The construction site across the road from me probably employs 10x the labour (or more) than one in North America because of the availability of low cost labour making it affordable. That means that as labour became less affordable in North America it became redundant but efficiencies.

"you refer to jobs being made redundant. i don't believe plumber, carpenter, or surveyor have gone out of style since the days of the roman empire, and i don't see robots mixing and hauling concrete at the work site more cheaply any time soon"

Construction is not done the same way, and it will move even more towards prefabrication in the future. The old skills of carpentry are long gone for the most part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Only so many jobs for each of these professions. In addition construction is even more cyclical than many other jobs out there - feast then famine.

The teach by topic sounds more like streaming at an early age. China does that because they cannot afford to give all students the same level of "higher education" so they stream people out earlier into more "technical vocations" earlier. This leads to a less flexible society that will not be able to adapt in the future. What you teach in school to some 15 year old may not be valid skills when they are 26. Teaching all the "subjects" to people in a "Cafeteria Services" program in an integrated way may seem like you are teaching them in a way that interests them, but in reality you are really streaming people at an early age into being a "cafeteria servant" and when those jobs are made redundant... so are most of those kids cum adults.

If you work in a large enterprise you will likely buy equipment that is certified to run on the OS that you are running, they will not go out and buy the newest -- hottest hardware which has not been certified to run it and replace the operating system with Windows 7. You will avoid the newest technology that is not certified by the manufacturer to run Windows 7. What the consumer buys and what the enterprise buys will not likely be the same hardware in all cases.

Xp was kept alive through Vista.... until Windows 7.... Windows 7 has been kept alive through Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 is coming out in a matter of months. This is the new Windows, get use to the new Windows if you want to continue using Windows.... Me, I stopped using Windows in 2007 and never looked back (other than the work computer which is Windows - but it is not my choice). No new machines are being sold with Windows 7, although Enterprise is free to install Windows 7 on Windows 7 compatible hardware - but hardware/laptops not aimed for business may not be supported going forward. Laptop aimed at business will probably not be the leading edge hardware -- at least when it comes to Windows 7 installations. Windows 7 days are past....

OS X Yosemite still supports my 2008 Mac Pro (with upgraded video cards ATI 5770). There is a cost to trying to support legacy software written 10+ years ago..... The operating system has to jump through hoops and keep old obsolete code for APIs that have long been deprecated - it bloats the operating system, often turns operating system code into spaghetti and limits the operating system moving forward -- it also is ripe as a security threat. Most of the software usually works, there sometimes is one or two applications that were programmed using already deprecated APIs that need to be updated.... but then I seem to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP apps on Windows 7 because of the improvement in security. You even had them creating a virtual XP support to handle old programs - which in itself did not always work.

I have used VMware and not had an issue with networking - I can configure it many different ways.... the preferred way is just making it on the same network as the main computer (so if I use 10.1.1.11 for OS X, I use 10.1.1.12 for Windows). As far as bare metal, that might be the case if you were gaming -- or -- a database (though I run an oracle database in my vmware)..... but if you are actually needing bare-metal for gaming - I would recommend getting a computer that is specialized (with better gaming hardware) than a mac. Personally, I multi-task and booting solely into Windows would be extremely annoying to me.

This story will apply to not just Apple laptops, but quite a few new laptops going forward. For hardware (including drivers for all the devices built into the motherboard) it makes economic sense to build and test new drivers that are Windows 7 compatible since there is a large pool of people using Windows 7 on desktops that may buy the hardware as an upgrade. For laptop specific hardware for new laptops there is no upgrade market and all new laptops must be sold with Windows 8.1+. It does not make sense to build and test Windows 7 drivers for these devices since there is no real market to speak of. Be it new Apple laptops or other manufactures laptops, new hardware for laptops just will not have the drivers. Just testing a new driver costs millions of dollars. Apple has dropped Windows 7 support in bootcamp for new hardware. It does not make sense for Apple to invest millions of dollars to write and test drivers for hardware that has no hardware support for Windows 7.

"ActiveX is a software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly in the context of the World Wide Web. It was introduced in 1996 and is commonly used in its Windows operating system. In principle it is not dependent on Microsoft Windows, but in practice, most ActiveX controls require either Microsoft Windows or a Windows emulator. Most also require the client to be running on Intel x86 hardware, because they contain compiled code." HTML5 is a standards based format, so is CSS. JavaScript has been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification.

Insurance increases can be considerable and ongoing (not one time) [it can add up to thousands of dollars per year]. But the real deterrent is loss of points leading to suspension or loss of license. You really want to stop something, take their license away for incremental amounts of time.

Demerit points are much more of a deterrent to things like speeding in Canada (speeding while going at the same speed as traffic although is typically not enforced as speeding - i.e. normal speed on 401 is about 120 - 130 while the posted limit is 100....) Caught for speeding 16+km and you lose 3 points, insurance goes up... and if you repeat you have to go to an interview... and at 15.... poof goes your license.

It is not considered a currency -- or you would run afoul of other law.... and it is not a security otherwise they would have run afoul of reporting / tax regulations....

I write and speak similarly, but it is easy to misinterpret when I am writing to get offended by taking my often blunt way of arguing my ideas without a grain of salt. If they are able to see me and I them (their expressions) both they and I are able to communicate more effectively and avoid situations. To keep face to face meetings on point, hold them standing up and keep them short (figure out how long it will take beforehand and stick to it). Many short meetings are more productive than large long meetings. Unfortunately none of that is available to me these days since I work at home half a world away from the office. I would like the ability to hold videoconferencing calls (at peoples desk similar to using the phone with a camera) but the office is not very advanced. You could easily install a system that allows you to hold and archive video "standup" meetings these days if you want backup. The other alternative is to hold the short meeting, agree on what you can and summarize it in a short email after the fact (since it is just facts of the outcome it is no longer an argumentative situation).

Not an appeals court, that is several levels up. It may already be too late since you might be required to post a bond in the matter of 100s of millions of dollars while you are appealing - which in many cases force the company into settlement talks since that may not be affordable. There should be a specialized court which handles patent cases right at the beginning of the process. Decisions would still be able to be appealed through the appropriate channels.

WIth Nuclear, Hydro, gas and coal you generate the amount of electricity that you expect the demand to be. The only time I ever had a problem with this type of power in Toronto is when a grid failure shut down the nuclear reactors and they had to do a cold restart. A once in a lifetime event. Rolling blackouts like what you mentioned often come from the lack of investment in generating supplies for the growth in usage (in addition to peak demand due to heat waves etc.). That type of blackout does not happen except when you have mismanagement in the grid or if you make it impossible to build new generating capacity. When you talk about things like solar or wind -- your generation is not driven by demand.... you could have even a constant demand but if you have days without wind or a drop of 50%, or you need power at night when the sun goes down..... You still need generation capacity to fill that lack of power. People don't just cut back when the wind drops, they don't shut off all the lights at night..... they need a predictable amount of power. Solar and wind cannot produce that. You can build banks and banks of very expensive battery backup for when the grid fails (in my case locally it shuts off for 5 minutes every few days) if you are a company, but usually that is a stopgap measure that then for prolonged power outages switches over to gas generating backup generators (or some other fuel like that). This is the type of backup generating capacity for wind and solar - but no-one ever mentions it because it is a dirty little secret. They have mandates to buy power from home solar setups, they have to buy it whether there is a demand or not..... but there is no penalty if that same house which is on the grid fails to deliver power when people need it.... so there is a hidden subsidy of the grid supplier to buy backup power to supply both you and that house when the sun doesn't shine.