Best advice on the thread. HR isn't there to help you, but if there is a manager or their boss, alerting them to problems is the only way to affect change. We had someone quit last year, and while there were a number of things that we thought might have contributed to the departure, the biggest issues were things we were completely surprised by. People like to think they know the answers when it reflects better on them than reality...
From my math, prepaid is only going to save you $110 over a two year contract (using goPhone), once you factor in the subsidy. If you add in international travel (where you don't need your US phone number) then things look better, but that is really an edge case. The bottom line is that US cell service prices are absurd.
Does a person that makes $10MM per year and pays $1.5MM in federal taxes not already do a pretty good job of supporting the government? If you make $60k and pay 25% marginal tax rate, it is just $8,000, or 1/200 what the millionaire makes. Does the millionaire use 200x the resources? A bit of a stretch.
If the millionaire paid $2.5MM in federal taxes, or 300x your taxes, do you really think that is proportionate in any way?
Now, saying that every person should pay the same amount is stupid, and that the tax rates should be progressive is logical enough, but it has to be rationalized somehow. I would argue that since businesses have decided to use the public welfare system rather than corporate responsibility in hiring and firing practices, there is clearly cause for higher total taxes, as well as the "social good."
When you factor in AMT, someone that actually earns a meaningful percentage of their income is paying at least 20% in taxes. If it is all from dividends then the money has be taxed at a much higher rate. Capital gains are a bit different, but when it comes down to how these things are structured it gets hard to separate.
I agree with your assessment; my only point is it is no different for individuals or corporations, in practical terms. (The value of an asset to an individual is the greater of what they can earn from it directly or what they can sell it to someone else for.)
The societal value vs private value of copyright has been skewed far too much in the direction of "content owners" for too long, and it needs to be fixed. The same is true for all IP; we need rationalization of the system.
Eighteen years later and Word (and Libre Office last time I checked) cannot handle the formatting of reports and construction specifications correctly and reliably. The "Reveal Codes" function actually gave you access to all the markup data, so you could easily fix things like headline formatting improperly spanning a page break or footer conflicts.
If Word were still "free" because of licensing issues, WP5.1 would still be worth $5 to me if it ran. If they actually got 6.2(?) to work properly in Windows, $20 would be no sweat. For $50-100, it would be too much to install on every desk.
Separating personal and corporate is dangerous at best. Where does a family trust fit? If anything can be separated it is creative rights and publishing rights; creative rights should last much longer than publishing rights.
Just wait until Peter Jackson or a delegate runs for office in NZ, and then there will be a re-focused priority on protection of intellectual property.
While I agree on the overuse of the cloud meme, things like sshfs still don't offer encryption of the data at the server, so that someone with physical access can view all the data; it only encrypts the transfer.
Is there anything that can hold an encrypted data store that is only decrypted by authorized clients on a local basis? Ideally it would be something that gives different layers of access so you can navigate a directory tree only with authorization, and only download files you need.
The only thing I can imagine is running a VM on the hosted server with an encrypted volume that needs to be manually mounted and decrypted, but that isn't ideal.
You were doing ok until the non-removable battery bit. Only an idiot needs to swap batteries. Yes, I own a iPhone. Despite being on the phone for up to five hours per day, I have never needed to charge other than at night on my bedside table.
When I lived in a place where power was extremely unreliable, I had an external battery pack in case I spent more time using it for Internet access, or if power was out all night. There are plenty of such gizmos out there that are arguably more reliable and flexible than an extra phone battery.
No, agriculture in the southwest is using it all up. Urban water consumption across the southwest uses significantly less than 20% of the Colorado River. The problem is trying to grow stuff in the desert.
Now... the next logical question is why do you grow stuff in a desert... and that is population expansion. Don't just blame that on the cities.
Not to mention the fact that if a terrorist really wanted to do something bad, all they need to do is bribe or hold someone with adequate clearance's family hostage.
The reality is that a significantly motivated person/organization can easily defeat any obstacles placed in front of them. It becomes an economic issue. If security costs $1MM, and can be defeated for $1k (including risk, human cost, etc), the security doesn't work. If the security costs $1k and requires $1MM to be defeated, it works. It is the orders of magnitude difference that is significant.
Right now we have an airport security apparatus that costs well over $1B more than the pre-9/11 costs. It is not statistically/demonstrably safer than the pre 9/11 security. 9/11 total cost was under $1MM to orchestrate... likely under $100k!
There is no such thing as perfect safety, perfect security, or perfect intelligence. Understand what acceptable risk is and we avoid wasting all this obscene money.
To not do it would be a legacy decision based on a need to optimize battery performance... which is why I can see some logic to the disruption LTE played to them (in the very recent term-- last 18-24 months). BB10 might be more of a modular approach.
A better statement of the problem is likely that the delay in BB10 squandered resources on adding features to the old OS, which further delayed a competitive entry into the market.
In-home service is about the only place they can provide value though. My mom paid $500 to get her TV installed (cheaper than me doing it!), and I wouldn't think twice about paying $150 for someone that would put on the wedge anchors, mount the wiremold, and make it look pretty, short of carpentry or painting. They could have gotten an extra $100 from me for the hardware (50% margin) as well!
But, I would want the job done right-- none of the using a 5-20P where it should be a 5-20C, etc.
Actually the lesson learned from the good old days is that the service provided just isn't worth $120k per year. Our company of 30 can get by fine with a monthly visit by a consultant for 8 hours. He can still make $120k or so, but we pay about $13k. Our total support costs, including my time and another guy that spends a few hours a month settin guy new computers and rotating backups adds less than $20k fully burdened to the equation. We could scale to 80 people in one location before our total IT labor outlay would exceed $45k per year.
That isn't to say there isn't more we could do with IT.. Just that it is diminishing returns.
That is exactly the point. If the utility company does it for you it is more expensive and ultimately less effective. Say your utility currently has 99% availability at your home. That can be done with a network that has 99.5-99.9% availability-- to improve at your home, they need to make their core infrastructure have 99.999% reliability to get 99.99% reliability to your neighborhood and 99.9% to your home.
If you put a generator at your home, all you need out of it is to have 90% reliability for the 1% utility unavailability to get you 99.9% availability. Mathematically there are some caveats-- if the utility is unreliable inthe hot summer, you need to make sure your generator has a cooling system that is designed to accommodate worst-day ambient temperature. If they go out inthe cold of winter, you need to make sure your fuel doesn't gel and that you have a reliable starting system and block heater. If you go natural gas or propane, you need to make sure those would be available for your expected outage cases.
As for your cost, you might not be including a transfer switch and adequate fuel storage in your number, but $1000-1200 per kW should get you a pretty good system installed. I think I remember seeing a propane/natural gas 17 kW Generac unit being quoted for $25k, which would be somewhat high-end.
You should plan on one minimum 3-day outage per year with the current electrical grid, on a national average. If you want to drop that to 8 hours per year, expect to pay about $1,400 per kW peak demand per year more. If you want to go to 45 minutes per year, it should be another $700/kW.
An interesting thing about that number is that it is actually cheaper to put in your own generator (or even solar with batteries!) than having the utility do it. The payback is only a couple years worst case.
The issue is that for higher reliability you need to limit distance effects and be able to tolerate maintenance activities.
Not sure of GP's logic, but smaller motors are easier for a generator to handle, it should be better efficiency than even the best central, and you should get better humidity control. He could have gone with smaller units-- maybe two 900's and one 1500 if he has that much insulation, but pull-down time of the bigger units is nice.
Crazy unless you live on a hillside and you look down on a bunch of white roofs. It can actually be painful.
One option is to try and shade the roof-- burlap or canvas with an air gap, plants on the roof, or trees around the roof. Putting a sprinkler on the roof is not bad in an emergency if it isn't too humid. Same goes for dark decks.
As for the article, my advice after a couple years on an island in Thailand is to get acclimated to the temperature, drink water with electrolytes, and get yourself as much shade as possible. With really oppressive heat though, I would get a very small split system for an interior room in the house (basement is ideal). Cool it to no more than 15F below outside temperature and keep the humidity low. For power outages, I would keep a spray bottle full of ice water, but if you want to be a real geek, make a misting system that can be hand cranked.
For apartment dwellers, try and stay away from doing stupid things like putting a camping generator on the balcony, don't transport gasoline in an elevator, and never back feed your power system throu a wrong-way plug! Try and figure out a way to work on a 500W power budget, and some more options open up.
You can tell a lot more than that from the meters. They might only record interval data every 15 minutes, but that interval is totalized from near-continuous and very precise data. There raw data can be found if desired. It takes some effort, but you can quickly see the signatures of different types of equipment based on the rate of change in load, power factor, and harmonics.
But... who really cares? You can tell a hell of a lot more with a thermal imager drive-by. Actually getting enough useful data requires more than just access to the utility company records-- we needed to record at slightly over 10 Hz sampling rates of see this kind of information off of process equipment and then run iterative batch processing of the data. It was around 50MB of raw data per week.
Sure, there are easy applications for industrial intelligence and estimating earnings, but that has been a concern for years. What value does the pain really have for a residence.
I'll add to that: diversify your sources of income. The easiest way to do that is for the wife to work part time. Treat housing as an investment and only buy if it makes economic sense. Live below your means, and save for when a good opportunity comes along.
If you like the stability of big companies, put out feelers on consulting... Maintain your networks and watch where people go. If you are sick of it, look at smaller companies.
It seems like the only real path to financial stability is to have your own company, which is far from being risk-free.
Also understand where older workers succeed. It isn't in the production-type positions, sweatshops, or innovative startups. It seems to be more with roles where requirements are concrete, but ill defined.
We do work with a large HMO. Their expectation is that significantly more care gets pushed down to medical offices rather than the hospital. There is an order of magnitude cost savings between treatment Ina doctor's office and in a hospital.
So, if your ER visit and subsequent overnight stay could have been avoided with a trip to the doctor and some antibiotics, costs go down.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies over 50 people must maintain those records. It is a crock, but it is the law.
Best advice on the thread. HR isn't there to help you, but if there is a manager or their boss, alerting them to problems is the only way to affect change. We had someone quit last year, and while there were a number of things that we thought might have contributed to the departure, the biggest issues were things we were completely surprised by. People like to think they know the answers when it reflects better on them than reality...
From my math, prepaid is only going to save you $110 over a two year contract (using goPhone), once you factor in the subsidy. If you add in international travel (where you don't need your US phone number) then things look better, but that is really an edge case. The bottom line is that US cell service prices are absurd.
Does a person that makes $10MM per year and pays $1.5MM in federal taxes not already do a pretty good job of supporting the government? If you make $60k and pay 25% marginal tax rate, it is just $8,000, or 1/200 what the millionaire makes. Does the millionaire use 200x the resources? A bit of a stretch.
If the millionaire paid $2.5MM in federal taxes, or 300x your taxes, do you really think that is proportionate in any way?
Now, saying that every person should pay the same amount is stupid, and that the tax rates should be progressive is logical enough, but it has to be rationalized somehow. I would argue that since businesses have decided to use the public welfare system rather than corporate responsibility in hiring and firing practices, there is clearly cause for higher total taxes, as well as the "social good."
When you factor in AMT, someone that actually earns a meaningful percentage of their income is paying at least 20% in taxes. If it is all from dividends then the money has be taxed at a much higher rate. Capital gains are a bit different, but when it comes down to how these things are structured it gets hard to separate.
I agree with your assessment; my only point is it is no different for individuals or corporations, in practical terms. (The value of an asset to an individual is the greater of what they can earn from it directly or what they can sell it to someone else for.)
The societal value vs private value of copyright has been skewed far too much in the direction of "content owners" for too long, and it needs to be fixed. The same is true for all IP; we need rationalization of the system.
Eighteen years later and Word (and Libre Office last time I checked) cannot handle the formatting of reports and construction specifications correctly and reliably. The "Reveal Codes" function actually gave you access to all the markup data, so you could easily fix things like headline formatting improperly spanning a page break or footer conflicts.
If Word were still "free" because of licensing issues, WP5.1 would still be worth $5 to me if it ran. If they actually got 6.2(?) to work properly in Windows, $20 would be no sweat. For $50-100, it would be too much to install on every desk.
Separating personal and corporate is dangerous at best. Where does a family trust fit? If anything can be separated it is creative rights and publishing rights; creative rights should last much longer than publishing rights.
Just wait until Peter Jackson or a delegate runs for office in NZ, and then there will be a re-focused priority on protection of intellectual property.
While I agree on the overuse of the cloud meme, things like sshfs still don't offer encryption of the data at the server, so that someone with physical access can view all the data; it only encrypts the transfer.
Is there anything that can hold an encrypted data store that is only decrypted by authorized clients on a local basis? Ideally it would be something that gives different layers of access so you can navigate a directory tree only with authorization, and only download files you need.
The only thing I can imagine is running a VM on the hosted server with an encrypted volume that needs to be manually mounted and decrypted, but that isn't ideal.
You were doing ok until the non-removable battery bit. Only an idiot needs to swap batteries. Yes, I own a iPhone. Despite being on the phone for up to five hours per day, I have never needed to charge other than at night on my bedside table.
When I lived in a place where power was extremely unreliable, I had an external battery pack in case I spent more time using it for Internet access, or if power was out all night. There are plenty of such gizmos out there that are arguably more reliable and flexible than an extra phone battery.
No, agriculture in the southwest is using it all up. Urban water consumption across the southwest uses significantly less than 20% of the Colorado River. The problem is trying to grow stuff in the desert.
Now... the next logical question is why do you grow stuff in a desert... and that is population expansion. Don't just blame that on the cities.
Not to mention the fact that if a terrorist really wanted to do something bad, all they need to do is bribe or hold someone with adequate clearance's family hostage.
The reality is that a significantly motivated person/organization can easily defeat any obstacles placed in front of them. It becomes an economic issue. If security costs $1MM, and can be defeated for $1k (including risk, human cost, etc), the security doesn't work. If the security costs $1k and requires $1MM to be defeated, it works. It is the orders of magnitude difference that is significant.
Right now we have an airport security apparatus that costs well over $1B more than the pre-9/11 costs. It is not statistically/demonstrably safer than the pre 9/11 security. 9/11 total cost was under $1MM to orchestrate... likely under $100k!
There is no such thing as perfect safety, perfect security, or perfect intelligence. Understand what acceptable risk is and we avoid wasting all this obscene money.
To not do it would be a legacy decision based on a need to optimize battery performance... which is why I can see some logic to the disruption LTE played to them (in the very recent term-- last 18-24 months). BB10 might be more of a modular approach.
A better statement of the problem is likely that the delay in BB10 squandered resources on adding features to the old OS, which further delayed a competitive entry into the market.
In-home service is about the only place they can provide value though. My mom paid $500 to get her TV installed (cheaper than me doing it!), and I wouldn't think twice about paying $150 for someone that would put on the wedge anchors, mount the wiremold, and make it look pretty, short of carpentry or painting. They could have gotten an extra $100 from me for the hardware (50% margin) as well!
But, I would want the job done right-- none of the using a 5-20P where it should be a 5-20C, etc.
Actually the lesson learned from the good old days is that the service provided just isn't worth $120k per year. Our company of 30 can get by fine with a monthly visit by a consultant for 8 hours. He can still make $120k or so, but we pay about $13k. Our total support costs, including my time and another guy that spends a few hours a month settin guy new computers and rotating backups adds less than $20k fully burdened to the equation. We could scale to 80 people in one location before our total IT labor outlay would exceed $45k per year.
That isn't to say there isn't more we could do with IT.. Just that it is diminishing returns.
That is exactly the point. If the utility company does it for you it is more expensive and ultimately less effective. Say your utility currently has 99% availability at your home. That can be done with a network that has 99.5-99.9% availability-- to improve at your home, they need to make their core infrastructure have 99.999% reliability to get 99.99% reliability to your neighborhood and 99.9% to your home.
If you put a generator at your home, all you need out of it is to have 90% reliability for the 1% utility unavailability to get you 99.9% availability. Mathematically there are some caveats-- if the utility is unreliable inthe hot summer, you need to make sure your generator has a cooling system that is designed to accommodate worst-day ambient temperature. If they go out inthe cold of winter, you need to make sure your fuel doesn't gel and that you have a reliable starting system and block heater. If you go natural gas or propane, you need to make sure those would be available for your expected outage cases.
As for your cost, you might not be including a transfer switch and adequate fuel storage in your number, but $1000-1200 per kW should get you a pretty good system installed. I think I remember seeing a propane/natural gas 17 kW Generac unit being quoted for $25k, which would be somewhat high-end.
You should plan on one minimum 3-day outage per year with the current electrical grid, on a national average. If you want to drop that to 8 hours per year, expect to pay about $1,400 per kW peak demand per year more. If you want to go to 45 minutes per year, it should be another $700/kW.
An interesting thing about that number is that it is actually cheaper to put in your own generator (or even solar with batteries!) than having the utility do it. The payback is only a couple years worst case.
The issue is that for higher reliability you need to limit distance effects and be able to tolerate maintenance activities.
Not sure of GP's logic, but smaller motors are easier for a generator to handle, it should be better efficiency than even the best central, and you should get better humidity control. He could have gone with smaller units-- maybe two 900's and one 1500 if he has that much insulation, but pull-down time of the bigger units is nice.
Crazy unless you live on a hillside and you look down on a bunch of white roofs. It can actually be painful.
One option is to try and shade the roof-- burlap or canvas with an air gap, plants on the roof, or trees around the roof. Putting a sprinkler on the roof is not bad in an emergency if it isn't too humid. Same goes for dark decks.
As for the article, my advice after a couple years on an island in Thailand is to get acclimated to the temperature, drink water with electrolytes, and get yourself as much shade as possible. With really oppressive heat though, I would get a very small split system for an interior room in the house (basement is ideal). Cool it to no more than 15F below outside temperature and keep the humidity low. For power outages, I would keep a spray bottle full of ice water, but if you want to be a real geek, make a misting system that can be hand cranked.
For apartment dwellers, try and stay away from doing stupid things like putting a camping generator on the balcony, don't transport gasoline in an elevator, and never back feed your power system throu a wrong-way plug! Try and figure out a way to work on a 500W power budget, and some more options open up.
The em field from the meter is less than from the service head on an overhead line. Better get out the tinfoil.
You can tell a lot more than that from the meters. They might only record interval data every 15 minutes, but that interval is totalized from near-continuous and very precise data. There raw data can be found if desired. It takes some effort, but you can quickly see the signatures of different types of equipment based on the rate of change in load, power factor, and harmonics.
But... who really cares? You can tell a hell of a lot more with a thermal imager drive-by. Actually getting enough useful data requires more than just access to the utility company records-- we needed to record at slightly over 10 Hz sampling rates of see this kind of information off of process equipment and then run iterative batch processing of the data. It was around 50MB of raw data per week.
Sure, there are easy applications for industrial intelligence and estimating earnings, but that has been a concern for years. What value does the pain really have for a residence.
You forgot "What would Ellison be with a soul."
I'll add to that: diversify your sources of income. The easiest way to do that is for the wife to work part time. Treat housing as an investment and only buy if it makes economic sense. Live below your means, and save for when a good opportunity comes along.
If you like the stability of big companies, put out feelers on consulting... Maintain your networks and watch where people go. If you are sick of it, look at smaller companies.
It seems like the only real path to financial stability is to have your own company, which is far from being risk-free.
Also understand where older workers succeed. It isn't in the production-type positions, sweatshops, or innovative startups. It seems to be more with roles where requirements are concrete, but ill defined.
Voting is the more common approach - 3 means of determining something, and if one disagrees with the other two it is ignored.
We do work with a large HMO. Their expectation is that significantly more care gets pushed down to medical offices rather than the hospital. There is an order of magnitude cost savings between treatment Ina doctor's office and in a hospital.
So, if your ER visit and subsequent overnight stay could have been avoided with a trip to the doctor and some antibiotics, costs go down.