain environments there will be an ideal interface. I didn't look through the entire document, but what I did see seemed to simply point out flaws in Samsung's interface versus Apple's approach. The UX flaws I saw, things like overlapping windows or poorly designed button layouts, were legitimate problems.
It isn't like Samsung was trying to pass their own phone for an iPhone, as some Chinese companies are apt to do. They were simply studying the industry's current best practices. I can only imagine how badly crippled web development and design would be if it were subject to this kind of nonsense.
It's no different than a million other interfaces. Nearly all industrial machinery all features a bright red button for shut off. If Apple had come up with that I bet they'd start suing everyone in creation for replicating it. Even worse if they had come up with the molly-guard too.
Some people just happen to be in the right place at the right time. They're not necessarily the best at what they're doing, but they were able to capitalize on the opportunities when they arose. Many people wouldn't even notice the opportunity if it presented itself others cripple themselves with self doubt or stubbornness.
In my experience, having a pool of dependable contacts is the best path to success. If you weren't lucky enough to grow up in the right neighborhood or didn't attend one of the top universities that inevitable means you've got to leave a strong impression, in terms of work quality and personality, with whoever you interact with. Luck can be a factor, but I tend to find it works far more in the negative, health issues or downsizing, than in the positive. If you're going to take the self-made route you'd better be dedicated and prepared to work your ass off.
The thing that's always irked me about the entrepreneurial label is that people talk about these guys like they're innovators and risk takers. When they're starting from nothing that may be true. But someone who's already successful isn't necessarily any more creative than anyone else. The difference is they've got the money and connections to execute and promote their ideas. Floating a vague idea is enough for these guys to get backing. Your average person will dismiss most of their ideas because they don't have the time or resources to do anything with it, they get trained to tune out flights of fancy.
When that individual does hit upon something they're convinced will work they're put into a position where their whole lives are invested in it. The consequences of failure is far, far greater than it is for your average "entrepreneur". So they either have to commit to fruition or give up early. There's no implicit trust, which means that unlike an "entrepreneur" they have to prove that the idea works before anyone will back them.
I think the real problem is that some people actually believe that socialism would negate corporatism; if anything, it institutionalizes that kind of protectionism.
I have a friend who lives on Hawaii and his entire house is powered by solar.
Pushing the entire archipelago to wind or solar, however, is another story altogether. Doing it for an island with a population of 1400 is a far cry to doing it for 1.3 million spread across several islands.
What do you suggest? Clear cutting huge swaths of forest to install solar panels and wind turbines?
It's outrageous enough that you need to be a subscriber of their services and partner companies to watch anything online. But then they mislead you all the way in. They advertise it on tv and online make it seem like all you need to do is click on a feed and start watching. So despite having logins for three of their services I couldn't watch with any because I didn't have one of their crappy cable networks as part of those packages.
And to add insult to injury, coverage on NBC has been abysmal. Take last night's broadcast of women's gymnastics. There was no rhyme or reason to it. They showed a bunch of random events, several times not even waiting to show scores. They barely showed any of the competition, so who the hell knows why China ended up being so far behind, for example. They wasted too much time with goofy drama. And despite being so overly America centric, for whatever reason they spent the first hour in primetime broadcasting diving which featured no American even close to being in medal contention. And, last but not least, let's not forget the endless commercial interruptions.
It's pathetic and my interest in following the Olympics for anything to other than medal counts is quickly evaporating. NBC seems incapable of handling a broadcast of this scale. You'd think that for prerecorded broadcasts, with the massive staff devoted to the games that they'd do a better job of editing.
What confuses me is that the story says they're using speakers, meaning every player hears the sound at the same time. So where's the issue?
It seems that the speakers convey the sound of a guy with an actual gun further behind. But why aren't the players training themselves to react to the first sound, disregarding the real noise. More importantly, why the hell is there even a real gun out there if they've got the speakers? They couldn't have started using a prerecorded sound years ago?
It appears to me that the real story here is that these officials are so slavish to hopelessly outdated traditions that they'll continue sticking to them even long after it's become evident that it's detrimental. It reminds me of FIFA's long time refusal to accept replays or goal line technology.
Watching the videos deflated all of my excitement. Much of it was so cheesy that I initially thought it was the work of a special effects studio. As it stands it's not much more than a moving sculpture.
I can't help but think that someone could produce that actually works by cannibalizing a few small construction vehicles. But at the end of the day the thing is going to be so heavy and slow as to be pointless. It's a nice fantasy, but I think the future is more likely to be powered armor, a la Starship Troopers, than anything depicted in Gundam. Modern day weaponry already nullifies any advantage something like a Gundam unit could have possibly had. But a compact one-man shell with blast resistance might actually be an asset.
This brings a tear of joy to my eye... Finally, some overt examples of future technology. All that's left to fulfill my childhood vision of the future is flying cars, supersonic transports, torus-style space stations, and proper spacecraft (FTL optional but strongly encouraged).
The irony here is that it's the lowly workers sacrificing themselves. And the elderly at that. I notice that the termite queen isn't blowing herself up for anyone and, in fact, is hidden safely away in the colony while others do the hard work. So much for your arguments about the common good.
The problem I've found with those I've encountered who push communistic ideals, both personally and online, is that they tend to look down on the majority of the population as stupid. The masses are too dumb to appreciate the wonders communism will bestow on us all. They seem to maintain this attitude that they're one of the enlightened, one of the elites who will sit above the rest by virtue of pushing communism so fervently.
The sad fact is that the same scumbags screwing us right now would continue to be the ones screwing us if we switched to communism. Nothing changes except that you've institutionalized misery for the masses.
It wouldn't be the first time Apple has pulled a stunt like this.
You're overlooking USB 3.0, capable of up to 5Gbps.
I find that suggestion amusing considering these stats released by the IRS:
Tax Bracket - % of Federal Income Tax Paid
Top 1% - 36.73%
Top 5% - 58.66%
Top 10% - 70.47%
Top 25% - 87.30%
Top 50% - 97.75%
Bottom 50% - 2.25%
The 50% mark is about $32,000 a year. 2009 was the most recent year I could find for this breakdown. According to Fact Check, the share of the total income received by the top 1% in 2005 was 18.1%.
So they're already paying a lot more than what you're suggesting. Perhaps what you mean is that they should be paying a lot more. Now, mind you, in Europe people pay far more in taxes and governments are struggling to sustain their social programs. And this is without the kind of defense budgets the US maintains. In Asia (Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) tax rates are generally lower than in the US at all levels, corporate tax included, and they do reasonably well. They're facing problems too but they aren't nearly as serious as those facing the US or Europe. So the problem isn't simply one of just taxing people more. That's making the same mistake as believing that throwing money at any problem will automatically fix it.
The problem I have with the system in the US isn't tax rates. It's all the loopholes that enable people to get out of what they should be paying. But I'm also not so naive as to believe that more taxes will solve anything. You're still relying on the government to spend that money wisely. As Europe has demonstrated, that's not likely to happen.
The reason people in poverty have more children is in the hope that one of them will rise out of that misery, and at the very least grow to adulthood and have children of their own. But a most of their problems are a consequence of government corruption, not a true lack of food or medicine.
Most developed Asian nations, generally still more densely populated, are seeing fertility rates barely above 1. Hell, even China is starting to see the impact of population decline and has been experiencing the consequences of it's one-child policy. Europe has also seen marked population decline, especially if you don't count immigration. I think the US is one of the exceptions, where the more affluent population continues to have more than multiple children. And even then, it's hard to argue that we have any kind of population problem.
I'm not sure why the stories of a population explosion persist when it's long since been shown that it's not going to happen.
I've seen a number of posts talking about how American CEOs would never do such a thing. I'd really like to know where this sort of self-deprecating delusion originates. Common sense alone would dictate that this has had to have happened more than once in US. Searching on Google brings up a wall of spam, linking to the same Lenovo story. But look elsewhere and you'll see plenty of stories of CEOs paying out very generous benefits to all employees, or forgoing on payment of any kind during tough times.
And while this guy was very generous, many, if not most, Chinese executives pay their employees crap. In fact, a lot of Chinese workers, when they have a choice, find employment at foreign-owned companies because they know they're going to earn better pay under less demanding conditions. Surveys have shown that even those in more professional fields prefer working for foreign organizations. Chinese companies are generally known for being quite oppressive, but when people are desperate for a job they'll take anything. In my experience Lenovo thing is a fluke and the company probably has something to gain from it.
I guess easy access to guns was also the problem in Norway, Sweden and France.