What kind of support contracts do you have? I've worked with HP hardware my entire career, with the exception of my current job where I inherited a bunch of Dell hardware. Their hardware isn't all that great, and their drivers are crap compared to HP. However their support seems as good, if not better. We have 24x7x4 "mission critical" support and I haven't had any problems getting parts and technicians dispatched.
You say that like the knowledge is a bad thing. Businesses make money by cutting costs and earning more than they spend. I do not begrudge anyone for not voluntarily offering up more money than they have to. People need to stand up for themselves. Part of that involves asking for pay that is commensurate with their worth. In the case of my last employer, other people in other departments got raises to compensate them for their increased responsibilities when positions were eliminated. My boss just happened to be a complete prick and did not feel the need to compensate us. The unspoken message to me was, "You aren't an important part of the organization." To which my unspoken response was, "Fine. Have fun without me."
That is exactly the position I found myself in. I knew that I was way under compensation for the job I was doing. My department was cut in half and nobody got compensated for the added work. I tried all of the subtle ways of asking for a raise. I asked for a clarification of my job responsibilities. I asked for a new job description to reflect my increased responsibilities. I put my resume online and started receiving offers, then went to my employers and told them that the market was willing to pay me X. In the end, it went no where and I left for a better position at another company.
It seems like unless you really, really, really like where you are working, it is easier to go find another job than it is to try to squeeze blood out of a rock with your current employer.
It already is improving. We are hiring and picking up new business left and right. It might take a little while for the effects to trickle down to the rest of the economy, but in corporate America things are looking pretty good. On the other hand, it is quite likely that America will never get back to where it was before the housing bubble burst. A lot of the economic improvement will take place overseas.
Re:Why isn't Siemens being taken to task here?
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Stuxnet Worms On
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A lot of technology falls under the multi-purpose loop holes. A PLC is a standard industrial component. It is a "programmable logic controller". It simply activates machinery and coordinates activities in industrial machinery. The PLC doesn't know if it is opening a valve that is dumping gas into a centrifuge, or water into a sanitation system.
You don't even need to go to law school. There are a whole slew of systems used by lawyers that IT guys can support. Relativity, Clearwell and iConect are a couple that you might want to look into.
What are you talking about? What exactly is my solution? The way I see it, I am suggesting that people pay for the tools that they use. You are free to create whatever data you want with whatever free tools you can find, or proprietary tools that you can afford. If you can't afford the tools, that is your problem. Your inability to afford something does not give you the right to steal it.
I've seen a lot of comments on here that are derogatory towards EA and the families of soliders who have voiced their opposition to EA's decision. I agree that EA made a bad call by white washing the reality of the conflict. One of the fundamental cornerstones of our society seems to be freedom of choice. As Americans, we want the ability to do whatever we feel like doing, no matter how insensitive or offensive to others it might be. As others have said many times before, freedom is not free. That leads me to my question... how badly do all of you people whining about not being able to play the Taliban, want to play the Taliban?
Will you gather signatures and go on the record saying that you want to do it? Will you lobby and protest and make your voices heard? Are you so strong in your convictions that EA has made a bad decision that you will NOT buy the game in order to voice your dissatisfaction?
If there is one thing I've learned about being American it is that those who are willing to make the biggest stink about something usually get their way. So how strong are your convictions? Are you going to do anything about it, or are you just going to whine on Slashdot?
However, why should you get paid ad infinitum for the same work for eternity (effectively)? The work I do today I won't get paid for later, what makes copyrighted works so special?
You answered your own question without realizing it. Although you won't get paid tomorrow for the work you did today, if you do the same work tomorrow, you will get paid for it again. If you think about software, it's an even better deal. You pay for it once and get to use it for as long as you have a computer that will run it (ignore shady things like forced obselesence). Imagine if you did some work for someone, and then that person expected you to do the same work for their friends, and thought it was stupid to pay you for it. Would that be fair?
If a person writes a song, that song brings enjoyment every time it is played. If a person writes a book, that book can be enjoyed by anyone who wants to read it. If a book needs to be re-published, it makes sense that the publisher should get paid for it. If a digital copy needs to be retained, it makes sense that the infrastructure to store the copy needs to be paid for. Likewise if software continues to be useful, it should be paid for (once) by everyone who finds it useful.
You're confusing "data" with "tools". I have no problem with people copying data. If Bob wants to give Jane a copy of his family pictures in jpg format, more power to him. When Jane sees that Bob has a great tool that makes his business more effective, and shes for and Bob supplies her with a copy of it, I have a problem with that. Bob should have a problem with it too. By giving away what he had to pay for, he limits the revenue going to the developer and makes subsequent releases of the software much less likely. That hurts everyone who paid for the software.
For a business, and for any professional, a software purchase is an investment. Just a carpenter needs tools, like a plumber needs tools, computer people need tools. There are a whole slew of free tools out there. In that way, digital workers have an advantage. However a lot of tools are not free. They are not free because in most cases, they were difficult to develop. The developers who developed the tools deserve to get paid for them. What is so objectionable about that? Why are you against paying people?
I don't buy the populist argument about "crippling" society at large. Well written software applications help society by making businesses more efficient, among other things. Those efficiencies come at a cost. You don't have to use proprietary software. You can go back to pen and paper and an abacus for all I care. I think you'll find that people will expect you to pay for those too.
In my mind it comes down to respect for each other, and respect for our time. If someone produces a product that improves my life, it has value and I will pay for it. That is the right thing to do.
You mentioned laws, and the differences between different kinds. Have you considered that the laws themselves are only there because of the degeneration of society? If people were upstanding to begin with, laws would be unnecessary. The laws are there because people, by and large, will fuck each other over first, and only treat each other well a distant second.
We probably share some common agreement about intellectual property law. I think a lot of the "process" patents are crap. Those should be fair game. Society losses when the best way to do something is locked up and kept in the realm of a select few. Software is not like that. Software is a tangible product.
I'm not a coder, but I work with them. Lets take a not so hypothetical situation where we produce software that you find useful. We say that if you want to use our software, you have to pay us a certain amount of money on a regular basis. Now, either you can pay us to use our software, or find another way of doing what our software does for you.
You can try to obfuscate the issue and try to reframe it all day long, but it won't work. The fact of the matter is simple. A person who produces something gets to dictate the terms under which it is used. It is the same in all aspects of society, but for some reason the digital segment of society fails to recognize it. If I want a ditch dug in my backyard, I can either dig it myself, or pay someone else to do it. If I pay someone else to dig a ditch for me, I do not have some stupid notion that they are obligated to dig other ditches for me at no further charge. Why is software any different? You paid for some software, so you can give it to your friends for free? Free loaders are the bottom feeders of society. They are the arrogant bastards who have no concern for others. They are so ego centric that they fail to consider how their actions negatively impact others. Now, you can go right ahead and be comfortable among them.
It does not matter what you, and a bunch of like minded tools like you want to believe about copy protection. The reality of the matter is that real people are spending their lives and brain power writing code that makes life better for everyone who uses it. They are developing applications that help businesses run more efficiently. They are codifying processes that improve the way people do things. You might think that you have some right to it, but you don't. Your only right to it involves your ability to reproduce it on your own. If you aren't creating it, you don't own it and you don't have any right to it. How idiotic do you have to be to believe otherwise?
Do you have a wife, girlfriend, lover? Do you have sex with them? You know what... I know how to have sex too. Can I come right along and put myself into the middle of what you've got going on? Me fucking your partner is more legit than you copying software. At least if I fuck your partner, it is consentual... assuming I don't rape them. When you copy software, you're ignoring the wishes of the person who created it. You are violating them. You are taking away their right to earn a living for their labor.
Now, if you want to use free software, go right ahead and use it. If you want to use software that has a cost attached to, pay the cost or do without it.
It seems to come down to the inescapable fact that if you sell your code, it will be stolen and/or passed along to others. On the other hand, if you simpy put a paywall in front of your code and charge people for a subscription, you can avoid getting financially ass-raped by all of the cheap bastards out there.
When I was a kid heavily involved in the warez scene, I didn't really understand what the big deal was when people complained about piracy. Now that I work for a living and earn money using computers, I get it. Life is too short to go to work every day and crank out code, only to have it ripped off by some cheap bastard.
People seem to miss the fact that it takes time and effort to write code. If a person feels it isn't that difficult, they should do it themselves rather than steal from someone else. All of the defenses along the lines of, "It doesn't cost anything to reproduce, therefore it should be free for me." are a big fat load of crap. It amazes me how morally corrupt a good sized segment of our society is.
Take a look at what a monitored PDU costs for a server rack. APC offers them, as do a few other vendors. You're easily looking at $450 per PDU. It will do everything that you want though, including output to SNMP so that you can trap it.
Our beef is with anyone who gives us a reason to maintain boots on the ground in the most resource rich region on the planet. If you kid yourself into believing anything else you are deluded. Al-Qaeda sucks and all, but more people die every year in motor vehicles than Al-Qaeda has ever killed for as long as they have been around. Yet for some reason we haven't declared war on Ford and Toyota.
I feel bad for the Israelis but they are every bit as off their rockers as the Arabs are. We really should nuke the holy land and be done with it. That way nobody gets it anymore and they can find something else to fight over. Nuke the Temple Mount for World Peace.
The missile doesn't care if its warhead is nuclear or conventional.
The trigger mechanism sure does.
I don't think they share those same concerns. They don't care about dying as long as they kill the enemy. Preservation of life is not their primary goal, destruction is.
Where do you get your information from? Prime time news? Late night TV? There are a lot of factions in this country who want us to attack Iran. Don't be a tool. Use your head. Iran is the only thing standing in the way of US hedgemony over the Middle East. Of course you are going to be told that they are fanatical wack jobs who are a threat to everyone.
The Iranians are having a hard enough time keeping the regime together. People want power here and now, in the present. They use religion as a vehicle to obtain that power. There might be some wack jobs who believe in an afterlife and paradise and virgins. They are not a significant enough majority to build a bomb and use it, despite what the talking heads on the idiot box might be telling you.
You sound like a fundamentalist Christian wack job who is just as dangerous as the Muslims that you seem to have a problem with. Given that we're close to or past Peak Oil at this point, does it really seem so far fetched that the Iranians want a different energy source? Even if they are building a bomb, they are a long way from having a delivery system. Even if they get a delivery system, they are unlikely to use it for the reasons stated.
Last I checked there are a bunch of Fundamendalist Christians in the United States armed forces. Does that mean that we're about to start the rapture to bring about the second coming of Christ? What makes you think that the the Arabs are any more likely to do so in the Middle East?
You have to realize that what leaders say in public to appease their people, and the actions that they take in private are often times very different.
It seems like you've been drinking too much media Kool Aid without bothering to do your own research or critical thinking. All well thought out analysis points to Iran wanting nuclear weapons as a defensive measure. Despite what you see portrayed on television, the Iranians are a bit smarter than you seem to give them credit for. Nuking Israel would result in the total annihilation of Iran. Even if they manage to get a nuke to Hamas, nuclear forensics are very advanced these days and it would be traced back to Iran.
If they have to consult their notes for every question (regardless of format) then they should fail the test because they don't understand the material adequately.
That is all well and good, if physics happens to be the only class that a student takes in that semester, and the student's brain has been properly calibrated to just "get" physics. For the rest of the world, notes are a life saver. Show me one real world scenario where notes and resource materials are not made available to employees.
I used to work for a 501c3 non-profit and we got ridiculously good deals on Microsoft licensing. Everything from server licenses, to Office suite, Exchange and the whole Back Office line of products (SQL, Sharepoint, etc). I know that our Office licenses (for the Professional edition) were in the neighborhood of $30 a piece. That included a provision that allowed the users to have a copy of the program on their home computer as well.
I'm interested in what you've mentioned. My g/f has a G1 and she has hit the point where she does not have enough room on the phone to load the apps that she wants to use. Can you post a link to the devices that you are selling?
I'm all for the FTC cracking down on online advertising and tracking. Who are we kidding though? Have you seen some of the stuff that happens offline? Has anyone taken a look at what Nielsen is up to? They have insane levels of demographic data available on EVERYONE. Every single one of us has already been pigeon holed and stereotyped based on our buying habits, where we live, what kind of car we drive, etc.
"PRIZM defines every U.S. household in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct types, or "segments," to help marketers discern consumer behavior: their likes, dislikes, lifestyles, purchase behaviors and media preferences. Used by thousands of marketers within Fortune 500 companies, PRIZM provides the "lingua franca" for marketing in an increasingly diverse and complex American marketplace. Because PRIZM is linked to the surveys and panels of most major marketing databases in the U.S., the segmentation system enables you to target on virtually any purchase and media behavior."
You overlooked the fact that the individual in question might not be famous enough to be given gifts by designers, but is major enough to be photographed / recorded. That is what the article is talking about. Certain brands do not want to be associated with certain types of people who are popular enough to be noticed. Therefore they send them brands other than their own in hopes that the individual will never pick up their brand.
It makes perfect sense (in so much as advertising ever makes sense). Big money brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton do not want some well to do shopper in Beverly Hills or New York to look at one of their bags, think about buying it, and then have an association with some trashy chick from Jersey Shore popping into her head.
They decided not to replace me (for now) and they are trying to get it done with consultants. On the way out I suggested that since they weren't going to be paying my salary, they should spend what they were going to pay me on the infrastructure projects that needed to be done. I hope my leaving was good for the organization and that they get what they need. They weren't going to give me the resources to do it for them, so hopefully they will trust the consultants (who are going to tell them exactly what I told them).
The happiness factor does have to do with the job, but the money factors in as well. You see it worked out like this. At the slack job I was making about as much as I could ever hope to make there. The company was having financial problems but wasn't going to go under any time soon. My boss was a complete idiot when it came to IT and he thought that he knew how to run an IT department because he had handled IT for 5 people at a venture capital funded startup firm. I could have sucked it up and kept on keeping on in a professional dead zone with my skills atrophying year after year due to lack of exposure to new projects and technology, or I could have moved.
I made the decision to move only if I was going to make at least $10,000 a year more with the potential to go up from there. That was a personal decision, but in the process of looking for a job that met that criteria I came to the realization that I mentioned in the original post. In IT in Southern California, $75,000 is the dividing line between slack and professional advancement. If you want to take less than $75,000 a year, you can find a decent job working for a firm that doesn't have IT as their driving force. In my situation, I was working at a contemporary art museum. It was a fun place to work, but it was run but a bunch of incompetent people at the top. A place like that needs an IT guy who is good enough.
If you want more than $75,000 a year, you have to step up and start to trade your personal free time for work time. I like my new job a lot better than my old job. When I make a suggestion about something needing to be done, they give me the resources to get it done. IT is the foundation upon which the rest of the company runs on. I came in at a lower wage because my skills were out of date due to being at the previous organization. However the potential for six figures a few years from now is very real. In all honesty though, I'd stay where I'm at pay wise and suggest that they hire someone else to help me out. I'm not so fixated on money that I will trade my sanity and free time for a nicer car or a house.
The point I was trying to make is that there is a fine line between being comfortable and being over worked. It is really easy to go too far in the pursuit of money and wind up being miserable because of it.
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What kind of support contracts do you have? I've worked with HP hardware my entire career, with the exception of my current job where I inherited a bunch of Dell hardware. Their hardware isn't all that great, and their drivers are crap compared to HP. However their support seems as good, if not better. We have 24x7x4 "mission critical" support and I haven't had any problems getting parts and technicians dispatched.
You say that like the knowledge is a bad thing. Businesses make money by cutting costs and earning more than they spend. I do not begrudge anyone for not voluntarily offering up more money than they have to. People need to stand up for themselves. Part of that involves asking for pay that is commensurate with their worth. In the case of my last employer, other people in other departments got raises to compensate them for their increased responsibilities when positions were eliminated. My boss just happened to be a complete prick and did not feel the need to compensate us. The unspoken message to me was, "You aren't an important part of the organization." To which my unspoken response was, "Fine. Have fun without me."
That is exactly the position I found myself in. I knew that I was way under compensation for the job I was doing. My department was cut in half and nobody got compensated for the added work. I tried all of the subtle ways of asking for a raise. I asked for a clarification of my job responsibilities. I asked for a new job description to reflect my increased responsibilities. I put my resume online and started receiving offers, then went to my employers and told them that the market was willing to pay me X. In the end, it went no where and I left for a better position at another company.
It seems like unless you really, really, really like where you are working, it is easier to go find another job than it is to try to squeeze blood out of a rock with your current employer.
It already is improving. We are hiring and picking up new business left and right. It might take a little while for the effects to trickle down to the rest of the economy, but in corporate America things are looking pretty good. On the other hand, it is quite likely that America will never get back to where it was before the housing bubble burst. A lot of the economic improvement will take place overseas.
A lot of technology falls under the multi-purpose loop holes. A PLC is a standard industrial component. It is a "programmable logic controller". It simply activates machinery and coordinates activities in industrial machinery. The PLC doesn't know if it is opening a valve that is dumping gas into a centrifuge, or water into a sanitation system.
You don't even need to go to law school. There are a whole slew of systems used by lawyers that IT guys can support. Relativity, Clearwell and iConect are a couple that you might want to look into.
What are you talking about? What exactly is my solution? The way I see it, I am suggesting that people pay for the tools that they use. You are free to create whatever data you want with whatever free tools you can find, or proprietary tools that you can afford. If you can't afford the tools, that is your problem. Your inability to afford something does not give you the right to steal it.
I've seen a lot of comments on here that are derogatory towards EA and the families of soliders who have voiced their opposition to EA's decision. I agree that EA made a bad call by white washing the reality of the conflict. One of the fundamental cornerstones of our society seems to be freedom of choice. As Americans, we want the ability to do whatever we feel like doing, no matter how insensitive or offensive to others it might be. As others have said many times before, freedom is not free. That leads me to my question... how badly do all of you people whining about not being able to play the Taliban, want to play the Taliban?
Will you gather signatures and go on the record saying that you want to do it? Will you lobby and protest and make your voices heard? Are you so strong in your convictions that EA has made a bad decision that you will NOT buy the game in order to voice your dissatisfaction?
If there is one thing I've learned about being American it is that those who are willing to make the biggest stink about something usually get their way. So how strong are your convictions? Are you going to do anything about it, or are you just going to whine on Slashdot?
However, why should you get paid ad infinitum for the same work for eternity (effectively)? The work I do today I won't get paid for later, what makes copyrighted works so special?
You answered your own question without realizing it. Although you won't get paid tomorrow for the work you did today, if you do the same work tomorrow, you will get paid for it again. If you think about software, it's an even better deal. You pay for it once and get to use it for as long as you have a computer that will run it (ignore shady things like forced obselesence). Imagine if you did some work for someone, and then that person expected you to do the same work for their friends, and thought it was stupid to pay you for it. Would that be fair?
If a person writes a song, that song brings enjoyment every time it is played. If a person writes a book, that book can be enjoyed by anyone who wants to read it. If a book needs to be re-published, it makes sense that the publisher should get paid for it. If a digital copy needs to be retained, it makes sense that the infrastructure to store the copy needs to be paid for. Likewise if software continues to be useful, it should be paid for (once) by everyone who finds it useful.
You're confusing "data" with "tools". I have no problem with people copying data. If Bob wants to give Jane a copy of his family pictures in jpg format, more power to him. When Jane sees that Bob has a great tool that makes his business more effective, and shes for and Bob supplies her with a copy of it, I have a problem with that. Bob should have a problem with it too. By giving away what he had to pay for, he limits the revenue going to the developer and makes subsequent releases of the software much less likely. That hurts everyone who paid for the software.
For a business, and for any professional, a software purchase is an investment. Just a carpenter needs tools, like a plumber needs tools, computer people need tools. There are a whole slew of free tools out there. In that way, digital workers have an advantage. However a lot of tools are not free. They are not free because in most cases, they were difficult to develop. The developers who developed the tools deserve to get paid for them. What is so objectionable about that? Why are you against paying people?
I don't buy the populist argument about "crippling" society at large. Well written software applications help society by making businesses more efficient, among other things. Those efficiencies come at a cost. You don't have to use proprietary software. You can go back to pen and paper and an abacus for all I care. I think you'll find that people will expect you to pay for those too.
In my mind it comes down to respect for each other, and respect for our time. If someone produces a product that improves my life, it has value and I will pay for it. That is the right thing to do.
You mentioned laws, and the differences between different kinds. Have you considered that the laws themselves are only there because of the degeneration of society? If people were upstanding to begin with, laws would be unnecessary. The laws are there because people, by and large, will fuck each other over first, and only treat each other well a distant second.
We probably share some common agreement about intellectual property law. I think a lot of the "process" patents are crap. Those should be fair game. Society losses when the best way to do something is locked up and kept in the realm of a select few. Software is not like that. Software is a tangible product.
I'm not a coder, but I work with them. Lets take a not so hypothetical situation where we produce software that you find useful. We say that if you want to use our software, you have to pay us a certain amount of money on a regular basis. Now, either you can pay us to use our software, or find another way of doing what our software does for you.
You can try to obfuscate the issue and try to reframe it all day long, but it won't work. The fact of the matter is simple. A person who produces something gets to dictate the terms under which it is used. It is the same in all aspects of society, but for some reason the digital segment of society fails to recognize it. If I want a ditch dug in my backyard, I can either dig it myself, or pay someone else to do it. If I pay someone else to dig a ditch for me, I do not have some stupid notion that they are obligated to dig other ditches for me at no further charge. Why is software any different? You paid for some software, so you can give it to your friends for free? Free loaders are the bottom feeders of society. They are the arrogant bastards who have no concern for others. They are so ego centric that they fail to consider how their actions negatively impact others. Now, you can go right ahead and be comfortable among them.
It does not matter what you, and a bunch of like minded tools like you want to believe about copy protection. The reality of the matter is that real people are spending their lives and brain power writing code that makes life better for everyone who uses it. They are developing applications that help businesses run more efficiently. They are codifying processes that improve the way people do things. You might think that you have some right to it, but you don't. Your only right to it involves your ability to reproduce it on your own. If you aren't creating it, you don't own it and you don't have any right to it. How idiotic do you have to be to believe otherwise?
Do you have a wife, girlfriend, lover? Do you have sex with them? You know what... I know how to have sex too. Can I come right along and put myself into the middle of what you've got going on? Me fucking your partner is more legit than you copying software. At least if I fuck your partner, it is consentual... assuming I don't rape them. When you copy software, you're ignoring the wishes of the person who created it. You are violating them. You are taking away their right to earn a living for their labor.
Now, if you want to use free software, go right ahead and use it. If you want to use software that has a cost attached to, pay the cost or do without it.
It seems to come down to the inescapable fact that if you sell your code, it will be stolen and/or passed along to others. On the other hand, if you simpy put a paywall in front of your code and charge people for a subscription, you can avoid getting financially ass-raped by all of the cheap bastards out there.
When I was a kid heavily involved in the warez scene, I didn't really understand what the big deal was when people complained about piracy. Now that I work for a living and earn money using computers, I get it. Life is too short to go to work every day and crank out code, only to have it ripped off by some cheap bastard.
People seem to miss the fact that it takes time and effort to write code. If a person feels it isn't that difficult, they should do it themselves rather than steal from someone else. All of the defenses along the lines of, "It doesn't cost anything to reproduce, therefore it should be free for me." are a big fat load of crap. It amazes me how morally corrupt a good sized segment of our society is.
Am I the only one hoping that Obama exercises his "internet kill switch" option?
What happens then?
"Good job Mr. President. Now our game is over. Way to ruin it for EVERYONE!"
Take a look at what a monitored PDU costs for a server rack. APC offers them, as do a few other vendors. You're easily looking at $450 per PDU. It will do everything that you want though, including output to SNMP so that you can trap it.
Our beef is with anyone who gives us a reason to maintain boots on the ground in the most resource rich region on the planet. If you kid yourself into believing anything else you are deluded. Al-Qaeda sucks and all, but more people die every year in motor vehicles than Al-Qaeda has ever killed for as long as they have been around. Yet for some reason we haven't declared war on Ford and Toyota.
I feel bad for the Israelis but they are every bit as off their rockers as the Arabs are. We really should nuke the holy land and be done with it. That way nobody gets it anymore and they can find something else to fight over. Nuke the Temple Mount for World Peace.
The missile doesn't care if its warhead is nuclear or conventional.
The trigger mechanism sure does.
I don't think they share those same concerns. They don't care about dying as long as they kill the enemy. Preservation of life is not their primary goal, destruction is.
Where do you get your information from? Prime time news? Late night TV? There are a lot of factions in this country who want us to attack Iran. Don't be a tool. Use your head. Iran is the only thing standing in the way of US hedgemony over the Middle East. Of course you are going to be told that they are fanatical wack jobs who are a threat to everyone.
The Iranians are having a hard enough time keeping the regime together. People want power here and now, in the present. They use religion as a vehicle to obtain that power. There might be some wack jobs who believe in an afterlife and paradise and virgins. They are not a significant enough majority to build a bomb and use it, despite what the talking heads on the idiot box might be telling you.
You sound like a fundamentalist Christian wack job who is just as dangerous as the Muslims that you seem to have a problem with. Given that we're close to or past Peak Oil at this point, does it really seem so far fetched that the Iranians want a different energy source? Even if they are building a bomb, they are a long way from having a delivery system. Even if they get a delivery system, they are unlikely to use it for the reasons stated.
Last I checked there are a bunch of Fundamendalist Christians in the United States armed forces. Does that mean that we're about to start the rapture to bring about the second coming of Christ? What makes you think that the the Arabs are any more likely to do so in the Middle East?
You have to realize that what leaders say in public to appease their people, and the actions that they take in private are often times very different.
Get a subscription to Stratfor. Do some research.
It seems like you've been drinking too much media Kool Aid without bothering to do your own research or critical thinking. All well thought out analysis points to Iran wanting nuclear weapons as a defensive measure. Despite what you see portrayed on television, the Iranians are a bit smarter than you seem to give them credit for. Nuking Israel would result in the total annihilation of Iran. Even if they manage to get a nuke to Hamas, nuclear forensics are very advanced these days and it would be traced back to Iran.
If they have to consult their notes for every question (regardless of format) then they should fail the test because they don't understand the material adequately.
That is all well and good, if physics happens to be the only class that a student takes in that semester, and the student's brain has been properly calibrated to just "get" physics. For the rest of the world, notes are a life saver. Show me one real world scenario where notes and resource materials are not made available to employees.
I used to work for a 501c3 non-profit and we got ridiculously good deals on Microsoft licensing. Everything from server licenses, to Office suite, Exchange and the whole Back Office line of products (SQL, Sharepoint, etc). I know that our Office licenses (for the Professional edition) were in the neighborhood of $30 a piece. That included a provision that allowed the users to have a copy of the program on their home computer as well.
I'm interested in what you've mentioned. My g/f has a G1 and she has hit the point where she does not have enough room on the phone to load the apps that she wants to use. Can you post a link to the devices that you are selling?
I'm all for the FTC cracking down on online advertising and tracking. Who are we kidding though? Have you seen some of the stuff that happens offline? Has anyone taken a look at what Nielsen is up to? They have insane levels of demographic data available on EVERYONE. Every single one of us has already been pigeon holed and stereotyped based on our buying habits, where we live, what kind of car we drive, etc.
Take a look at this.
http://en-us.nielsen.com/content/nielsen/en_us/product_families/nielsen_claritas/prizm.html
Emphasis mine.
"PRIZM defines every U.S. household in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct types, or "segments," to help marketers discern consumer behavior: their likes, dislikes, lifestyles, purchase behaviors and media preferences. Used by thousands of marketers within Fortune 500 companies, PRIZM provides the "lingua franca" for marketing in an increasingly diverse and complex American marketplace. Because PRIZM is linked to the surveys and panels of most major marketing databases in the U.S., the segmentation system enables you to target on virtually any purchase and media behavior."
You overlooked the fact that the individual in question might not be famous enough to be given gifts by designers, but is major enough to be photographed / recorded. That is what the article is talking about. Certain brands do not want to be associated with certain types of people who are popular enough to be noticed. Therefore they send them brands other than their own in hopes that the individual will never pick up their brand.
It makes perfect sense (in so much as advertising ever makes sense). Big money brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton do not want some well to do shopper in Beverly Hills or New York to look at one of their bags, think about buying it, and then have an association with some trashy chick from Jersey Shore popping into her head.
They decided not to replace me (for now) and they are trying to get it done with consultants. On the way out I suggested that since they weren't going to be paying my salary, they should spend what they were going to pay me on the infrastructure projects that needed to be done. I hope my leaving was good for the organization and that they get what they need. They weren't going to give me the resources to do it for them, so hopefully they will trust the consultants (who are going to tell them exactly what I told them).
The happiness factor does have to do with the job, but the money factors in as well. You see it worked out like this. At the slack job I was making about as much as I could ever hope to make there. The company was having financial problems but wasn't going to go under any time soon. My boss was a complete idiot when it came to IT and he thought that he knew how to run an IT department because he had handled IT for 5 people at a venture capital funded startup firm. I could have sucked it up and kept on keeping on in a professional dead zone with my skills atrophying year after year due to lack of exposure to new projects and technology, or I could have moved.
I made the decision to move only if I was going to make at least $10,000 a year more with the potential to go up from there. That was a personal decision, but in the process of looking for a job that met that criteria I came to the realization that I mentioned in the original post. In IT in Southern California, $75,000 is the dividing line between slack and professional advancement. If you want to take less than $75,000 a year, you can find a decent job working for a firm that doesn't have IT as their driving force. In my situation, I was working at a contemporary art museum. It was a fun place to work, but it was run but a bunch of incompetent people at the top. A place like that needs an IT guy who is good enough.
If you want more than $75,000 a year, you have to step up and start to trade your personal free time for work time. I like my new job a lot better than my old job. When I make a suggestion about something needing to be done, they give me the resources to get it done. IT is the foundation upon which the rest of the company runs on. I came in at a lower wage because my skills were out of date due to being at the previous organization. However the potential for six figures a few years from now is very real. In all honesty though, I'd stay where I'm at pay wise and suggest that they hire someone else to help me out. I'm not so fixated on money that I will trade my sanity and free time for a nicer car or a house.
The point I was trying to make is that there is a fine line between being comfortable and being over worked. It is really easy to go too far in the pursuit of money and wind up being miserable because of it.