mcdougle

Depending on OP's needs, this is probably the best. If he's trying to trade, he can open an account and (I believe) there is no minimum balance for buying/selling. I think $3k is the minimum for margin trades (and you get super-low commissions if you fund that much).

But you don't even need an account to use it. Just create a paper-trading account and you have access to the application, plus you can play around with trading without actually spending any real money.

Furthermore, dough.com is (kind of) a branch off of ToS - less functionality, but a much prettier interface. You can sign up on dough and get full access (without being able to actually trade, of course) without a brokerage account or paper account at all.

The best way I've been able to describe it:

When I'm out socializing, I'm often the life of the party. I was called a "social butterfly" over the weekend at a tailgate. I'm usually the guy at the party or whatever being loud, having a good time, talking to everyone and getting all of them to have a good time too.

I also have no trouble talking to people. I often just strike up conversations with strangers in lines, elevators, just walking down the street, etc. I can approach the pretty girl and talk to her, and not be nervous about it. I can speak in public, and I've been essentially a "door-to-door salesman" (cold calls instead of doors, but you get what I mean).

But, at the end of the day, I need to have my "anti-social" time. I get burnt out on all of the stuff above, and if I do it too much, I'll get annoyed and tired, and end up not being very fun to be around. After too much partying, I need a few nights to just chill at home and relax, maybe with the people closest to me (at most).

I'm outgoing. But I'm also introverted.

Introversion is a quality that can't be (easily) changed. Being outgoing is a skill that one can learn.

That's anti-immersive, too. When you fire a shotgun in real life, you don't have to do the recoil motion yourself -- you just pull the trigger, and the recoil occurs on its own.

He's also the creator/founder of Soylent, and even if he were a good cook, he'd likely continue to live off of his creation if only to say "look, I do this!" which will probably get more people to buy his product.

Even though the founder does that, he has explained many times that he doesn't expect most people to replace their entire diet with Soylent.

They expect you to do just as you said -- replace one or two meals, specifically the ones where you're in a rush or in the middle of something (work, etc.) and you would've otherwise grabbed a reheatable lunch or some kind of unhealthy fast food.

I didn't even see the 77 CE part at first. I clicked on the title, read a bit into it, and was very confused for a minute.

It isn't illegal, but does that mean they should still do it?

Exactly. They're a private company, they're free to do whatever they want within the legal limits. The argument isn't whether they're allowed to do it (whether the first amendment applies here), but rather, should they do it?

I say probably not. In many cases, morals/ethics are subjective and should not be enforced upon others. The key word is enforced -- I'm all for them contacting the user and saying "Listen, man, this isn't cool -- please change it."

In general, I'm against the enforcement of personal morals upon others, except in obvious circumstances (we probably shouldn't hurt/kill/steal from/etc. each other). Discussion and debate is cool, enforcement is not.

And just as the company itself has the right to censor whatever it pleases, its users have the right to stop using their services when they feel that the company is infringing on their rights -- which is what a lot of people here are saying (they're not saying "this is bad, the company should get in trouble for it," they're saying "this is bad, I refuse to do business with a bad company").

I love coffee, particularly darker roasts. I tend to drink my coffee black, I usually buy better-quality coffee (pretty much all big-brand store-bought coffee, e.g. Folger's, is bland and weak).

That said, I hate Starbucks coffee. I'm sure their fancy, sugary drinks are better (and the reason people prefer them to another coffee place) but as far as just black coffee goes, Starbucks is terrible.

Dunkin Donuts is better (particularly the dark roast) and I also enjoy the new McDonald's coffee (although it seems to depend on location, some McDonald's seem to be better than others).

Unless their technology developed along a completely different path, and the concept of radio waves is too foreign to them because they use an altogether different method of communication that we can't even begin to imagine.

That's probably the next logical step, though, honestly. Not necessarily oil specifically, but resources in general and even colonization of any nearby planets/etc. that will allow it.

How did we discover (and begin actually using) the Americas? Christopher Columbus was sent on a trip to retrieve resources from India. It was a financial trip, supposed to enrich the government, not an exploratory one.

That's kind of how it's always been. Societies have discovered new people, lands, and resources by accident while trying to expand their empires (generally).

Furthermore, as we continue to consume resources and grow our population, we should probably strive to expand our society to other locations before we overconsume and overpopulate to the point that it starts to cause problems.

The assumption is that with a "family owned business," you're still running the business, right?

The OP is actually saying that's one of the viable options -- to keep the business and stay at the helm.

What he's arguing is that you're not likely to ever successfully be able to keep the business (not sell), hire someone else to run it for you, and never have to work again -- the obvious exception being e.g. Bill Gates (and the difference being that Microsoft was so huge and firmly rooted that he could hand it off).

Yep. Generally, as the advice goes, when you're looking for a rental property to purchase, anticipate property management fees and include those fees in your profitability calculations -- regardless of whether you're going to hire a property manager or do it yourself. If the purchase does not make financial/business sense when including those management fees, then it doesn't make business sense at all, and you shouldn't buy it.

This is exactly what I want to do eventually

Sure. And we definitely need some kind of motivation to focus our efforts on space exploration (it's very noticeably become an afterthought ever since we stopped trying to compete).

But if we could somehow find that motivation, it would be far more productive to work together -- we'd have a lot more manpower and a higher budget that way.

Better yet, why does it have to be an "individual nation" thing? Why can't all (or even just some) of the developed nations collaborate and pool funding and have a bigger team to work on the problem?

If we're talking about fitness goals, generally, weight is actually a fairly poor indicator of progress. Someone can be 200 lb and another person can be 180 lb, and both can be the same height; yet the 200lb person might be stronger or more athletic, while the 180lb person could have very little muscle mass and a much higher body fat %.

Stated in another way, it's entirely possible that a person can gain weight and lose fat -- or even lose weight and accumulate fat.

The size of various parts of your body is a much better indicator compared to measuring weight (measuring one overall size isn't a great help either), although still not the best. Measuring body fat % would be best, but unfortunately, it's not very easy to do so -- at least not without special tools.

As others have said in this thread, it's entirely possible (and, in a corporate setting, very probable) that he could've been writing an email during a time in the meeting where is attention wasn't needed.

I can tell you that there have been plenty of meetings I've been in where I'm hard at work on something actually important while listening at the same time, because I know I'm not missing anything. I know which meetings are important and require my full attention (a requirements meeting for a new project, for example) compared to something I can just kinda half-listen to (e.g. the weekly team meeting where everyone discusses what they've worked on since the last meeting)

These days?

I think it's always been like that, and these days we're starting to recognize that introversion isn't a deficiency, it's just how some people are wired (and doesn't necessarily equate to "shy" or "awkward")

Yep, it's Kronos.

Fortunately, I only need to use it when I request PTO. I feel sorry for the hourly employees that use it several times a day.

My company just transitioned to a Java applet-based time clocking/PTO/etc. management application.

The first time I opened it and it brought up the little Java prompt, I was like, "Really?"

I imagine the OP probably meant that and simply wrote the wrong thing in the post. I probably wouldn't have noticed it was the wrong wording if not for this comment chain.

I just find it really cool that a clemson.edu link made it to the front page of HN....

Also consider DUIs (now that we have motor vehicles), office work (where drinking during the day - at least heavily - is typically forbidden), and to some extent possibly the suburban lifestyle (most people don't live a few steps from a bar) and I can see why the amount would be higher back then.

Music is Distracting

Sometimes, the right kind of distraction is good. Even if having no distractions gives me the opportunity to have acute concentration on the subject, in practice, having the right kinds of distractions really do help me reach peak productivity.

If I don't have music or background noise of some kind, my mind wanders and I never really reach that "acute concentration" point anyways. But I work best with the right kind of music -- or even a TV show that's just interesting enough to be background noise (without capturing all of my attention).

That said, the wrong kinds of distractions truly are too distracting. The study mentioned that music with lyrics is more distracting; I know that my favorite songs (generally 70s classic rock) really do grab my attention away from work sometimes. Music where the words are unintelligible and fade into the sounds or music without words actually works a lot better. Also, obviously a really captivating TV show will definitely hurt productivity.

I upvoted it. Why is it getting downvoted, I wonder? Seems like a fairly rational explanation.

Is it just because of the negative tone? I mean, this post is asking for opinions, and the commenter simply gave his opinion....

Also control over your time. There's a huge difference between "9 to 5 every day" and "40ish hours a week, pick the times that are most convenient, and have some flexibility in that number based on how much actually gets done"

The best, most fun job I ever had was being a bag boy at a golf course during the summers when I was in undergrad. Got to spend the day outside, talk to the golfers as they came in, and everyone I worked with was enjoyable (one of my best friends actually ended up working with me when he found out how great it was). Plus, free golf, and during the downtimes we would go hit balls on the range or something. And picking the range (driving the machine around to sweep up the balls off the range) was incredibly chill and relaxing, like you described mowing.

As much as I loved that job, though, there's no way I could do it for a living. There's a reason it's only high school and college kids that do it -- the pay is horrible. Which is honestly fair, since the job's not very intense.

But there's a reason a lot of guys end up as golf course rangers in their retirement years.

I'd actually argue that 80% to 90%* of people are suited to traditional jobs, simply because the majority of people don't have the motivation, ambition, or discipline to do what it takes otherwise.

I don't mean that as a negative criticism to those people in any way, either. Most of my friends openly admit that this is the case for them -- they can't even work from home (when given the option) because they don't have the discipline to actually get their work done unless they have a boss telling them when to work and what to work on. It's just the way some people are wired, and it doesn't help that it's the way society and schools try to raise us to be.

I, personally, hate it, though. I don't know why anyone would feel guilty about that. I mean, maybe if all you wanted to do was sit around and do nothing all day -- but that's not me. I enjoy working, as long as it's meaningful and under my control (at least to an extent). There's nothing wrong with building up side streams of income (through things like real estate investments or online businesses) with the intention of ultimately going full time on them.

* Ok, 80% to 90% might be a bit high. I just threw out a big number. But I'm sure it's the overwhelming majority of people.

This is a fantastic comment (so is the rest of the reply chain) and just upvoting doesn't feel like enough.

I initially agreed with the parent poster (don't just walk away from your financial commitments) but your comment really takes a different perspective and made me re-think about the whole thing in a completely different way.

We're finally starting to consider talking about transitioning old software from Access 97 to a C# .NET web app at my job.