Sweet Cheeses, indeed. When the actions of the service owner directly contradict the very NAME of the service in question, yes it becomes more than "lacking good intentions".
The DMCA has provisions to let UMG and Google settle their disputes without a single lawsuit, but Google (apparently) chose the path of least resistance, giving the content enforcement job to a media company that does not have the user's best interest in mind. Certainly not "dont-be-evil" no matter how you cut it. If the cost of compliance on Youtube is too great for Google to bear, there has to be a better solution than just giving the keys to the castle away to a media company so they have free reign to take what is billed as a free and open video sharing site and turn it into "whatever UMG thinks you should be able to watch".
If you are that paranoid get a car with a locking trunk release (most cars in the US above the "compact" class have this feature) and leave some coin in the cup holder and the doors unlocked. If a thief wants to rummage, they can take the change without breaking anything and likely either wont bother with the trunk, if they do want in to the trunk they will have to put the usual amount of breaking and entering effort into it.
In my area tint = expensive stereo... I have had many friends whose tinted cars got smash-n-grabbed, my humble, tintless (albeit expensive stereo equipped) car never got touched. "Send the right signals", and all that.
Compare that to a warzone consisting of less than 250,000 Americans where the avg daily death rate is 2 per or higher, or 8 in 1,000,000.
And how many of those are non-combatant contractors in that particular theater?
Much lower. Vastly lower. And you'd be making 5x+ the amount of money. And even at an 8x increase in risk, the risk is still *tiny*, but its not even remotely as high as you quote.
It's either as high or it's not as high... Since data on "non-combatant contractors" is hard to come by I would be honored if you would share your source with the rest of us.
People drive sport bikes without helmets all the time in states that don't require it. Nothing unusual there.
Just because you don't fear death, that doesn't mean you have a death wish, nor does it make you an less stable. If someone came to me and said, "I will pay off all your student loans and credit card debt, buy you a brand new house, a new car, and all you have to do is work in Iraq for a year"....well if I wasn't gainfully employed, I wouldn't be crazy for considering it.
There is certainly room on the spectrum for risk-takers who don't want to die outright; but there is a big difference on that spectrum between contemplating a lucrative job offer that involves risk, and saying "i am hard up for money so give me the riskiest thing possible". The latter kind is probably prone to unaccountably risky behavior when it comes to carrying out their job functions as well.
The money isn't worth it if you wind up kidnapped and looking at a video camera while they cut your head off.
Look at working in Europe or if you want to try the language China, even better Australia routinely hires for IT and they speak English (sort of).
Is the money worth it if you're killed in a car accident during rushhour traffic on your way to work in *insert city here* USA?
Life is a risk, death is always a risk, and the statistics about risk are often pretty far off what people estimate in their gut.
Except in a warzone, you have to worry about the car accident AND the roadside bomb AND the sniper AND the suicide bomber... You are exactly right that humans tend to misunderstand risk, but in this case you will find that those seeking to work in a "warzone" are grossly underestimating the risk they are taking.
To put it numerically, every day in the US approximately 1 person in 3,400,000 dies in a car accident (the rate for all accidental causes is approx 1/1,000,000). Compare that to a warzone consisting of less than 250,000 Americans where the avg daily death rate is 2 per or higher, or 8 in 1,000,000. So by making this choice, you are taking a risk that is at least 8x greater than most activities found stateside.
What's wrong with wanting to work in a war zone? The pay is usually better, and some people like the daily excitement.
Because gleefully exclaiming that the money is worth the risk is probably an indicator of an unstable personality at best, if not a depressed/suicidal disorder. People are *supposed* to fear death, it's what makes them generally live longer and therefore be a more reliable employee. A competent manager would have the same reservations about hiring someone who drove a 1000cc sportbike to work every day with no helmet on because they were "a busy person".
More deeply, by and large someone who has never worked in a "warzone" who says "i want to work in a warzone" should be directly enlisting in the military, as they have the resources to protect n00bs from killing themselves too easily. Someone who says "i want to freelance in a warzone for the kicks!" who has never done it before in all likelihood has NO idea what they are actually getting themselves into, and will be a risk to themselves and others until they have a significant amount of experience.
I said the fictional user in the story was a moron because they fell for a sales scam that is as old as time itself: "how about you buy some of this bullshit". Slashdot works a lot better with a little reading comprehension.
Given that I have been trawling Android forums for about 18 months and I have yet to encounter a single user report of this outside of Google's own bug reporting system (and I certainly never met a user IRL that saw this problem), this falls squarely into the "yawn" bucket. Also, it's not at all security related. I'd be interested in anything else you might have, though...
And the fact that it takes people on XDA a matter of days to find and fix many of the issues in manufacturer releases.
Two words that the mobile industry doesn't seem to understand: Beta Test
Users would not be so angry about delayed upgrades if we were allowed to test betas.
What do you think XDA is? Do you think hundred-billion dollar companies really have a hard time keeping the wraps on test firmware? The leaks are just a thinly veiled beta program, administered by the CarrierIQ software which can report deep enough bug information to allow the carrier to triage and fix any major issues.
You get the update the day that Apple decides they want to start pushing the update, it has nothing to do with when the code was "finished" because Apple keeps all of that under wraps. Whether this is good/bad/indifferent is up to the user, but comparing that process to the Android one is awkward at best. Oh yeah, and how is Siri working on that iPhone 4 of yours?
Google patches a security flaw in Android and releases it. How long does it take the patch to be available for every Android phone worldwide?
When Apple released iOS 5.0.1. Every iOS user worldwide got a notification that a new OS was available and all they had to do was press 'Update' from their phone/tablet.
The last (and only, from my memory) time a security issue surfaced, Google plugged the hole via a silent update to it's application suite and it did not require any user intervention at all. There was also no documented cases of the exploit being used "in the wild" so the action taken by Google was sufficient to mitigate any risk. Whether or not this is the best way to handle things is again, up to the user. However, I would be interested to see an "in the wild" exploit that gained traction due to the lack of swift action by either Google or the carriers.
If you have a choice between two otherwise equal phones, and one comes with a promise of an upgrade to the next OS, you'll go with that one, since[...]
Since you (the fictional user in this story) are a MORON. Never buy on promises. No matter what the product or how convincing the sales rep is. This is a lesson everyone probably learns once, but some seem doomed to learn over and over and over and over.
The day the iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0 was released I was able to upgrade my iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and iPad to iOS 5.
You get the update the day that Apple decides they want to start pushing the update, it has nothing to do with when the code was "finished" because Apple keeps all of that under wraps. Whether this is good/bad/indifferent is up to the user, but comparing that process to the Android one is awkward at best. Oh yeah, and how is Siri working on that iPhone 4 of yours?
That being said, it would be a completely different story if your new PC came with the promise that newer versions of windows would be made available at no charge over your existing internet connection. Why shouldn't you be upset when a new version is released and months go by without your upgrade coming through?
Expectation management is definitely not handled well by the people selling the phone, you have a definite point. At the same time, Google has a real branding problem because no one can really be bothered to tell the difference between what the Android OS itself is, and what runs on their phone (a piece of software often bearing very little resemblance to the original version)...
People were asking for Windows XP in large quantities still, which is why Dell continued to sell it with their computers. You don't see people bemoaning the fact that the carriers and manufacturers are making plans to start rolling out upgrades and phones that lack Android 2.x on them, whereas you did see that in the PC market when Vista came out. Android 4 is seen as a legitimate upgrade to the Android line. Vista was seen as a downgrade by many, so they preferred to do without it.
Comparing the two makes little sense.
Whenever I talk to an Android user who hasn't been exposed to internet forums, there is probably a 95% chance they don't even know what version of the OS they are currently using, much less what version is somewhere in the ether waiting to get released for their phone. Articles are constantly appearing that bemoan the Android upgrade cycle, and while there are a lot of things about it that seem impractical (such as giving carriers, who know little about hardware OR software, so much say over what changes will be made) it always has the stink of a pissing match because a little version number buried somewhere deep in some settings menu has so little to do with what the phone actually does.
If these articles were all about how Android 2.3 had glaring bug [X] or glaring missing feature [Y], and Android 3 or 4 or 9.8 was supposed to fix all that, then I would say "game on" and be right there lighting the fire under whoever is holding up the process. As it is, all we are doing is complaining about the weather because honestly if version numbering and release state were kept under wraps (like they are on monolithic platforms) then none of this would ever be discussed at all.
If I were to (warning, a line is about to be crossed) write an article that said Apple's iOS 6 was "finished" and I had evidence to back it up, and I went on to complain that the release wouldn't happen until December 2012 because of some group's lengthy test process, or bureaucracy, or AT&T's insistence, or whatever, should that depress all the Apple users thinking that they were holding a phone in their hands that was running an "outdated" operating system?
I know I am going to get flamed for being an apologist, but you know that until about a year ago Dell was selling computers preloaded with Windows XP, right? Windows XP, which made its debut in 2001? They were selling (and people were glad to get) a computer with 9 year old software on it. Now we have Android OS from Google and the turnaround can be anywhere from 4 months to a year before it is running on a good portion of the install base, and we complain about it? Why? If the phone doesn't do what you want it to, don't buy it thinking that some software release will come along next week and make it all better (even if the retailers want to insist that)...
Learn from history: buy the phone that does today what you want your phone to do today. For a crowd of computer dorks who know all too well the ups and downs of the software development lifecycle, we here on/. sure do like to play dumb...
I've worked for a couple of small companies. I think it requires different skill sets/strengths to get a company off the ground, known, and making money in the first place than it does to keep it running after you've gone public, have a bunch of employees, etc. Frequently it's not the same person who has both of these skill sets.
Exactly. To me, the only thing that Netflix could have done to save face given everything that has happened is for the board to find a new CEO, one that possessed vision in maintaining a leading, large media distribution company. Reed has plenty of strengths, but he is clearly in over his head as CEO and either needs to find a different spot in Netflix (CTO?) or the board needs to appoint a CSO that has authority over Reed to make sure he doesn't make any more blunders. Until then, I would much rather hold CSTR (parent of Redbox) than NFLX.
I think that the decision to exit the DVD-by-mail market is a great one. Maybe it's just because I'm a college kid, but most people I know don't even bother renting DVDs anymore. As Netflix gains more and more licenses for various production companies, and their ability to stream online grows, nearly everyone I know has switched to exclusively streaming (I know I certainly have). Streaming is where the market is at, these days, since we're practically glued to our technology, particularly the internet.
Good on you, Netflix.
Hate to break it to you, but the Netflix "watch instantly" library is shrinking (unless you count 27 episodes/season of Dora the Explora as individual titles) since desirable content is getting much more expensive (see the Starz licensing situation). If you are happy with the streaming content then great, but make no mistake they are fighting a very hard battle and you will not be seeing very much new-new content on watch instantly in the coming year or two.
What shocks (and appalls) me is that Reed Hastings has made several horrible mistakes, has led his business from profit to loss, and he will still take home a multi million dollar pay package for 2011. It's about time he admit that he is willing to actually PAY for his mistakes, and forego his compensation for the next year since it will clearly be a terrible one for the business. Until then, Netflix is a sinking Titanic with an irresponsible madman at the helm, refusing to change course.
But other than my french friend I have no one that even joked about "organizing" software developers.... would love to hear well thought out arguments in its favor though. Don't mind reading an opposing point of view. Maybe I'll learn something...
Step 1: realize that the hypothesis of the article in question (that developers are scarce and valuable) and the hypothesis of the GP (that the solution to the problem of capitalizing on scarcity is unions) are completely opposite. Unions serve one purpose, to take a large number of otherwise indistinguishable (and therefore disposable) employees and make them distinguishable again by the sole method of giving each one a (identical) contract with the employer that contains certain advantages for the employee (stable hours, stable wage, etc.) Also, it works better if the employees are otherwise not savvy when it comes to contracts (they will rely more on the union's efforts). Therefore to say that the way for a "good developer" to take home an appropriate wage (above-average, according to the article) is to unionize is completely wrong.
Software developers, to date, fall into none of these buckets; good ones are still hard to come by, it is easy to tell the good ones from the bad ones (at least any good company does so, or perishes) and they are generally educated and therefore can recognize a fair/unfair deal when it comes to being employed. In the next 50 years, the trade of software development will likely have grown to become an interchangeable quagmire and it's constituents would benefit from unions, but it is certainly not today. Unions have no part in the current system, plain and simple.
I'm not trying to get people to listen to me...I was just pointing out my tongue-in-cheek sig because I thought people might find it amusing. It's completely obvious that Samsung's business model is to ape popular designs in order to rely on customer confusion an ride the coattails of more popular products. They even released a Windows laptop that looks just like a MacBook Pro, from form factor to color to keyboard layout, complete with a default Windows account avatar that resembles the Apple logo so that it appears in the center of the screen just like OS X's startup screen.
(Score: -1, Non sequitur) Your evidence suggests that Samsung is willing to produce products that customers clearly like, for the purpose of selling products that CUSTOMERS CLEARLY LIKE. Your notion that there is a conspiracy to fool customers into thinking that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is really an iPad is completely baseless. Customers clearly like the look of the iPad, so there is reason to believe that they will also like the look of a similar device. Is that really shocking?
Walk into any consumer electronics store, head for the TV section, and from about 30 feet away tell me the brand of each of the TVs on display. What, you can't? It turns out that people just want a flat fucking box with a display on the front and for everything else to get the hell out of the way so they can watch it? Wow. I bet the power cords even look the same! Holy hell this is some wicked shit. Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp, Sony, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, and Visio really should be suing the hell out of each other right now. Wait, they aren't?
and asking for a fee which will be a around 20% of the settlement. While the number is very large I doubt you or I or much of anyone on this site knows the true costs involved in running a major law firm and maintaining a case over eight years.
So while it is simple to demagogue someone/something/etc because we don't understand it still does not make it right, let alone worthy of being rated insightful on this site. We should not give into our ignorance, let alone jealously, of others simply because of a dollar amount. It cheapen us and the very work we do. I am quite certain you can find any number of people on the street who would be aghast at how much "some" people get paid to work on computers and that attitude has the same founding.
You are so right, I did an informal poll just last weekend:
Who would you, John Q Public, be more sympathetic to? a) Someone whose sole job it is to operate a computer for the purpose of creating and maintaining communication services to every aspect of life around the globe. b) Someone whose sole job it is to go into an already overloaded court of law, and plead on the behalf of "victims" who were the target of illegal business practices and spend 8 years crafting a settlement that amounted to the same value as the fast food coupons the victims find in their mailbox on a weekly basis, and oh by the way the pay is $2 million a year.
What sort of argument is that? If the lawyers hadn't run the case, no one would have got anything. This case didn't magically happen.
Oh, and you are more than welcome to opt out of the class and bring your own case against Ticket Master.
It's the same argument as "Why, the fella who won the state lotto last week just paid for a ticket and ended up with ten million bucks, if any of you wants to become a millionaire obviously the thing standing in your way is buying a ticket"
The legal profession is so wrought with uncertainty that I have absolutely no envy for those just starting out. Sure, there are *good* lawyers who get *very* well paid for their work, but by and large most (even good) lawyers make jack crap and put in 80+ hour weeks for years on end before being promoted to the point of having a salary worthy of the money they spent on law school, or taking a tangential job with more stability and the commiserate lack of high pay.
Slashdot Mirror
Sweet Cheeses, indeed. When the actions of the service owner directly contradict the very NAME of the service in question, yes it becomes more than "lacking good intentions".
The DMCA has provisions to let UMG and Google settle their disputes without a single lawsuit, but Google (apparently) chose the path of least resistance, giving the content enforcement job to a media company that does not have the user's best interest in mind. Certainly not "dont-be-evil" no matter how you cut it. If the cost of compliance on Youtube is too great for Google to bear, there has to be a better solution than just giving the keys to the castle away to a media company so they have free reign to take what is billed as a free and open video sharing site and turn it into "whatever UMG thinks you should be able to watch".
If you are that paranoid get a car with a locking trunk release (most cars in the US above the "compact" class have this feature) and leave some coin in the cup holder and the doors unlocked. If a thief wants to rummage, they can take the change without breaking anything and likely either wont bother with the trunk, if they do want in to the trunk they will have to put the usual amount of breaking and entering effort into it.
In my area tint = expensive stereo... I have had many friends whose tinted cars got smash-n-grabbed, my humble, tintless (albeit expensive stereo equipped) car never got touched. "Send the right signals", and all that.
lol, golf clap. well done. My mod points would have been yours...
Compare that to a warzone consisting of less than 250,000 Americans where the avg daily death rate is 2 per or higher, or 8 in 1,000,000.
And how many of those are non-combatant contractors in that particular theater?
Much lower. Vastly lower. And you'd be making 5x+ the amount of money. And even at an 8x increase in risk, the risk is still *tiny*, but its not even remotely as high as you quote.
It's either as high or it's not as high... Since data on "non-combatant contractors" is hard to come by I would be honored if you would share your source with the rest of us.
People drive sport bikes without helmets all the time in states that don't require it. Nothing unusual there.
Just because you don't fear death, that doesn't mean you have a death wish, nor does it make you an less stable. If someone came to me and said, "I will pay off all your student loans and credit card debt, buy you a brand new house, a new car, and all you have to do is work in Iraq for a year"....well if I wasn't gainfully employed, I wouldn't be crazy for considering it.
There is certainly room on the spectrum for risk-takers who don't want to die outright; but there is a big difference on that spectrum between contemplating a lucrative job offer that involves risk, and saying "i am hard up for money so give me the riskiest thing possible". The latter kind is probably prone to unaccountably risky behavior when it comes to carrying out their job functions as well.
The money isn't worth it if you wind up kidnapped and looking at a video camera while they cut your head off.
Look at working in Europe or if you want to try the language China, even better Australia routinely hires for IT and they speak English (sort of).
Is the money worth it if you're killed in a car accident during rushhour traffic on your way to work in *insert city here* USA?
Life is a risk, death is always a risk, and the statistics about risk are often pretty far off what people estimate in their gut.
Except in a warzone, you have to worry about the car accident AND the roadside bomb AND the sniper AND the suicide bomber... You are exactly right that humans tend to misunderstand risk, but in this case you will find that those seeking to work in a "warzone" are grossly underestimating the risk they are taking.
To put it numerically, every day in the US approximately 1 person in 3,400,000 dies in a car accident (the rate for all accidental causes is approx 1/1,000,000). Compare that to a warzone consisting of less than 250,000 Americans where the avg daily death rate is 2 per or higher, or 8 in 1,000,000. So by making this choice, you are taking a risk that is at least 8x greater than most activities found stateside.
What's wrong with wanting to work in a war zone? The pay is usually better, and some people like the daily excitement.
Because gleefully exclaiming that the money is worth the risk is probably an indicator of an unstable personality at best, if not a depressed/suicidal disorder. People are *supposed* to fear death, it's what makes them generally live longer and therefore be a more reliable employee. A competent manager would have the same reservations about hiring someone who drove a 1000cc sportbike to work every day with no helmet on because they were "a busy person".
More deeply, by and large someone who has never worked in a "warzone" who says "i want to work in a warzone" should be directly enlisting in the military, as they have the resources to protect n00bs from killing themselves too easily. Someone who says "i want to freelance in a warzone for the kicks!" who has never done it before in all likelihood has NO idea what they are actually getting themselves into, and will be a risk to themselves and others until they have a significant amount of experience.
I said the fictional user in the story was a moron because they fell for a sales scam that is as old as time itself: "how about you buy some of this bullshit". Slashdot works a lot better with a little reading comprehension.
Given that I have been trawling Android forums for about 18 months and I have yet to encounter a single user report of this outside of Google's own bug reporting system (and I certainly never met a user IRL that saw this problem), this falls squarely into the "yawn" bucket. Also, it's not at all security related. I'd be interested in anything else you might have, though...
And the fact that it takes people on XDA a matter of days to find and fix many of the issues in manufacturer releases.
Two words that the mobile industry doesn't seem to understand:
Beta Test
Users would not be so angry about delayed upgrades if we were allowed to test betas.
What do you think XDA is? Do you think hundred-billion dollar companies really have a hard time keeping the wraps on test firmware? The leaks are just a thinly veiled beta program, administered by the CarrierIQ software which can report deep enough bug information to allow the carrier to triage and fix any major issues.
Google patches a security flaw in Android and releases it. How long does it take the patch to be available for every Android phone worldwide?
When Apple released iOS 5.0.1. Every iOS user worldwide got a notification that a new OS was available and all they had to do was press 'Update' from their phone/tablet.
The last (and only, from my memory) time a security issue surfaced, Google plugged the hole via a silent update to it's application suite and it did not require any user intervention at all. There was also no documented cases of the exploit being used "in the wild" so the action taken by Google was sufficient to mitigate any risk. Whether or not this is the best way to handle things is again, up to the user. However, I would be interested to see an "in the wild" exploit that gained traction due to the lack of swift action by either Google or the carriers.
If you have a choice between two otherwise equal phones, and one comes with a promise of an upgrade to the next OS, you'll go with that one, since[...]
Since you (the fictional user in this story) are a MORON. Never buy on promises. No matter what the product or how convincing the sales rep is. This is a lesson everyone probably learns once, but some seem doomed to learn over and over and over and over.
The day the iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0 was released I was able to upgrade my iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and iPad to iOS 5.
You get the update the day that Apple decides they want to start pushing the update, it has nothing to do with when the code was "finished" because Apple keeps all of that under wraps. Whether this is good/bad/indifferent is up to the user, but comparing that process to the Android one is awkward at best. Oh yeah, and how is Siri working on that iPhone 4 of yours?
That being said, it would be a completely different story if your new PC came with the promise that newer versions of windows would be made available at no charge over your existing internet connection. Why shouldn't you be upset when a new version is released and months go by without your upgrade coming through?
Expectation management is definitely not handled well by the people selling the phone, you have a definite point. At the same time, Google has a real branding problem because no one can really be bothered to tell the difference between what the Android OS itself is, and what runs on their phone (a piece of software often bearing very little resemblance to the original version)...
I wish I had mod points right now to mod you up.
People were asking for Windows XP in large quantities still, which is why Dell continued to sell it with their computers. You don't see people bemoaning the fact that the carriers and manufacturers are making plans to start rolling out upgrades and phones that lack Android 2.x on them, whereas you did see that in the PC market when Vista came out. Android 4 is seen as a legitimate upgrade to the Android line. Vista was seen as a downgrade by many, so they preferred to do without it.
Comparing the two makes little sense.
Whenever I talk to an Android user who hasn't been exposed to internet forums, there is probably a 95% chance they don't even know what version of the OS they are currently using, much less what version is somewhere in the ether waiting to get released for their phone. Articles are constantly appearing that bemoan the Android upgrade cycle, and while there are a lot of things about it that seem impractical (such as giving carriers, who know little about hardware OR software, so much say over what changes will be made) it always has the stink of a pissing match because a little version number buried somewhere deep in some settings menu has so little to do with what the phone actually does.
If these articles were all about how Android 2.3 had glaring bug [X] or glaring missing feature [Y], and Android 3 or 4 or 9.8 was supposed to fix all that, then I would say "game on" and be right there lighting the fire under whoever is holding up the process. As it is, all we are doing is complaining about the weather because honestly if version numbering and release state were kept under wraps (like they are on monolithic platforms) then none of this would ever be discussed at all.
If I were to (warning, a line is about to be crossed) write an article that said Apple's iOS 6 was "finished" and I had evidence to back it up, and I went on to complain that the release wouldn't happen until December 2012 because of some group's lengthy test process, or bureaucracy, or AT&T's insistence, or whatever, should that depress all the Apple users thinking that they were holding a phone in their hands that was running an "outdated" operating system?
I know I am going to get flamed for being an apologist, but you know that until about a year ago Dell was selling computers preloaded with Windows XP, right? Windows XP, which made its debut in 2001? They were selling (and people were glad to get) a computer with 9 year old software on it. Now we have Android OS from Google and the turnaround can be anywhere from 4 months to a year before it is running on a good portion of the install base, and we complain about it? Why? If the phone doesn't do what you want it to, don't buy it thinking that some software release will come along next week and make it all better (even if the retailers want to insist that)...
Learn from history: buy the phone that does today what you want your phone to do today. For a crowd of computer dorks who know all too well the ups and downs of the software development lifecycle, we here on /. sure do like to play dumb...
I've worked for a couple of small companies. I think it requires different skill sets/strengths to get a company off the ground, known, and making money in the first place than it does to keep it running after you've gone public, have a bunch of employees, etc. Frequently it's not the same person who has both of these skill sets.
Exactly. To me, the only thing that Netflix could have done to save face given everything that has happened is for the board to find a new CEO, one that possessed vision in maintaining a leading, large media distribution company. Reed has plenty of strengths, but he is clearly in over his head as CEO and either needs to find a different spot in Netflix (CTO?) or the board needs to appoint a CSO that has authority over Reed to make sure he doesn't make any more blunders. Until then, I would much rather hold CSTR (parent of Redbox) than NFLX.
I think that the decision to exit the DVD-by-mail market is a great one. Maybe it's just because I'm a college kid, but most people I know don't even bother renting DVDs anymore. As Netflix gains more and more licenses for various production companies, and their ability to stream online grows, nearly everyone I know has switched to exclusively streaming (I know I certainly have). Streaming is where the market is at, these days, since we're practically glued to our technology, particularly the internet.
Good on you, Netflix.
Hate to break it to you, but the Netflix "watch instantly" library is shrinking (unless you count 27 episodes/season of Dora the Explora as individual titles) since desirable content is getting much more expensive (see the Starz licensing situation). If you are happy with the streaming content then great, but make no mistake they are fighting a very hard battle and you will not be seeing very much new-new content on watch instantly in the coming year or two.
What shocks (and appalls) me is that Reed Hastings has made several horrible mistakes, has led his business from profit to loss, and he will still take home a multi million dollar pay package for 2011. It's about time he admit that he is willing to actually PAY for his mistakes, and forego his compensation for the next year since it will clearly be a terrible one for the business. Until then, Netflix is a sinking Titanic with an irresponsible madman at the helm, refusing to change course.
But other than my french friend I have no one that even joked about "organizing" software developers.... would love to hear well thought out arguments in its favor though. Don't mind reading an opposing point of view. Maybe I'll learn something...
Step 1: realize that the hypothesis of the article in question (that developers are scarce and valuable) and the hypothesis of the GP (that the solution to the problem of capitalizing on scarcity is unions) are completely opposite. Unions serve one purpose, to take a large number of otherwise indistinguishable (and therefore disposable) employees and make them distinguishable again by the sole method of giving each one a (identical) contract with the employer that contains certain advantages for the employee (stable hours, stable wage, etc.) Also, it works better if the employees are otherwise not savvy when it comes to contracts (they will rely more on the union's efforts). Therefore to say that the way for a "good developer" to take home an appropriate wage (above-average, according to the article) is to unionize is completely wrong.
Software developers, to date, fall into none of these buckets; good ones are still hard to come by, it is easy to tell the good ones from the bad ones (at least any good company does so, or perishes) and they are generally educated and therefore can recognize a fair/unfair deal when it comes to being employed. In the next 50 years, the trade of software development will likely have grown to become an interchangeable quagmire and it's constituents would benefit from unions, but it is certainly not today. Unions have no part in the current system, plain and simple.
I LOLed. The part about the cosmonaut gets me every time.
Who the hell is "SK"?
I'm not trying to get people to listen to me...I was just pointing out my tongue-in-cheek sig because I thought people might find it amusing. It's completely obvious that Samsung's business model is to ape popular designs in order to rely on customer confusion an ride the coattails of more popular products. They even released a Windows laptop that looks just like a MacBook Pro, from form factor to color to keyboard layout, complete with a default Windows account avatar that resembles the Apple logo so that it appears in the center of the screen just like OS X's startup screen.
(Score: -1, Non sequitur) Your evidence suggests that Samsung is willing to produce products that customers clearly like, for the purpose of selling products that CUSTOMERS CLEARLY LIKE. Your notion that there is a conspiracy to fool customers into thinking that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is really an iPad is completely baseless. Customers clearly like the look of the iPad, so there is reason to believe that they will also like the look of a similar device. Is that really shocking?
Walk into any consumer electronics store, head for the TV section, and from about 30 feet away tell me the brand of each of the TVs on display. What, you can't? It turns out that people just want a flat fucking box with a display on the front and for everything else to get the hell out of the way so they can watch it? Wow. I bet the power cords even look the same! Holy hell this is some wicked shit. Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp, Sony, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, and Visio really should be suing the hell out of each other right now. Wait, they aren't?
and asking for a fee which will be a around 20% of the settlement. While the number is very large I doubt you or I or much of anyone on this site knows the true costs involved in running a major law firm and maintaining a case over eight years.
So while it is simple to demagogue someone/something/etc because we don't understand it still does not make it right, let alone worthy of being rated insightful on this site. We should not give into our ignorance, let alone jealously, of others simply because of a dollar amount. It cheapen us and the very work we do. I am quite certain you can find any number of people on the street who would be aghast at how much "some" people get paid to work on computers and that attitude has the same founding.
You are so right, I did an informal poll just last weekend:
Who would you, John Q Public, be more sympathetic to?
a) Someone whose sole job it is to operate a computer for the purpose of creating and maintaining communication services to every aspect of life around the globe.
b) Someone whose sole job it is to go into an already overloaded court of law, and plead on the behalf of "victims" who were the target of illegal business practices and spend 8 years crafting a settlement that amounted to the same value as the fast food coupons the victims find in their mailbox on a weekly basis, and oh by the way the pay is $2 million a year.
It was shocking which one they went for...
What sort of argument is that? If the lawyers hadn't run the case, no one would have got anything. This case didn't magically happen.
Oh, and you are more than welcome to opt out of the class and bring your own case against Ticket Master.
It's the same argument as "Why, the fella who won the state lotto last week just paid for a ticket and ended up with ten million bucks, if any of you wants to become a millionaire obviously the thing standing in your way is buying a ticket"
The legal profession is so wrought with uncertainty that I have absolutely no envy for those just starting out. Sure, there are *good* lawyers who get *very* well paid for their work, but by and large most (even good) lawyers make jack crap and put in 80+ hour weeks for years on end before being promoted to the point of having a salary worthy of the money they spent on law school, or taking a tangential job with more stability and the commiserate lack of high pay.