Which is due to management not being taken seriously as a skill in our culture. Thus, at every level of management you are bound to find many frustrated people who would rather be practicing the functions that inspired them to pursue a career than doing Management. They may see up-and-comers with jealousy because they are doing the "real" work. They may also feel threatened. Sidelining them with enthusiasm-exterminating managerial duties kills two birds with one stone. Thus the cycle perpetuates itself.
Of course, one person's trash is another's treasuer. I believe that there are many people who would enjoy and excel at management duties if our society recognized it as a distinct and valuable set of skills. But as long as "Manager" is synonymous with "Boss", this will never happen.
I've managed people in the past, and it struck me that Management should really be a support role. My most valuable contribution as a manager was making sure my people understood what was expected and getting them the information and resources they needed to do their best work. This involved a lot of spreadsheets and scheduling, which had nothing to do with the job I was promoted from (mechanic). The second most valuable contribution was protecting my people from the whimsy and downright predation of higher management, who felt that their purpose in life was to crack whips and make sure everyone below them knew they were being watched.
Ideally, I would put a manager alongside a Tech Lead (or equiv) and make it the responsibility of each to make the partnership greater than the sum of its parts. You can't be a good Tech-type if you are out of too many loops, and you can't be a good manager if you don't understand the technology. In most cases this problem is 'solved' by promoting a Tech to Management, but that assumes that Management is easy and can be learned by anyone. Alternately, we have a class of Management Professionals who know everything about Management Theory but little about the real world trying to dictate real work. Neither is optimal.
Disagree. Presumably, they would need to fill the Tech Lead role once they promoted him, so his old job would need to be filled. Only a cartoonishly f'ed up company would bring in two outside hires just to spite a long-time employee who does not want to be a manager.
On the other hand, it would amount to constructing a ceiling over one's own progress within the organization.
Both of my parents moved up from teaching/tech work to managerial positions, and neither was particularly happy. My father eventually went back to teaching at a lower salary and is much happier in general.
Part of me thinks there is a serious problem when skilled labor is force-funneled into management. On the other hand, after a point it only makes sense that pay increasse would eventually taper off to cost-of-living adjustments if an employee is unwilling to move out of their current position.
Are you so sure? Alienating customers won't help publishers any, since they're where the money comes from.
Yeah, and cable TV, internet and mobile subscribers are where the money comes from, so obviously providers in those industries would never do anything to screw their customers. Business transactions, rational self interest, providing value and all that good stuff.
I worked in the book industry for 7 years that spanned the short-lived Rocket eBook generation of electronic books. I can assure you that the majority of publishers I worked with (my employer represented more than 100 independent publishers) would have laughed you out of the room with that "providing value" nonsense. Book publishers are no different than record or film companies, they just work on thinner margins taken from smaller revenues.
So here is why this might work: Skiff eliminates a middleman, namely Amazon. Thus consumers could end up paying less, while publishers (and even writers) get more.
What on earth makes you think that prices are based on the layers of middle-men (or any other cost)? Good grief!
If you haven't factored in the cost of disposing of the "empty" printer, you really have no idea whether it cost less than the replacement ink. I suspect that the only way you will "save" money is by externalizing the disposal cost by simply (and irresponsibly) throwing the printer in the trash.
But if it gets cheaper, expect many farm animals to go extinct in many areas, being replaced by the vat-grown clonemeat. What would PETA think about that?
Seems like they would think something along the lines of "as far as we're concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there's no ethical objection" (TFA).
Every time this sort of issue comes up, someone imagines that there is some kind of conundrum for animal rights activists regarding the fact that reducing the number of animals that are farmed for slaughter reduces the number of animals, and don't animal rights activists like animals? So what's up with wanting fewer of them?
I hope that isn't what you are getting at, because it is completely inane.
Here in Scandinavia that has been standard clause in the TOS for ever. ..
Hey, that's great. In the US ISPs most certainly will care about it because they believe they are entitled to profit from any addition of features or functionality, period.
I understand it too but seems a very one dimensional view. I have a few very niche applications available (including an RPG helper app GMToolkit) that made it through the approval process within a couple weeks with relatively few issues. I have to wonder why a small independent developer can do reasonably well?
This is ridiculous. A major facet of the disillusionment with the AppStore is the capriciousness of the approval process. There have been multiple accounts, many posted here, describing apps that were left in permanent limbo, rejected for invalid reasons (approval droid says app violates X when it demonstrably doesn't), or shot down for BS reasons that boil down to Apple/ATT greed and/or paranoia.
Do you not understand why your experience does not invalidate this complaint? Its your view that is very one dimensional view.
And I am sure that building "niche" apps has more than a little to do with your success.
Incorrect. "Go" is pronounced as Westerners pronounce it. There are short and long "o" sounds in Japanese, but neither is pronounced as in "got" (they'd likely use an "a" to represent that sound). The short version is typically written "o" and the long version either as "ou" or "oh".
Note that Japanese have established conventions for using "Romaji" to write their own language. Western conventions are not necessarily applicable.
Re:Just shows investors are clueless
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The problem with the iPhone type devices is that they are a compromise for everything. Do you really enjoy that tiny screen? Do you like browsing the web on your iPhone? Do you enjoy texting with keys that small? Hey, but you can do it anywhere, so you put up with it. It's cool.
Exactly. It's cool because you can do it anywhere. Where is this "problem" you speak of?
Next up (and this will be a hardware issue): Heads-up displays on the windshield. I would dump my Garmin and buy a new one in half a second if I could get a heads-up display. Let's see you download THAT from Google.
You just kicked the legs out from beneath your own argument. With HUD, screen size becomes irrelevant. All that matters is what devices can be used to drive the display. Would you rather buy a separate GPS device, or just use the phone you already have and can use outside the car as well?
If anything, I support true liberalism, in which there is less government restriction period, and personal liberties are protected as much as possible).
I hate to break it to you, but what you are describing is Libertarianism, not "true liberalism". My condolences.
Obviously "Go" is the English/Western name for the game. The Japanese name is in some character that I won't try to type on slashdot.
What nonsense. "Go" is the Japanese name for the game, which has been widely adopted in the West. The Japanese pronounce it the same as Westerners and their Romaji written representation is "Go".
The reason that I still like my curly-braces is that I don't want the meaning of my code to change just because somebody (me?) changed the whitespace.
Put a tiny amount of time into configuring your code editing environment and this is a practical non-issue. Its not like curly-brace languages are impervious to sloppy coding.
Apple is not going to sell the OS by itself. I don't know why this has to even be repeated, but Apple is a hardware company and to sell boxed copies of OSX than ran on generic hardware would simply be shooting themselves in the foot.
Here is why you are wrong.
First, they are not maximizing their hardware sales. Their limited offerings cede huge swathes of the desktop and laptop markets to other manufacturers. Why would a "hardware company" limit itself in this way? Especially given the myriad versions of the iPod that they churn out -- clearly they have no concerns about supporting a large array of devices.
Second, speaking of that iPod, even if they are a (curiously unambitious) "hardware company", a lot of that hardware is in the form of music players & smart phones which require Apple software running on something (at least for the maximum "experience"). That something can already be a non-Apple computer, and presumably they already have to support non-Apple computers running this software to some extent. What sense does it make for a "hardware company" to sell entry-level peripherals that require their software which will likely to be installed on a competitors hardware because this "hardware" company offers no price-point-equivalent hardware of its own.
Apple is not a "hardware company". They sell hardware, peripherals and software for non-Apple computers. They pick and choose what they offer among those categories based on some internal logic that we may assume maximizes their profits.
None, of all those who arise Phoenix-like every few months or years, lamenting the state of the OS world they find themselves in, you may notice, wants to buy the Apple hardware to run OSX on. Apparently, the natural conclusion goes right over their heads... they are not Apple customers.
They seem to think that paying for a retail copy of OSX would make them Apple customers. They are wrong; that would make them Microsoft customers, because Microsoft is the vendor that uses sales of stand-alone OS's as it's business model. Go buy it; there's a snappy new version out right now, I hear.
Get over yourself. You are not more an Apple customer than the snot-nosed kid with a first gen iPod Shuffle.
If you buy an iPod shuffle and sync it with iTunes on a $300 PC, how are you not an Apple customer? How is Apple damaged by offering the option to run OSX on that same box and get a better iTunes experience, and possibly a better overall impression of Apple products?
I can't figure out what their angle is other than rigging their offerings to milk the most money out of self-regarding suckers before it becomes too obvious to ignore.
Most of these seem like pretty trivial enhancements for the $2000 you have spent. It sounds like you are enjoying the project, which is worth something, but seriously, you can pull all of this off but you need an electrician to reconfigure a light switch?
The point here isn't the irony of delivering broadband to lost pygmy tribes with no indoor plumbing.
Hasn't anyone noticed that to use the internet efficiently for even mundane tasks it requires more and more processing power and bandwith? I wouldn't pay for broadband either, since I rarely use the web for video, gaming or large image downloads -- I could easily get by with dial-up and my PowerBook G4. Heck, I was using a circa 1998 Thinkpad two years ago. But both machines became an increasing hassle to use even for basic browsing of primarily text sites due to the ton of gimmicky overhead in the form of useless bells and whistles and un-optimized content.
I agree that people in the 3rd world probably have larger priorities than high-speed internet. But certainly the internet is a tool that they could benefit from, and the sad fact of the matter is that without high-speed, an increasing portion of the internet is functionally inaccessible. That is a legitimately dire state of affairs, IMO.
Whether Apple would implement such an invention is unknown, but it is possible that they think there are others out there who might want to implement such invasive advertising. It is possible Apple wanted to get ahead of the curve and file this patent so that if any company is silly enough to engage in Big Brother advertising, then Apple will get a royalty. I sure hope this is not the future of advertising.
Riiiiiight. Hey, anything is possible.
My first thought was "I wonder if it is possible to apply for a patent with a spoofed name", you know, to make someone look bad. But in view of the money grubbing BS that can no more be removed from the Apple Experience than missing features and brushed aluminum, I have not trouble believing that Apple is interested in this kind of "monetizing".
Call me a cynic. I got another word for anyone who believes that Apples is reserving this concept in order to protect users from someone else implementing it.
If your parents covered 75% of your education, you are in no position to lecture anyone about "living within you means". Nor should you make snide allusions to friends who will only become homeowners when they inherit homes from their parents, when your oh-so-sperior position was made possible by handouts from your parents.
And are we supposed to be impressed that you left your 2 siblings one semester's worth of tuition to divvy up?
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Yeah, its easy to be a cynic. I've worked for some great bosses. I'm sorry if you've never had the privilege.
Which is due to management not being taken seriously as a skill in our culture. Thus, at every level of management you are bound to find many frustrated people who would rather be practicing the functions that inspired them to pursue a career than doing Management. They may see up-and-comers with jealousy because they are doing the "real" work. They may also feel threatened. Sidelining them with enthusiasm-exterminating managerial duties kills two birds with one stone. Thus the cycle perpetuates itself.
Of course, one person's trash is another's treasuer. I believe that there are many people who would enjoy and excel at management duties if our society recognized it as a distinct and valuable set of skills. But as long as "Manager" is synonymous with "Boss", this will never happen.
I've managed people in the past, and it struck me that Management should really be a support role. My most valuable contribution as a manager was making sure my people understood what was expected and getting them the information and resources they needed to do their best work. This involved a lot of spreadsheets and scheduling, which had nothing to do with the job I was promoted from (mechanic). The second most valuable contribution was protecting my people from the whimsy and downright predation of higher management, who felt that their purpose in life was to crack whips and make sure everyone below them knew they were being watched.
Ideally, I would put a manager alongside a Tech Lead (or equiv) and make it the responsibility of each to make the partnership greater than the sum of its parts. You can't be a good Tech-type if you are out of too many loops, and you can't be a good manager if you don't understand the technology. In most cases this problem is 'solved' by promoting a Tech to Management, but that assumes that Management is easy and can be learned by anyone. Alternately, we have a class of Management Professionals who know everything about Management Theory but little about the real world trying to dictate real work. Neither is optimal.
Disagree. Presumably, they would need to fill the Tech Lead role once they promoted him, so his old job would need to be filled. Only a cartoonishly f'ed up company would bring in two outside hires just to spite a long-time employee who does not want to be a manager.
On the other hand, it would amount to constructing a ceiling over one's own progress within the organization.
Both of my parents moved up from teaching/tech work to managerial positions, and neither was particularly happy. My father eventually went back to teaching at a lower salary and is much happier in general.
Part of me thinks there is a serious problem when skilled labor is force-funneled into management. On the other hand, after a point it only makes sense that pay increasse would eventually taper off to cost-of-living adjustments if an employee is unwilling to move out of their current position.
Are you so sure? Alienating customers won't help publishers any, since they're where the money comes from.
Yeah, and cable TV, internet and mobile subscribers are where the money comes from, so obviously providers in those industries would never do anything to screw their customers. Business transactions, rational self interest, providing value and all that good stuff.
I worked in the book industry for 7 years that spanned the short-lived Rocket eBook generation of electronic books. I can assure you that the majority of publishers I worked with (my employer represented more than 100 independent publishers) would have laughed you out of the room with that "providing value" nonsense. Book publishers are no different than record or film companies, they just work on thinner margins taken from smaller revenues.
So here is why this might work: Skiff eliminates a middleman, namely Amazon. Thus consumers could end up paying less, while publishers (and even writers) get more.
What on earth makes you think that prices are based on the layers of middle-men (or any other cost)? Good grief!
If you haven't factored in the cost of disposing of the "empty" printer, you really have no idea whether it cost less than the replacement ink. I suspect that the only way you will "save" money is by externalizing the disposal cost by simply (and irresponsibly) throwing the printer in the trash.
But if it gets cheaper, expect many farm animals to go extinct in many areas, being replaced by the vat-grown clonemeat. What would PETA think about that?
Seems like they would think something along the lines of "as far as we're concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there's no ethical objection" (TFA).
Every time this sort of issue comes up, someone imagines that there is some kind of conundrum for animal rights activists regarding the fact that reducing the number of animals that are farmed for slaughter reduces the number of animals, and don't animal rights activists like animals? So what's up with wanting fewer of them?
I hope that isn't what you are getting at, because it is completely inane.
The blame belongs on the customer who falls for the scam of over-paying for "inexpensive" crap.
Here in Scandinavia that has been standard clause in the TOS for ever. . .
Hey, that's great. In the US ISPs most certainly will care about it because they believe they are entitled to profit from any addition of features or functionality, period.
I understand it too but seems a very one dimensional view. I have a few very niche applications available (including an RPG helper app GMToolkit) that made it through the approval process within a couple weeks with relatively few issues. I have to wonder why a small independent developer can do reasonably well?
This is ridiculous. A major facet of the disillusionment with the AppStore is the capriciousness of the approval process. There have been multiple accounts, many posted here, describing apps that were left in permanent limbo, rejected for invalid reasons (approval droid says app violates X when it demonstrably doesn't), or shot down for BS reasons that boil down to Apple/ATT greed and/or paranoia.
Do you not understand why your experience does not invalidate this complaint? Its your view that is very one dimensional view.
And I am sure that building "niche" apps has more than a little to do with your success.
Incorrect. "Go" is pronounced as Westerners pronounce it. There are short and long "o" sounds in Japanese, but neither is pronounced as in "got" (they'd likely use an "a" to represent that sound). The short version is typically written "o" and the long version either as "ou" or "oh".
Note that Japanese have established conventions for using "Romaji" to write their own language. Western conventions are not necessarily applicable.
The problem with the iPhone type devices is that they are a compromise for everything. Do you really enjoy that tiny screen? Do you like browsing the web on your iPhone? Do you enjoy texting with keys that small? Hey, but you can do it anywhere, so you put up with it. It's cool.
Exactly. It's cool because you can do it anywhere. Where is this "problem" you speak of?
Next up (and this will be a hardware issue): Heads-up displays on the windshield. I would dump my Garmin and buy a new one in half a second if I could get a heads-up display. Let's see you download THAT from Google.
You just kicked the legs out from beneath your own argument. With HUD, screen size becomes irrelevant. All that matters is what devices can be used to drive the display. Would you rather buy a separate GPS device, or just use the phone you already have and can use outside the car as well?
Not to mention he spouts off to NBA refs and other players.
And their mothers http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2009/news/story?id=4157481
He's an attention whore with no class (and that is true regardless of what one things of Kenyon Martin or his mother).
If anything, I support true liberalism, in which there is less government restriction period, and personal liberties are protected as much as possible).
I hate to break it to you, but what you are describing is Libertarianism, not "true liberalism". My condolences.
Furthermore, it has been long known that these sharks frequent the Farallon Islands, near the coast of Northern California: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Sharks
Obviously "Go" is the English/Western name for the game. The Japanese name is in some character that I won't try to type on slashdot.
What nonsense. "Go" is the Japanese name for the game, which has been widely adopted in the West. The Japanese pronounce it the same as Westerners and their Romaji written representation is "Go".
A lot of folks consider NPR to be a tool of the liberals.
A lot of folks are ignorant paranoids who think ALL media is a "tool of the liberals" save Fox News and insurgent independent voices like Glenn Beck.
I doubt you'd won't find many Liberals who are content with NPR's efforts to provide liberal perspectives.
Like in Python?
The reason that I still like my curly-braces is that I don't want the meaning of my code to change just because somebody (me?) changed the whitespace.
Put a tiny amount of time into configuring your code editing environment and this is a practical non-issue. Its not like curly-brace languages are impervious to sloppy coding.
Apple is not going to sell the OS by itself. I don't know why this has to even be repeated, but Apple is a hardware company and to sell boxed copies of OSX than ran on generic hardware would simply be shooting themselves in the foot.
Here is why you are wrong.
First, they are not maximizing their hardware sales. Their limited offerings cede huge swathes of the desktop and laptop markets to other manufacturers. Why would a "hardware company" limit itself in this way? Especially given the myriad versions of the iPod that they churn out -- clearly they have no concerns about supporting a large array of devices.
Second, speaking of that iPod, even if they are a (curiously unambitious) "hardware company", a lot of that hardware is in the form of music players & smart phones which require Apple software running on something (at least for the maximum "experience"). That something can already be a non-Apple computer, and presumably they already have to support non-Apple computers running this software to some extent. What sense does it make for a "hardware company" to sell entry-level peripherals that require their software which will likely to be installed on a competitors hardware because this "hardware" company offers no price-point-equivalent hardware of its own.
Apple is not a "hardware company". They sell hardware, peripherals and software for non-Apple computers. They pick and choose what they offer among those categories based on some internal logic that we may assume maximizes their profits.
None, of all those who arise Phoenix-like every few months or years, lamenting the state of the OS world they find themselves in, you may notice, wants to buy the Apple hardware to run OSX on. Apparently, the natural conclusion goes right over their heads ... they are not Apple customers.
They seem to think that paying for a retail copy of OSX would make them Apple customers. They are wrong; that would make them Microsoft customers, because Microsoft is the vendor that uses sales of stand-alone OS's as it's business model. Go buy it; there's a snappy new version out right now, I hear.
Get over yourself. You are not more an Apple customer than the snot-nosed kid with a first gen iPod Shuffle.
If you buy an iPod shuffle and sync it with iTunes on a $300 PC, how are you not an Apple customer? How is Apple damaged by offering the option to run OSX on that same box and get a better iTunes experience, and possibly a better overall impression of Apple products?
I can't figure out what their angle is other than rigging their offerings to milk the most money out of self-regarding suckers before it becomes too obvious to ignore.
Most of these seem like pretty trivial enhancements for the $2000 you have spent. It sounds like you are enjoying the project, which is worth something, but seriously, you can pull all of this off but you need an electrician to reconfigure a light switch?
The point here isn't the irony of delivering broadband to lost pygmy tribes with no indoor plumbing.
Hasn't anyone noticed that to use the internet efficiently for even mundane tasks it requires more and more processing power and bandwith? I wouldn't pay for broadband either, since I rarely use the web for video, gaming or large image downloads -- I could easily get by with dial-up and my PowerBook G4. Heck, I was using a circa 1998 Thinkpad two years ago. But both machines became an increasing hassle to use even for basic browsing of primarily text sites due to the ton of gimmicky overhead in the form of useless bells and whistles and un-optimized content.
I agree that people in the 3rd world probably have larger priorities than high-speed internet. But certainly the internet is a tool that they could benefit from, and the sad fact of the matter is that without high-speed, an increasing portion of the internet is functionally inaccessible. That is a legitimately dire state of affairs, IMO.
Whether Apple would implement such an invention is unknown, but it is possible that they think there are others out there who might want to implement such invasive advertising. It is possible Apple wanted to get ahead of the curve and file this patent so that if any company is silly enough to engage in Big Brother advertising, then Apple will get a royalty. I sure hope this is not the future of advertising.
Riiiiiight. Hey, anything is possible.
My first thought was "I wonder if it is possible to apply for a patent with a spoofed name", you know, to make someone look bad. But in view of the money grubbing BS that can no more be removed from the Apple Experience than missing features and brushed aluminum, I have not trouble believing that Apple is interested in this kind of "monetizing".
Call me a cynic. I got another word for anyone who believes that Apples is reserving this concept in order to protect users from someone else implementing it.
Correction: Everyone wants a phone that draws heavily from Nokia's tech. Apple just doesn't want to pay Nokia for using that tech to build the iPhone.
Point taken on the first thing.
I'll withhold judgment on the second of the two things until you actually post a second thing.
You can buy 60GB for $99 or "stick it to the man" by paying $29 for a 2GB third party device?
If your parents covered 75% of your education, you are in no position to lecture anyone about "living within you means". Nor should you make snide allusions to friends who will only become homeowners when they inherit homes from their parents, when your oh-so-sperior position was made possible by handouts from your parents.
And are we supposed to be impressed that you left your 2 siblings one semester's worth of tuition to divvy up?
Sheesh.