Perhaps in your jurisdiction, not ours. We asked about it ages ago when we were dealing with our lawyer for our wills and our accountant for our income taxes.

Forgot to include this link: Common Law marriage in Canada

We're in Canada and considered common-law: there are no extra legal protections the paper offers. When we were drawing up our wills, our lawyer said as much. Our life insurance has each other as the beneficiary, our wills are the same. If we ever split up, it's off to the lawyers to divide up assets and work on custody.

When we file our yearly taxes we check off the relevant box for 'marital status' (or whatever it asks) for common-law partnerships and do income splitting to minimize the tax hit. Our accountant said there was no difference in having the paper or not for us. My lady is a professional and known as her own name. So. if we ever did get hitched, she would keep her name. No hyphenating, etc. Fine by me.

So what are the benefits? Neither of us see any.

Tricky. It might be that right now, you both behave in a way so that the other person would marry you if you insisted on it. But after getting married, you might both stop behaving that way and then things go downhill.

We are not acting in a 'sales mode' after 10+ years, we clicked early on and are ourselves: no lies, no masks, no illusions.

Reading TFA was interesting as, according to that data, we are perfectly set other than the marriage question. We're both atheist, so for the religious question it doesn't apply though I guess saying "The three of us regularly go to the museum, watch sciency shows, etc." would count as attending a church. ;)

My lady and I have been together over ten years, we have an eight year old daughter and are completely happy.
I wonder how the "Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced" extends to us if we ever got married (not that we've ever thought about it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)

"Are you looking at saggy tribal titties again, Anon?"
"No, mommy, I'm looking at -flip flip flip- the Aral Sea."

For the first time since I started w/the iPhone (the 3G was my first one), I see absolutely nothing of value with this major release version which makes me want to upgrade to it.

I'll be paying $99 for the 5S and be happy w/it. Sorry but unnecessarily bigger sizes and a better camera is not worth $200+contract renewal.

I totally understand what they're doing and that's fine if they want to operate in that way. Its people just need to realize this and use the name and prestige its name on their resume brings when they hop to a smaller but potentially more enjoyable organization.

The IT world is certainly competitive; however, ALL companies should see the internal benefits to training employees and working to ensure they do not leave. Companies with the mindset you laid out above are doing themselves a double disservice by not training their employees and leveraging the benefits and immediate returns provided by investments in their human capital. In some fields and with some resources, professional development is seen as a bigger happiness motivator and retention tool than more salary.

What you have outlined above is a company which is not interested in its people and only its immediate bottom line and one where it's clear its people should move on regardless of payscale and internal short-term opportunity provided.

As someone who has repeatedly attended and presented at conferences in my field, I make it a point during negotiations for any new job to ensure these are funded fully but only if I am presenting; otherwise, I opt to share in the costs associated in attending with my employer.

Each and every company I have worked at in the past (and current) has a budget for training and professional development of its employees, some more than others; however, by making a case that I am giving back to a community of like-minded professionals and putting our name and brand out there during presentations, I have found this is an easy sell for companies for which I want to work.

I work extensively w/SAS and utilize a lot of the conference (SAS Global Forum/SUGI prior) materials in my day to day both for myself and our entire organization. By making it clear to my employers that I want to give back by presenting, I have opened organization's view on how the sharing of information benefits the business while benefiting the entire industry.

Make your determination and desires known when you sign on and, if that is not an option, make it clear to your management that you want to do the same thing. While I have received a variety of different types of pushback over the years for this view, they have all relented and ended up changing their world view when the benefits are presented as they are.

Conferences are not inexpensive (SAS Global Forum is usually around $3000 - $3500 for a single person encompassing travel, conference registration, lodging, meals, etc) but the ROI can be HUGE beyond that depending on the knowledge transfers that occur, the networking opportunities, and the new business development which I have seen from these conferences.

While I did not attend SASGF 2014 this year, it was solely due to my available time to develop a presentation topic, not because my company would not send me (this was my first missed attendance since I became involved in the SAS world) and I look forward to contributing to and learning from others in the future.

Best of luck.

One would hope the headline would say. Linux? OpenBSD? FreeBSD? OSX?

I can see how that would be relaxing, and I have an application at work where I may try this: cleaning up a mess of a telecom closet when I have some spare cycles to burn.

Wow... I've seen lacing over the years but never gave it a second thought until reading your link. Interesting, thanks!

I believe they recently announced Star Wars theatrical releases for BluRay.

If it's possible to play this back at 24 FPS, we can shoot that 3 minute homemade porn we've always wanted!