Re:A LAW FOR EUROPEAN DIESEL STANDARDS FOR US.
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An Inconvenient Truth
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· Score: 1
The key word there is "artificially". If the cost of fuel doubled, people would either adjust to the new cost or change their habits. I think we're in complete agreement on that point.
The cost of pollution is very low currently. Nobody gets a bill for their emissions. There are some costs such as research needed to produce cars that meet federal emissions guidelines that are passed on to the consumer. Overall, nobody pays for it directly, so making a case on economic grounds seems pointless. $0 times any other number is still $0.
Creating a rebate or voucher system would just change who is driving which cars, not how many of which kinds are on the roads. The thing that makes the whole idea irrational is that it is purely artificial. Given the choice between paying more (not even for a specific cause the way the government plays with budgets) or not doing that, the vast majority of people will choose not to. It's political suicide because it trades a very real cost for something that people think of as free. That's what makes the idea irrational.
I'd rather see sensible policies about our fuel reserves. Opening up our national reserves because the price of gas went up makes as little sense as another fuel tax. Either solution is catering to public opinion of a segment of society that chooses to eschew reality. In every other aspect of life, if supply decreases or demand increases, cost increases. That's the model of reality supported by the data. I'd rather see the reserves topped off and make everyone pay the actual cost for their fuel consumption. Reserves are for an emergency, and people being inconvenienced for poor decisions they made should not constitute an emergency. If the increased cost makes them choose to be more efficient, fine. If they choose to consume just as much at the increased cost, that's also fine.
Re:A LAW FOR EUROPEAN DIESEL STANDARDS FOR US.
on
An Inconvenient Truth
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· Score: 1
Thanks for illustrating my point. Proposals that ignore history and reality don't help.
I cited something I have done and continue to do to help the environment. It is counter productive to suggest an alternative that would lower emissions slightly while substantially raising the total cost of ownership. It's this kind of single issue thinking that makes people dismissive of environmental causes.
Taxing fuel to get SUV's off the road is irrational. Why not just vandalize all of the SUV's? If your goal is to harm people arbitrarily, you should at least be honest about it. When fuel prices go up, prices on goods go up. The stuff you buy costs more, but labor (ie, your paycheck) stays the same. This is a nuisance to the rich, but is effectively a pay cut to the poor. By the way, the poor don't have the option of buying a new car with lower emissions. They're the ones who buy whatever they can afford and have to pay whatever it costs for gas to feed it.
A wise man once said "the enemy of better is best." It's a good thing to keep in mind. When you put too much emphasis on the best, don't be surprised when you end up with exactly the same thing you had before.
The one thing I consistently see lacking from the "lets do something" crowd is specific, realistic recommendations of what to do. Too many of the recommendations I see are things like "pass a law". That never helps because it increases costs for those who choose to comply or gives an incentive to move manufacturing to countries without those laws. For a measure to be practical, it has to also be cost effective. Helping the environment sounds like a nice cause, but it's the kind of thing that can only appeal to those rich enough to make that decision. In order for something to work, it has to appeal to more than one group of people. Often times, it has to appeal to the people who oppose your cause.
For example, my wife and I drive Corolla's. They may not be as efficient as the Prius or Insight, but they are practical. They have good gas mileage (we have the manual transmission ones with better gas mileage) and have low emissions. Unlike the hybrids, the Corollas do not require you to substantially alter your driving habits or risk substantial repair costs when we finally find out what maintenance is needed on these after 10-20 years. Evidence(collected by observing cars on the road) suggests that a Corolla will be ugly in 10-20 years, but still be on the road. I don't know if that's true of the Prius and don't want to take that bet. All in all, it's a reliable car that sacrafices additional space we don't regularly need for getting good gas mileage and having low emissions. Relatively low costs for initial purchase, maintenance and feeding are all factors that appeal to a lot of people. The low emissions are there for those who care, and more importantly, for those who don't. Telling people what I've chosen and why for transportation is my small part of trying to help the environment.
People listen to the cool kids because they can relate to them on some level. Conversely, nerds don't relate well to people and believe that being right is enough. Most people have very short attention spans. If the argument in favor of your cause can't be made in one breath, it's too long to stick in the minds of the majority. No matter how many people will claim otherwise, the vast majority of people will vote for reduced cost. Any solution that claims some intangible help to the environment for an increased cost is a lost cause. Hoping for a miracle is a bad way to plan the future. I'd like to see less complaints about global warming and more stories about how someone did something positive for the environment and it didn't cost any more or maybe even saved them money. Those are kind the things that can resonate with people regardless of their stand on the environment and global warming.
A 747 could easily be deflected with BBs. The velocity and quantity of BBs is the most relevant factor. A billion BBs would deflect a 747 pretty easily. Or maybe just a handful of BBs at 2/3 the speed of light.
Retaining memories of when they were 5 is not cost effective.
Though, it is humorous when they pay someone to shoot them in the foot because it sounds cost effective if you lack of the common sense of a 5 year old.
I don't think a school could make it too realistic. To be realistic, the teams should have a manager (chosen by consensus or fiat doesn't really matter) and individuals should be able to switch teams as often as they want. This would allow a way for the bums to get fired or smart people to jump ship if their manager is the bum.
The bad part of this plan is that there would probably be 1 or 2 teams in a good year that complete the project, and the rest would be totally lost. It would be just like the real world where there are winners and losers, but it would never be allowed because it could hurt someone's self esteem.
I think I've written the program you're talking about a few times. I think those are the required code standards for any large organization. Though, I'm unfamiliar with this "maintenance" concept you speak of. Sure, that may work for free software where people do it for a reason other than short term profit, but in the outside world, forget it.
This is why I'm a consultant. I can know it's wrong and stupid and do it anyway, because it's what the client wants. Those fancy where and join clauses are nice and all, but the Big Ball of Mud design is the natural evolution of any project that has no direction at all when it's started. Would you believe that there was no indication until the project was done that there was a need for a where or join? It's hard to do more than keep going back with some code and asking "is this what you mean?" with a lot of people. Then, once you get something minimally passable through this kind of iterative process, you end up with no management support for actually doing the project since the prototype is the deliverable in their minds.
I've come to the conclusion that given the choice, business people will always chose the unmaintainable, pre-alpha kludge from hell. Sure, the horrible kludge will cost them a lot more in the long run, but a smart business person will have left and gone to another company before their short sighted decisions catch up with them. It's hard to get anyone in management for a publicly traded company to think past the current quarter. Of course, this is where being a consultant works in your favor. If they want to go back and fix it later, it's always more work to do it wrong, do it right, and do the conversion from the wrong to the right system than it is to just do it right the first time. I know a lot of people pull these scams for job security, but I actually recommend against doing something stupid. Sometimes, I wonder if other people are more concerned with keeping me around, so they want to ensure there is a neverending queue of work left to do.
If a coworker sees it and is offended, it can be considered sexual harassment, creating a hostile working environment, or any number of other whiny things that HR doesn't want to deal with.
In business, money is everything. 1 billion dollars is something that adversely affects the bottom line more than 500 million, making it a bad business decision. Speaking about the right thing is the easiest way to lose the attention of business people. Though, there are often other factors that can turn the right thing into a bottom line benefit. For example, avoiding damage to the company's reputation would be good for future contracts. Also, death and injury frequently cause new laws which could result in overcompensation for the original problem, bringing the cost to 10 billion + 500 million. There are ways to get through to the psychotic business people, but talking about doing the right thing will never be one of them.
I'd recommend that anyone who uses contractors have a long term plan as well. Contracting companies have an additional overhead of ~30% that doesn't help your company or the contractor. That may be an acceptable cost to have no real commitment to the person. Having individuals as contractors with no company inbetween runs the risk of the IRS ruling them to be employees, which is a headache no business wants.
There should be a very limited duration between when you bring on a contractor and when you cut them loose (filling temporary need or not working out). 6-12 months is a reasonable maximum. If you still need them and aren't willing to make them employees, there's something wrong. If you haven't made the decision that you definitely want to keep them in that time frame, you've made the deicsion that you don't, whether you admit it or not.
I'm in a situation where I've been a contractor for a large bank for almost 4 years and there's no way for them to replace me or convert me to a full time employee. They've offered FTE positions, but 60-80 hours/week instead of 40 at a 50+% paycut isn't what I'd consider a serious offer. It's good job security and good money for me, but it's a really bad deal for the company. If there is a short term need for me to put in additional time, they have to pay for all of that time. There's no way for them to offer the possibility for advancement, or other non-monetary incentives for taking on additional responsibilities. Not that I believe in any of these scams to get more work out of people for free, but it's just bad planning to put the company in a position where a critical team member has the same level of commitment to/from the organization as a very, very expensive post-it note.
Was "worst advice ever" meant to be a warning about the rest of the post?
The "you can work 80hr weeks instead" attitude is not a way to succeed. If you're demanding more from your people and they get nothing in return, some of them are going to leave. Hourly people who do get paid more for working more aren't all going to be interested in giving up all their free time to benefit the company. If people leave, that substantially increases the workload - not only do you have to take up the slack, but you also have to spend more time looking for a training a replacement. There are very few companies where you won't spend a significant portion of a new hire's time in training or getting up to speed for the first 3-6 months. This means that the person doesn't help relieve the workload for that period of time. In the worst case, the new person ends up taking more of other employees' time since they need to learn.
Hiring students to install software cheap is a reasonable interim measure, but it's hardly a long term plan. Setting up an automated software deployment infrastructure is important. Any software task that can be done by unskilled labor with minimal training can be automated. Automation improves scalability and accuracy. Accuracy is important since students may not realize when they skipped a step in the instructions they were given. Also, very few people are likely to bring it to someone's attention if they've messed up everything they've been doing this week because. Automation means consistency, which means if a mistake is made, it's been made everywhere, which means the solution can also be applied everywhere.
I'm glad there are people with enough free time to do this. My time is worth too much to me to bother. I have video games at home I haven't played enough. =)
However, I know that many companies will blatantly violate any law that is inconvenient if the cost of dealing with people like him is less than the perceived profit of recorded calls as a marketing channel. When no one does anything, it's practically like the law doesn't exist. If the law didn't exist, every company would use recordings - they're cheaper than telemarketers we know how common telemarketers are.
How do you differentiate between having access to do system administration and access to the data? In theory, you could store everything encrypted so that the sysadmin could backup and recover your data without ever having the ability to see it. In practice, this is not a practical solution. How many applications that normal people (non-geeks) use will encrypt their data by default? In my experience, it's approximately 0.
There are ways to mitigate against having to trust one person too much, like separating the server support from desktop support, etc. However, that only works in companies that are large enough to justify having people for each of those roles.
Policies are the problem, not the solution. The policies grant access only to those who have a legitimate business need. The practical problem occurs when you consider system administration to be an annoying fact of life to be relegated to the lowest bidder. The administrator has a legitimate business need to have priviledged access to the system. That same access means the administrator can do whatever they want. You can implement more policies to make it harder for someone to abuse their position without collusion, but the reality is that all systems have one or more people that you trust implicitly. The problem is that very few people think of making that trust explicit and well known to everyone who relies on it.
Everyone is pretty familiar with the "quality" they get from commercial software. How bad can the amateur software be? After all, most of the customers were made by amateurs in someone's bedroom.
People die. That's what they do. Every single one of us will die, it's just a matter of where and when. There is risk in everything we do.
A friend once told me that in big projects in the past, there were acceptable losses of workers factored into the cost. They actually worked the cost of people dying into the overall cost of building things like the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge. His idea was that we live in a society where risk is so unacceptable that we probably couldn't try anything so ambitious now.
I think there is some merit to that argument. We certainly could not develop something like the airplane today. In the early days they were inherently dangerous and a lot of people died trying to do something new and exciting. Aerobatic planes are mostly based on old designs because the FAA would never certify a new plane that's intended to do something inherently dangerous. Radio controlled helicopters can fly upside down. A real helicopter could do the same thing if you were bound by the laws of physics, but the FAA would never certify a stunt helicopter. My dad (an electrical and mechanical engineer, and private pilot) could not believe that it was possible for any helicopter to fly upside down. When we limit ourselves to safe thinking, it becomes difficult to differentiate between what is impossible because of physics and what is impractical because of bureaocracy. Fear of risk is something that we have as a society that gives other cultures an advantage over us.
If we choose to limit our potential based on arbitrary criteria that other countries do not have, it should be no surprise that we are unable to compete. There will always be people who are willing to destroy their environment and exploit people to make a quick buck. When we do business with countries that do not hold to our standards of living, we enable those people to profit off our good intentions. It's unrealistic to believe that we can ignore the cost effectiveness of cheap labor, but it's also unrealistic to believe that we can save money by outsourcing with no down side.
I'm a contractor, so I'm an expendable resource. The company keeps me around because someone realizes that replacing me with 10 less experienced people for the same money is a bad business decision. It's easy to make that decision when you have experience with someone. However, when dealing with unknowns (new hires), it's a lot easier for a company to hire more, cheaper people and hope some percentage of them are useful than to take the same chance on a single American. The expensive people are always at a disadvantage. One of the responsibilities of the expensive people is to demonstrate that they are delivering value for their cost. How many Americans don't realize this when they are looking for a job?
You mean there are people who aren't familiar with this method of marketing? It's been going on so long that it's hard to blame the companies with a straight face.
The company is trying to get you hooked by the cheap price. The average consumer is apparently too stupid to realize that when they're out of ink, they should consider the cost of the ink against the cost of buying a new printer. Of course, the manufacturers include baby ink cartridges because they don't want you getting off cheap by getting a free printer with every cartridge.
There are no trustworthy vendors to choose from. Every company uses the same tactic with inkjets. It appears the same thing is happening with laser printers now. They are being shipped with reduced capacity toner cartridges so you'll need another one sooner.
Back in the old days, I had an Epson FX-80. That lasted for a long time(well over 10k pages) and eventually was replaced by an LQ-800. I still have that LQ-800 and it still works. I don't know if I can still get ribbons for it because I haven't used it for many years. Dot matrix printers were so much more efficient in terms of ink usage. You, as the person looking at the printout, determine when to replace the ribbon. The printer never cared if you were printing light gray on white. I miss the convenience of the ribbons, but don't miss the one or two page per minute rate when printing graphics. For the less old out there, everything you print nowadays is graphics.
Re:If I am the copyright owner
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30 Days of DRM
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· Score: 1
Those things may sound good on the surface, but they can't be realistically implemented in laws. Any definition of "reasonable" in a law will most certainly be one sided. Do you want the same legislative forces that passed the DMCA to determine what is reasonable? Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think the chances of a law doing more harm than good are usually around 98%.
Responsibility cannot be legislated. Laws can only be used to harm, never to help. Laws can't give you a big hug if you're nice. However, they can stick you in some dark pit indefinitely. If you want to force people to act in the best interests of society and contribute to the public domain, the laws must have very severe penalties for failing to do so. There will be a price point at which it's cheaper to ignore the law than to follow it. Microsoft has demonstrated how this works in the real world. You can't require an action of the copyright holder after the copyright expires. There is a high probability that the copyright holder will not exist at that point in time. The only reasonable way to get a copy for the public domain would be to require the unprotected version be made available in the copyright application process.
While it's not a key focus of anyone's interest in the laws, abandonware is a prime example of what the laws you propose should cover. If a program was previously sold for $40 retail and the copyright holder is not willing to make a copy available at any reasonable price ($400 is reasonable considering that you're asking for some ancient archive, $1,000,000 is not), it should be put in the public domain. The problem is that in many cases, the copyright holder is unknown or otherwise is legitimately incapable of finding a copy to put into the public domain. The application for the copyright for a digital product should include a charge for keeping the program stored in a recoverable digital form indefinitely. If the cost were distributed over millions of contributors, the cost of setting up and maintaining a permanent, distributed archive would be pretty reasonable. If the public domain is really the driving force, the archive should also integrate everything that is released directly into the public domain without copyright protection.
The title is a status symbol. They make people managers of themselves, as well as a future empire of peons that will one day report to them if the company ever starts hiring people instead of letting more go.
The company I'm working for liked me so much that they offerred a 40% cut to switch from contractor to a full time senior manager position. More hours, less pay - now there's a hard decision to make. I wonder why they would even bother asking, it's not like they'll terminate my contract if I say no. =)
I don't think the disposable society can be fixed without getting rid of all the people with a disposable mindset. There have been other people who have already effectively demonstrated that genocide is not a way to get people to support your cause.
The reason things are built to break down much sooner these days is because people would rather spend $500 on an appliance that will last 5 years than $1000 on one that will last 20 years. Would you spend twice as much on a product that has the same features and warrantee, but was built better? It's hard for the average consumer to gauge quality, so they operate on price and reputation.
Even a knowledgeable consumer doesn't always make the right choice. Just because Brand X has always made a good Foo, it doesn't mean that they won't switch their manufacturing to somewhere cheaper with lower quality. A company can't survive in a highly competetive market if they refuse to change their products to keep up with the market. The vast majority of customers aren't going to spend substantially more for a product on reputation alone.
How many types of products can you think of that are well made and you'll be able to get replacement parts to maintain it for many years to come? Even if you care, it's harder to get them.
I think it's confusing because of the terminology used. The whole thing makes more sense if you think of it not as a license fee, but as a computer tax levied by a corporation. If you purchase a computer, you pay a tax. You're may use the OS, free of charge, if you agree to the terms. If you do not agree, you don't have a right to the OS. The only way to avoid the tax is to not buy a computer.
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The key word there is "artificially". If the cost of fuel doubled, people would either adjust to the new cost or change their habits. I think we're in complete agreement on that point.
The cost of pollution is very low currently. Nobody gets a bill for their emissions. There are some costs such as research needed to produce cars that meet federal emissions guidelines that are passed on to the consumer. Overall, nobody pays for it directly, so making a case on economic grounds seems pointless. $0 times any other number is still $0.
Creating a rebate or voucher system would just change who is driving which cars, not how many of which kinds are on the roads. The thing that makes the whole idea irrational is that it is purely artificial. Given the choice between paying more (not even for a specific cause the way the government plays with budgets) or not doing that, the vast majority of people will choose not to. It's political suicide because it trades a very real cost for something that people think of as free. That's what makes the idea irrational.
I'd rather see sensible policies about our fuel reserves. Opening up our national reserves because the price of gas went up makes as little sense as another fuel tax. Either solution is catering to public opinion of a segment of society that chooses to eschew reality. In every other aspect of life, if supply decreases or demand increases, cost increases. That's the model of reality supported by the data. I'd rather see the reserves topped off and make everyone pay the actual cost for their fuel consumption. Reserves are for an emergency, and people being inconvenienced for poor decisions they made should not constitute an emergency. If the increased cost makes them choose to be more efficient, fine. If they choose to consume just as much at the increased cost, that's also fine.
Thanks for illustrating my point. Proposals that ignore history and reality don't help.
I cited something I have done and continue to do to help the environment. It is counter productive to suggest an alternative that would lower emissions slightly while substantially raising the total cost of ownership. It's this kind of single issue thinking that makes people dismissive of environmental causes.
Taxing fuel to get SUV's off the road is irrational. Why not just vandalize all of the SUV's? If your goal is to harm people arbitrarily, you should at least be honest about it. When fuel prices go up, prices on goods go up. The stuff you buy costs more, but labor (ie, your paycheck) stays the same. This is a nuisance to the rich, but is effectively a pay cut to the poor. By the way, the poor don't have the option of buying a new car with lower emissions. They're the ones who buy whatever they can afford and have to pay whatever it costs for gas to feed it.
A wise man once said "the enemy of better is best." It's a good thing to keep in mind. When you put too much emphasis on the best, don't be surprised when you end up with exactly the same thing you had before.
The one thing I consistently see lacking from the "lets do something" crowd is specific, realistic recommendations of what to do. Too many of the recommendations I see are things like "pass a law". That never helps because it increases costs for those who choose to comply or gives an incentive to move manufacturing to countries without those laws. For a measure to be practical, it has to also be cost effective. Helping the environment sounds like a nice cause, but it's the kind of thing that can only appeal to those rich enough to make that decision. In order for something to work, it has to appeal to more than one group of people. Often times, it has to appeal to the people who oppose your cause.
For example, my wife and I drive Corolla's. They may not be as efficient as the Prius or Insight, but they are practical. They have good gas mileage (we have the manual transmission ones with better gas mileage) and have low emissions. Unlike the hybrids, the Corollas do not require you to substantially alter your driving habits or risk substantial repair costs when we finally find out what maintenance is needed on these after 10-20 years. Evidence(collected by observing cars on the road) suggests that a Corolla will be ugly in 10-20 years, but still be on the road. I don't know if that's true of the Prius and don't want to take that bet. All in all, it's a reliable car that sacrafices additional space we don't regularly need for getting good gas mileage and having low emissions. Relatively low costs for initial purchase, maintenance and feeding are all factors that appeal to a lot of people. The low emissions are there for those who care, and more importantly, for those who don't. Telling people what I've chosen and why for transportation is my small part of trying to help the environment.
People listen to the cool kids because they can relate to them on some level. Conversely, nerds don't relate well to people and believe that being right is enough. Most people have very short attention spans. If the argument in favor of your cause can't be made in one breath, it's too long to stick in the minds of the majority. No matter how many people will claim otherwise, the vast majority of people will vote for reduced cost. Any solution that claims some intangible help to the environment for an increased cost is a lost cause. Hoping for a miracle is a bad way to plan the future. I'd like to see less complaints about global warming and more stories about how someone did something positive for the environment and it didn't cost any more or maybe even saved them money. Those are kind the things that can resonate with people regardless of their stand on the environment and global warming.
A 747 could easily be deflected with BBs. The velocity and quantity of BBs is the most relevant factor. A billion BBs would deflect a 747 pretty easily. Or maybe just a handful of BBs at 2/3 the speed of light.
Retaining memories of when they were 5 is not cost effective.
Though, it is humorous when they pay someone to shoot them in the foot because it sounds cost effective if you lack of the common sense of a 5 year old.
But back it up so you have a plan B when it goes broke. This is the most basic thing that is rarely done in practice.
Anyone who can get a bunch of programmers to work together has patience beyond that of mere mortals.
I don't think a school could make it too realistic. To be realistic, the teams should have a manager (chosen by consensus or fiat doesn't really matter) and individuals should be able to switch teams as often as they want. This would allow a way for the bums to get fired or smart people to jump ship if their manager is the bum.
The bad part of this plan is that there would probably be 1 or 2 teams in a good year that complete the project, and the rest would be totally lost. It would be just like the real world where there are winners and losers, but it would never be allowed because it could hurt someone's self esteem.
I think I've written the program you're talking about a few times. I think those are the required code standards for any large organization. Though, I'm unfamiliar with this "maintenance" concept you speak of. Sure, that may work for free software where people do it for a reason other than short term profit, but in the outside world, forget it.
This is why I'm a consultant. I can know it's wrong and stupid and do it anyway, because it's what the client wants. Those fancy where and join clauses are nice and all, but the Big Ball of Mud design is the natural evolution of any project that has no direction at all when it's started. Would you believe that there was no indication until the project was done that there was a need for a where or join? It's hard to do more than keep going back with some code and asking "is this what you mean?" with a lot of people. Then, once you get something minimally passable through this kind of iterative process, you end up with no management support for actually doing the project since the prototype is the deliverable in their minds.
I've come to the conclusion that given the choice, business people will always chose the unmaintainable, pre-alpha kludge from hell. Sure, the horrible kludge will cost them a lot more in the long run, but a smart business person will have left and gone to another company before their short sighted decisions catch up with them. It's hard to get anyone in management for a publicly traded company to think past the current quarter. Of course, this is where being a consultant works in your favor. If they want to go back and fix it later, it's always more work to do it wrong, do it right, and do the conversion from the wrong to the right system than it is to just do it right the first time. I know a lot of people pull these scams for job security, but I actually recommend against doing something stupid. Sometimes, I wonder if other people are more concerned with keeping me around, so they want to ensure there is a neverending queue of work left to do.
All IT decision makers want execute access for everyone. Especially the salespeople.
If a coworker sees it and is offended, it can be considered sexual harassment, creating a hostile working environment, or any number of other whiny things that HR doesn't want to deal with.
In business, money is everything. 1 billion dollars is something that adversely affects the bottom line more than 500 million, making it a bad business decision. Speaking about the right thing is the easiest way to lose the attention of business people. Though, there are often other factors that can turn the right thing into a bottom line benefit. For example, avoiding damage to the company's reputation would be good for future contracts. Also, death and injury frequently cause new laws which could result in overcompensation for the original problem, bringing the cost to 10 billion + 500 million. There are ways to get through to the psychotic business people, but talking about doing the right thing will never be one of them.
I'd recommend that anyone who uses contractors have a long term plan as well. Contracting companies have an additional overhead of ~30% that doesn't help your company or the contractor. That may be an acceptable cost to have no real commitment to the person. Having individuals as contractors with no company inbetween runs the risk of the IRS ruling them to be employees, which is a headache no business wants.
There should be a very limited duration between when you bring on a contractor and when you cut them loose (filling temporary need or not working out). 6-12 months is a reasonable maximum. If you still need them and aren't willing to make them employees, there's something wrong. If you haven't made the decision that you definitely want to keep them in that time frame, you've made the deicsion that you don't, whether you admit it or not.
I'm in a situation where I've been a contractor for a large bank for almost 4 years and there's no way for them to replace me or convert me to a full time employee. They've offered FTE positions, but 60-80 hours/week instead of 40 at a 50+% paycut isn't what I'd consider a serious offer. It's good job security and good money for me, but it's a really bad deal for the company. If there is a short term need for me to put in additional time, they have to pay for all of that time. There's no way for them to offer the possibility for advancement, or other non-monetary incentives for taking on additional responsibilities. Not that I believe in any of these scams to get more work out of people for free, but it's just bad planning to put the company in a position where a critical team member has the same level of commitment to/from the organization as a very, very expensive post-it note.
Was "worst advice ever" meant to be a warning about the rest of the post?
The "you can work 80hr weeks instead" attitude is not a way to succeed. If you're demanding more from your people and they get nothing in return, some of them are going to leave. Hourly people who do get paid more for working more aren't all going to be interested in giving up all their free time to benefit the company. If people leave, that substantially increases the workload - not only do you have to take up the slack, but you also have to spend more time looking for a training a replacement. There are very few companies where you won't spend a significant portion of a new hire's time in training or getting up to speed for the first 3-6 months. This means that the person doesn't help relieve the workload for that period of time. In the worst case, the new person ends up taking more of other employees' time since they need to learn.
Hiring students to install software cheap is a reasonable interim measure, but it's hardly a long term plan. Setting up an automated software deployment infrastructure is important. Any software task that can be done by unskilled labor with minimal training can be automated. Automation improves scalability and accuracy. Accuracy is important since students may not realize when they skipped a step in the instructions they were given. Also, very few people are likely to bring it to someone's attention if they've messed up everything they've been doing this week because. Automation means consistency, which means if a mistake is made, it's been made everywhere, which means the solution can also be applied everywhere.
I'm glad there are people with enough free time to do this. My time is worth too much to me to bother. I have video games at home I haven't played enough. =)
However, I know that many companies will blatantly violate any law that is inconvenient if the cost of dealing with people like him is less than the perceived profit of recorded calls as a marketing channel. When no one does anything, it's practically like the law doesn't exist. If the law didn't exist, every company would use recordings - they're cheaper than telemarketers we know how common telemarketers are.
How do you differentiate between having access to do system administration and access to the data? In theory, you could store everything encrypted so that the sysadmin could backup and recover your data without ever having the ability to see it. In practice, this is not a practical solution. How many applications that normal people (non-geeks) use will encrypt their data by default? In my experience, it's approximately 0.
There are ways to mitigate against having to trust one person too much, like separating the server support from desktop support, etc. However, that only works in companies that are large enough to justify having people for each of those roles.
Policies are the problem, not the solution. The policies grant access only to those who have a legitimate business need. The practical problem occurs when you consider system administration to be an annoying fact of life to be relegated to the lowest bidder. The administrator has a legitimate business need to have priviledged access to the system. That same access means the administrator can do whatever they want. You can implement more policies to make it harder for someone to abuse their position without collusion, but the reality is that all systems have one or more people that you trust implicitly. The problem is that very few people think of making that trust explicit and well known to everyone who relies on it.
Everyone is pretty familiar with the "quality" they get from commercial software. How bad can the amateur software be? After all, most of the customers were made by amateurs in someone's bedroom.
People die. That's what they do. Every single one of us will die, it's just a matter of where and when. There is risk in everything we do.
A friend once told me that in big projects in the past, there were acceptable losses of workers factored into the cost. They actually worked the cost of people dying into the overall cost of building things like the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge. His idea was that we live in a society where risk is so unacceptable that we probably couldn't try anything so ambitious now.
I think there is some merit to that argument. We certainly could not develop something like the airplane today. In the early days they were inherently dangerous and a lot of people died trying to do something new and exciting. Aerobatic planes are mostly based on old designs because the FAA would never certify a new plane that's intended to do something inherently dangerous. Radio controlled helicopters can fly upside down. A real helicopter could do the same thing if you were bound by the laws of physics, but the FAA would never certify a stunt helicopter. My dad (an electrical and mechanical engineer, and private pilot) could not believe that it was possible for any helicopter to fly upside down. When we limit ourselves to safe thinking, it becomes difficult to differentiate between what is impossible because of physics and what is impractical because of bureaocracy. Fear of risk is something that we have as a society that gives other cultures an advantage over us.
If we choose to limit our potential based on arbitrary criteria that other countries do not have, it should be no surprise that we are unable to compete. There will always be people who are willing to destroy their environment and exploit people to make a quick buck. When we do business with countries that do not hold to our standards of living, we enable those people to profit off our good intentions. It's unrealistic to believe that we can ignore the cost effectiveness of cheap labor, but it's also unrealistic to believe that we can save money by outsourcing with no down side.
I'm a contractor, so I'm an expendable resource. The company keeps me around because someone realizes that replacing me with 10 less experienced people for the same money is a bad business decision. It's easy to make that decision when you have experience with someone. However, when dealing with unknowns (new hires), it's a lot easier for a company to hire more, cheaper people and hope some percentage of them are useful than to take the same chance on a single American. The expensive people are always at a disadvantage. One of the responsibilities of the expensive people is to demonstrate that they are delivering value for their cost. How many Americans don't realize this when they are looking for a job?
You mean there are people who aren't familiar with this method of marketing? It's been going on so long that it's hard to blame the companies with a straight face.
The company is trying to get you hooked by the cheap price. The average consumer is apparently too stupid to realize that when they're out of ink, they should consider the cost of the ink against the cost of buying a new printer. Of course, the manufacturers include baby ink cartridges because they don't want you getting off cheap by getting a free printer with every cartridge.
There are no trustworthy vendors to choose from. Every company uses the same tactic with inkjets. It appears the same thing is happening with laser printers now. They are being shipped with reduced capacity toner cartridges so you'll need another one sooner.
Back in the old days, I had an Epson FX-80. That lasted for a long time(well over 10k pages) and eventually was replaced by an LQ-800. I still have that LQ-800 and it still works. I don't know if I can still get ribbons for it because I haven't used it for many years. Dot matrix printers were so much more efficient in terms of ink usage. You, as the person looking at the printout, determine when to replace the ribbon. The printer never cared if you were printing light gray on white. I miss the convenience of the ribbons, but don't miss the one or two page per minute rate when printing graphics. For the less old out there, everything you print nowadays is graphics.
Those things may sound good on the surface, but they can't be realistically implemented in laws. Any definition of "reasonable" in a law will most certainly be one sided. Do you want the same legislative forces that passed the DMCA to determine what is reasonable? Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think the chances of a law doing more harm than good are usually around 98%.
Responsibility cannot be legislated. Laws can only be used to harm, never to help. Laws can't give you a big hug if you're nice. However, they can stick you in some dark pit indefinitely. If you want to force people to act in the best interests of society and contribute to the public domain, the laws must have very severe penalties for failing to do so. There will be a price point at which it's cheaper to ignore the law than to follow it. Microsoft has demonstrated how this works in the real world. You can't require an action of the copyright holder after the copyright expires. There is a high probability that the copyright holder will not exist at that point in time. The only reasonable way to get a copy for the public domain would be to require the unprotected version be made available in the copyright application process.
While it's not a key focus of anyone's interest in the laws, abandonware is a prime example of what the laws you propose should cover. If a program was previously sold for $40 retail and the copyright holder is not willing to make a copy available at any reasonable price ($400 is reasonable considering that you're asking for some ancient archive, $1,000,000 is not), it should be put in the public domain. The problem is that in many cases, the copyright holder is unknown or otherwise is legitimately incapable of finding a copy to put into the public domain. The application for the copyright for a digital product should include a charge for keeping the program stored in a recoverable digital form indefinitely. If the cost were distributed over millions of contributors, the cost of setting up and maintaining a permanent, distributed archive would be pretty reasonable. If the public domain is really the driving force, the archive should also integrate everything that is released directly into the public domain without copyright protection.
The title is a status symbol. They make people managers of themselves, as well as a future empire of peons that will one day report to them if the company ever starts hiring people instead of letting more go.
The company I'm working for liked me so much that they offerred a 40% cut to switch from contractor to a full time senior manager position. More hours, less pay - now there's a hard decision to make. I wonder why they would even bother asking, it's not like they'll terminate my contract if I say no. =)
I don't think the disposable society can be fixed without getting rid of all the people with a disposable mindset. There have been other people who have already effectively demonstrated that genocide is not a way to get people to support your cause.
The reason things are built to break down much sooner these days is because people would rather spend $500 on an appliance that will last 5 years than $1000 on one that will last 20 years. Would you spend twice as much on a product that has the same features and warrantee, but was built better? It's hard for the average consumer to gauge quality, so they operate on price and reputation.
Even a knowledgeable consumer doesn't always make the right choice. Just because Brand X has always made a good Foo, it doesn't mean that they won't switch their manufacturing to somewhere cheaper with lower quality. A company can't survive in a highly competetive market if they refuse to change their products to keep up with the market. The vast majority of customers aren't going to spend substantially more for a product on reputation alone.
How many types of products can you think of that are well made and you'll be able to get replacement parts to maintain it for many years to come? Even if you care, it's harder to get them.
I think it's confusing because of the terminology used. The whole thing makes more sense if you think of it not as a license fee, but as a computer tax levied by a corporation. If you purchase a computer, you pay a tax. You're may use the OS, free of charge, if you agree to the terms. If you do not agree, you don't have a right to the OS. The only way to avoid the tax is to not buy a computer.