The most important number mentioned in the article was not emphasized nearly enough. The amount of fuel that could be saved if more people telecommuted is the most important thing in this day of $3+/gallon gas. Not everyone can telecommute but many can and keeping these people off the roads would do a lot for the traffic, energy and pollution problems that only get worse everyday. Ensuring that affordable broadband is available to everyone and providing tax benefits to companies that encourage telecommuting would be a much better use of tax payers money than the current economic solution our leader have come up with.
they'd move the access business to TWC's Roadrunner group which does the same thing more or less but over faster wires. They could consolidate call centers and support and save $$$. Then when they sell the rest of TWC shares to the public TWX can wash their hands of all the tech stuff and stick to selling crap to the unwitting public...
My only suggestion would be to prototype, see what works and what doesn't and to never assume because "it's good for you, it's good".
Although a good start, books and academic discussions on this subject are mostly theory or one persons experience with a certain user base. What it comes down to is making it work for your user. What's good for one group may be gibberish to another. Also no matter how great you think your design is, if your client doesn't like it, it's worthless. Prototyping gets the interface in front of the target user before too much effort has been expended on the project. Of course you have to make sure you are showing the prototype to the actual user, not just some management type who may have no clue as to what a user will actually want.
Ours still worked and I think the only thing that was missing was the upload of information from our box to the Tivo service. This makes even less sense that they stopped supporting our hardware (we had the original DirectTV box), because that is information that they sell back to the networks, marketing services, etc.
It seems that we started having the 'dial-in' issues after they did an upgrade at the one and only place that we could dial in to without having additional phone charges. Maybe you have newer hardware or they have not gotten around to updating the sites in your area. And like I said, ours still functioned as a Tivo but they told us that we would stop getting software updates which would someday make it stop working. Also, eventually, all that info that is being stored about our viewing habits would fill up the harddrive and cause trouble that way.
Glad to hear they haven't screwed all of their customers. We'd still be one if they hadn't forced us to look elsewhere.
Still looking for suggestions for what to do with the old hardware...
We bought a DirectTV Tivo several years ago and fell in love with it. We would still be using it except that all of a sudden we couldn't connect to the service any longer and kept getting messages saying we needed to fix it. We tried and tried, called customer support, tried again and again. Nothing we did worked to fix the problem. What was happening was when it dialed out it would connect to the service then drop the connection. Oh we could still use Tivo, we got the program guide updates and all that but we kept getting the error messages. We were determined to find out why. Finally after many hours of plodding through customer service hell, both DirecTV and Tivo, we found out that because Tivo and DirectTV had a falling out, they no longer support each other and there was no way it was ever gonna get resolved. We could keep going the way we were for a while but eventually bad things were gonna happen. We looked into it and found out that we could get the DirecTV DVR for less than we paid for monthly Tivo service. And we didn't have to buy the box. We don't like the new one as much as we did Tivo but I guess we'll get used to it. And what's better is if they decide to obsolete this box, we get another one for free. Not like the Tivo doorstop that we have now...
How can Tivo hope to stay around if they are going to treat loyal customers like this? They won't easily get anymore business from us because of this, no matter how much we liked them...
Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do with my old Tivo hardware?
They played "You keep me hangin' on" by Vanilla Fudge 3 times through out the episode and finished with "Don't stop believing" by Journey. Oh there will be a movie alright...
I'm sorry, I must be confused here. We ship our IT work over to India because they have such a highly skilled, cheap workforce. They don't really have that many skilled workers willing to work for next to nothing so now they want to outsource the jobs we outsourced to them back to us??? And this proves that outsourcing works??? I must have skipped my meds today...
I'm sure that's coming soon. Why should India and China work cheap so American businesses can make huge profits on products. It's only a matter of time before middle management and executive positions migrate closer to the worker locations. It has never made sense (logical or economic) to work through so many layers in order to get things done by outsourcers. Once management, work force and facilities are in foreign countries, why would they let profits go back to outside corporation.
"I'm not saying violence is never justified, but excessive violence is never justified. Would you lop off appendages for jaywalking, or just for murder? What about white-collar crimes like Ken Lay and Enron?"
I have just the body part im mind for Ken Lay and all of the other crooked CEO bastards!!!
That looks like a studio version of a generic office except for the side by side trio of monitors on the desk. I'll bet they didn't want to show his real office with the big golden throne and all the other good stuff...
Not to defend AOL or anything but you are wrong that AOL is the only dead weight in Time-Warner. AOL supplies over a billion $ a year in profit back to Time Warner. Not to mention the 11% of Google's business they supply. Certainly, AOL is not the cash machine it once was but they are far from dead. They are now shifting their focus from a member-centric model to an ad supported model. If you don't think that will work out for them then you'd better sell all of your Google and Microsoft stock because that is exactly their plans for the future too.
The merger was probably never a good idea but it was made worse when the two architects of the new company lost their focus shortly after the merger. With those two out of the picture the suits took over and the results are history.
Who can say what would have happened if the merger hadn't taken place but I think Time Warner would have been in a lot of trouble. The magazine business was losing ad money to the internet and don't get me started about their movies... Little Nicky, that stoopid Eddie Murphy space movie, please... The only thing that was making money was music and even that went to hell a few years later. That company was and is run by a bunch of greedy old school suits who have no clue what the real public wants or needs. They finally did get lucky with the HP and LOTR movies but I doubt if they could have done those without the money AOL was kicking in.
The best thing that could happen would be for the company to be split up. Then each new company could stand or fall on it's own and not be held back or propped up by the losing divisions. Maybe AOL will get picked up by someone who actually knows what the internet is...
The tech bubble(s) of the 90s wasn't caused by IT departments. It was caused by venture capitalist, who had major investments in tech companies, bullshitting every other company CxO in the world into thinking they too had to have an "Internet Strategy" or that they had to buy into the latest and greatest thingamabob or they would go the way of the dinosaurs. Then after they got other suckers to buy into their IPO's they bailed and brought the tech industry back to earth. Now they are telling CxOs they must have an "Offshoring Strategy" or their company will go the way of the dinosaurs. Wanna guess where the VCs have their money invested these days...
Amen to that brother! At my company we are required to produce reams of documentation in a format that some outside consultant came up with. The documents are worthless to the coders on the team but they get awarded the required checkmark in someones MS-Project plan. I always write my own document and include it in the CVS module for the project. I try to keep it up to date... I also use JavaDocs to create API documentation. Neither are a requitrement but they are helpful later on when you need to come back to the projects or pass it on to other developers (offshore) to maintain.
Slashdot Mirror
Its about the only way those losers will make money...
The name of the combined company will be "AOLWho?".
You could say the same thing about PHP...
Bad or not, by not supporting Flash Apple will be denying iPhone users access to many popular video sites, including YouTube.
The most important number mentioned in the article was not emphasized nearly enough. The amount of fuel that could be saved if more people telecommuted is the most important thing in this day of $3+ /gallon gas. Not everyone can telecommute but many can and keeping these people off the roads would do a lot for the traffic, energy and pollution problems that only get worse everyday. Ensuring that affordable broadband is available to everyone and providing tax benefits to companies that encourage telecommuting would be a much better use of tax payers money than the current economic solution our leader have come up with.
I think the book you are talking about is "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" by Jason Beard. It is a decent basic overview of graphic design.
they'd move the access business to TWC's Roadrunner group which does the same thing more or less but over faster wires. They could consolidate call centers and support and save $$$. Then when they sell the rest of TWC shares to the public TWX can wash their hands of all the tech stuff and stick to selling crap to the unwitting public...
My only suggestion would be to prototype, see what works and what doesn't and to never assume because "it's good for you, it's good".
Although a good start, books and academic discussions on this subject are mostly theory or one persons experience with a certain user base. What it comes down to is making it work for your user. What's good for one group may be gibberish to another. Also no matter how great you think your design is, if your client doesn't like it, it's worthless. Prototyping gets the interface in front of the target user before too much effort has been expended on the project. Of course you have to make sure you are showing the prototype to the actual user, not just some management type who may have no clue as to what a user will actually want.
Oh they do that all the time. Sometimes weeks in advance. Lot's of work being done on the AOL campus to be sure...
If the US decides to legalize online gambling most of the offshore online casinos will go out of business!!!
Ours still worked and I think the only thing that was missing was the upload of information from our box to the Tivo service. This makes even less sense that they stopped supporting our hardware (we had the original DirectTV box), because that is information that they sell back to the networks, marketing services, etc.
It seems that we started having the 'dial-in' issues after they did an upgrade at the one and only place that we could dial in to without having additional phone charges. Maybe you have newer hardware or they have not gotten around to updating the sites in your area. And like I said, ours still functioned as a Tivo but they told us that we would stop getting software updates which would someday make it stop working. Also, eventually, all that info that is being stored about our viewing habits would fill up the harddrive and cause trouble that way.
Glad to hear they haven't screwed all of their customers. We'd still be one if they hadn't forced us to look elsewhere.
Still looking for suggestions for what to do with the old hardware...
We bought a DirectTV Tivo several years ago and fell in love with it. We would still be using it except that all of a sudden we couldn't connect to the service any longer and kept getting messages saying we needed to fix it. We tried and tried, called customer support, tried again and again. Nothing we did worked to fix the problem. What was happening was when it dialed out it would connect to the service then drop the connection. Oh we could still use Tivo, we got the program guide updates and all that but we kept getting the error messages. We were determined to find out why. Finally after many hours of plodding through customer service hell, both DirecTV and Tivo, we found out that because Tivo and DirectTV had a falling out, they no longer support each other and there was no way it was ever gonna get resolved. We could keep going the way we were for a while but eventually bad things were gonna happen. We looked into it and found out that we could get the DirecTV DVR for less than we paid for monthly Tivo service. And we didn't have to buy the box. We don't like the new one as much as we did Tivo but I guess we'll get used to it. And what's better is if they decide to obsolete this box, we get another one for free. Not like the Tivo doorstop that we have now...
How can Tivo hope to stay around if they are going to treat loyal customers like this? They won't easily get anymore business from us because of this, no matter how much we liked them...
Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do with my old Tivo hardware?
They played "You keep me hangin' on" by Vanilla Fudge 3 times through out the episode and finished with "Don't stop believing" by Journey. Oh there will be a movie alright...
And no one has ever lost data using a commercial desktop app before ...
I'm sorry, I must be confused here. We ship our IT work over to India because they have such a highly skilled, cheap workforce. They don't really have that many skilled workers willing to work for next to nothing so now they want to outsource the jobs we outsourced to them back to us??? And this proves that outsourcing works??? I must have skipped my meds today...
I'm sure that's coming soon. Why should India and China work cheap so American businesses can make huge profits on products. It's only a matter of time before middle management and executive positions migrate closer to the worker locations. It has never made sense (logical or economic) to work through so many layers in order to get things done by outsourcers. Once management, work force and facilities are in foreign countries, why would they let profits go back to outside corporation.
"I'm not saying violence is never justified, but excessive violence is never justified. Would you lop off appendages for jaywalking, or just for murder? What about white-collar crimes like Ken Lay and Enron?"
I have just the body part im mind for Ken Lay and all of the other crooked CEO bastards!!!
Make everyone who boards an airplane eat a big greasy slice of bacon!!!
> If American voters aren't happy with his decision they can always vote him out.
Oh yeah, that'll work. We never voted him in the first time!!! Remember what happened in Florida???
Anyone else notice that at one time or another PC Weak ran articles that gave good reviews to almost all of the things in the top 25???
That looks like a studio version of a generic office except for the side by side trio of monitors on the desk. I'll bet they didn't want to show his real office with the big golden throne and all the other good stuff...
Not to defend AOL or anything but you are wrong that AOL is the only dead weight in Time-Warner. AOL supplies over a billion $ a year in profit back to Time Warner. Not to mention the 11% of Google's business they supply. Certainly, AOL is not the cash machine it once was but they are far from dead. They are now shifting their focus from a member-centric model to an ad supported model. If you don't think that will work out for them then you'd better sell all of your Google and Microsoft stock because that is exactly their plans for the future too.
The merger was probably never a good idea but it was made worse when the two architects of the new company lost their focus shortly after the merger. With those two out of the picture the suits took over and the results are history.
Who can say what would have happened if the merger hadn't taken place but I think Time Warner would have been in a lot of trouble. The magazine business was losing ad money to the internet and don't get me started about their movies... Little Nicky, that stoopid Eddie Murphy space movie, please... The only thing that was making money was music and even that went to hell a few years later. That company was and is run by a bunch of greedy old school suits who have no clue what the real public wants or needs. They finally did get lucky with the HP and LOTR movies but I doubt if they could have done those without the money AOL was kicking in.
The best thing that could happen would be for the company to be split up. Then each new company could stand or fall on it's own and not be held back or propped up by the losing divisions. Maybe AOL will get picked up by someone who actually knows what the internet is...
The tech bubble(s) of the 90s wasn't caused by IT departments. It was caused by venture capitalist, who had major investments in tech companies, bullshitting every other company CxO in the world into thinking they too had to have an "Internet Strategy" or that they had to buy into the latest and greatest thingamabob or they would go the way of the dinosaurs. Then after they got other suckers to buy into their IPO's they bailed and brought the tech industry back to earth. Now they are telling CxOs they must have an "Offshoring Strategy" or their company will go the way of the dinosaurs. Wanna guess where the VCs have their money invested these days...
Amen to that brother! At my company we are required to produce reams of documentation in a format that some outside consultant came up with. The documents are worthless to the coders on the team but they get awarded the required checkmark in someones MS-Project plan. I always write my own document and include it in the CVS module for the project. I try to keep it up to date... I also use JavaDocs to create API documentation. Neither are a requitrement but they are helpful later on when you need to come back to the projects or pass it on to other developers (offshore) to maintain.
I would pose the same question to the M$-Word developers...