competition based on price enabled by online price comparison. consumers buy lots of things based on who is the cheapest. even being $1 cheaper will win a sale. so it becomes a race to the bottom.
for me, its that the hardware doesn't always work or at least not as you expect. if you write workstation or server code, 99.99999% of your problems will be software bugs. But on an embedded system, especially something custom, you can have weird, intermittent hardware behavior that takes a lot of work to pin down. and sometimes you can't fix it so you workaround. It's both rewarding to get this stuff to work while at the same time extremely frustrating.
I've worked embedded systems for years but every year I tell my colleagues that I'm switching to IT so if my hardware doesn't work I can just throw it away and buy a new workstation.
maybe a place you have to show up and be present for the training and there is someone there with expectations that you have to fulfill. Vs being self-motivated to work independently. In my case I have some personal projects and a couple of online courses in progress but I usually find it easier to play WoW instead. If I had to go to a physical class I wouldn't do that.
most of this thread is concerned with the desktop. but powerpc is widely used in the automotive systems. Those systems are running either some form of Linux, an RTOS or a bareboard exec. The modern powerpc SOC's are available in very wide temperature ranges (-40..+125) which makes them attractive for automotive. The QorIQ ppc's are used in networking also.
Whenever I encounter the Chomsky Language Hierarchy in programming or Noam Chomsky talking politics on TV, radio, or print, I always ask myself 'is it the same guy?'. Only because the topics are usually so disparate.
House prices are like bond prices. When interest rates are low, prices go up. When rates rise, prices will fall. People buy houses based on the monthly payment they can qualify for. Right now, prices are high because the low interest rates mean lowish monthly payments on inflated prices. But when rates rise, the value of the houses will fall because buyers will not be able to qualify at the previous inflated prices. This will mean that a lot of homeowners will be underwater again. Even though they should be able to afford their payment, there will be a similar level of panic.
as an ignorant user, I would just like to have a browser setting such as 'only talk to sites using TLS'. I would be happy to deal with the fallout. does chrome or other browser have that?
i'm old, and i still feel that way and unconsciously hesitate to take multiple shots. Along those lines I get a brief flash of worry when someone calls me on the phone, 'long distance', because its so expense.
one-off projects for 'special' customers can turn into support nightmares and drain your personnel resources. So besides taking some big $ for NRE, it would be smart to require, for example, a 5 year support contract with a hefty price tag.
i remember back in the day when you had to order paper reference books and it took days to weeks to get them, or for the supposedly free ones you were denied because your need/qualifications were somehow not right. And you simply could not proceed without them.
when working physical security, you occasionally hear 'do you know who I am?'. this attitude completely undermines the security of the asset being protected.
i was born and grew up in Texas, moved away 25 years ago and still have a couple of Texas quirks. I simply cannot live in a state that has an income tax, and I still worship the Alamo.
"Americans find it jarring when they are sitting at a European café or restaurant and someone takes the empty seat at their table"
I've experienced this and I had to exert will power not to get up and move. It was very unnerving. In the US I would have thought the guy was a creeper of some sort, or needed to be shot or stabbed quickly before he got me. I also was in a hotel restaurant once and there was only one other person at a table. The hostess wanted to seat me at his table, even though there were a dozen or more empty tables. Ack.
i heard a discussion once on time machines that had an interesting slant. (on the Art Bell show). The guest proposed 'what if you could be frozen in a capsule, then woken up 1000 years later, with no ill affects. Isn't that effectively a (future only) time machine? How is it different from a machine that somehow teleported you to the future? In that case where are you in the intervening 1000 years?'.
Myabe i was just paranoid, but i quit flying private after about 1000 hours because of the ever present opportunity to make a mistake and have the FAA come down on me. A private pilot is under the bloodshot eye of the FAA from the time he sets foot on the airport to when he leaves it.
it has nothing to do with that, its a supply/demand effect. its because at either end, people will work for a given effective wage. if taxes on low income (or high income) fall, their effective wage goes up so employers can pay less and still keep (or at least get new) employees. and vice-versa for tax rates rising. compare wages in neighboring Nevada and California. Absolute wages for tech employees are much higher in Cali, but because Nevada has lower taxes and cost of living. the effective wages are about the same. (well, that part is based on anecdotal info)