Look up Frank Norris and his stories on grain. Written a hundred years ago and still interesting and relevant today. One on the Chicago grain traders. Farmers to Traders to Consumers of US grain.
Travel techniques.. as soon as takeoff, switch yourself to the time zone at your destination. Which might require sleeping first and _then_ reading. This way your vacation starts sooner when you get there. Drink water too or you'll feel dried out and hung over when you get there even if no 'drinks' were involved.
What I've seen is the "Literary Critics" keyed in on this book for all the reasons (behind the scenes) that Literary Critics endorse books. The high priests said it was good and so it must be good.. whether it really is good writing or not. It has just been endorsed by the establishment and that's all there is to it.
. 40% of all the books bought are in the 'romance' category. A lot of women also purchase the 'Fantasy' genre so enterprising authors combine these two genres to be more marketable, many of which are cross-over authors anyway. It's pretty easy to pick out which Fantasy Genre book is done that way if you're looking at the advertising blurbs. Romance publishers are very particular about book copy because they know what sells there - since they are successfully pushing 40% of the market all on their own.
I'm a published author in the "Fantasy" genre, but I do it more as "Swords & Sorcery" because my dragons are vicious, the sword-play is fierce, and the wizards destroy things. Example book trailers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLrXyLI1gA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCFUBT6b9Po
I'm currently writing Book #3 in this series and should finish it over the holidays, get it to my editor, and then have it out in January. While the lead in Book #3 is a woman, she cranks up the violence from the first two books about her siblings.
While that's all fun and excitement. If you want your company to succeed, you need to learn one thing. You will be successful only if those working in your department are successful. Take your shiny new organizational pyramid and turn it so your point of the pyramid is at the bottom of the page. You're the worker for this whole group, and the output of your department only gets made by that row of workers along the top.
Then of course you should also consider delayering so span of control goes from the 'typical' 3-7 out to ten to twenty. Yes, the middle managers will scream. You'll be closer to the workers and also start giving them more general direction instead of micro managing (because that way leads to madness as you thin the middle). Then you'll become a leader instead of a manager cog. Don't backfill jobs. Constantly see how to improve workflow (with everyone's input). Read up on Lean Manufacturing, it applies in offices too.
Agree. Good that Dell is focusing on fewer machines (like Apple.. compare sales vs machines and you'll see the complexity that Dell has given itself - which is all cost structure). Put machines at $200 or lower and people will buy them like crazy... they did when you could get them on regular sales for under $200. But a lot don't do that now that the cpu power has improved and they 'run' windows7. With linux they fly (mine does). But then the media and manufacturers are all pushing the "I gotta be an iPad" market now. But try writing any kind of document on a tablet and it's annoying. Netbooks are just a more portable laptop.. and isn't that the whole point to getting such a machine? If you're looking for raw cpu power then you are better off getting a standard desktop/tower format.
That's because the el-cheapo Windows 7 home requires massive computing performance compared to that machine running Windows 98/me from ten years ago. I run Linux but even that has a few more lines of code than caparable LInux from that era.
Having just released my second book in a series (book trailer here: The Black Jewel) and following some of the indie discussions. The secrets to big sales:
1. have a lot of books
2. get a lot of reviews via book bloggers
3. price the books right
it seems to be easiest for traditionally published authors to go indie (because they have 1&2 already) and offer books at low prices direct.
They are just locked into their distribution channels. Imagine how the regular book stores would scream to the publishers if the ebook price were $1 and paperback was $10? And a consumer has it in five minutes vs driving across town and standing in a checkout line for fifteen minutes. The publishers also have a huge staff and prime real estate in the most expensive city possible.
A lot of book buyers want the stamp of "#1 NYTimes best seller" before they read it - there is a perception of quality; it was vetted by all those other people so "it must be good". All pure BS but it sells a lot of books that way.
We do make more as an independent author publishing a book at $1-$3 than shackled to the agent/publisher model... at their price points of $10+. The only authors still going to traditional publishing are those with stars in their eyes lusting for 'the brand'. the independents have control over editors and cover design that can be quibbling points in traditional setups. One author turned down a $500,000 advance because he was tired of the old model and knew he would earn more on his own, so far he's happy.
This is just another last gasp of the traditional publishers. Independents are scooping huge percentages of electronic sales, and electronic formats are growing while dead tree sales are falling. Check out Konrath jgordonsmith.com locke. The traditional publishers are afraid, but the writers who have all the content creation power, get a higher percentage of sales to go alone. The amazing thing is the writers are closer to the readers.
. R would be the way to go for heavy lifting, or even LibreOffice which has a database function in it for regular things (Scientific Linux and CAELinux are packaged with R, R's gui's and some other useful tools, I recommend CAELinux and you can run it directly from the DVD so no need to install).. There's a book I found helpful "introductory statistics with R" by Dalgaard as well as the gui extensions: rcmdr, rattle, rapid-i, and rstudio noted farther down in another post. there is also the R Journal (journal.r-project.org).
I've spent years in the auto industry and been involved with statistical analysis.. a "six sigma black belt". You're being asked the typical question of collecting data and then reporting it, from the partial list looks like a typical management request to justify departmental staffing/budget.
You can be very efficient in collecting data and producing reports, but the most valuable part of the exercise is defining the problem that needs solving. And only then look at the two or three variables that describe the symptoms and causes of that problem. By the time you have to pull out the statistical tools like R to answer the problem, the proposed solution doesn't move the needle enough.
"Do you want your car to stop at the front of the bus or the back of the bus? or be five-nines confident it only goes as deep as the firewall?" When anything passed the radiator is a problem. You want to have something that can pass the "Intuitively Obvious to the Casual Observer" test which a simple spreadsheet bar-chart or line-chart can often do.
Can you do a follow-up post on what data you've collected (charts)? And what questions are being answered? I'd be curious. or send me a note if you want some help looking over some of it.
There is only one machine in my household of a dozen computers that remains Windows. And that is only because the university that my wife works at switched to Microsoft 2010 servers that force check both web browser and OS, and she can't log in from home with anything but her windows netbook.
Everything else is a mix of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, FreeBSD, and Centos on laptops, desktops, servers, and media tv.
Within 3 months of getting that Windows machine, my wife got a virus I was forced to reslam a new copy of Windows on. Some of the Linux installs regularly run 3-6 months between reboots (servers).
Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
I'm sure the sales data shows 'we're selling to 30's and 40's year-olds'; but all I see are their kids playing with them.. on something like angry birds. The only adult's I hear from using them are pulling them out during some tv show to look up 'wasn't that actress in some movie a few years ago?.." or to distract themselves during TV commercials...
The proper thing to do is take the cover off and remove the platters (I think it's a #9 Torx typically). Damage just those disks.
The magnets are great on the fridge (super strong so be careful). There are some people that have made wind generators out of those magnets.
The cast aluminum housings are a high grade and valuable at a nearby recycler. But you have to get ALL the iron (screws) out of it or else you just made low grade aluminum (still worthwhile to recycle).
The electronics board has lead solder and some precious metals in the chips and so the board should go to a local electronics recycler.
Most people here are missing that the survey is not 'full-time employees working from home and only doing one hours worth"; they are people doing one hours worth and getting paid for one hours worth. Huge difference.
A hacked study.. and misleading in oh so many ways.
Many 'telecommuters' are filling part time jobs. So they only bill what they work. But they are still kind of 'on call' so never really 'done'.
Employers won't spend huge hourly fees for most 'telecommuters'.. so don't worry about pay gaps.
They can also have a dozen five minute calls spread throughout the day and then bill one hour. In an office they would get the same 'work quantity' but be stuck driving there and back again.
These sorts of jobs can also span from 6am to 11pm - working with international clients.
It's often don't work and you don't eat. Performance is really readily apparent to anyone. No hiding in teams.
Great Design can have a huge impact on product success. Look at Apple. A bit of nice design and 'marketing like there's no tomorrow', and they are valued more than Exxon. Bad design can drive your customers to the competition.. such was the ribbon design. And how people are much faster at using LO / OOo.
Slashdot Mirror
He teamed up with a couple of other authors on some good books .. 'mote in gods eye' and 'footfall' were good.
Look up Frank Norris and his stories on grain. Written a hundred years ago and still interesting and relevant today. One on the Chicago grain traders. Farmers to Traders to Consumers of US grain.
Travel techniques .. as soon as takeoff, switch yourself to the time zone at your destination. Which might require sleeping first and _then_ reading. This way your vacation starts sooner when you get there. Drink water too or you'll feel dried out and hung over when you get there even if no 'drinks' were involved.
What I've seen is the "Literary Critics" keyed in on this book for all the reasons (behind the scenes) that Literary Critics endorse books. The high priests said it was good and so it must be good .. whether it really is good writing or not. It has just been endorsed by the establishment and that's all there is to it.
You need to read Asimov's Foundation trilogy before Hitchhikers Guide to get the underlying currents that Hitchhikers is built on.
Don't read Stranger in a Strange Land! Stieg maybe ok. Moon and Troopers might be ok but after Stranger I read other things so can't say.
.
40% of all the books bought are in the 'romance' category. A lot of women also purchase the 'Fantasy' genre so enterprising authors combine these two genres to be more marketable, many of which are cross-over authors anyway. It's pretty easy to pick out which Fantasy Genre book is done that way if you're looking at the advertising blurbs. Romance publishers are very particular about book copy because they know what sells there - since they are successfully pushing 40% of the market all on their own.
I'm a published author in the "Fantasy" genre, but I do it more as "Swords & Sorcery" because my dragons are vicious, the sword-play is fierce, and the wizards destroy things. Example book trailers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLrXyLI1gA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCFUBT6b9Po
I'm currently writing Book #3 in this series and should finish it over the holidays, get it to my editor, and then have it out in January. While the lead in Book #3 is a woman, she cranks up the violence from the first two books about her siblings.
.
Here's a Book Trailer that might influence your reading selection, novel just released (#2 of the series) .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLrXyLI1gA
While that's all fun and excitement. If you want your company to succeed, you need to learn one thing. You will be successful only if those working in your department are successful. Take your shiny new organizational pyramid and turn it so your point of the pyramid is at the bottom of the page. You're the worker for this whole group, and the output of your department only gets made by that row of workers along the top.
Then of course you should also consider delayering so span of control goes from the 'typical' 3-7 out to ten to twenty. Yes, the middle managers will scream. You'll be closer to the workers and also start giving them more general direction instead of micro managing (because that way leads to madness as you thin the middle). Then you'll become a leader instead of a manager cog. Don't backfill jobs. Constantly see how to improve workflow (with everyone's input). Read up on Lean Manufacturing, it applies in offices too.
Agree. Good that Dell is focusing on fewer machines (like Apple .. compare sales vs machines and you'll see the complexity that Dell has given itself - which is all cost structure). Put machines at $200 or lower and people will buy them like crazy... they did when you could get them on regular sales for under $200. But a lot don't do that now that the cpu power has improved and they 'run' windows7. With linux they fly (mine does). But then the media and manufacturers are all pushing the "I gotta be an iPad" market now. But try writing any kind of document on a tablet and it's annoying. Netbooks are just a more portable laptop .. and isn't that the whole point to getting such a machine? If you're looking for raw cpu power then you are better off getting a standard desktop/tower format.
That's because the el-cheapo Windows 7 home requires massive computing performance compared to that machine running Windows 98/me from ten years ago. I run Linux but even that has a few more lines of code than caparable LInux from that era.
Having just released my second book in a series (book trailer here: The Black Jewel) and following some of the indie discussions. The secrets to big sales:
1. have a lot of books
2. get a lot of reviews via book bloggers
3. price the books right
it seems to be easiest for traditionally published authors to go indie (because they have 1&2 already) and offer books at low prices direct.
They are just locked into their distribution channels. Imagine how the regular book stores would scream to the publishers if the ebook price were $1 and paperback was $10? And a consumer has it in five minutes vs driving across town and standing in a checkout line for fifteen minutes. The publishers also have a huge staff and prime real estate in the most expensive city possible.
That's why I only publish my books in a DRM free format.
Just released book two in this series
The Black Jewel
.
A lot of book buyers want the stamp of "#1 NYTimes best seller" before they read it - there is a perception of quality; it was vetted by all those other people so "it must be good". All pure BS but it sells a lot of books that way.
We do make more as an independent author publishing a book at $1-$3 than shackled to the agent/publisher model... at their price points of $10+. The only authors still going to traditional publishing are those with stars in their eyes lusting for 'the brand'. the independents have control over editors and cover design that can be quibbling points in traditional setups. One author turned down a $500,000 advance because he was tired of the old model and knew he would earn more on his own, so far he's happy.
The Black Jewel The Diamond Coronal
.
This is just another last gasp of the traditional publishers. Independents are scooping huge percentages of electronic sales, and electronic formats are growing while dead tree sales are falling. Check out Konrath jgordonsmith.com locke. The traditional publishers are afraid, but the writers who have all the content creation power, get a higher percentage of sales to go alone. The amazing thing is the writers are closer to the readers.
.
.. a "six sigma black belt". You're being asked the typical question of collecting data and then reporting it, from the partial list looks like a typical management request to justify departmental staffing/budget.
R would be the way to go for heavy lifting, or even LibreOffice which has a database function in it for regular things (Scientific Linux and CAELinux are packaged with R, R's gui's and some other useful tools, I recommend CAELinux and you can run it directly from the DVD so no need to install).. There's a book I found helpful "introductory statistics with R" by Dalgaard as well as the gui extensions: rcmdr, rattle, rapid-i, and rstudio noted farther down in another post. there is also the R Journal (journal.r-project.org).
I've spent years in the auto industry and been involved with statistical analysis
You can be very efficient in collecting data and producing reports, but the most valuable part of the exercise is defining the problem that needs solving. And only then look at the two or three variables that describe the symptoms and causes of that problem. By the time you have to pull out the statistical tools like R to answer the problem, the proposed solution doesn't move the needle enough.
"Do you want your car to stop at the front of the bus or the back of the bus? or be five-nines confident it only goes as deep as the firewall?" When anything passed the radiator is a problem. You want to have something that can pass the "Intuitively Obvious to the Casual Observer" test which a simple spreadsheet bar-chart or line-chart can often do.
Can you do a follow-up post on what data you've collected (charts)? And what questions are being answered? I'd be curious. or send me a note if you want some help looking over some of it.
There is only one machine in my household of a dozen computers that remains Windows. And that is only because the university that my wife works at switched to Microsoft 2010 servers that force check both web browser and OS, and she can't log in from home with anything but her windows netbook.
Everything else is a mix of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, FreeBSD, and Centos on laptops, desktops, servers, and media tv.
Within 3 months of getting that Windows machine, my wife got a virus I was forced to reslam a new copy of Windows on. Some of the Linux installs regularly run 3-6 months between reboots (servers).
Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
I'm sure the sales data shows 'we're selling to 30's and 40's year-olds'; but all I see are their kids playing with them .. on something like angry birds. The only adult's I hear from using them are pulling them out during some tv show to look up 'wasn't that actress in some movie a few years ago?.." or to distract themselves during TV commercials...
While this all seems very exciting...
The proper thing to do is take the cover off and remove the platters (I think it's a #9 Torx typically). Damage just those disks.
The magnets are great on the fridge (super strong so be careful). There are some people that have made wind generators out of those magnets.
The cast aluminum housings are a high grade and valuable at a nearby recycler. But you have to get ALL the iron (screws) out of it or else you just made low grade aluminum (still worthwhile to recycle).
The electronics board has lead solder and some precious metals in the chips and so the board should go to a local electronics recycler.
.
Yes. Why that rent !.... Love that comment.
Most people here are missing that the survey is not 'full-time employees working from home and only doing one hours worth"; they are people doing one hours worth and getting paid for one hours worth. Huge difference.
.
A hacked study
Many 'telecommuters' are filling part time jobs. So they only bill what they work. But they are still kind of 'on call' so never really 'done'.
Employers won't spend huge hourly fees for most 'telecommuters'
They can also have a dozen five minute calls spread throughout the day and then bill one hour. In an office they would get the same 'work quantity' but be stuck driving there and back again.
These sorts of jobs can also span from 6am to 11pm - working with international clients.
It's often don't work and you don't eat. Performance is really readily apparent to anyone. No hiding in teams.
.
LOL! "Sequins on a Shovel"
.. such was the ribbon design. And how people are much faster at using LO / OOo.
Great Design can have a huge impact on product success. Look at Apple. A bit of nice design and 'marketing like there's no tomorrow', and they are valued more than Exxon. Bad design can drive your customers to the competition