They charge $220 for toilet seats because it's plausable that government employees are stupid enough to approve the expense. Of course, the billions of dollars for secret projects come from somewhere. If it were easy to figure out how much they're allegedly overpaying for things all over the budget, it would give everyone a good idea how much is in the black budget, which Does Not Exist(tm).
In order to get the more talented people, companies need to be willing to pay more. It's a chicken vs the egg problem. They can't get the proof that it's money well spent until after they spend the money, so they don't believe it's possible.
In large organizations, there are already a lot of mediocre people and policies built to deal with that reality. People who know what they're doing face an uphill battle in getting anything done. There are large beaurocracies in place to tell people what standards they must adhere to, but nobody can explain why. Without knowing why, it's hard for the competant people to come up with solutions that meet the technical needs without violating some weird compliance regulations. Everything comes down to the lowest common denominator in large companies. Small companies can avoid this problem, but only until they reach some critical mass of mediocre people, which is when the downward spiral starts.
Doing things right is rarely the long term low cost option. What is long term to you? Next quarter, year, decade, century? If you knew the lifespan of a solution in advance, you would plan accordingly. However, that's rarely the case in the real world. Management looks at the short term because that's where the least exposure exists. Most projects are not critical, so quick fix solutions are good. Something that could put the company out of business if it failed is going to get more resources allocated to ensure it doesn't fail.
Management is often content with workable solutions because they're workable and they're solutions. That's an improvement over what they have, so it fulfills the minimum need of getting something done. To us techies, it's a kludge (an inelegant, but functional hack), but to management it's a solution. Anyone who doesn't look behind the curtain doesn't care how the wizard works.
I'll use an example of a project I worked on last year - it took about 8 months for 5 programmers to replace an existing (slow, unreliable and expensive) system. The up front cost of that project was fairly high, but the ongoing cost is pretty low. There are many opportunities for improving upon that system to do things the right way. However, there's no money in the budget for improving something that works fine. If instead of 6-9 months, it were a 2-5 year project to do everything right, it would not have gotten done. That would leave the company with the slow, unreliable and expensive system, or nothing to handle that particular business function. If there was a need to improve the system we created to expand its capabilities, it would be possible to do so. If many of the areas for improvement were addressed, the total time spent would be more than it would have been to do it right the first time. However, having a fully functional system now would be the basis for such a project, so the level of confidence in succeeding would be much higher. Nobody expected us to finish our project on time and successfully.
As a technical person, one side of me is offended by all the corner cutting that is done to hit irresponsible deadlines. However, there's also the practical view that, even with all those compromises, the new process takes less than a week to do what used to take a couple of months.
I wouldn't be surprised to find this to be the norm for smaller companies. Computers ARE tools. It's only in companies whose business is tightly integrated with these tools that they need to maintain the in-house expertise needed to keep things running smoothly. It's no different than any other critical tool. IT people are not as likely to end up at these kinds of companies because they don't already recognize the need. Most companies use computers because they're normal, but wouldn't go out of business if they had a few go down occaisionally.
Doing things right is rarely the low cost option. Though, it's important to consider more than out of pocket monetary costs in the cost/benefit analysis. High turnover rates are expensive, so it's necessary to find a way to maximize value, including the value of employee satisfaction/productivity.
Being a sysadmin/programmer type myself, I can relate to the type of situation you are in. Management is not likely to be swayed into your way of thinking. If you want to affect change, you need to understand what motivates them and offer solutions to those problems. I doubt those problems will match the list you have. I find no end of frustration in trying to convince management of things I think are important. They're really simple creatures - they are motivated by money. If you can phrase your proposals in terms of how much money it will make or save, you can get their attention.
Another problem is that management rarely looks inwards for innovative solutions. Even though they are the ones who prevent progress by not allocating the resources, they believe that if their own people could solve their problems, it would have already been done. Bring in a consultant to look at the current situation and make suggestions as to how to make improvements. I'm a consultant in Phoenix, where are you?
I used to have a terminal in my bathroom, so I understand the motivation to be close to information. However, I have to draw the line at buttometric technology, that's just wrong.
There are a lot of marketing companies who spend a lot of money to get your information. They also support legislation that claims other goals, but has the end result of making information more readily available to them. I wouldn't be surprised to see them jump on the bandwagon to claim we need better domain registration information to prevent crime.
I agree that one shouldn't have to pay for privacy, but that's not how it works in the real world. Nothing is free unless your time is worthless.
Domain registrations aren't the only place that it's helpful to have a valid address that you can give out that's not your own. Private mailboxes have the added advantage of looking like normal apartment addresses rather than a PO Box.
The whois database was public long before most people even knew of the internet. Back in the good old days, domain registration was even free. The reason that it's still public is that no one has cared enough to make a better replacement that everyone wants to switch to.
Why do you think you shouldn't have to pay for privacy? I'm in favor of privacy, but it's not free in the real world. Why would online be any different? Contact information is bought and sold for marketing and other purposes all the time. Ever fill out a warrantee registration card, enter a contest, or otherwise provide your name and address to anyone? All of that goes into marketing databases.
My domains point to a private mailbox and a phone number I never answer. Anyone who has some legitimate need to contact me can send a letter, leave a voice message, or see if they make it past my spam filters.
"Especially unhappy ones that you can't threaten any more."
This is really the problem. If you create a work environment based on fear, you really should be afraid of what people will do. Last boss I had like that I let know he could pay me a lot more or I could move on and let his project fail. The you're-expendable philosophy only works when the little people don't realize they can fire their employer as well.
This is the same problem I have with email notifications or marketing from credit card companies. I assume they are all scams. Only the paranoid are safe against these scams.
What is worse is that the companies use the same kinds of approaches, so it's even more difficult to figure out if any of it is legit. The companies are also victims in these cases, but due to the disconnects between the fraud stats and their customer service, they don't see the big picture. Large companies use "email marketing" as a way of acquiring new customers, without realizing that the only people who will respond to that are also the most likely to be successfully phished.
Goto is used because it is more efficient from the processor's perspective. Function calls have additional overhead. Function calls are easier to follow than a chain of goto's, so most people consider the cost paid in processing time to be well worth the decreased time needed in implementation, testing, debugging, and maintenance.
I don't understand this philosophy. Why are people willing to work for less money? The cost of living is lower, but do you work just to meet the cost of living?
I moved from CA to AZ and make about 40% more here. I would like to live in a more rural environment, but I'm not willing to take a significant pay cut to do it.
Sometimes out-of-pocket isn't the only cost that people are concerned with. Another advantage of rural outsourcing is that you can prosecute under US laws. I suspect this would be a big selling point for those who want to lower the costs related to processing medical data without assuming the liability if someone decides to ransom the data.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
There are those who believe that rights exist independent of the law. In fact, laws as a whole do not grant rights. They enumerate punishments for violation of laws. Rights have very little to do with our legal system.
Cox required an SSN for establishing an account as well. I refused to provide it and had to talk to a customer service manager to get him to open the account anyway. I made up a 4 digit number to use as the last 4 of my SSN. He only got the point when I explained that I'd be happy to demonstrate for them (for a fee, of course) how insecure their online customer database was. There's no way to get these companies to get a clue when it comes to security of personal information, but I'd like to see clear cut liability for any misuse that occurs as a result of their carelessness.
Only corporations should act malicious and antisocial? That doesn't seem very fair. Why are you picking on the little sociopaths? At least it's possible to do something about them. Once you get a large corporation interested in a new form of plundering, it's all over.
I don't really see this as abuse as much as the fundamental flaw in providing free services. If the cost to support the service is higher than the cost to the recipient, it's just a matter of time before someone finds a way to cut their costs by increasing someone else's.
Slashdot Mirror
They charge $220 for toilet seats because it's plausable that government employees are stupid enough to approve the expense. Of course, the billions of dollars for secret projects come from somewhere. If it were easy to figure out how much they're allegedly overpaying for things all over the budget, it would give everyone a good idea how much is in the black budget, which Does Not Exist(tm).
So it should be:
10 PRINK "HE;LLO WORLD"
Now there's a parsing problem and a data issue. Are you trying to introduce bugs for job security?
In order to get the more talented people, companies need to be willing to pay more. It's a chicken vs the egg problem. They can't get the proof that it's money well spent until after they spend the money, so they don't believe it's possible.
In large organizations, there are already a lot of mediocre people and policies built to deal with that reality. People who know what they're doing face an uphill battle in getting anything done. There are large beaurocracies in place to tell people what standards they must adhere to, but nobody can explain why. Without knowing why, it's hard for the competant people to come up with solutions that meet the technical needs without violating some weird compliance regulations. Everything comes down to the lowest common denominator in large companies. Small companies can avoid this problem, but only until they reach some critical mass of mediocre people, which is when the downward spiral starts.
I'm pretty sure at -382F, we would be sufficiently protected against windchill.
Doing things right is rarely the long term low cost option. What is long term to you? Next quarter, year, decade, century? If you knew the lifespan of a solution in advance, you would plan accordingly. However, that's rarely the case in the real world. Management looks at the short term because that's where the least exposure exists. Most projects are not critical, so quick fix solutions are good. Something that could put the company out of business if it failed is going to get more resources allocated to ensure it doesn't fail.
Management is often content with workable solutions because they're workable and they're solutions. That's an improvement over what they have, so it fulfills the minimum need of getting something done. To us techies, it's a kludge (an inelegant, but functional hack), but to management it's a solution. Anyone who doesn't look behind the curtain doesn't care how the wizard works.
I'll use an example of a project I worked on last year - it took about 8 months for 5 programmers to replace an existing (slow, unreliable and expensive) system. The up front cost of that project was fairly high, but the ongoing cost is pretty low. There are many opportunities for improving upon that system to do things the right way. However, there's no money in the budget for improving something that works fine. If instead of 6-9 months, it were a 2-5 year project to do everything right, it would not have gotten done. That would leave the company with the slow, unreliable and expensive system, or nothing to handle that particular business function. If there was a need to improve the system we created to expand its capabilities, it would be possible to do so. If many of the areas for improvement were addressed, the total time spent would be more than it would have been to do it right the first time. However, having a fully functional system now would be the basis for such a project, so the level of confidence in succeeding would be much higher. Nobody expected us to finish our project on time and successfully.
As a technical person, one side of me is offended by all the corner cutting that is done to hit irresponsible deadlines. However, there's also the practical view that, even with all those compromises, the new process takes less than a week to do what used to take a couple of months.
I wouldn't be surprised to find this to be the norm for smaller companies. Computers ARE tools. It's only in companies whose business is tightly integrated with these tools that they need to maintain the in-house expertise needed to keep things running smoothly. It's no different than any other critical tool. IT people are not as likely to end up at these kinds of companies because they don't already recognize the need. Most companies use computers because they're normal, but wouldn't go out of business if they had a few go down occaisionally.
Doing things right is rarely the low cost option. Though, it's important to consider more than out of pocket monetary costs in the cost/benefit analysis. High turnover rates are expensive, so it's necessary to find a way to maximize value, including the value of employee satisfaction/productivity.
Being a sysadmin/programmer type myself, I can relate to the type of situation you are in. Management is not likely to be swayed into your way of thinking. If you want to affect change, you need to understand what motivates them and offer solutions to those problems. I doubt those problems will match the list you have. I find no end of frustration in trying to convince management of things I think are important. They're really simple creatures - they are motivated by money. If you can phrase your proposals in terms of how much money it will make or save, you can get their attention.
Another problem is that management rarely looks inwards for innovative solutions. Even though they are the ones who prevent progress by not allocating the resources, they believe that if their own people could solve their problems, it would have already been done. Bring in a consultant to look at the current situation and make suggestions as to how to make improvements. I'm a consultant in Phoenix, where are you?
I used to have a terminal in my bathroom, so I understand the motivation to be close to information. However, I have to draw the line at buttometric technology, that's just wrong.
There are a lot of marketing companies who spend a lot of money to get your information. They also support legislation that claims other goals, but has the end result of making information more readily available to them. I wouldn't be surprised to see them jump on the bandwagon to claim we need better domain registration information to prevent crime.
I agree that one shouldn't have to pay for privacy, but that's not how it works in the real world. Nothing is free unless your time is worthless.
Domain registrations aren't the only place that it's helpful to have a valid address that you can give out that's not your own. Private mailboxes have the added advantage of looking like normal apartment addresses rather than a PO Box.
Where do you get all of these theories?
The whois database was public long before most people even knew of the internet. Back in the good old days, domain registration was even free. The reason that it's still public is that no one has cared enough to make a better replacement that everyone wants to switch to.
Why do you think you shouldn't have to pay for privacy? I'm in favor of privacy, but it's not free in the real world. Why would online be any different? Contact information is bought and sold for marketing and other purposes all the time. Ever fill out a warrantee registration card, enter a contest, or otherwise provide your name and address to anyone? All of that goes into marketing databases.
My domains point to a private mailbox and a phone number I never answer. Anyone who has some legitimate need to contact me can send a letter, leave a voice message, or see if they make it past my spam filters.
"Especially unhappy ones that you can't threaten any more."
This is really the problem. If you create a work environment based on fear, you really should be afraid of what people will do. Last boss I had like that I let know he could pay me a lot more or I could move on and let his project fail. The you're-expendable philosophy only works when the little people don't realize they can fire their employer as well.
Yeah, really. The nerve of people misspelling a made up word.
I believe the original Simpsons spelling was "Kwyjibo".
This is the same problem I have with email notifications or marketing from credit card companies. I assume they are all scams. Only the paranoid are safe against these scams.
What is worse is that the companies use the same kinds of approaches, so it's even more difficult to figure out if any of it is legit. The companies are also victims in these cases, but due to the disconnects between the fraud stats and their customer service, they don't see the big picture. Large companies use "email marketing" as a way of acquiring new customers, without realizing that the only people who will respond to that are also the most likely to be successfully phished.
Goto is used because it is more efficient from the processor's perspective. Function calls have additional overhead. Function calls are easier to follow than a chain of goto's, so most people consider the cost paid in processing time to be well worth the decreased time needed in implementation, testing, debugging, and maintenance.
I don't understand this philosophy. Why are people willing to work for less money? The cost of living is lower, but do you work just to meet the cost of living?
I moved from CA to AZ and make about 40% more here. I would like to live in a more rural environment, but I'm not willing to take a significant pay cut to do it.
Sometimes out-of-pocket isn't the only cost that people are concerned with. Another advantage of rural outsourcing is that you can prosecute under US laws. I suspect this would be a big selling point for those who want to lower the costs related to processing medical data without assuming the liability if someone decides to ransom the data.
BSD users download and run the worm manually to show solidarity with the Linux users.
Or it could just be that BSD users, like Linux users, aren't all security conscious in all decisions about what they install.
A wise man once said:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
There are those who believe that rights exist independent of the law. In fact, laws as a whole do not grant rights. They enumerate punishments for violation of laws. Rights have very little to do with our legal system.
Cox required an SSN for establishing an account as well. I refused to provide it and had to talk to a customer service manager to get him to open the account anyway. I made up a 4 digit number to use as the last 4 of my SSN. He only got the point when I explained that I'd be happy to demonstrate for them (for a fee, of course) how insecure their online customer database was. There's no way to get these companies to get a clue when it comes to security of personal information, but I'd like to see clear cut liability for any misuse that occurs as a result of their carelessness.
A newt is considerably smaller than a weasel. Lack of fur will also help you spot the change.
Only corporations should act malicious and antisocial? That doesn't seem very fair. Why are you picking on the little sociopaths? At least it's possible to do something about them. Once you get a large corporation interested in a new form of plundering, it's all over.
I don't really see this as abuse as much as the fundamental flaw in providing free services. If the cost to support the service is higher than the cost to the recipient, it's just a matter of time before someone finds a way to cut their costs by increasing someone else's.