. That reasoning is the article writer making their own conclusions, not the automaker's tactics. Suppliers are swapped in and out of the supply chains constantly, even mid-run of a model, many parts and systems have a dozen suppliers chasing the business. Product cycle time is the main contributor to the lag. When Tesla 'just launched' with new tech the other brands still have three to five years of run time before they have budgeted for a model makeover. So it's easy to be six years away. .

. Good oblique insight to the strike issue. UAW has, since the 1970s, been about protecting ten percent of the jobs while putting ninety percent of the workforce at risk. UAW jobs are some of the highest paying blue collar work around, and ever increasing. Makes manufacturers and businesses seek products from lower wage cost countries. Does the union ever investigate why workers need more wages to cover a growing cost of living? What underpins the economy structural costs? Pretty easy to see where the big chunks come from: Wage taxes, rents (layered on top of property taxes), transportation fuel (35% taxes depending on the state), products chained with sales taxes (online and brick stores the same now) ... Then healthcare. ... what's the common thread and attractiveness to new countries with low wages? .

The largest crop in the US is not Corn or Soybeans, it's lawn grass. Many of the lawn and garden chemicals homeowners like to use, or are used on plants homeowners pick up at the local big box retailer, contain these chemicals harmful to pollinators.
The statistic is somewhere around 70% of the foods in the typical American Diet need pollinators. No pollinators then pretty limited menus.

Bees consume pollen. Some even call it 'bee bread'...
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in868
http://www.hhmi.org/biointerac...

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I've used CAELinux for quite a bit, but focused on Finite Element Modeling using Salome->Code_Aster. There are several packages on the disk and easy to burn the LiveDVD, insert it into your computer, reboot, use the software, reboot back to your base system.
http://www.caelinux.com/CMS/


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. The perceived problem is really a symptom of the greater issue within these organizations. Moving them back to the office to "keep an eye on them" will be counter productive. Of course any change will have an effect (but short lived) because someone will be "measuring" (Westinghouse Hawthorne effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect).
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The strongest performers, if any remain in the organization, will bail and find flexible jobs at major competitors.
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The real solution? Hire professionals and give them the ability to get things done - aka thin the middle management ranks and flatten the organization.
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As an artist myself, but in a different media, I give away product all the time (I have a free download running today in fact). It's what I do to expose new consumers to my work. Food companies hire people to do free samples in a supermarket "try Pete's Wacky Pizza and here is a coupon for today too."
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The point of the streaming (as was radio) is the artist is running a three to five minute commercial, they have that whole audience captured for the length of that song. Hopefully the streaming service provides links or a radio announcer that says "This is Jane Cellist and buy her stuff at Jane's web site". The streaming services can give accurate data that the artist can compare against their actual sales at the time or shortly after and see what the sales-through rate is. Example, the cellist run her classical cello music on Pandora for a week and her CD sales are flat but a few weeks later she runs her product on Spotify and she makes a thousand sales. Every time she runs Spotify she has big sell through. So she doesn't use Pandora but works Spotify hard. Then she does the same with other streaming services, or finds her Rock-style cello music pulls in a big Pandora fan base of physical sales.
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.It's advertising that the 'network' pays the artist to "come over here and advertise with us." Since this is Superbowl Sunday .. what is the number of earlobes the cellist might reach on Pandora vs how many viewers see the thirty-second commercial spot?
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I've worked at a couple of Fortune 10 corporations (basement to lofty offices), private manufacturing businesses (many capacities), and consulting (domestic and international small to large corporations). My plan has been to seek freedom and adventure. Yours might be something else. But these were my reasons:
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Early on while at one of the big-co's a co-worker went around and asked many in the department what they made when they first started at the company and what year they hired in. All these people approaching 30 years started with their "walk both ways to school uphill in driving snow" stories and of course were happy to share, Then he showed them a number "how far away is this number from what you make now?" Their jaws dropped at the accuracy. All he did was add in a formula of typical raises over the intervening years. Workers fresh out of school that these old timers were training made more than them because the company was forced to hire the new people at the going street price - not the carry price of the experienced talent.
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If a company is approaching a recession (count back and you'll see one every 7-10 years) then many of those experienced workers approaching the magical mid-50s "get packages". Or if things are bad enough a company starts with a bunch of 5% on up to 20% staff reductions that clear out whole sections of new and old workers. Plus HR comes around to those experienced people "are you sure you don't want to take this package? you might be safe now but next week could be a deeper cut".
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Pensions get underfunded all the time because the team in charge of it has assumed and calculated returns based on the stock/bond market goes up at "6%" or "10%" or "15%" and each percent figure higher reduces the initial pension pot money to start with (which frees up capital to produce those funny Superbowl advertisements). Then when the withdraws come faster than anticipated and the market never cleanly produced "12%" returns to start with, well .. someone gets fired but a whole lot get reduced benefits. This will impact States/Teachers/Government types too in the coming years...
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Structure your budget so you spend less than you make. Start with housing and transportation and other big cash consuming devices. Saving cash is something you have control of and that saving can mean freedom. As can learning transferable skills. Jobs, careers, companies, customers - all transient and in the end risky. .
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"You're screwed dude"
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Whatever your project is .. it is change and challenges the existing power structures. Large corporate organizations develop clear methods and core skills at suppressing anything that creates change. The whole organization fears any mistake is far far far worse than the potential upside for brilliance. That is why committees and groups will revert to the mean, it's why bland products exist. It's why companies like Apple are ultimately doomed (centralized change agent Jobs is no longer running the show, the middle managers are taking over). Consensus management. Team buy-in. Death from a thousand cuts. You're in the deep weeds already.
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I'm a (non-software) Engineer with an MBA who has worked in top 5 to 25 global corporations from the bottom all the way up to working with VPs and CEOs internationally. Unless that management blockade can be made to think your software project is their idea (such that they get the credit for its success, not you, you will be soon running errands for their idea) then to see any success from that project you have to spin it outside work using non-work resources (like not the company laptop) and once that company is a success then you sell it back into your previous employer for big bucks and a corner office and they put you in charge of that prior management (did you sign any patent auto-hand-over paperwork when you hired in? Check that too). But inside? Only heartache and stress is ahead and lower long term promotability - because you are now or will be a 'loose cannon' and a 'maverick' - enviable skills on the outside but career death inside.
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When you are on the outside you need to focus on Sales. Only by Sales to real paying customers can you see the dream through and get that success. Real customers are looking for solutions to their problem and don't care about who thought the thing up -- they just want their problem to go away. Getting Sales and figuring out your Burn Rate minimization plan and you'll be fine for the MBA skillz you'll need. Sales...those are still hard and take longer than you think so be prepared. .

Check the Power Source. I used one power cube that was around the 700mA minimum recommended and I had flaky problems with devices and crashed boots that didn't work, especially on the Pi-XBMC distro as it overclocks the cpu. Switching to a power cube giving 2000mA capacity fixed all that (~$10).

Still have a $4 keyboard that doesn't work but it's on the 'known problem' page. My other portable keyboard works fine.

OpenERP for the POS option: http://www.openerp.com/products/pos OpenERP has built in inventory and all the financial accounting plus management drill-down 'dashboard' (so you as the owner can monitor the business "what are sales today?" "Ok" "what are sales of chicken platters today?" "hey, that's nice"). An average technical person can install this on an older pc you might already have and be up and running pretty quick.

gnu cash as noted - real accounting package. Think 'peachtree' not 'quickbooks'. http://gnucash.org/

LibreOffice.org (instead of openoffice)

Others that might help: http://www.openbravo.com/retail has a POS
http://www.myfreepos.net/featured.htm
also google 'windows linux equivalents' to get other software you might want from time to time, like Brainstorming/mindmapping (xmind is good), ganttproject for project management tasks.

Quickbooks isn't the answer. Actual CPA's have told me there are some odd ways it handles some accounts and does some 'magic number balancing'. Hard-core middle market cpa's use peachtree and similar programs.

THAT'S the reason it was great. "I'll show you striking writers" and they did a free internet distributed independent show. The second part of distributing it without a network and just over the internet - you had to get one of those new fangled internet-cable-things and a 'puter to see it.

The guy shouldn't have been recording people. however a few worrisome things about this is that

Count the number of video cameras that Apple is already recording people with in their stores. It's not just used for security/theft, they also use it to mine shopper behaviors - spying on you to figure out how to better sell to you. So there is some dude in a back room looking at you - yes you - as you go about your random shopper tactics. Maybe even using those very same computers they sell. This happens all over.

The other worrisome item is how Apple got the SS involved. Of course, since Apple is just a corporation, it's subject to a few bad years of mismanagement that will have taken care of themselves and righted the world in the process.

This is because the movie companies have run out of the basic ways to tell STORIES THAT WE CARE ABOUT. Gimmicks and flash must be the only way to get people into the theater? Oh, I forgot about explosions and car chases.

I go to the theater to see a huge screen and amazing detail and a meaningful story. All that fancy 3D did was make everything blurry and appear out of focus. My home TV can do that on its own thank you very much.