.. blue or green hair dye?

... I used to regularly score 'above average', or in MSFT stack rankings, a 3.5 or 4.0 (the latter was hard to achieve if you weren't the golden-boy - required to balance the team score). This meant I would get a performance based bonus, which was great.

I made the mistake of pushing for a promotion. I felt that because I was consistently out-performing my role, that I should be promoted. Eventually they promoted me and a few other guys. We got a 'Senior' title. Now comes the problem.

The promotion only came with a 2% pay rise. The following annual performance review, it was now deemed that I was not exceeding my role (due to the new title), so I only scored a 3.0. This score means 'you met all your objectives'. Unfortunately, at the time, the policy was bonuses were only awarded to those exceeding their job description. I got no bonus. That year, or the following year. It probably left me on average $5k/year out of pocket.

Moral to the story? Don't be an employee :-)

So it's the mid 80's. You've got your innovative home computer, a Commodore 64, a Sinclar Spectrum, a Toshiba MSX, and others.. A lot of these platforms (and starting with the NES and Sega Master System, used/could_use cartridges for their software/games. Actually, even with using tape or disc it makes no difference. I don't remember _ever_ seeing an 'update' or a 'fix' for a game or piece of software you purchased over the counter.

Sure, with utility software, you'd get new major versions. Games? No. It had to work right out of the box as there was no going back. You were manufacturing a boxed product which simply had to work.

I appreciate it was a lot simpler back then. Less to go wrong. Less demand. Less requirement to always be on the edge of everything. At least that's my perception of how it differed back then to now. Maybe i'm wrong, I don't want to discount any of the great work from the 8 and 16 bit days.

Perhaps the modern internet day creates too much of a challenge. It's easy to knock up some code and distribute it. Same as posting any old crap comment/opinion on a forum, you can just as easily publich some code. 'Back in the old days' you actually had to make the effort and commitment to put something into production, which wouldn't have been taken lightly. Nowadays it seems to be a case of get something new out there before the next guy and worry about fixing it after. Of course, the internet facilitates this nicely.

Maybe the nostalgia bug is just biting again.

There are animals in the Ocean that make noises as loud as this..

Take the Pistol Shrimp for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae

That makes 200db's just by snapping it's big claw.. (albeit at a much shorter range)

Interestingly the 'explosion' caused by the snapping reaches temperatures close to that of the suns surface!

I just ordered mine from www.amazon.co.uk. If you're in the UK, by far the cheapest I found in the first few results pages on Google. £71 including delivery.