I used to run regional ISP's for a living (~150k users in multiple states). As an ISP, we had "cloud" infrastructure before it was cool. Among other things we had high speed internet connections, PRI connections, and vendor outsourced dial-up pools. As the head of technology for these companies, I was unable to see anything past my router interface (except incoming traffic, of course). When the T-1 to a customer crashed, there was absolutely nothing I could do except make good and damn well sure it wasn't a hardware issue. If my dial-up lines were down, all I could do was, well, make good and damn well sure it wasn't my hardware at fault.
This problem is nothing new. What's new is scale, and in a way that is unprecedented. Back in the day we had T-3's and multiple PRI's, and, at the end, an OC-3, but that was about the extent of it. However, when managing "the cloud", you're talking about the network backbone, along with servers, storage, and who all knows what else. In other words, at the hardware level, you're damn near blind.
What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait...
Even back then it was complex. My survival tactic was to learn how to make the guys at the other end of the telephone lines believe I worked for them when I called. That, and be really nice to the ones who could actually solve a problem and get their cell phone numbers (and Norm, if you're out there, thank you for your home phone number!).
As someone stated earlier, the "cloud" is that part of the Visio network diagram where you have no idea what the #@$& is going on or what the @#$* it is running on, and you have zero level of visibility to it. Hence, the term "cloud".
I spent many sleepless nights talking to Cisco's help desk in Australia and waiting in a queue at the RBOC's office to solve a problem I knew without a shadow of a doubt was not mine. (Except the one time it was, but that guy was pistol-whipped, sock-partied, and sacked. And then re-sacked to make sure.) I can't imagine how anyone over a decade later figures outsourcing *MORE* could be a fantastic career move, especially when the technology behind it isn't really all that old. At least OC-3's, PRI's, and T-3's had at least a decade of real-world use when I was doing it. Doing it on unknown code with vendors who can't possibly have more than a few years of experience? I don't think so.
is the fact that we are beginning to accept the term "app" as a distinctly different category/delivery method of software, rather than whatever poor comparisons/facts of the original story. We are now getting to the point where Steam/ITunes/et cetera et al. have become a distinct category of media, even though each one is an "app" in the original sense of the word.
Seems to me that this trend is essentially inevitable, whether it's the game industry or any other category of computer software. Simply put, not having to create, manufacture, and distribute physical media is cheaper, faster, and easier for everyone, and as the percentage of people with acceptable "broadband" speeds (which is pretty low, because it's very likely you'd put up with a 6 hour download of a big game in the background) increases, the drive to move away from physical media benefits everyone.
So, move along, no real story here, just some journalist looking to get paid by the word to repeat the obvious.
You know, I scanned the first 75 replies or so and I cannot recall a single one being from someone who actually claimed to have a kid in a school. So here's my take on the situation, as someone who has had 5 kids in school.
1) This isn't news. This has been going on for a long time now, as school districts strive to stop handling money. As a parent, I would *FAR* rather write a check every few months (or, better yet, this year they take Paypal!) to pay for my kids lunches, than try to find the exact damn change every day for my six year old.
2) I have a child who has struggled with weight issues from birth. Seeing as how she has two rail thin sisters (and they eat the same things), we have been working with her for about a year to emphasize better food choices and controlled portions. However, the simple fact is that schools do have choices in the cafeterias, especially starting in middle school. As such, I consider it a good tool for me to keep track of all my kids *SPENDING* and eating habits. I can tell if my high school freshman is guzzling down four packages of twinkies a day, or eating a real meal.
3) What, exactly, does anyone believe the schools will do with this information? They are already legally restricted in terms of dietary requirements (by state and federal regulation) and they are already legally restricted from divulging personal information of students. So, does anyone her seriously believe that they will start selling Hostess the names and eating habits of every child? Or that they will start writing contracts with companies simply to, what? Increase profit margins? Violate laws by bringing in unhealthy foods? Sorry, it won't happen.
I think that the bottom line here is that this really isn't a privacy violation. It's a tool to allow parents to control diet and spending of kids who might not be able to make the best decisions about such issues.
I'm the parent of 3 youngsters, and we go there all the time. Without a doubt it is one of the most engaging and fun places to take a kid in St. Louis. My kids play to exhaustion every time they go. As a matter of fact, so do I. We always comment (or hear people around us commenting) on how amazing it is that, considering the risk, they have the sort of place where nothing is off limits, and if you can get to it, you can go and climb on it and play on it. Is there danger? Yes, but you can drown in a bucket of water if you try hard enough, and the fun more than outweighs any problems.
I'm just amazed by how little the WSJ article actually said about the place, seeing as how they only mentioned 1/10 of the things you can do there. And they were incorrect about the big slide. It's actually about 9 stories tall, going from the 10th floor to the 1st. Bah, the state of journalism.
Anyway, cool place. Visit if you can.
Re:What about the other morality issue?
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
I think you are over-simplifying this just a tad. While I agree with the general direction and ideas, there are two poignant facts that you seem to be overlooking in this.
First, every other universal health care system is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than the US. The ones that are continually compared to the US (particularly Britain and Canada) are much more manageable due to the much smaller size. I've been watching our government for years, and I cannot fathom the bureaucratic cock-ups that will inevitably occur in any system we may implement, whether its the current bill, or a public-option, or any other.
Second, based on current experience with both government run health systems, and with other entitlement programs (particularly Social Security), I have little faith that the US government (no matter who is in charge, they are both guilty) will manage to correctly run any implemented system. I have a lot of friends who are veterans, and without exception they all believe that the VA system is fundamentally broken. And look at the cock-up that is Medicare/Medicaid. Do you seriously believe that any government which has legally forgone it's right to negotiate prices (in the case of drugs) or that continually screws up procurement (google Medicare and powered wheel chair pricing) is in any way capable of running a health system of *ANY* sort? I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. Look at how the money taken for Social Security has been used as a slush fund for 50 years. Had it not, Social Security would in all likelihood be solvent today.
I'm sorry, but this isn't better than nothing, if only because the basic tenet, health care "reform" is false. We are not reforming health care. We're doing a backhanded deal with the insurance companies, who, by the way, are spending $1.4 million per day on lobbying and advertising. How much health care could $400 million dollars buy?
I have five kids, ranging from two college graduates to a kindergartner, and I am not at all surprised. At the risk of sounding like someone who sits on his front porch and reminisces about the good old days and walking uphill to school both ways, while waiting for kids to touch my property so I can yell at them, I firmly and insistently blame primary schools. Over the years, somehow, phonics has increased in teaching, encouraging kids to try and spell more complex words (which is fine), but does not in any way penalize them for misspelling or bad grammar. My 2nd grader routinely turns in papers with words that would be a challenge for a 6th grader, yet I don't see any red ink or corrections, telling them how to spell the word correctly. I can only attribute this three ways: 1) the teacher doesn't have the time to do it (WTF?!?!?) or 2) they don't want to actually make someone feel bad for messing up (WTF?!?!?) or 3) they just don't care. Probably a combination of all three. This is especially prevalent with my 8th grader, whose grammar is only corrected for English class, but anything else she turns in for any other class is remarkably devoid of red ink to correct spelling and grammar.
With a lack of consistent reinforcement of the basics in every class and in every setting, is it any wonder that the kids can't spell when they get to college? I recall getting points marked down in all my classes (including science classes) for misspellings, and I am stunned by the fact that somehow proper spelling and grammar is not considered something that anyone other than an English teacher should be concerned about when grading.
Recently, we allowed our teenager to get a Facebook account, with the proviso that we remain her friends and that we have access to the account. I reply to every post she makes abusively correcting her piss-poor grammar.
Any way you cut it, a consistent use of proper red ink would likely solve this issue quickly, even for high-school aged children who have learned bad habits.
1) Start Web 2.0 web site utilizing every buzzword you can find 2) Desparately woo users until you get large enough to matter 3) Sit down a year or more later to desperately figure out a revenue model 4) Provide Spammers a way to proliferate 5) Sue them! 6) PROFIT$$$$$$$
Not only that, but this also avoids the usual problem in Slashdot business plans in that there is no question marks in either steps 3 or 4.
Remember, most piracy is reported by pissed off employees. In an effort to do the right thing, as other posters have pointed out, first inventory everything you can. Next, figure out the extent of the problem. Then go to your boss, or the owner, and let them know your concerns, as well as the legal ramifications. Do this in the best possible fashion for you, of course. And then let them know how much of a risk they are at, in terms of financial impact. All it takes in this environment (or any, for that matter) is one fired or layed off employee (yourself for instance, but I wouldn't mention that, all things being equal) to cost them far more in productivity, time, money, and embarassment than finding solutions.
The response should dictate your further actions. However, if worse comes to worse, you can always report them yourself, should they vindictively attack you over this.
Also keep in mind that the previous IT guy might very well be much better connected if he's still there. Do what you need to do to avoid embarrassment for all parties.
Documentation is critical to business success, no matter what the business. The reality is not about "protecting" your job or keeping the PHB's from mucking with things. The reality is that it may not be what you do, but what the other guy has in his head that is critical information for your business.
In other words, what happens when a critical employee has a heart attack, or gets hit by a bus. What do you do then? If everyone has their little piece in their head, no one else benefits, and the business overall loses. Or, even more simply, what happens when someone goes on vacation? Or when you go on vacation? Do you (or does the business) suffer because there isn't a way to replicate what that person does?
In this day and age, business processes are perhaps the most valuable thing a business owns. Knowledge can be learned, information can be looked up. But utilizing information in a business is *NOT* as simple as having that information. How information is applied to the business is the key. And documenting that information is the *ONLY* way to get it out of someone's head and into the general domain.
I've had this discussion recently both as part of my business (an IT Services vendor) and as part of my customers businesses. In every case the answer is the same. The processes are the most valuable asset for any company, no matter what the size or business. In fact, the smaller the business, the more valuable, because the likelihood is that in a smaller company there are more concentrations of knowledge, more key people who, if hit by the hypothetical bus, would take with them the day to day processes that run that business.
There are many ways to approach the problem. From embedding processes into a help desk program, to external solutions such as Wiki's, to professional programs that are specifically designed to collect knowledge, flowchart it, and also align it to your business processes.
One of the products that my company handles is specifically designed for this: aligning IT processes to business processes. While this is generally a new concept, and a tough sell, when you can map out what you do in your IT department, and also see the business reasons for why you do it, not to mention see the business impact if you don't do it, the value can be staggering. This is one of the greatest untapped barriers to IT becoming part of the larger business, and demonstrating its value. Far too often IT does things because they need doing, but they don't understand how what they do affects the business, or what value their day-to-day activities actually have in the larger business. And the reverse holds true as well: the business doesn't understand how their needs and requests impact IT, or why they cannot simply "make a wish" and have things their way.
Control of your business processes is the single best way to ensure that IT is doing things the right way for the business, and to clearly demonstrate the value (monetary and otherwise) of their jobs to the PHB's and accountants and other ickey people on the business side.
Documenting processes might be the best way to protect yourself, and save yourself grief. Its only a very narrow and stupid point of view that sees this as being a way to protect themselves, and make themselves "valuable" to the business.
Its very simple, really, and there is nothing sinister or state-regularted about it (which, in some minds, might be the same thing...
Charter grew up like every other cable provider: acquisition. Cable franchises are granted on a city (or county) by city (or county) basis. In other words, Charter (or a company it acquired) negotiated at some point with the municipalities in question and bought the rights to provide service.
So, they bought those cities.
Note that rural areas are generally much cheaper for a cable company to expand into. Two reasons: one, franchises are cheaper, because of the lower number of potential subscribers, and two, in a rural area the costs associated with building a system are *RADICALLY* cheaper. For instance, in the county of Charters HQ (St. Louis, County, Missouri) the average cost per foot (inclusive) to lay fiber is about $8/foot. (Okay, this was the cost in 2002, but it will suffice for this discussion.) However, if you across the river from St. Louis, into Southern Illinois (also Charter territory) the cost per foot averages about $2 per foot. (also 2002 figures). In other words, a sparsely populated, more rural or rural area *CAN* be a cheap acquisition and buildout for a provider. Obviously, this is dependent on simple cost-ratios, and there will come a point where an area is simply too underpopulated to cost-effectively support.
Also, you have to look at Charter's history to understand why they have lots of rural populations under their belts. The original founders, headed up by Jery Kent, all lived in rural areas of Missouri. When Paul Allen bought into the company, he had completely and totally bought into the "wired world" concept. As a result, between the founders (who desparately wanted service in areas nearly and hour from the edges of St. Louis), Jerry Kent, and the relative cheapness of such systems, there was a gold-rush mentality on these outlying systems that no one wanted.
So Charter ended up in lots of smaller systems and areas.
Not necessarily a bad business plan, just one they screwed up with some unrelated decisions much later.
Quote: "If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia," he said."Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?"
I don't know...maybe that's because a few hundred million people visit Wikipedia every year, and maybe because someone like me, who remembers when Lynx was the only web browser available, has never actually gone to Brittanica's website? Just maybe? Perhaps if they resolved their rectal-cranial inversion and made an accessible, easy to use, accurate product their PageRank might improve?
You know, as much as we've heard about the auto industry in the last few months, and their ailments, as well as endless ad nauseam fixes, there are a few things that *NOBODY* wants to talk about here, at least no one involved.
First off, tage a gander at CAFE regulations, or the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards set by the EPA in the US. This is something which, of course, was instituted after the Oil Crisis in 1972. In theory, its a nice noble set of standards for regulating better fuel economy in the US.
Now, in spite of the fact that these standards are something of a joke (they haven't changed a bit since 1992, and have only been increased a grand whopping total of 9.5 MPG since they were instituted over 30 years ago), there are a few peculiarities in the enforcement of these which, I think, are specifically causing or have caused the problems the Big 3 face today, and, in fact, were specifically caused by Congress and the Clinton Administration.
Now, buried within these standards is a little rule called the Two Fleet Rule. Essentially, what it says is that the foriegn produced cars imported by a company to the US are a different "fleet" from the domestically produced cars. It goes further to say that, in fact, if a car company (by default the Big 3) want to be considered "domestic" producers that the cars they produce in the US are, in fact, the only ones that count for their inclusion in the CAFE regulations.
Now, this has some nasty side effects, the biggest being that, in order to be considered "domestic" car producers, the Big 3 were actually forced to manufacture all of their vehicles in the US, regardless of whether or not they could actually afford to sell said vehicles at a profit. In other words, this "2 Fleet Fule" was a very specific sop directly to the Auto Unions and forced the Big 3 to produce and sell their economy cars a loss for 2 decades. Not only that, but since they were actually losing money on a huge percentage of sales, they were forced to concentrate production on the most profitable lines, namely SUV's and Minivans. Which worked great, sort of, for a decade or so. Until the public decided that a) gas was too expensive to spend in a gas guzzling vehicle, and b) the enviroment matters.
So, a downturn in large vehicle sales causes a double whammy against the Big 3, in that they can't afford not to make them, and the fact that they still have to produce a significant amount of small vehicles to sell at a loss since they can't make a profit anyway. Not only that, but they can't make a profit on increased sales of economically viable vehicles as those were already selling at a loss...
Sucks to be them.
So we need to blame government, specifically the Democrats but I believe the measure had decent bi-partisan support, for this mess. By giving a few people job security, they've endangered the well being of an entire industry.
Oh, and these are the same people we're trusting to solve the mess...
The problem with your assumption is that you obviously don't understand bottom line costs to company. Most small companies that I have worked with/for have very tight margins on their products. As this guy said "blue collar", lets assume its manufacturing or something similar.
A manufacturing company is unlikely to make 5% profit on sales. But lets be really generous and say they make 25%.
Lets assume there are 5 developers, and the only thing the company will pay for is the console. (This is patently untrue, but I'll get to that in a moment).
So, minimum outlay is $1000 dollars. Which means that the company has to recoup $4000 in sales just to cover the cost of the consoles.
This is a bottom line hit. Its a ridiculous use of money in a budget that could likely be spent in better places.
Not only that, but its likely that there will, at some point, be a productivity hit directly related to the consoles. I can't imagine a developer worth anything that can't in some way disable/scam the monitoring software. So if they slack off, their salary is also a bottom line hit to the company.
Of course you're next argument will be that they are likely working overtime and such, which is likely (although not certain) to be free, as they might be salaried. However, if others are working that overtime, and the overtime directly affects productivity, this is effectively time that benefits the company in product and revenue, which, again they must make by selling 4x the amount of product completely on top of what they already sell.
In other words extraneous hits to the budget can have a dramatic affect on profitability, with little or no demonstrable gain to the company.
And please don't throw out the strawman on this one: that the company shouldn't expect its employees to work free overtime. That may or may not be right or wrong, but if that's part of their job, its happening and arguing about the morality and ethics of such things won't change the reality on the ground.
And I won't even go into litigation costs if someone sues over the myriad number of issues this would raise in a company.
Okay, I've been in IT a while, and I know plenty of developers. I'm unaware of a developer "Needing" a console at his desk in order to do his job, unless he happens to be a game developer on that console.
That being said, you mentioned this was a blue collar company.
How long, roughly, do you really think it will take for the rest of the company to find out that their co-workers are being paid to play games? I guarantee you, I'd be *PISSED* if I found out one department had the company paying for time (whether salaried or not) that was spent on games. Imagine what happens when Joe Plumber (insert favorite and/or appropriate profession here) finds out? How long before one of your developers brags about it to someone outside the department?
Not only that, but a console per person? Are you kiddng? Assuming its a modern console, that's at a minimum $199/person. That's a lot of money. Are you buying them games, too? If one dies, are you going to be spending time and money to send it in for warrantly repairs? How about 2 days after warranty runs out? You got budget to repair/replace? How about when the controller breaks? You payin' for that?
You buying the games, too?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about making the workplace fun. How about you buy one console and put it in a common area, and maybe give the "blue collar" guys one in their lunchroom, too? If someone is gone from their cubicle for 4 hours a day, should be obvious, right? Less money spent, more accountability.
Or, and here's a crazy idea, I know, how about you expect them to actually work 8 hours a day since they get paid 8 hours a day and let them blow off steam in other ways. You could just give it to them to take home. Or have after hours lan parties or console parties. Go to a bar.
Bottom line, you are not just asking for trouble, you've actually gone out, started blasting its mating call at the top of your lungs, and smeared its favorite food all over your body and genitalia while naked. This is a half-baked idea at best that won't last very long, for a variety of reasons.
I have to agree. Having played video games from Pong all the way until today, I now play many games for the world experience, rather than the body count or difficulty. I mainly play FPS's, but after umpteem Quake and Doom clones, the whole difficulty thing wears thin. In most games, this is simply a matter of shooting a little better, or twitching a bit more, to take down more enemies. It gets old after a while.
Now, lately I've gone back and replayed or collected all the classics I've missed over the years. Deus Ex, HL, HL2, System Shock 1 & 2, RTCW. All of these games have so much more to do and offer than *SEE* than Doom, or Quake. I spent hours exploring in these games. Heck, even Painkiller and Serious Sam had aspects that went beyond the carnage. They were fun to explore, to try and find the hidden areas, to play around in.
For their times, they each brought something to the table beyond just the killing, even as the games were, in some respects, about the killing.
You have to give kudos especially to games where difficulty is also about resources and allocation. SS1, 2, and Deus Ex brought that element to the table, and made playing the game enjoyable even on low difficulty by making ammo less infinite, and allowing choices to modify the outcome.
There are plenty of examples out there where other elements, be they RPG elements or intelligently designed and properly utilized puzzles, or even spectacular level design have contributed to enjoyable game play and replayability without the need to just swarm you with numbers.
First off, I was running ISP's back in the 90's, and even then my dynamic pools for Radius were bigger than a/24, unless the location was a tiny remote dial up. Nowadays, there probably is no large ISP assigning single/24's for dynamic IP addressing. Heck,/20,/19, and even/18 are being used by my ISP, a large cable provider. I haven't asked anyone there lately, but I'm betting they have bigger pools than that.
Now, if you have a static block, that's different, but if we're talking about the masses in general, the number of possibilities are going to be larger than 1 in 253, and if you also consider DHCP timeouts, the possibilities become even larger.
This sounds a bit like alarmism, and the author apparently doesn't bother to map any of this into actual real-world.
6.5 million people connections. Let's just say that, on average, people are paying $15US per connection per month.
That would be $97,500,000 per month in lost revenue to the broadband industry, or a cool $1,170,000,000 per year in lost revenue.
Uh huh. Go on, then, pull the other one.
How long until someone comes up with a way to completely anonymize P2P applications? Or someone comes up with the next way of doing this that is almost, but not entirely, unlike current P2P apps?
I'm amazed that *ANYONE* in the broadband industry is giving credence to the BPI and RIAA and MPAA. They can't afford that kind of subscriber loss, or revenue loss.
You know, I've been a computer user for almost 30 years now. During my first exposure to personal computers, there were guys copying VIC-20 tapes to pirate software. During the 80's, all kinds of software companies devised copy protection schemes to keep pirates from copying software. During the 90's, even more elaborate ruses were used, including hardware dongles, hardware locking, network checking for multiple instances of the same serial number. We've had encryption, DPI, and everything else thrown at the problem.
Nothing has worked. How long are companies going to continue to try to "stop" piracy, when it simply doesn't work. There might be one or two instances of copy protection working, but they are few and far between. It seems that the copyright watchdogs have decided to beat other peoples heads on a brick wall rather than their own, but it still won't work. This elaborate game of "whack-a-mole" is senseless, idiotic, and ends up hurting everyone.
And it will solve nothing.
It'd be sad if it weren't just so downright pathetic.
Re:This is what comes...
on
Who Owns Software?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Ummm...you obviously haven't bothered to actually read or find out a single fact about this case, have you?
I'll lay out the really pertinent facts. You're welcome to find out more on your own.
The woman was severely burned. Initially, she asked McD's for $20k to cover medical expenses for her medical treatments. McD's refused to even talk to her.
Here's the kicker: the coffee at McD's (not just that one, but every single one, as they all operate under the guidance of the corporate office, and had the same coffee makers) was found to be keeping coffee *FAR* above a reasonably hot temperature. This was corporate policy. McDonalds had a policy to keep coffee between 180 and 190 degrees, which is not too terribly far from boiling.
She had 3rd Degree burns, as well as severe 2nd degree burns, and spent over a week in the hospital and required skin grafts.
There was also over 700 reports of burns due to the temperature of McDonalds coffee in the decade preceeding this incident. McDonalds had actually settled with many of these, to the tune of over $500k paid.
It was also testified that drinking McD's coffee at the time given to the customer at that temperature would burn *ANYONE'S* mouth. I find this to be true today, although its rumored that in the time since the lawsuit, McD's has again jacked temperatures.
So, lets see: serving a substance you know can cause 3rd degree burns, where you have a decade of claims arising from the practice, refusing a request (which you had granted to *MANY* others) for covering of legitimate medical expenses.
If you actually read the facts of the case, you'll see that the media coverage has omitted most of the pertinent facts on this case. McD's deserved what they got. They should have choked up the $20k and been done with it.
I don't know about you, but I don't like to drink coffee that can give me 3rd degree burns.
Yes, actually, it does. And it has nothing to do with technical prowess.
Right now Microsoft is making their money as a box mover. They create physical products, and then sell them to people. This is currently the way that they have become one of the largest corporations on earth. This entire model is predicated on a very traditional method of utilizing the channel (distributors, resellers, direct sales, etc.)
This one nasty fact has created a huge boondogle for Microsoft. In order to keep their share price where its at, they need to keep moving product. In order to move to a different meshed network, or online/offline model, there is a very real possibility that Microsoft will end up cannabalizing its own products. Not only that, but there is the very real possibility that such a product, in the face of a competitor with equal or better name recognition, will fail.
For the last 5-7 years, Microsoft stock has not exactly prospered, even if you normalize the data against the larger market. The growth hasn't been there. So any misstep by MS in Ray Ozzie's new world could conceivably be quickly and severely punished by the market.
Microsoft faces a far greater challenge, how to undo the existing, traditional, established model of delivery, upon which their stock price is dependent, while moving to a new, untested, difficult to assess, impossible to value model.
Google, on the other hand, has neatly sidestepped the issue by giving software away, creating an entire universe where its okay to use live customers as beta testers (nay, they actually leave billable products as beta for years and years), and they have the quick ability to make/undo changes to code, even on the new apps that allow for offline content, since your endusers are likely to realize that downloading the latest version is a Good Thing To Do.
If Microsoft were go come out with a eighth-baked product like Google Spreadsheets and actually sell it to business customers, they'd be crucified (see Windows ME and Vista, in fact). Google does it and the world cheers, and a good chunk of the geeks download it, play with it, and help make it better. For free.
The System Tray would end up filling most of my dual monitors with all the crap Microsoft will inevitably find "necessary" to run the OS, leaving me with a small, 640x480 patch and approximately 640k for applications.
Well, if you want to get into a pissing contest, we can.
I worked as an Engineer for a major cable provider for years. I have installed modems, drops, Cisco ONS Fiber equipment, worked on Cisco CMTS's, installed Gigabit Fiber Optic networks, maintained DNS, Mail, and Web Servers for cable customers, done tech support, and many other things.
I have also been a Director at 3 different regional ISP's, responsible 100% for operations and security for up to 150k customers, with 25 people in 4 states directly reporting to me. I've installed modems, DSL, T1's, T3's, OC3's, phone equipment, PBX's, Linux, Unix, and Windows Servers, and I've supported it all.
As far as bandwidth being free, I think you are badly mistaken. That's at best an infantile fantasy.
Let's talk about your home network. "Bandwidth" might be free, but I'm guessing you spent a chunk of change on wiring, 802.x cards, Ethernet cards, a Router and/or switch, plus the PC(s) to actually do something with your free bandwidth. You also spend (spent) time installing and supporting that equipment. When a card or piece of equipment goes bad, you have to spend money to replace it, and time.
Hardly free.
As far as your estimate for supporting the Local Access channels, how much did it cost you to put in the feed? Those channels are *NOT* supplied on dishes. In my system, we had to install fiber to several of the local municipalities. At approximately $8/foot (inclusive) to install, that was, by no stretch of the imagination, free. And when the lines get cut, getting a fiber splicer out there costs a chunk of change. Or when someone at the far end screws something up and you have to send a tech out to fix it. Oh, and you forgot to factor in the time your NOC spends monitoring such feeds, which is a real cost, however fractional.
You also apparently live/work in a system where there is a very minimal number of municipalities with franchises. In the core system where I live, there are over 100 municipalities, each with a separate franchise agreement. There are also 3 counties (where those municipalities reside) that negotiate separately. So we had to maintain many different LO channels, and also split the system geographically to provide the correct channels to the correct areas. Even though every franchise didn't provide an LO channel, many of them did.
Let me tell you, that wasn't free.
You also seem to forget that if that (those) channel(s) were freed up, that would give the cable company the opportunity to provide however many digital channels. For instance, where I live some of the non-American populations would give body parts to get foreign programming. A single tier of Indian/Bosnian programming would probably give my local cable company thousands of subscribers for premium content, just in my local system. My Indian co-worker pays a boatload of money (I think its about $50/month) for Indian channels on satellite. If the cable company fired up a foreign tier, he'd switch in a second. So the lost revenue, while somewhat nebulous, is a real factor as well.
None of this is "free", as you try to make it out to be.
As far as my calculation, I'd invite you to look up the word "upstream" as it pertains to a cable system and DOCSIS.
So, which is it? Will it work in the real world, or won't it? It won't, unless the FCC or Congress has the guts to dictate to some of the most powerful media companies in the world that they should lose revenue by not being able to force cable providers to keep crap channels that still generate revenue.
You seem to be mistaking geek nirvana for reality. You are entirely correct in one thing: the cable companies won't suffer from being able to add a la carte pricing. My guess is that they will welcome it. But compared to TW, Disney, and NBC/Universal, the cable companies are small fish, and money talks.
Finally, I don't know where you live, but my cable system has crammed every open channel/mhz on the system with programming
I never claimed a la carte wouldn't solve the problem. However, the fact that we don't have a la carte right now is not a decision that the cable companies have made, and it is most certainly not a decision that they have the ability to make. The only solution I can see is complete regulation. Once everything goes digital, they only solution would be for the FCC or Congress to dictate to *EVERYONE* (Cable, Satellite, Fiber) that everyone gets a la carte pricing. However, from the perspective of the middle-men (Cable, Satellite, Telco's) that effectively makes them nothing more than a pipe for media. At that moment, Big Media will control everything, and be able to dictate everything. This might be bad (think: instead of 5 crappy ESPN channels you can now subscribe to 50) or it might be good (think: independent media gets boost in providing specialized, interesting content, much as musical independents are starting to do without record labels).
Personally, I'm not optimistic that the Media companies have the intelligence to take advantage of this or that they give a crap about such things.
It will be interesting, however, to watch. Probably with horror-filled eyes at the atrocities forced on us.
Perhaps. But then, it will also allow the cable companies to provide better services and to slice those services much, much more finely for the endusers. It seems as if you've made the assumption that the cable companies want to provide crap. They really don't. They want to provide the best services that their customers want so they can bill for them and everyone is happy. For every crap service that is foisted on them, they end up losing something.
And as far as requiring a tuner for HD content, that has *NOTHING* to do with the cable companies. You can transmit data without a modem, too. But the bandwidth sucks and the cost goes up. If you don't believe me, then compare the cost of sending a CD to your friend by Fed-Ex versus ripping it to MP3 and emailing it. That's technology. You can get a dialup connection for what, $9.99 a month, maybe less? Versus paying $12-40 for DSL or Cable? You get what you pay for.
I never claimed cable would be open. However, placing blame solely with the cable companies for this issue shows a complete lack of information and understanding of how the system works.
You're missing the point entirely. If the media providers have the power, by way of forcing the cable companies into a contract to have the right to carry the necessary channels by bundling them, the cable providers and satellite providers lose any negotiating ability. Since this is unregulated, the cable companies *CANNOT* change the contracts, or even negotiate better ones. They have been placed into a position of no power here.
As you poined out, if *ALL* the providers did this at once, it would work. Unfortunately, they all have different contracts, and different expirations, so the first to do it would lose. Let's say Comcast decides to strongarm Disney, and ends up losing ESPN and Disney. What do you really think will happen? The satellite provider is damn near guaranteed to pick up thousands (if not many, many more) customers. Do you think that the direct competitors in a market will do this?
Now, you think bandwidth is free? Baloney. And it doesn't happen at cost. The cable provider ends up providing all the equipment, the fiber lines, head end equipment, and ends up maintenancing the entire operation. You don't really think that a local mayoral office pays for these things, do you? Not only that, but each analog Local Access Channel costs the cable company 6mz of bandwidth on the system. That's the equivalent a second channel for cable modems, doubling capacity for data. And since most big cities have multiple analog Local Access channels (mine has 3 on analog), thats a huge cost in terms of service that could go to other things.
Bandwidth is *NOT* free. It never will be. Especially in a scenario where there are limits to the system. A cable system has 1000mhz of bandwidth to transmit. Take our 50mhz for upstream, and then start factoring in required services and you end up chewing through that bandwidth quite quickly.
There is more to a la carte channel selection than simply the will of the Cable Co's themselves.
The reality is that the bulk of programming costs for the cable company are directly attributable to a few companies, such as Disney, HBO, etc.
First, you have to understand how pricing for channels from the channel owners is done. Its done based on volume, usually negotiated per head. When Disney and a provider (doesn't matter is its cable or satellite) negotiate a contract, they end up with a per-consumer cost that the cable company pays to carry the channel.
There are two reasons that more than 50% of the channels are complete crap.
1) The really crappy ones are so low cost that they have a negligible effect on the consumer. Channels provided by the non-big companies fall in this category. The one that comes to mind is the Christian Broadcast Network, which only cost pennies per month to the cable companies.
2) The bundle effect. In order to sell advertising, the big media providers (Disney, etc.) want to have as many channels as possible carried, preferably the ones that are in the starter bundles. Therefore, you get at least 3-5 ESPN channels. Unfortunately, none of the cable (or satellite) providers have any negotiating ability here at all. This is unregulated territory, so Disney will just sit back on its haunches and say, "You want ESPN? Guess what...you have to also put ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and ESPN Sports Nobody Cares About" in your Basic Tier.
Do you really think that a local cable provider will be able to refuse? So Disney ends up with a fairly significant portion of channels, which means they get to sell more ad revenue, and build up aftermarket sales of DVD's and paraphenalia.
The cable company is damned if they don't, effectively. They can't negotiate, as there isn't much choice about carrying Disney Channel and ESPN.
So, because of these contractual agreements, the cable companies *CANNOT* unbundle channels, at least in any meaningful way. Because there are only a handful of meaningful channels provided by a handful of extremely large companies, unbundling would, at best, mean having a Disney group, a TimeWarner group, etc. And the big media conglomerates will *NEVER* allow this. If they did, it would eat into their already shrinking ad revenues so fast the shareholders might explode.
So, not to defend the cable companies, but this matter is one that is largely unregulated, and the cable companies are unable to win the battle. While this isn't the only factor (certainly the cable companies want to charge you as much as possible for as many tiers of service as possible), it is one of the biggest. Remember, the highest margins for the cable companies are in the in-house services they control: data, phone, etc. When they have to pay per subscriber (or per event, such as On-Demand or PPV) they don't make nearly as much as they do for services they control.
Remember, also, that some channels *ARE* regulated by government, especially local access channels (my system carries 3-4 of them, I think). This is a huge waste of bandwidth that the cable companies are contractually obligated to provide in order to get local franchises. Again, crap. A waste of resources. But the cable company has no choice but to spend a ton of money and bandwidth to meet these obligations.
The future of cable is obviously to move to digital only services. I know of one small cable company that is actively looking to migrate to PacketCable exclusively, which means that they would deliver everything via packets, rather than channels. The minute the FCC lets the cable companies drop Analog services, expect this to happen quickly.
However, its unfair to only blame the Cable Co's. The Big Media is as much to blame if not more than anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to run regional ISP's for a living (~150k users in multiple states). As an ISP, we had "cloud" infrastructure before it was cool. Among other things we had high speed internet connections, PRI connections, and vendor outsourced dial-up pools. As the head of technology for these companies, I was unable to see anything past my router interface (except incoming traffic, of course). When the T-1 to a customer crashed, there was absolutely nothing I could do except make good and damn well sure it wasn't a hardware issue. If my dial-up lines were down, all I could do was, well, make good and damn well sure it wasn't my hardware at fault.
This problem is nothing new. What's new is scale, and in a way that is unprecedented. Back in the day we had T-3's and multiple PRI's, and, at the end, an OC-3, but that was about the extent of it. However, when managing "the cloud", you're talking about the network backbone, along with servers, storage, and who all knows what else. In other words, at the hardware level, you're damn near blind.
What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait...
Even back then it was complex. My survival tactic was to learn how to make the guys at the other end of the telephone lines believe I worked for them when I called. That, and be really nice to the ones who could actually solve a problem and get their cell phone numbers (and Norm, if you're out there, thank you for your home phone number!).
As someone stated earlier, the "cloud" is that part of the Visio network diagram where you have no idea what the #@$& is going on or what the @#$* it is running on, and you have zero level of visibility to it. Hence, the term "cloud".
I spent many sleepless nights talking to Cisco's help desk in Australia and waiting in a queue at the RBOC's office to solve a problem I knew without a shadow of a doubt was not mine. (Except the one time it was, but that guy was pistol-whipped, sock-partied, and sacked. And then re-sacked to make sure.) I can't imagine how anyone over a decade later figures outsourcing *MORE* could be a fantastic career move, especially when the technology behind it isn't really all that old. At least OC-3's, PRI's, and T-3's had at least a decade of real-world use when I was doing it. Doing it on unknown code with vendors who can't possibly have more than a few years of experience? I don't think so.
Bill
is the fact that we are beginning to accept the term "app" as a distinctly different category/delivery method of software, rather than whatever poor comparisons/facts of the original story. We are now getting to the point where Steam/ITunes/et cetera et al. have become a distinct category of media, even though each one is an "app" in the original sense of the word.
Seems to me that this trend is essentially inevitable, whether it's the game industry or any other category of computer software. Simply put, not having to create, manufacture, and distribute physical media is cheaper, faster, and easier for everyone, and as the percentage of people with acceptable "broadband" speeds (which is pretty low, because it's very likely you'd put up with a 6 hour download of a big game in the background) increases, the drive to move away from physical media benefits everyone.
So, move along, no real story here, just some journalist looking to get paid by the word to repeat the obvious.
You know, I scanned the first 75 replies or so and I cannot recall a single one being from someone who actually claimed to have a kid in a school. So here's my take on the situation, as someone who has had 5 kids in school.
1) This isn't news. This has been going on for a long time now, as school districts strive to stop handling money. As a parent, I would *FAR* rather write a check every few months (or, better yet, this year they take Paypal!) to pay for my kids lunches, than try to find the exact damn change every day for my six year old.
2) I have a child who has struggled with weight issues from birth. Seeing as how she has two rail thin sisters (and they eat the same things), we have been working with her for about a year to emphasize better food choices and controlled portions. However, the simple fact is that schools do have choices in the cafeterias, especially starting in middle school. As such, I consider it a good tool for me to keep track of all my kids *SPENDING* and eating habits. I can tell if my high school freshman is guzzling down four packages of twinkies a day, or eating a real meal.
3) What, exactly, does anyone believe the schools will do with this information? They are already legally restricted in terms of dietary requirements (by state and federal regulation) and they are already legally restricted from divulging personal information of students. So, does anyone her seriously believe that they will start selling Hostess the names and eating habits of every child? Or that they will start writing contracts with companies simply to, what? Increase profit margins? Violate laws by bringing in unhealthy foods? Sorry, it won't happen.
I think that the bottom line here is that this really isn't a privacy violation. It's a tool to allow parents to control diet and spending of kids who might not be able to make the best decisions about such issues.
Bill
I'm the parent of 3 youngsters, and we go there all the time. Without a doubt it is one of the most engaging and fun places to take a kid in St. Louis. My kids play to exhaustion every time they go. As a matter of fact, so do I. We always comment (or hear people around us commenting) on how amazing it is that, considering the risk, they have the sort of place where nothing is off limits, and if you can get to it, you can go and climb on it and play on it. Is there danger? Yes, but you can drown in a bucket of water if you try hard enough, and the fun more than outweighs any problems.
I'm just amazed by how little the WSJ article actually said about the place, seeing as how they only mentioned 1/10 of the things you can do there. And they were incorrect about the big slide. It's actually about 9 stories tall, going from the 10th floor to the 1st. Bah, the state of journalism.
Anyway, cool place. Visit if you can.
I think you are over-simplifying this just a tad. While I agree with the general direction and ideas, there are two poignant facts that you seem to be overlooking in this.
First, every other universal health care system is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than the US. The ones that are continually compared to the US (particularly Britain and Canada) are much more manageable due to the much smaller size. I've been watching our government for years, and I cannot fathom the bureaucratic cock-ups that will inevitably occur in any system we may implement, whether its the current bill, or a public-option, or any other.
Second, based on current experience with both government run health systems, and with other entitlement programs (particularly Social Security), I have little faith that the US government (no matter who is in charge, they are both guilty) will manage to correctly run any implemented system. I have a lot of friends who are veterans, and without exception they all believe that the VA system is fundamentally broken. And look at the cock-up that is Medicare/Medicaid. Do you seriously believe that any government which has legally forgone it's right to negotiate prices (in the case of drugs) or that continually screws up procurement (google Medicare and powered wheel chair pricing) is in any way capable of running a health system of *ANY* sort? I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. Look at how the money taken for Social Security has been used as a slush fund for 50 years. Had it not, Social Security would in all likelihood be solvent today.
I'm sorry, but this isn't better than nothing, if only because the basic tenet, health care "reform" is false. We are not reforming health care. We're doing a backhanded deal with the insurance companies, who, by the way, are spending $1.4 million per day on lobbying and advertising. How much health care could $400 million dollars buy?
I have five kids, ranging from two college graduates to a kindergartner, and I am not at all surprised. At the risk of sounding like someone who sits on his front porch and reminisces about the good old days and walking uphill to school both ways, while waiting for kids to touch my property so I can yell at them, I firmly and insistently blame primary schools. Over the years, somehow, phonics has increased in teaching, encouraging kids to try and spell more complex words (which is fine), but does not in any way penalize them for misspelling or bad grammar. My 2nd grader routinely turns in papers with words that would be a challenge for a 6th grader, yet I don't see any red ink or corrections, telling them how to spell the word correctly. I can only attribute this three ways: 1) the teacher doesn't have the time to do it (WTF?!?!?) or 2) they don't want to actually make someone feel bad for messing up (WTF?!?!?) or 3) they just don't care. Probably a combination of all three. This is especially prevalent with my 8th grader, whose grammar is only corrected for English class, but anything else she turns in for any other class is remarkably devoid of red ink to correct spelling and grammar.
With a lack of consistent reinforcement of the basics in every class and in every setting, is it any wonder that the kids can't spell when they get to college? I recall getting points marked down in all my classes (including science classes) for misspellings, and I am stunned by the fact that somehow proper spelling and grammar is not considered something that anyone other than an English teacher should be concerned about when grading.
Recently, we allowed our teenager to get a Facebook account, with the proviso that we remain her friends and that we have access to the account. I reply to every post she makes abusively correcting her piss-poor grammar.
Any way you cut it, a consistent use of proper red ink would likely solve this issue quickly, even for high-school aged children who have learned bad habits.
Bill
1) Start Web 2.0 web site utilizing every buzzword you can find
2) Desparately woo users until you get large enough to matter
3) Sit down a year or more later to desperately figure out a revenue model
4) Provide Spammers a way to proliferate
5) Sue them!
6) PROFIT$$$$$$$
Not only that, but this also avoids the usual problem in Slashdot business plans in that there is no question marks in either steps 3 or 4.
Anyone got a good idea?
Remember, most piracy is reported by pissed off employees. In an effort to do the right thing, as other posters have pointed out, first inventory everything you can. Next, figure out the extent of the problem. Then go to your boss, or the owner, and let them know your concerns, as well as the legal ramifications. Do this in the best possible fashion for you, of course. And then let them know how much of a risk they are at, in terms of financial impact. All it takes in this environment (or any, for that matter) is one fired or layed off employee (yourself for instance, but I wouldn't mention that, all things being equal) to cost them far more in productivity, time, money, and embarassment than finding solutions.
The response should dictate your further actions. However, if worse comes to worse, you can always report them yourself, should they vindictively attack you over this.
Also keep in mind that the previous IT guy might very well be much better connected if he's still there. Do what you need to do to avoid embarrassment for all parties.
Bill
Documentation is critical to business success, no matter what the business. The reality is not about "protecting" your job or keeping the PHB's from mucking with things. The reality is that it may not be what you do, but what the other guy has in his head that is critical information for your business.
In other words, what happens when a critical employee has a heart attack, or gets hit by a bus. What do you do then? If everyone has their little piece in their head, no one else benefits, and the business overall loses. Or, even more simply, what happens when someone goes on vacation? Or when you go on vacation? Do you (or does the business) suffer because there isn't a way to replicate what that person does?
In this day and age, business processes are perhaps the most valuable thing a business owns. Knowledge can be learned, information can be looked up. But utilizing information in a business is *NOT* as simple as having that information. How information is applied to the business is the key. And documenting that information is the *ONLY* way to get it out of someone's head and into the general domain.
I've had this discussion recently both as part of my business (an IT Services vendor) and as part of my customers businesses. In every case the answer is the same. The processes are the most valuable asset for any company, no matter what the size or business. In fact, the smaller the business, the more valuable, because the likelihood is that in a smaller company there are more concentrations of knowledge, more key people who, if hit by the hypothetical bus, would take with them the day to day processes that run that business.
There are many ways to approach the problem. From embedding processes into a help desk program, to external solutions such as Wiki's, to professional programs that are specifically designed to collect knowledge, flowchart it, and also align it to your business processes.
One of the products that my company handles is specifically designed for this: aligning IT processes to business processes. While this is generally a new concept, and a tough sell, when you can map out what you do in your IT department, and also see the business reasons for why you do it, not to mention see the business impact if you don't do it, the value can be staggering. This is one of the greatest untapped barriers to IT becoming part of the larger business, and demonstrating its value. Far too often IT does things because they need doing, but they don't understand how what they do affects the business, or what value their day-to-day activities actually have in the larger business. And the reverse holds true as well: the business doesn't understand how their needs and requests impact IT, or why they cannot simply "make a wish" and have things their way.
Control of your business processes is the single best way to ensure that IT is doing things the right way for the business, and to clearly demonstrate the value (monetary and otherwise) of their jobs to the PHB's and accountants and other ickey people on the business side.
Documenting processes might be the best way to protect yourself, and save yourself grief. Its only a very narrow and stupid point of view that sees this as being a way to protect themselves, and make themselves "valuable" to the business.
Bill
Its very simple, really, and there is nothing sinister or state-regularted about it (which, in some minds, might be the same thing...
Charter grew up like every other cable provider: acquisition. Cable franchises are granted on a city (or county) by city (or county) basis. In other words, Charter (or a company it acquired) negotiated at some point with the municipalities in question and bought the rights to provide service.
So, they bought those cities.
Note that rural areas are generally much cheaper for a cable company to expand into. Two reasons: one, franchises are cheaper, because of the lower number of potential subscribers, and two, in a rural area the costs associated with building a system are *RADICALLY* cheaper. For instance, in the county of Charters HQ (St. Louis, County, Missouri) the average cost per foot (inclusive) to lay fiber is about $8/foot. (Okay, this was the cost in 2002, but it will suffice for this discussion.) However, if you across the river from St. Louis, into Southern Illinois (also Charter territory) the cost per foot averages about $2 per foot. (also 2002 figures). In other words, a sparsely populated, more rural or rural area *CAN* be a cheap acquisition and buildout for a provider. Obviously, this is dependent on simple cost-ratios, and there will come a point where an area is simply too underpopulated to cost-effectively support.
Also, you have to look at Charter's history to understand why they have lots of rural populations under their belts. The original founders, headed up by Jery Kent, all lived in rural areas of Missouri. When Paul Allen bought into the company, he had completely and totally bought into the "wired world" concept. As a result, between the founders (who desparately wanted service in areas nearly and hour from the edges of St. Louis), Jerry Kent, and the relative cheapness of such systems, there was a gold-rush mentality on these outlying systems that no one wanted.
So Charter ended up in lots of smaller systems and areas.
Not necessarily a bad business plan, just one they screwed up with some unrelated decisions much later.
Bill
Quote: "If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia," he said."Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?"
I don't know...maybe that's because a few hundred million people visit Wikipedia every year, and maybe because someone like me, who remembers when Lynx was the only web browser available, has never actually gone to Brittanica's website? Just maybe? Perhaps if they resolved their rectal-cranial inversion and made an accessible, easy to use, accurate product their PageRank might improve?
Bill
You know, as much as we've heard about the auto industry in the last few months, and their ailments, as well as endless ad nauseam fixes, there are a few things that *NOBODY* wants to talk about here, at least no one involved.
First off, tage a gander at CAFE regulations, or the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards set by the EPA in the US. This is something which, of course, was instituted after the Oil Crisis in 1972. In theory, its a nice noble set of standards for regulating better fuel economy in the US.
Now, in spite of the fact that these standards are something of a joke (they haven't changed a bit since 1992, and have only been increased a grand whopping total of 9.5 MPG since they were instituted over 30 years ago), there are a few peculiarities in the enforcement of these which, I think, are specifically causing or have caused the problems the Big 3 face today, and, in fact, were specifically caused by Congress and the Clinton Administration.
Now, buried within these standards is a little rule called the Two Fleet Rule. Essentially, what it says is that the foriegn produced cars imported by a company to the US are a different "fleet" from the domestically produced cars. It goes further to say that, in fact, if a car company (by default the Big 3) want to be considered "domestic" producers that the cars they produce in the US are, in fact, the only ones that count for their inclusion in the CAFE regulations.
Now, this has some nasty side effects, the biggest being that, in order to be considered "domestic" car producers, the Big 3 were actually forced to manufacture all of their vehicles in the US, regardless of whether or not they could actually afford to sell said vehicles at a profit. In other words, this "2 Fleet Fule" was a very specific sop directly to the Auto Unions and forced the Big 3 to produce and sell their economy cars a loss for 2 decades. Not only that, but since they were actually losing money on a huge percentage of sales, they were forced to concentrate production on the most profitable lines, namely SUV's and Minivans. Which worked great, sort of, for a decade or so. Until the public decided that a) gas was too expensive to spend in a gas guzzling vehicle, and b) the enviroment matters.
So, a downturn in large vehicle sales causes a double whammy against the Big 3, in that they can't afford not to make them, and the fact that they still have to produce a significant amount of small vehicles to sell at a loss since they can't make a profit anyway. Not only that, but they can't make a profit on increased sales of economically viable vehicles as those were already selling at a loss...
Sucks to be them.
So we need to blame government, specifically the Democrats but I believe the measure had decent bi-partisan support, for this mess. By giving a few people job security, they've endangered the well being of an entire industry.
Oh, and these are the same people we're trusting to solve the mess...
What could possibly go wrong?
Bill
The problem with your assumption is that you obviously don't understand bottom line costs to company. Most small companies that I have worked with/for have very tight margins on their products. As this guy said "blue collar", lets assume its manufacturing or something similar.
A manufacturing company is unlikely to make 5% profit on sales. But lets be really generous and say they make 25%.
Lets assume there are 5 developers, and the only thing the company will pay for is the console. (This is patently untrue, but I'll get to that in a moment).
So, minimum outlay is $1000 dollars. Which means that the company has to recoup $4000 in sales just to cover the cost of the consoles.
This is a bottom line hit. Its a ridiculous use of money in a budget that could likely be spent in better places.
Not only that, but its likely that there will, at some point, be a productivity hit directly related to the consoles. I can't imagine a developer worth anything that can't in some way disable/scam the monitoring software. So if they slack off, their salary is also a bottom line hit to the company.
Of course you're next argument will be that they are likely working overtime and such, which is likely (although not certain) to be free, as they might be salaried. However, if others are working that overtime, and the overtime directly affects productivity, this is effectively time that benefits the company in product and revenue, which, again they must make by selling 4x the amount of product completely on top of what they already sell.
In other words extraneous hits to the budget can have a dramatic affect on profitability, with little or no demonstrable gain to the company.
And please don't throw out the strawman on this one: that the company shouldn't expect its employees to work free overtime. That may or may not be right or wrong, but if that's part of their job, its happening and arguing about the morality and ethics of such things won't change the reality on the ground.
And I won't even go into litigation costs if someone sues over the myriad number of issues this would raise in a company.
Bill
Okay, I've been in IT a while, and I know plenty of developers. I'm unaware of a developer "Needing" a console at his desk in order to do his job, unless he happens to be a game developer on that console.
That being said, you mentioned this was a blue collar company.
How long, roughly, do you really think it will take for the rest of the company to find out that their co-workers are being paid to play games? I guarantee you, I'd be *PISSED* if I found out one department had the company paying for time (whether salaried or not) that was spent on games. Imagine what happens when Joe Plumber (insert favorite and/or appropriate profession here) finds out? How long before one of your developers brags about it to someone outside the department?
Not only that, but a console per person? Are you kiddng? Assuming its a modern console, that's at a minimum $199/person. That's a lot of money. Are you buying them games, too? If one dies, are you going to be spending time and money to send it in for warrantly repairs? How about 2 days after warranty runs out? You got budget to repair/replace? How about when the controller breaks? You payin' for that?
You buying the games, too?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about making the workplace fun. How about you buy one console and put it in a common area, and maybe give the "blue collar" guys one in their lunchroom, too? If someone is gone from their cubicle for 4 hours a day, should be obvious, right? Less money spent, more accountability.
Or, and here's a crazy idea, I know, how about you expect them to actually work 8 hours a day since they get paid 8 hours a day and let them blow off steam in other ways. You could just give it to them to take home. Or have after hours lan parties or console parties. Go to a bar.
Bottom line, you are not just asking for trouble, you've actually gone out, started blasting its mating call at the top of your lungs, and smeared its favorite food all over your body and genitalia while naked. This is a half-baked idea at best that won't last very long, for a variety of reasons.
Bill
I have to agree. Having played video games from Pong all the way until today, I now play many games for the world experience, rather than the body count or difficulty. I mainly play FPS's, but after umpteem Quake and Doom clones, the whole difficulty thing wears thin. In most games, this is simply a matter of shooting a little better, or twitching a bit more, to take down more enemies. It gets old after a while.
Now, lately I've gone back and replayed or collected all the classics I've missed over the years. Deus Ex, HL, HL2, System Shock 1 & 2, RTCW. All of these games have so much more to do and offer than *SEE* than Doom, or Quake. I spent hours exploring in these games. Heck, even Painkiller and Serious Sam had aspects that went beyond the carnage. They were fun to explore, to try and find the hidden areas, to play around in.
For their times, they each brought something to the table beyond just the killing, even as the games were, in some respects, about the killing.
You have to give kudos especially to games where difficulty is also about resources and allocation. SS1, 2, and Deus Ex brought that element to the table, and made playing the game enjoyable even on low difficulty by making ammo less infinite, and allowing choices to modify the outcome.
There are plenty of examples out there where other elements, be they RPG elements or intelligently designed and properly utilized puzzles, or even spectacular level design have contributed to enjoyable game play and replayability without the need to just swarm you with numbers.
First off, I was running ISP's back in the 90's, and even then my dynamic pools for Radius were bigger than a /24, unless the location was a tiny remote dial up. Nowadays, there probably is no large ISP assigning single /24's for dynamic IP addressing. Heck, /20, /19, and even /18 are being used by my ISP, a large cable provider. I haven't asked anyone there lately, but I'm betting they have bigger pools than that.
Now, if you have a static block, that's different, but if we're talking about the masses in general, the number of possibilities are going to be larger than 1 in 253, and if you also consider DHCP timeouts, the possibilities become even larger.
This sounds a bit like alarmism, and the author apparently doesn't bother to map any of this into actual real-world.
So, let me get this straight:
6.5 million people connections.
Let's just say that, on average, people are paying $15US per connection per month.
That would be $97,500,000 per month in lost revenue to the broadband industry, or a cool $1,170,000,000 per year in lost revenue.
Uh huh. Go on, then, pull the other one.
How long until someone comes up with a way to completely anonymize P2P applications? Or someone comes up with the next way of doing this that is almost, but not entirely, unlike current P2P apps?
I'm amazed that *ANYONE* in the broadband industry is giving credence to the BPI and RIAA and MPAA. They can't afford that kind of subscriber loss, or revenue loss.
You know, I've been a computer user for almost 30 years now. During my first exposure to personal computers, there were guys copying VIC-20 tapes to pirate software. During the 80's, all kinds of software companies devised copy protection schemes to keep pirates from copying software. During the 90's, even more elaborate ruses were used, including hardware dongles, hardware locking, network checking for multiple instances of the same serial number. We've had encryption, DPI, and everything else thrown at the problem.
Nothing has worked. How long are companies going to continue to try to "stop" piracy, when it simply doesn't work. There might be one or two instances of copy protection working, but they are few and far between. It seems that the copyright watchdogs have decided to beat other peoples heads on a brick wall rather than their own, but it still won't work. This elaborate game of "whack-a-mole" is senseless, idiotic, and ends up hurting everyone.
And it will solve nothing.
It'd be sad if it weren't just so downright pathetic.
Ummm...you obviously haven't bothered to actually read or find out a single fact about this case, have you?
I'll lay out the really pertinent facts. You're welcome to find out more on your own.
The woman was severely burned. Initially, she asked McD's for $20k to cover medical expenses for her medical treatments. McD's refused to even talk to her.
Here's the kicker: the coffee at McD's (not just that one, but every single one, as they all operate under the guidance of the corporate office, and had the same coffee makers) was found to be keeping coffee *FAR* above a reasonably hot temperature. This was corporate policy. McDonalds had a policy to keep coffee between 180 and 190 degrees, which is not too terribly far from boiling.
She had 3rd Degree burns, as well as severe 2nd degree burns, and spent over a week in the hospital and required skin grafts.
There was also over 700 reports of burns due to the temperature of McDonalds coffee in the decade preceeding this incident. McDonalds had actually settled with many of these, to the tune of over $500k paid.
It was also testified that drinking McD's coffee at the time given to the customer at that temperature would burn *ANYONE'S* mouth. I find this to be true today, although its rumored that in the time since the lawsuit, McD's has again jacked temperatures.
So, lets see: serving a substance you know can cause 3rd degree burns, where you have a decade of claims arising from the practice, refusing a request (which you had granted to *MANY* others) for covering of legitimate medical expenses.
If you actually read the facts of the case, you'll see that the media coverage has omitted most of the pertinent facts on this case. McD's deserved what they got. They should have choked up the $20k and been done with it.
I don't know about you, but I don't like to drink coffee that can give me 3rd degree burns.
Yes, actually, it does. And it has nothing to do with technical prowess.
Right now Microsoft is making their money as a box mover. They create physical products, and then sell them to people. This is currently the way that they have become one of the largest corporations on earth. This entire model is predicated on a very traditional method of utilizing the channel (distributors, resellers, direct sales, etc.)
This one nasty fact has created a huge boondogle for Microsoft. In order to keep their share price where its at, they need to keep moving product. In order to move to a different meshed network, or online/offline model, there is a very real possibility that Microsoft will end up cannabalizing its own products. Not only that, but there is the very real possibility that such a product, in the face of a competitor with equal or better name recognition, will fail.
For the last 5-7 years, Microsoft stock has not exactly prospered, even if you normalize the data against the larger market. The growth hasn't been there. So any misstep by MS in Ray Ozzie's new world could conceivably be quickly and severely punished by the market.
Microsoft faces a far greater challenge, how to undo the existing, traditional, established model of delivery, upon which their stock price is dependent, while moving to a new, untested, difficult to assess, impossible to value model.
Google, on the other hand, has neatly sidestepped the issue by giving software away, creating an entire universe where its okay to use live customers as beta testers (nay, they actually leave billable products as beta for years and years), and they have the quick ability to make/undo changes to code, even on the new apps that allow for offline content, since your endusers are likely to realize that downloading the latest version is a Good Thing To Do.
If Microsoft were go come out with a eighth-baked product like Google Spreadsheets and actually sell it to business customers, they'd be crucified (see Windows ME and Vista, in fact). Google does it and the world cheers, and a good chunk of the geeks download it, play with it, and help make it better. For free.
Bill
The System Tray would end up filling most of my dual monitors with all the crap Microsoft will inevitably find "necessary" to run the OS, leaving me with a small, 640x480 patch and approximately 640k for applications.
Well, if you want to get into a pissing contest, we can.
I worked as an Engineer for a major cable provider for years. I have installed modems, drops, Cisco ONS Fiber equipment, worked on Cisco CMTS's, installed Gigabit Fiber Optic networks, maintained DNS, Mail, and Web Servers for cable customers, done tech support, and many other things.
I have also been a Director at 3 different regional ISP's, responsible 100% for operations and security for up to 150k customers, with 25 people in 4 states directly reporting to me. I've installed modems, DSL, T1's, T3's, OC3's, phone equipment, PBX's, Linux, Unix, and Windows Servers, and I've supported it all.
As far as bandwidth being free, I think you are badly mistaken. That's at best an infantile fantasy.
Let's talk about your home network. "Bandwidth" might be free, but I'm guessing you spent a chunk of change on wiring, 802.x cards, Ethernet cards, a Router and/or switch, plus the PC(s) to actually do something with your free bandwidth. You also spend (spent) time installing and supporting that equipment. When a card or piece of equipment goes bad, you have to spend money to replace it, and time.
Hardly free.
As far as your estimate for supporting the Local Access channels, how much did it cost you to put in the feed? Those channels are *NOT* supplied on dishes. In my system, we had to install fiber to several of the local municipalities. At approximately $8/foot (inclusive) to install, that was, by no stretch of the imagination, free. And when the lines get cut, getting a fiber splicer out there costs a chunk of change. Or when someone at the far end screws something up and you have to send a tech out to fix it. Oh, and you forgot to factor in the time your NOC spends monitoring such feeds, which is a real cost, however fractional.
You also apparently live/work in a system where there is a very minimal number of municipalities with franchises. In the core system where I live, there are over 100 municipalities, each with a separate franchise agreement. There are also 3 counties (where those municipalities reside) that negotiate separately. So we had to maintain many different LO channels, and also split the system geographically to provide the correct channels to the correct areas. Even though every franchise didn't provide an LO channel, many of them did.
Let me tell you, that wasn't free.
You also seem to forget that if that (those) channel(s) were freed up, that would give the cable company the opportunity to provide however many digital channels. For instance, where I live some of the non-American populations would give body parts to get foreign programming. A single tier of Indian/Bosnian programming would probably give my local cable company thousands of subscribers for premium content, just in my local system. My Indian co-worker pays a boatload of money (I think its about $50/month) for Indian channels on satellite. If the cable company fired up a foreign tier, he'd switch in a second. So the lost revenue, while somewhat nebulous, is a real factor as well.
None of this is "free", as you try to make it out to be.
As far as my calculation, I'd invite you to look up the word "upstream" as it pertains to a cable system and DOCSIS.
So, which is it? Will it work in the real world, or won't it? It won't, unless the FCC or Congress has the guts to dictate to some of the most powerful media companies in the world that they should lose revenue by not being able to force cable providers to keep crap channels that still generate revenue.
You seem to be mistaking geek nirvana for reality. You are entirely correct in one thing: the cable companies won't suffer from being able to add a la carte pricing. My guess is that they will welcome it. But compared to TW, Disney, and NBC/Universal, the cable companies are small fish, and money talks.
Finally, I don't know where you live, but my cable system has crammed every open channel/mhz on the system with programming
I never claimed a la carte wouldn't solve the problem. However, the fact that we don't have a la carte right now is not a decision that the cable companies have made, and it is most certainly not a decision that they have the ability to make. The only solution I can see is complete regulation. Once everything goes digital, they only solution would be for the FCC or Congress to dictate to *EVERYONE* (Cable, Satellite, Fiber) that everyone gets a la carte pricing. However, from the perspective of the middle-men (Cable, Satellite, Telco's) that effectively makes them nothing more than a pipe for media. At that moment, Big Media will control everything, and be able to dictate everything. This might be bad (think: instead of 5 crappy ESPN channels you can now subscribe to 50) or it might be good (think: independent media gets boost in providing specialized, interesting content, much as musical independents are starting to do without record labels).
Personally, I'm not optimistic that the Media companies have the intelligence to take advantage of this or that they give a crap about such things.
It will be interesting, however, to watch. Probably with horror-filled eyes at the atrocities forced on us.
Bill
Perhaps. But then, it will also allow the cable companies to provide better services and to slice those services much, much more finely for the endusers. It seems as if you've made the assumption that the cable companies want to provide crap. They really don't. They want to provide the best services that their customers want so they can bill for them and everyone is happy. For every crap service that is foisted on them, they end up losing something.
And as far as requiring a tuner for HD content, that has *NOTHING* to do with the cable companies. You can transmit data without a modem, too. But the bandwidth sucks and the cost goes up. If you don't believe me, then compare the cost of sending a CD to your friend by Fed-Ex versus ripping it to MP3 and emailing it. That's technology. You can get a dialup connection for what, $9.99 a month, maybe less? Versus paying $12-40 for DSL or Cable? You get what you pay for.
I never claimed cable would be open. However, placing blame solely with the cable companies for this issue shows a complete lack of information and understanding of how the system works.
Bill
You're missing the point entirely. If the media providers have the power, by way of forcing the cable companies into a contract to have the right to carry the necessary channels by bundling them, the cable providers and satellite providers lose any negotiating ability. Since this is unregulated, the cable companies *CANNOT* change the contracts, or even negotiate better ones. They have been placed into a position of no power here.
As you poined out, if *ALL* the providers did this at once, it would work. Unfortunately, they all have different contracts, and different expirations, so the first to do it would lose. Let's say Comcast decides to strongarm Disney, and ends up losing ESPN and Disney. What do you really think will happen? The satellite provider is damn near guaranteed to pick up thousands (if not many, many more) customers. Do you think that the direct competitors in a market will do this?
Now, you think bandwidth is free? Baloney. And it doesn't happen at cost. The cable provider ends up providing all the equipment, the fiber lines, head end equipment, and ends up maintenancing the entire operation. You don't really think that a local mayoral office pays for these things, do you? Not only that, but each analog Local Access Channel costs the cable company 6mz of bandwidth on the system. That's the equivalent a second channel for cable modems, doubling capacity for data. And since most big cities have multiple analog Local Access channels (mine has 3 on analog), thats a huge cost in terms of service that could go to other things.
Bandwidth is *NOT* free. It never will be. Especially in a scenario where there are limits to the system. A cable system has 1000mhz of bandwidth to transmit. Take our 50mhz for upstream, and then start factoring in required services and you end up chewing through that bandwidth quite quickly.
Bill
There is more to a la carte channel selection than simply the will of the Cable Co's themselves.
The reality is that the bulk of programming costs for the cable company are directly attributable to a few companies, such as Disney, HBO, etc.
First, you have to understand how pricing for channels from the channel owners is done. Its done based on volume, usually negotiated per head. When Disney and a provider (doesn't matter is its cable or satellite) negotiate a contract, they end up with a per-consumer cost that the cable company pays to carry the channel.
There are two reasons that more than 50% of the channels are complete crap.
1) The really crappy ones are so low cost that they have a negligible effect on the consumer. Channels provided by the non-big companies fall in this category. The one that comes to mind is the Christian Broadcast Network, which only cost pennies per month to the cable companies.
2) The bundle effect. In order to sell advertising, the big media providers (Disney, etc.) want to have as many channels as possible carried, preferably the ones that are in the starter bundles. Therefore, you get at least 3-5 ESPN channels. Unfortunately, none of the cable (or satellite) providers have any negotiating ability here at all. This is unregulated territory, so Disney will just sit back on its haunches and say, "You want ESPN? Guess what...you have to also put ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and ESPN Sports Nobody Cares About" in your Basic Tier.
Do you really think that a local cable provider will be able to refuse? So Disney ends up with a fairly significant portion of channels, which means they get to sell more ad revenue, and build up aftermarket sales of DVD's and paraphenalia.
The cable company is damned if they don't, effectively. They can't negotiate, as there isn't much choice about carrying Disney Channel and ESPN.
So, because of these contractual agreements, the cable companies *CANNOT* unbundle channels, at least in any meaningful way. Because there are only a handful of meaningful channels provided by a handful of extremely large companies, unbundling would, at best, mean having a Disney group, a TimeWarner group, etc. And the big media conglomerates will *NEVER* allow this. If they did, it would eat into their already shrinking ad revenues so fast the shareholders might explode.
So, not to defend the cable companies, but this matter is one that is largely unregulated, and the cable companies are unable to win the battle. While this isn't the only factor (certainly the cable companies want to charge you as much as possible for as many tiers of service as possible), it is one of the biggest. Remember, the highest margins for the cable companies are in the in-house services they control: data, phone, etc. When they have to pay per subscriber (or per event, such as On-Demand or PPV) they don't make nearly as much as they do for services they control.
Remember, also, that some channels *ARE* regulated by government, especially local access channels (my system carries 3-4 of them, I think). This is a huge waste of bandwidth that the cable companies are contractually obligated to provide in order to get local franchises. Again, crap. A waste of resources. But the cable company has no choice but to spend a ton of money and bandwidth to meet these obligations.
The future of cable is obviously to move to digital only services. I know of one small cable company that is actively looking to migrate to PacketCable exclusively, which means that they would deliver everything via packets, rather than channels. The minute the FCC lets the cable companies drop Analog services, expect this to happen quickly.
However, its unfair to only blame the Cable Co's. The Big Media is as much to blame if not more than anyone else.
Bill