You've never seen a Redbox, have you? I agree with your comment about picking up a decent quality DVD with the groceries to watch in the living room, as opposed to downloads in a browser. However, brick-and-mortar video-only rental stores are not necessary for that. We pick up Redbox movies at the grocery store. I'm trying to convince my office building to put one in the lobby.
Between Netflix's cheaper plan for backlist titles, and Redbox for new releases, I would have little need for the likes of Blockbuster.
A good manager provides positive incentives for employees and creates loyalty both to himself and to the company by treating employees like people.
I would also add to this that it is essential for a good manager to garner the respect of his employees and fosters respect among his employees.
I work for a huge, oppressive, impersonal, giant international corporation. Despite the Dilbert-esque corporate policies, I love working here. Why? I have huge amounts of professional respect for my direct coworkers and managers (among the other things you mentioned).
...nothing can change the present situation... so...
Nothing...except for choices that can be made by the two people who control the present situation, which is to say that anything can change the present situation. "It didn't work out" and "nothing can change the present situation" is way too fatalistic for me. I refuse to be a victim of circumstance. I certainly can change my present situation. If my attempts are foiled by the other party who shares a controlling interest, well that could certainly mess things up - but that is not quite the same as nothing having the power to change the situation.
Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think the distinction is important to make.
Bingo. The reflective versus transmissive one is a big one for me. I find reflective surfances MUCH easier to read.
No one seems to have mentioned the anti-aliasing qualities of print. Printed material benefits from centuries of quality tyography development. Computers still have trouble with this, though it is getting much better.
You might enjoy reading Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint". Check it out; I just borrowed it from a friend at work and found it to be an enjoyable read.
Short version: don't use powerpoint unless you are trying to include low-rez graphics in your presentation. Just write a physical report and hand it out on paper.
the current month's rates for energy in my neighborhood are 2.2 cents/kWh for the first 800 kWh and 1.2 cents/kWh after.
I'd like to know where you live. Once I factor in my base customer charge, fuel factor for generation, distribution charges and miscellaneous taxes, my electric bill averages about US$0.14/kWh. The last part of the country I lived in was more like $0.09/kWh, and I thought that was cheap.
FTFA: More importantly, it can be turned sideways for a wide-screen movie experience, which is vastly superior to watching movies on an iPod.
You can just turn screens sideways for wide-screen movie experience? Why didn't anyone tell me?! Boy did I ever get snookered when I bought my widescreen HDTV. I could have just turned my old TV sideways!
It would be neat if you could link each piece of spending with the name of the Congressman whose wording introduced that particular clause of the spending bill, and then somehow correlate that data back to OpenSecrets.org and then find out how much "profit" was made by each entity (tax revenue routed to a given company/industry minus lobbying dollars spent by that company/industry).
Whose lobbying dollars are the most profitable? I know mine sure aren't.
Oh this stuff is so cool! Add "zenith" to the mix you described, and EXIF could very well provide all the information necessary to recreate that any given photograph exactly, albeit at a different point in time.
Do any GPS units record zenith as well as azimuth, or do need to rig up some sort of sextant on the head of my tripod and log that information manually?
I am a former Gentoo user also. I started out running it on a headless personal web server (thus no X), and it performed wonderfully for many years.
I also used it as a desktop OS for a while, but ended up going back to a dual-boot setup with Windows due to lots of unsupported peripherals. Once I got my iMac, Windows and Linux both went out the door as far as desktop OS's are concerned; I haven't looked back. I still ran Gentoo on my web server until I recently decided just to pay for web hosting (cheaper than the electricity to run my server).
I also had a recent bout with the latest Gentoo trying to configure it as a lightweight vmware host OS, but that was on bleeding-edge laptop hardware that isn't supported well by *any* distribution yet, so I quickly gave up on that.
Alas, I don't have any Gentoo in my life anymore, but I do miss it. If you can avoid X, I think Gentoo is hands down the best distro there is. For a desktop OS? Just stick with Mac OS X. Maybe I'll set up a Gentoo virtual machine to get my occasional portage fix.:)
That reminds me of the traffic jam I had to sit through on my way home from work because a new gas station had opened up on my route home. There were people lined up at the pumps, and into the street, effectively stopping all traffic. Why? Because the gas station had a "Grand Opening Sale" and was about $0.20/gallon cheaper than the gas station down the street. My neighbor apparently patronized the new store, and claimed they had very efficient traffic direction in the lot and moved people through fairly quickly - it only took him 20-30 minutes to get in and out.
I was incredulous! 20-30 minutes!! For $0.20!! Lets see, I usually fill up with about 15 gallons or so when I let it get *really* empty. So that's a maximum $3.00 savings on the entire tank, in exchange for a half-hour wait. No thank you. I'll gladly spend much more time for much less savings if it is something I enjoy, but my time waiting in line for gas is certainly worth more than $6.00/hour. I have precious little time as it is; in fact, I wouldn't have had time for this post had I waited in line for gas today!
I've never understood the wireless speakers thing. I mean - you still have to plug them in, right? How is having a big power cord sticking out the back (and possibly an AC Adapter brick) more agreeable than simply running some speaker cable? Also, ideal speaker placement may be compromised if you don't happen to have an outlet nearby.
Meanwhile, while you are working overtime, your wife has to leave her job right on time every day so she can pick up *your* kids from school and take them to little league!
I will never begrudge someone who has firm ideas about the boundaries of where work ends and their family life begins. Overtime is above and beyond the call of duty; my job is not my life.
Granted, it sounds like your female colleague was a problem. But I don't think your experience is at all representative of the gender issues that are being discussed on this article -- it sounds more like a fringe case.
I'm pretty sure the key to beating Microsoft is winning the Office market, which is probably much harder than beating them at the OS war, in no small part because of custom MS Access apps that run half of your business and VB macros, etc.
Oof. I need another expensive hobby like I need a hole in the head.
But thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into the model rocketry clubs and see what I can find. In a metropolitan area of 5 million people there is bound to be something.
I would love to take my son to some sort of rocket launch, but we are not in a poisition to make it to Florida for a shuttle launch. I am pretty sure there are some unmanned rocket launches from elsewhere in the country. How for do I have to drive from Dallas to get to see one of these, whether NASA or private industry? Where are they?
Designed for what the company calls "photocopier simplicity", CEO Geoff Peck claims that the technology is ready to deploy immediately and is already deployed in some ports and hospitals.
Photocopier simplicity, eh? I can see it now: "Bomb Ingredient Jam in detection device. Please open Door 2A and follow the instructions on the label inside of the door to clear the jam." Don't forget to turn knob 4C three complete rotations! But it doesnt' matter how many compartments you open, there is *always* one more page buried in there somewhere. And then the job restarts who knows where, and you'll get partial results of "0.396 bombs found".
I don't know what kind of photocopiers they have in New Zealand, but saying "Photocopier simplicity" is a sure way to make me avoid your product for being too complicated.
I always used to think an employee-owned organization would be nearly ideal, but I have seen so many cases where it is simply disaster. I really liked Google's IPO - where they were able to maintain control by employees without necessarily maintaining a majority of their financial ownership by employees.
I wonder what factors contribute to the success or failure of an employee-owned company? Other than the obvious business and marketplace factors. Comparing three identical hypothetical companies, other than their ownership structure -- one employee-owned and one private and one public, some successful and some not: what factors determine their success and failure?
It seems to me now that being employee-owned would generally be a bad idea.
Co-ops are not an example of an organization where everyone has an equal say. I am a member of a credit union, yet I do not have ANY say in how they run their business. I am a voting member, so I certainly can vote my {delegates|representatives} off the board if I don't like what they are doing (and a majority agrees), but just being a member does not give me a portion of control of the organization. Ownership, shared benefits and shared costs != Control.
Open Source != "An organization where everyone has an equal say in what goes on."
In fact, the Linux kernel development model has often been compared to a dictatorship with Linus at the top. Is that a bad thing? Not in itself. The two concepts are entirely orthogonal, and the latter (decisions by committee) is a bad idea in nearly every setting.
E.g., a fridge is just a fridge. All it needs is a thermostat.
If only it were that simple. I'd be happy to find a reasonably priced thermostatically controlled fridge*. I'm sick of this "A - E, E is coldest, don't mess with the freezer setting because it will affect the fridge too". I want to set the control on my fridge to an actual TEMPERATURE, not a letter. My ice cream never stays the same consistency, and it sucks for overnight cold fermentation of bread dough.
* Yes, I know that technically the fridges with "letter" controls are thermostatically controlled as well. You know what I meant - stop being pedantic.
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You've never seen a Redbox, have you? I agree with your comment about picking up a decent quality DVD with the groceries to watch in the living room, as opposed to downloads in a browser. However, brick-and-mortar video-only rental stores are not necessary for that. We pick up Redbox movies at the grocery store. I'm trying to convince my office building to put one in the lobby.
Between Netflix's cheaper plan for backlist titles, and Redbox for new releases, I would have little need for the likes of Blockbuster.
Only good things can possibly come from that.
That must be the coolest job in the world: working on Macs for Google.
Very nice reply.
A good manager provides positive incentives for employees and creates loyalty both to himself and to the company by treating employees like people.
I would also add to this that it is essential for a good manager to garner the respect of his employees and fosters respect among his employees.
I work for a huge, oppressive, impersonal, giant international corporation. Despite the Dilbert-esque corporate policies, I love working here. Why? I have huge amounts of professional respect for my direct coworkers and managers (among the other things you mentioned).
Nothing...except for choices that can be made by the two people who control the present situation, which is to say that anything can change the present situation. "It didn't work out" and "nothing can change the present situation" is way too fatalistic for me. I refuse to be a victim of circumstance. I certainly can change my present situation. If my attempts are foiled by the other party who shares a controlling interest, well that could certainly mess things up - but that is not quite the same as nothing having the power to change the situation.
Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think the distinction is important to make.
Bingo. The reflective versus transmissive one is a big one for me. I find reflective surfances MUCH easier to read.
No one seems to have mentioned the anti-aliasing qualities of print. Printed material benefits from centuries of quality tyography development. Computers still have trouble with this, though it is getting much better.
You might enjoy reading Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint". Check it out; I just borrowed it from a friend at work and found it to be an enjoyable read.
Short version: don't use powerpoint unless you are trying to include low-rez graphics in your presentation. Just write a physical report and hand it out on paper.
I'd like to know where you live. Once I factor in my base customer charge, fuel factor for generation, distribution charges and miscellaneous taxes, my electric bill averages about US$0.14/kWh. The last part of the country I lived in was more like $0.09/kWh, and I thought that was cheap.
-- Cameron
FTFA: More importantly, it can be turned sideways for a wide-screen movie experience, which is vastly superior to watching movies on an iPod.
You can just turn screens sideways for wide-screen movie experience? Why didn't anyone tell me?! Boy did I ever get snookered when I bought my widescreen HDTV. I could have just turned my old TV sideways!
-- Cameron
Sweet! Another advantage to alternative keyboard layouts!
:,ddk! Alskjdo ah.alkaud ks apkdolakg.d vdtnsaoh patsfk;!
The NSA would have only recorded:
It would be neat if you could link each piece of spending with the name of the Congressman whose wording introduced that particular clause of the spending bill, and then somehow correlate that data back to OpenSecrets.org and then find out how much "profit" was made by each entity (tax revenue routed to a given company/industry minus lobbying dollars spent by that company/industry).
Whose lobbying dollars are the most profitable? I know mine sure aren't.
D'oh! Thanks. I hadn't had my caffeine yet.
Best. Acronym. Ever.
Oh this stuff is so cool! Add "zenith" to the mix you described, and EXIF could very well provide all the information necessary to recreate that any given photograph exactly, albeit at a different point in time.
Do any GPS units record zenith as well as azimuth, or do need to rig up some sort of sextant on the head of my tripod and log that information manually?
I am a former Gentoo user also. I started out running it on a headless personal web server (thus no X), and it performed wonderfully for many years.
:)
I also used it as a desktop OS for a while, but ended up going back to a dual-boot setup with Windows due to lots of unsupported peripherals. Once I got my iMac, Windows and Linux both went out the door as far as desktop OS's are concerned; I haven't looked back. I still ran Gentoo on my web server until I recently decided just to pay for web hosting (cheaper than the electricity to run my server).
I also had a recent bout with the latest Gentoo trying to configure it as a lightweight vmware host OS, but that was on bleeding-edge laptop hardware that isn't supported well by *any* distribution yet, so I quickly gave up on that.
Alas, I don't have any Gentoo in my life anymore, but I do miss it. If you can avoid X, I think Gentoo is hands down the best distro there is. For a desktop OS? Just stick with Mac OS X. Maybe I'll set up a Gentoo virtual machine to get my occasional portage fix.
That reminds me of the traffic jam I had to sit through on my way home from work because a new gas station had opened up on my route home. There were people lined up at the pumps, and into the street, effectively stopping all traffic. Why? Because the gas station had a "Grand Opening Sale" and was about $0.20/gallon cheaper than the gas station down the street. My neighbor apparently patronized the new store, and claimed they had very efficient traffic direction in the lot and moved people through fairly quickly - it only took him 20-30 minutes to get in and out.
I was incredulous! 20-30 minutes!! For $0.20!! Lets see, I usually fill up with about 15 gallons or so when I let it get *really* empty. So that's a maximum $3.00 savings on the entire tank, in exchange for a half-hour wait. No thank you. I'll gladly spend much more time for much less savings if it is something I enjoy, but my time waiting in line for gas is certainly worth more than $6.00/hour. I have precious little time as it is; in fact, I wouldn't have had time for this post had I waited in line for gas today!
I've never understood the wireless speakers thing. I mean - you still have to plug them in, right? How is having a big power cord sticking out the back (and possibly an AC Adapter brick) more agreeable than simply running some speaker cable? Also, ideal speaker placement may be compromised if you don't happen to have an outlet nearby.
Meanwhile, while you are working overtime, your wife has to leave her job right on time every day so she can pick up *your* kids from school and take them to little league!
I will never begrudge someone who has firm ideas about the boundaries of where work ends and their family life begins. Overtime is above and beyond the call of duty; my job is not my life.
Granted, it sounds like your female colleague was a problem. But I don't think your experience is at all representative of the gender issues that are being discussed on this article -- it sounds more like a fringe case.
I'm pretty sure the key to beating Microsoft is winning the Office market, which is probably much harder than beating them at the OS war, in no small part because of custom MS Access apps that run half of your business and VB macros, etc.
Oof. I need another expensive hobby like I need a hole in the head.
But thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into the model rocketry clubs and see what I can find. In a metropolitan area of 5 million people there is bound to be something.
Thanks.
I would love to take my son to some sort of rocket launch, but we are not in a poisition to make it to Florida for a shuttle launch. I am pretty sure there are some unmanned rocket launches from elsewhere in the country. How for do I have to drive from Dallas to get to see one of these, whether NASA or private industry? Where are they?
-- Cameron
Photocopier simplicity, eh? I can see it now: "Bomb Ingredient Jam in detection device. Please open Door 2A and follow the instructions on the label inside of the door to clear the jam." Don't forget to turn knob 4C three complete rotations! But it doesnt' matter how many compartments you open, there is *always* one more page buried in there somewhere. And then the job restarts who knows where, and you'll get partial results of "0.396 bombs found".
I don't know what kind of photocopiers they have in New Zealand, but saying "Photocopier simplicity" is a sure way to make me avoid your product for being too complicated.
I always used to think an employee-owned organization would be nearly ideal, but I have seen so many cases where it is simply disaster. I really liked Google's IPO - where they were able to maintain control by employees without necessarily maintaining a majority of their financial ownership by employees.
I wonder what factors contribute to the success or failure of an employee-owned company? Other than the obvious business and marketplace factors. Comparing three identical hypothetical companies, other than their ownership structure -- one employee-owned and one private and one public, some successful and some not: what factors determine their success and failure?
It seems to me now that being employee-owned would generally be a bad idea.
Co-ops are not an example of an organization where everyone has an equal say. I am a member of a credit union, yet I do not have ANY say in how they run their business. I am a voting member, so I certainly can vote my {delegates|representatives} off the board if I don't like what they are doing (and a majority agrees), but just being a member does not give me a portion of control of the organization. Ownership, shared benefits and shared costs != Control.
Open Source != "An organization where everyone has an equal say in what goes on."
In fact, the Linux kernel development model has often been compared to a dictatorship with Linus at the top. Is that a bad thing? Not in itself. The two concepts are entirely orthogonal, and the latter (decisions by committee) is a bad idea in nearly every setting.
If only it were that simple. I'd be happy to find a reasonably priced thermostatically controlled fridge*. I'm sick of this "A - E, E is coldest, don't mess with the freezer setting because it will affect the fridge too". I want to set the control on my fridge to an actual TEMPERATURE, not a letter. My ice cream never stays the same consistency, and it sucks for overnight cold fermentation of bread dough.
* Yes, I know that technically the fridges with "letter" controls are thermostatically controlled as well. You know what I meant - stop being pedantic.