...Toshiba's patent just says to take out the MFM hard disc controller, and replace it with their new RLL controller. I tested this myself and got my 10MB drive to a full 15MB without a single problem!
Unfortunately that will never happen. Most politicians don't believe in a non-adapting Constitution so they will not likely vote in someone who does.
We've also lived for over 250 years with a mainstream media that has co-opted, and been co-opted by, the State, working hand-in-hand to destroy freedoms. That is changing, and the Internet is making that change happen. Funny how so much of the web was rolled out by major media entities, only to have it bite the hand that fed it.
I use News.google.com RSS feeds for phrases I am watching, and I'm seeing more than 15% of those news stories come from non-mainstream media entities with a variety of opinions way different than the "eat, regurgitate and vomit the AP and Reuters articles" process that the MSM tends to stick together with.
The web is a massive pool of people who can actually voice their disagreements with the system. As time goes on, and people see they're not alone in fearing and being harmed by the State, we might just find people voting NO to more government, and using the web to congregate as individuals wanting freedom, not tyranny.
I find the ACLU terribly racist (believing people should be grouped together rather than be individuals) and unconcerned with real direction of freedom from force.
For me, I prefer the Institute for Justice, where I donate my money towards real lawyers who get out and trample on the State that tries to trample on us. I'd never give to the ACLU, which has a history of supporting aggressive government growth when it appeals to them, versus the IJ which works against government in ever lawsuit it files or every defendant it defends.
I'm an anti-voter, anti-voting in all elections that I can vote in. Many people are surprised that I said I would actually vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, since this vote doesn't actually give any of my rights up to another individual. But even with so many RP supporters online (and now offline), I still think the only way to reduce tyranny in this country is to get judges back into reading the Constitution, and understanding that the document is not flexible, living, breathing and adapting.
Since the U.S. was born, it was understood by all, even detractors, that the Constitution had one purpose: the keep Federal government small and let the individual States be big for those who wanted a big State, and small for those who wanted a small State. People afraid of a North American Union forget that the U.S. was designed this way: a union of States (governments) that agree to one thing: personal rights and responsibilities (these are one thing because they go hand-in-hand).
I'm SHOCKED that we today forget that freedom comes from a lack of government intrusion, NOT from government intrusion. The PATRIOT Act is a simple proof that citizens today have no clue that the Federal government is restrained by the Constitution exactly as it was written. No laws restricting speech, no laws restricting arms, no laws restricting Habeus Corpus, no laws restricting travel or transport, no laws restricting trade, no laws restricting the People's rights beyond what limited powers the central body has. In fact, the only thing the Feds really can do is to make sure the individual States don't trample on the individual's rights to act non-violently how they want to act.
I'm glad to see SOME judges admire SOME parts of the Constitution, but I can only dream of a day when judges understand the non-breathing, non-adapting Constitutional limits on the Feds. When that happens, nothing Congress or a power-hungry President do would become law.
That's lots of billable hours for us to clean it up and put it in a proper relational format.
Most of our work adding features onto another OEMs software has been provided for without trashing their datasets by incorporating secondary non-relational databases on the side and using our own front end to query their database and ours and stick information back to the proper databases. This way, accounting can deal with the OEMs terribly outdated front end, while management, field workers, and company officials can enter their own data, and run their own reports, without trashing accounting's data. It works, but it's a little bit of a kludge.
By the way, I love giving work to local database programmers rather than offshore ones (in this case because of the language issue). So I don't mind throwing you all that extra work when we do make a mistake:)
I've had the unfortunate life that I've butted heads with databases since I was a teenager, going back to the old dBase junk on contracts.
I have studied database design extensively over the years, but not to the mastering stage. The label "just enough to be dangerous" applies to me, and yes I know that database programmers HATE that.
I've also taken steps to study RDBMS on a theoretical level, and I think it IS adaptable to the object-oriented ideas that I have, but I think it is more of a kludge than an efficient long term solution. Maybe relational database can be adapted to be more object-oriented, but I don't think they're the solution. When you deal with TONS of information on a given project, information that is important to 2 users out of 400, how do you shoehorn it into a structure without making the relational structure overwhemlingly complicated to manager? I can't begin to tell you how many "experts" we've hired that have said that relational is not the solution to what I envisioned, and eventually we found other solutions to the problem (on one occasion, we took steps backwards to hierarchical (sp) databases which worked great).
Slashdot is a great learning too when subjects like this come up, because of the vast amount of really intellectual readers and posters. I appreciate that, and I'd say I learned more about database solutions from the infrequent database topics here than I have from books or hands-on experience with my programmers. What I am trying to accomplish for my clients is to take steps in NEW directions, even if others have failed before. It is why we can charge what we charge, because we look to adapt to future technological growth ahead of when that growth becomes commonplace. Do we fail? Yes. Are some of my ideas simple on paper but impossible in reality? Yes. But when you have someone like myself who is not a layman, knows enough to be dangerous, and can think outside the box with a team of good programmers, I think we make inroads to a field that resists these kinds of changes. You should see the look on the faces of the OEM code providers when I explain what we're going to do with a secondary database outside of theirs, using our own report writers, data entry software, and management summaries. Eventually, things work, they work more efficiently, and the clients are satisfied even if my programmers get wigged out by the ideas.
The web is a great example of what I feel is a good direction. How could you take a subset of a website, its outbound links, and all of its users and stick it into a relationship database and have it function? You can't. We use dozens of databases just to handle slashdot and the sites it links to, but I think there is a object oriented structure ABOVE the actual databases and backend code used that COULD allow you to encode that subset into its own non-relational structures. Maybe a combination of a hierarchical (sp) database with top objects and sub-objects having external linked-list options? I don't know, I'm not a programmer. But it can be done, and it should be done, so individuals can enter relevant data, and utilize relevant data of others, to produce the reports they need.
I'm not a database programmer, so it is difficult for me to use all the key phrases properly, although I think I have a distinct understanding of the technology under it. When I sell a project, I always draft my thoughts on paper (flow chart or object-oriented style).
For me, the most difficult aspect of the relational database has been what the database elite call impedance mismatch: how to take data in a relational database back end and utilize it properly in the front end. Much of the data that seems logical to flow in a persistent manner may actually be better suited to an object-oriented manner, where a single top level object, say a particular invoice, may actually point to a variety of objects that aren't relational in the 2D sense. Sure, business data entry has always been simplified in almost a spreadsheet manner (when querying the database overview), but we've found that while this system has always been intuitive from a simplicity perspective, it doesn't actually facilitate objects that are way more complicated than the simple relational format forces you to accept. I know that is a jumble of words, but read it again and you'll see where I'm coming from.
For simple clients, simple databases make sense. But most of our clients are large businesses with a massive amount of data, and shoehorning that data into a relational format leaves a LOT to be desired, even if it makes logical sense from a tiny example perspective. Once you have data that is readily adaptable to different needs for different jobs, you open the door to having software that adapts better to changing needs, no matter how complex those needs are. We have individuals within companies who want varying degrees of complexity for data input, relating data to other data, and even report generating, and no matter who I've subbed work out to, I've often heard "Oh, that can't be done." When I ask why not, they said that the database just can't handle all the different directions the various individuals at the client's office want. Yes, it is complicated, but only from a relational view. Once you open the system up to allowing more complexity in how objects refer to one another, you give individuals a better opportunity to enter data that THEY see important, even if others within the organization would simply ignore it or not enter it all together.
Again, I'm not a programmer, so I'm not familiar with all the issues, but I have worked hard in the past few years to develop (on paper, and eventually in code through programmers) systems that take the flat/relational invoice idea to another level, giving employees at different levels of the organization the ability to convey information they feel is important into a database, so others CAN utilize the information if needed, but it is still there for that particular complex employee's needs. Not all our systems work well, yet, but they work better than before even with the glitches.
Object-oriented databases are scary, they can be a real mess, and they can make simple tasks slightly more complex, but I think the added efficiency of allowing people to work with a larger dataset in various manners is worth the initial mess of coding what I want into reality. From what I can tell, most younger database programmers seem to WANT more complexity because they also can see the added incentive of a short term inefficiency (design and coding) that leads to a long term added efficiency (more adaptable data sets, entry and reporting) because the objects are tied down relationally.
If that didn't make sense, I'm sorry -- it is had to convey what I want to do without giving away the cow to someone else to beat me to market:) Googling my name and some of my industries might give one of my competitors a lead in what we're trying to accomplish, ha.
Your invoice example is one that historically seems to only work with a purely relationship database, but I beg to differ because I've seen systems in place (custom coded) where an invoice front end was way more interactive in how you entered data. Searches were faster, and for large companies, the shoehorning to get data into place can be almost violent because they have such a variety of what they want to enter, or search for, or assemble by, etc.
We have one customer, a large contractor, who is trying a new PO system that isn't relational, and uses a ton of non-persistent data. Each supplier, each job, each inventory item might be completely different on a particular job, and the relational database system fails because it is so complex to try to make everything work with one another properly.
I'm NOT saying that relational isn't the best solution for a simple invoice or inventory system, but it isn't the perfect solution for many companies that have a need to provide a different "mapping" for items that might seem similar. I recall one example where the company orders items from 3 suppliers, with those same invoices being distributed to different jobs that had different invoicing structures and different billing situations. It was a mess if we just said "10,000 items from supplier A, 10,000 items from supplier B, etc" because of the sheer number of fields involved. The system we provided for them, while proprietary to my business, is a much more fluid and adapting system that made the entry clerks and the project managers happy because the system WAS so fluid and capable of dealing with really sticky situations of having 15 suppliers for 35 jobs and 20 different processes to invoice, bill, collect, process and track. What we did was "revolutionary" according to the client, and I'm hoping to integrate it for future clients as well. We tried for years to work these problems out relationally, but it never worked, even hiring some top database consultants who said "just do it the way it has always been done."
I really think the relational database WILL eventually die as we find more ways to balance the idea of persistent data versus non-persistent data versus how we look things up, store them, and regurgitate them in a different way for different tasks. I am not a database programmer, but I always try to attack ongoing problems using newer tools and unique ways to look at things.
In my IT business, a vast majority of our top tier clients (grossing over US$100 million annually) are still using antiquated software that is still using a relational database backend. While these companies are generally VERY efficient in terms of providing services or products to their market, their accounting, purchase orders and project management software is decades outdated. Many of the companies that maintain these packages have merely made the interface more current (but still 5+ years old, but are still using terribly outdated software. I can't begin to tell you how often the words "FoxPro" and "MS SQL" come up and it ends up being a relational database "solution" or even worse.
It is very frustrating because we do have programmers on staff that create third party plug-ins to these databases to try to make solutions that the OEM code doesn't. When you meet younger programmers, many of them are frustrated themselves to work on ancient solutions that have no hope of being upgraded, because these industries we work in are not in a rush to try anything new and shiny, but instead are happy with the status quo.
I just bid a job a few months back that would cost $150,000 to upgrade their database infrastructure, and likely save the company $300,000+ annually in added efficiency, less downtime, and a more robust report system. Guess what they said? "We all think it is fine the way it is." That's money thrown out the window, employees who are frustrated (without knowing why), and forcing the company to lose efficiency by not being able to compete with newer companies that are utilizing newer technology to better their bottom line.
You're just a right-wing nut. I should have known better.
No, I don't like the right-wing. Right and Left are both wings of the same side of the coin: authoritarians. I'm on the other side of the coin, anti-authoritarian.
Who was President in 1973? What party was he from?
Doesn't matter, both parties conspire to reduce freedom, increase taxation, and use both to support their friends and cronies.
BTW, the market did cause the healthcare crisis. There is an economic phenomenon called "cost disease" that occurs when a skill that can only turn out so much efficiency (such as surgery) fails to keep up with the broader market (which, at large, is in fact efficient and therefore surpasses its inefficient sections). It is no mistake that medicine became a problem around the time that efficiency took off.
If you look carefully at the health care system, you see the obvious causes for the crises: reduced supply of doctors, and a high cost to pay for services.
BOTH of these problems are caused by Congressional force.
1. Congress, the AMA, and the ADA artificially place a cap on new doctors licensed. This reduces the supply of doctors, which increases cost. Low supply + high demand = high price. In a market economy, people could become doctors, putting added competition in the market.
2. The high cost of services comes from two factors: a. the government's money flow into the industry (acquired through theft), and the laws legislating criminal response to what a market economy would provide for. For example, rather than having doctors hold liability insurance, the market economy would let each individual acquire their own liability insurance for each medical treatment based on what they need and what they can afford. This is currently ILLEGAL to get. This way, you would pay for the insurance you need, per treatment, based on the doctor's history with your insurer. Tort lawyers would hate this. This is called negative outcome insurance, and you are a criminal if you try to acquire it.
I find this funny considering you're posting this comment on the INTERNET of all places.
I started my first telecom business as a BBS when I was 11 years old. The Internet may have been a government-started entity, but it was the market that provided what we have today. Heck, I had an X.25 network in my house in my teen years before I could get a decent Internet connection -- and X.25 worked wonderfully for interconnection before the market started providing T1s and ISDL to those willing to foot the bill. The government-designed Internet was not an efficient process, and it would have happened naturally soon enough through X.25 or other communication, too. Remember FidoNet? I remember when the nightly dial-ups started to disappear as more large BBSes had X.25 packet networks to connect real-time through. FidoNet was a market-provided network, and it worked fine for a long time.
Research requires patronage. And that patronage will fund a lot of broken and useless crap.
Nothing is useless, all products have markets, however large or small. Yet some "useless crap" today can be a useful treasure tomorrow, based on what each individual needs and is willing to pay for.
Also, the efficient markets theory isn't true. Companies fund tons of useless, unmarketable crap, too. Look at half the semiconductor and pharm industries.
Stepping stones to finding products and services that they can offer. All my research also helps me find a market for my solutions.
A lot of research is useless. But you don't always know until you get in there and see what things really do. And people do abuse the system. It doesn't matter what system you use. Every system is prone to abuse because there will always being people looking to abuse the system. All the market does is give capitalist interests an excuse to claim their abuses are profitable and therefore no one should bitch because the consumer gets to foot the bill.
The consumer who foots the bill is the same individual who AGREED to foot the bill. Today, taxpayers foot the bill -- taxpayers who do NOT agree to foot each particular expenditure. Consumers spending = voluntary, government taxes = theft. How hard is that to understand?
Think about market-driven research itself before thinking it is so great. Some monkey actually sat down and built the actuarial tables and policies that today are screwing up the healthcare system and making sure that even people who have insurance somehow don't get procedures covered. Yep. Market-driven research really did a lot of good there.
Sorry, my friend, but it was not the market that created the health care problem. The biggest destroyer of cheap and excellent health care in the United States was, guess who? Government, starting with the HMO Act of 1973.
Without state funded research into relativity (something that appears uselss to the market) we wouldn't have accurate GPS and other accurate measuring systems. Science cannot be judged by the market because the market cannot predict what is useful in the realm of the unknown.
And you know this how?
Ground-based GPS has been around as long as triangulation has, it just wasn't a product that consumers wanted when it was available. It wasn't BECAUSE of government research that we have GPS, it was because the market demanded it as the discoveries were made.
I find it ridiculous that people think that just because government-research paid for SOME discoveries that those same discoveries wouldn't exist in a market economy. Not only would they exist, but we'd have even more research produced as people are challenged to be the first to market with a product.
I know some "scientists" who have government grants for "research" that I likely pay a part of through my taxes. One of my best friends from High School is a PhD in an earth science, and he's always jumping from grant to grant to grant, and his research is mostly useless from a market perspective.
How about instead of "freeing up" research based on money that is stolen, we just stop the steal-and-pay mentality of government research grants, and let the market economy support what it needs and deny what it doesn't need?
If some poor researcher loses funding, and industry realizes they had something good to say or study, they'll get the money quick enough, plus they can decide who to offer it to and at what price. It is no different than the guy who washes cars: if government paid him to do it, he'd be charging $100 an hour and would forget to use water.
I don't doubt it, and I actually live it. I serve hundreds of churches and faith groups with my church printing ministry, and am active in my community as an anti-tax and anti-force advocate. People know be my name, and I'm the first to shell out a few bucks for a single mom who needs gas or groceries.
But I don't support the "them" mentality. Each person I deal with is an individual. I don't look at "the black folks" or "the Pentecostals" or "the drug addicts" because that is groupthink that causes harm to the individual's uniqueness.
Even when I am in my "community," I am still dealing with individuals. I live life through relationships of "you and I" verses "us and them."
I'll get beaten up for this, but the next 50 years in space will continue to be more of the same: I'll be stolen from more (through taxes), with more lost opportunities for people to work in a real market rather than a State-planned market that focuses on generating new technology for the war machine, rather than new technology that will actually solve some real problems. Yes, yes, some of NASA's discoveries over the years have been adapted for consumers or health or what-not, but this is more an accident than it is a regular reality.
I could care less which country gets to Mars first -- I don't believe in "us versus them." We're individuals, regardless of citizenship, and it is always "me versus everyone" until I am comfortable enough to be able to help others through charity, purchasing goods or services, or hopefully saving in a full-reserve bank so my money can be honestly loaned to those who can use it wisely. I don't need to venture to space, even though I'm a Sci-Fi geek. I'll look forward to McDevitt's next book and get my fantasies worked out there rather than in billions or trillions lost to government waste, bureaucracies, and preferential treatment for their elite friends.
Space is a waste UNTIL the market economy provides for it. Let the private industries battle it out competitively, with lessened regulations, than what we've had for the first 50 years.
If a price goes up, or down, there are always two reasons, one is based on a market economy, and one is based on the use of force (government, generally, but sometimes mob pressure):
1. Supply and demand. These curves tend to meet at the equilibrium, which changes daily and is benefited by competition and technological changes, as well as market needs. Supply goes up, price goes down. Demand goes up, price goes up. We don't pay much for horse-shoers anymore, but it wasn't the result of bootleg horseshoers, it was just a lack of demand for a product or service.
2. Government-forced regulation. This is where competition is destroyed because of preferential treatment of elite parties. Copyright regulations have been so over-encroaching on the art market that consumers are now finding new ways to acquire their product. Black markets thrive on governments giving too many favors to their buddies. MP3 is the new crack, and I'm sure we'll see a War on Piracy soon enough. Think about the children.
The music industry, as a whole, is growing faster than ever. Never in all of history have we seen the sheer amount of new artists creating sometimes fantastic music. Not only that, but the popular artists are pricing themselves out of the market. As embarassing as it is to say, I bought my wife two tickets to Madonna's Chicago show and I think I dropped $400 for the two tickets (each). She loved it, but I'm sure a lot of fans were disturbed. Me? I scour MySpace for local bands with talent -- and I'm happy to pay $10 for a ticket and $20 for a T-shirt and CD. Local Chicago shows are PACKED lately, with hundreds of fans going out to dozens of bars/pubs on the same night to see different local bands. You can talk to the bands, learn their guitar tabs straight from them, and have a relationship with bands to entice them to continue their entertainment.
The market amazes me, because even with government-forced monopoly on distribution, the music gets out there, and it is many times better than the mass-produced, monopoly-enriched mainstream distribution media outlets.
No, what he has is a communal office for independent consultants. They get paid by the job, but he runs the show - bringing in work and doling it out. It's a bigger-company with individual talents - good to keep clients happy (we have lots of support), but you get targeted experts. He makes money herding the cats. The pay thing is just to keep the government happy.
Bingo. There are two skills spheres I have always been concerned with in my entire business life (I started a successful BBS at the age of 13 with this same mindset):
1. Those who are risk takers and are able to penetrate a market or a project early. These folks are not the most responsible in the long term (that's me). 2. Those who are responsible and are able to carry projects through to completion. These folks are not risk takers (not me).
A successful business needs a combination of both. The consultants who work with me are usually type 2, in fact I have never met a type 1 individual who competes on my level. This isn't egotistic, it is just a fact since I've been looking for a replacement for years.
Herding the cats is exactly what I do. There are 1000 projects in our markets (primarily Midwest US, Southwest US, Poland and India) that I can't reach because I can't find a way to do them more efficiently. Yet when I know what my consultants CAN do, and what they HAVE done, and what they WANT to do, I can jump into a bid or a decision process and sell our talents and come in well under budget. Most of the type 2 people I know won't take the risk of NOT having work or the risk of collections or the risk of keeping customers as contracts in the future. I'm the king of expensive dinners, bid submittals, comparison summaries and collections. I even use factoring companies when necessary to keep the cash coming in, even at a 5-11% hit. Most consultants are good at doing their job and scheduling their responsibilities, where I am not, so we work very well together. If I could find another 2-3 guys like me (type 1), we could probably take on 600% more work, but it is difficult to assess someone's abilities in the grayer business actions that I perform versus what an actual consultant does.
What it all boils down to is that I don't see the point of earning 6-10x what my average consultant earns. In most years, I am the BOTTOM of the income chart at my own company, but I also like to keep capital within the company as much as possible. Happy employees = future stability. People don't quit if they feel like they are earning slightly more than they are worth, but they'll quit if they smell the potential of earning more elsewhere.
That is interesting - what do you use to allow employees to bill time? Just a simple note, or something different like Act! or (for the tax prep folks)Lacerte (something similar).
I wrote a VB app years ago (I'm a terrible programmer but can read any code fluently, so I hacked it out) and a year ago we transcoded it to work under Windows Mobile (not sure what it is programmed in now). Simple to note your work, time in/time out, and have the customer sign the PDA. Works well, and I think we only lose about 6% of our work orders when customers have disagreed. I have a principle about disagreements: the customer is always right. If they say no to a work order, I toss it.
As a salaried employee, I know my employer doesn't care if I write a note or surf here or there; checking my bank account, etc... for much the same reasons. The 8,000 employee firm I work for has payroll out on time, charges go out and come in, etc etc...
You're probably correct, but I wonder what their operating efficiency is. My consultants tend to work as hard as they feel they are worth -- the only time I've split with consultants is when I felt they were underpaid in our system, and I've actively helped former consultants start their own (competitive) business. I try to cap our growth at 15-20% a year maximum, and we've been in business since 1989 and stuck to that growth consistently. I know I could never, nor would I ever, run a company with thousands or even hundreds of employees. I feel I lose my competitive edge if I have more than 15-20 projects to keep track of, even with a full time CFO on staff.
But, you are very much right - employing salaried people means you have to contain them, have them "on site" in some way or form, and point them in the right direction.
I'm also restricted to allowing the market proceed to where it needs to go. A few years ago, our telephony consultants were warned that their billable rate might have to drop to stay competitive. I explained that a rate drop would keep us 30-40% cheaper than the big boys, but we'd grow in business. That did, in fact, happen, with people working slightly more for slightly less, but they stayed employed where many of my competitors lost market share or went under completely. Salaried staff isn't as ready to take a cut when the market sends warnings that the business is becoming over-saturated with a supply of labor. The same thing is happening in residential construction development (which accounted for 40% of our work in 2004, but I knew would fall in 2006+), and it will soon happen in IT, too. If I had to meet salaries for inefficient divisions, I'd have to steal from profitable ones.
Since everyone works on projects based on profitability, when I issue a warning about a market it also comes with the invitation to switch to a different market over time, to learn the trade or convert their current talents to be useful in a future growth market. Salaried staff with specific permanent departments is a very inelastic way to run a business, and I am surprised the business model still exists in such numbers (namely, everywhere).
Actually, I offered 2 consulting gigs (1099) to people I met from here. My concern is an impending Recession (big "R") in the next year, so we're capping our expenses until the market shakes itself out. If it tanks, Dubai here we come.
My employees are free to spend as much time as they want in the office surfing any site they want do: slashdot, porn, the anarchist's cookbook, whatever. It is useless to me to tell them what they can or can't do when they've met their personal goals for projects.
I also pay my employees differently than most consulting firms. We pay close to minimum wage, plus a very large bonus on each project. I've never had anyone quit, and I've never had anyone complain about their monthly paychecks. By offering a large portion of a project's profits, I know my employees won't waste my money (in salary), won't have to lie on their time sheets, and they'll do the best job they can do because they won't want to go and finish a punch list without pay or handle warranty work at a low rate. It is win-win, and a big reason why I'd prefer full 1099's than W2's if the IRS didn't prevent us from working that way.
When you're salaried or on wages, the employer has to focus a lot more on containing the employee and sending them in the proper direction, constantly. We have zero managers at my company, just consultants. It works fine. Our customers love us because we're 40% cheaper than others in the industry but we excel at handling their needs.
So this all lets me "not care" if an employee decides to spend all day long on the web, and only 1 hour on a project. If the customer is happy, and the work is good, and they do it quickly and correctly, they'll make a killing on the profit sharing, and they'll have a ton of free time to kill at the office if they want to be there. Our top employee works 2 days a week, I think, and earns a very respectable income. He can now spend 3 days at the office playing some MMOG, or go home and sleep. I could care less, the customers are happy.
I think YouTube is fantastic -- I can grab snippets of information that I'm interested in, plus also have the option to search for proam video from events that normally don't get broadcast in the MSM. I think YouTube should offer some sort of "revenue sharing" options, though. This would quickly destroy the MSM as pro-am or pro videographers and filmographers could find income for their ventures.
I'd prefer to see YouTube offer a "subscriber" option -- pay $x/month or $x/GB transferred to skip ads of all sorts. Sure, you can block some ads, but the video inserts you can't. Flash Video is capable of skipping segments based on server-data, such as seeing if a person has a subscription and if they have free gigs left. I'd happily pay for my video snippets -- even moreso if part of my subscription went to the video author or "owner."
One-way TV is too limiting -- either you get all a channel's offerings, or you don't get it at all. Some channels are starting to allow PPV on-demand, which is excellent, but I still have to get the full buffet of channels (Digital ones) to get PPV. I'd rather do an a la carte selection, honestly. In 2 years, the amount I'd save over having to maintain a decent media center PC would be worth it for me (considering my media center PC is probably worth $1500 and has to be upgraded every so often) for the limited TV we watch.
YouTube has a huge opportunity here to offer snippets, full shows, and amateur content, while offering the viewer the option to pay up front, or watch ads rather than paying. Bandwidth and hosting ain't free, not even for Google, who can also handle fee distribution between their hosting office and the content "owner." This is a big step to also reduce the need for companies to monitor for copyright infringement, as it gives them the option to host their own stuff and make the pennies per hit.
I'm not a frequent soap user at all, unless I really have some grime going on. I find that a simple rinsing a few times a day, along with the good ole pumice scrub, works wonder -- and keeps my hands soft enough to work with. Since I do a lot of hands-on production, I absolutely HATE the feeling of dry hands that comes along with using soap. Moisturizers are worse, since they always leave a greasy feel -- and when working with print jobs for churches, I can't leave smudges behind.
I've always told the wifey to stay away from anti-bacterial anything. A lot of bacteria is GOOD, and the ones that are bad are relatively easy to defend against if you're healthy. We want our bodies to adjust to whatever new bacteria is growing in our homes. Between cleanings, you'll have some growth. The body has a great defensive system already -- it builds the necessary defenses to learn and kill whatever comes into the body.
I've been sick twice in the last 2 decades -- once when I shook the hand of someone who was days later became VERY ill, and once after I rubbed my eyes after playing craps in a casino late one night. Both times I didn't rinse my hands after -- and I recovered well enough in a matter of days (much faster than the guy I got sick from).
Let others be suckers and buy into the manufacturer's marketing campaigns about what is healthy and what isn't. Humans have been around for a long time -- longer than soap. Running water > most daily chemicals for living longer and healthier.
If you don't copyright your works, your "Moralip" license is unenforceable. Because either it is a license, or it is not, in which case you're just asking people to do what they think is right. Which is fine - IP rights are yours to claim or disavow, whatever suits you. In that case, however, you've consigned yourself to a rather Hobbesian IP environment. So I wouldn't call this system of yours "protection."
It isn't meant to be protection, it is merely a moral reminder of what the content author wishes for the content they've created. I repudiate the use of force, and copyright and creative commons both require the use of force to enforce protection. Copyright, and creative commons, eventually fall to the mafia-regime we call the State to enforce what a person wants. I do not give the State the right to use force against individuals who disagree with me. Instead, I "pander" to their moral side, in hopes that they will understand what I want done with works I have spent my time creating or designing.
If someone wishes to go against what the original author wishes, the best the author can do is to use other options against someone going against the MORALip "license." They can use public ridicule, or guilt, or a variety of other options that appeal to a person's guilt/moral side. It may work, it may not work. But I do believe it is the best, and most moral, form of "protection" for content that is easily copied or distributed by others.
Now, a correction - you do in fact copyright your works. Copyright is automatic. In the Berne Convention Implementation Act Congress abolished formalities, meaning that you don't need to get a copyright registration in order to receive a copyright. You have a copyright in your post unless you explicitly devote it to the public domain; I have a copyright in this post as well. [Whether Slashdot's ToU claims a right to our posts- and whether that's enforceable- is an interesting question worthy of another thread.]
I have never signed an agreement with the Berne Convention, or with Congress, or with anyone regarding State-based protections of my creations. I won't. On slashdot, I probably DID sign an agreement not to copy or distribute items posted here -- so in slashdot's case I have probably agreed to not copy content (I'm not sure, I didn't read the ToS fully). Yet I personally don't copy other's content (except to quote and reference, which I believe increases their market), so I don't really care about the restrictions here.
Our IP system isn't wrong or immoral; it is merely out of balance - and today, it is drastically out of balance, in a manner that can undermine the progress of science and the useful arts, rather than promote it. A properly tuned IP system, however, is a invaluable asset to an information economy.
I find that incredibly wrong. Copyright, and all State-restricted IP, is both wrong and immoral. First, it uses the force of the gun and jail and financial penalties to restrict a resource that has near-unlimited distribution potential at nearly no cost. Secondly, it supports large distributors with money over individuals -- can you afford to fight a legal battle against a large corporation who "steals" your "creation"? I think not. That is both wrong, and immoral, to believe that it helps the individual over the group.
That being said, it shouldn't be held against you that you don't appreciate this. Our IP system's excesses are themselves responsible for IP's crisis of credibility. Yet we must recognize that the ultimate solution lies in reform, not repudiation.
Again, I repudiate all use of force against another, except in the personal defense of one's physical property. I personally no longer believe in defending my own property against theft or attack, since I know I can easily work to replace it quickly. Yet I don't believe I should push my responsibilities to the State or any group without their direct approval of supporting my needs and goals. I don't believe in social contracts, or any contracts that do not directly have the signed contract support of each individual. That is freedom, not tyranny.
Poisonous toothpaste and dead regulatory officials?
I don't support force-heavy laws of the State, but I firmly believe that those who get paid directly by any State should be the ones who fall under the law. In this case, this was the State that failed, not the market. Get rid of all State-regulations on medication and let the retailers and independent testing organization test products for safety. Underwriters' Laboratories does a great job as an independent testing organization -- so great that many retailers won't sell electric products that isn't UL-rated for consumers.
Some do. Most invent because there's a financial reward attached in the form of a paycheck.
There are two ways to invest and make a profit:
1. Invent your own product, try to find marketing and production, and then hope to make a profit. This is highly risky, but can be highly rewarding, too.
2. Go work for an R&D think-tank and get a paycheck. Your risk is cut, but so is your reward.
Slashdot Mirror
...Toshiba's patent just says to take out the MFM hard disc controller, and replace it with their new RLL controller. I tested this myself and got my 10MB drive to a full 15MB without a single problem!
Unfortunately that will never happen. Most politicians don't believe in a non-adapting Constitution so they will not likely vote in someone who does.
We've also lived for over 250 years with a mainstream media that has co-opted, and been co-opted by, the State, working hand-in-hand to destroy freedoms. That is changing, and the Internet is making that change happen. Funny how so much of the web was rolled out by major media entities, only to have it bite the hand that fed it.
I use News.google.com RSS feeds for phrases I am watching, and I'm seeing more than 15% of those news stories come from non-mainstream media entities with a variety of opinions way different than the "eat, regurgitate and vomit the AP and Reuters articles" process that the MSM tends to stick together with.
The web is a massive pool of people who can actually voice their disagreements with the system. As time goes on, and people see they're not alone in fearing and being harmed by the State, we might just find people voting NO to more government, and using the web to congregate as individuals wanting freedom, not tyranny.
One can only hope.
I find the ACLU terribly racist (believing people should be grouped together rather than be individuals) and unconcerned with real direction of freedom from force.
For me, I prefer the Institute for Justice, where I donate my money towards real lawyers who get out and trample on the State that tries to trample on us. I'd never give to the ACLU, which has a history of supporting aggressive government growth when it appeals to them, versus the IJ which works against government in ever lawsuit it files or every defendant it defends.
I'm an anti-voter, anti-voting in all elections that I can vote in. Many people are surprised that I said I would actually vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, since this vote doesn't actually give any of my rights up to another individual. But even with so many RP supporters online (and now offline), I still think the only way to reduce tyranny in this country is to get judges back into reading the Constitution, and understanding that the document is not flexible, living, breathing and adapting.
Since the U.S. was born, it was understood by all, even detractors, that the Constitution had one purpose: the keep Federal government small and let the individual States be big for those who wanted a big State, and small for those who wanted a small State. People afraid of a North American Union forget that the U.S. was designed this way: a union of States (governments) that agree to one thing: personal rights and responsibilities (these are one thing because they go hand-in-hand).
I'm SHOCKED that we today forget that freedom comes from a lack of government intrusion, NOT from government intrusion. The PATRIOT Act is a simple proof that citizens today have no clue that the Federal government is restrained by the Constitution exactly as it was written. No laws restricting speech, no laws restricting arms, no laws restricting Habeus Corpus, no laws restricting travel or transport, no laws restricting trade, no laws restricting the People's rights beyond what limited powers the central body has. In fact, the only thing the Feds really can do is to make sure the individual States don't trample on the individual's rights to act non-violently how they want to act.
I'm glad to see SOME judges admire SOME parts of the Constitution, but I can only dream of a day when judges understand the non-breathing, non-adapting Constitutional limits on the Feds. When that happens, nothing Congress or a power-hungry President do would become law.
That's lots of billable hours for us to clean it up and put it in a proper relational format.
:)
Most of our work adding features onto another OEMs software has been provided for without trashing their datasets by incorporating secondary non-relational databases on the side and using our own front end to query their database and ours and stick information back to the proper databases. This way, accounting can deal with the OEMs terribly outdated front end, while management, field workers, and company officials can enter their own data, and run their own reports, without trashing accounting's data. It works, but it's a little bit of a kludge.
By the way, I love giving work to local database programmers rather than offshore ones (in this case because of the language issue). So I don't mind throwing you all that extra work when we do make a mistake
I've had the unfortunate life that I've butted heads with databases since I was a teenager, going back to the old dBase junk on contracts.
I have studied database design extensively over the years, but not to the mastering stage. The label "just enough to be dangerous" applies to me, and yes I know that database programmers HATE that.
I've also taken steps to study RDBMS on a theoretical level, and I think it IS adaptable to the object-oriented ideas that I have, but I think it is more of a kludge than an efficient long term solution. Maybe relational database can be adapted to be more object-oriented, but I don't think they're the solution. When you deal with TONS of information on a given project, information that is important to 2 users out of 400, how do you shoehorn it into a structure without making the relational structure overwhemlingly complicated to manager? I can't begin to tell you how many "experts" we've hired that have said that relational is not the solution to what I envisioned, and eventually we found other solutions to the problem (on one occasion, we took steps backwards to hierarchical (sp) databases which worked great).
Slashdot is a great learning too when subjects like this come up, because of the vast amount of really intellectual readers and posters. I appreciate that, and I'd say I learned more about database solutions from the infrequent database topics here than I have from books or hands-on experience with my programmers. What I am trying to accomplish for my clients is to take steps in NEW directions, even if others have failed before. It is why we can charge what we charge, because we look to adapt to future technological growth ahead of when that growth becomes commonplace. Do we fail? Yes. Are some of my ideas simple on paper but impossible in reality? Yes. But when you have someone like myself who is not a layman, knows enough to be dangerous, and can think outside the box with a team of good programmers, I think we make inroads to a field that resists these kinds of changes. You should see the look on the faces of the OEM code providers when I explain what we're going to do with a secondary database outside of theirs, using our own report writers, data entry software, and management summaries. Eventually, things work, they work more efficiently, and the clients are satisfied even if my programmers get wigged out by the ideas.
The web is a great example of what I feel is a good direction. How could you take a subset of a website, its outbound links, and all of its users and stick it into a relationship database and have it function? You can't. We use dozens of databases just to handle slashdot and the sites it links to, but I think there is a object oriented structure ABOVE the actual databases and backend code used that COULD allow you to encode that subset into its own non-relational structures. Maybe a combination of a hierarchical (sp) database with top objects and sub-objects having external linked-list options? I don't know, I'm not a programmer. But it can be done, and it should be done, so individuals can enter relevant data, and utilize relevant data of others, to produce the reports they need.
I'm not a database programmer, so it is difficult for me to use all the key phrases properly, although I think I have a distinct understanding of the technology under it. When I sell a project, I always draft my thoughts on paper (flow chart or object-oriented style).
:) Googling my name and some of my industries might give one of my competitors a lead in what we're trying to accomplish, ha.
For me, the most difficult aspect of the relational database has been what the database elite call impedance mismatch: how to take data in a relational database back end and utilize it properly in the front end. Much of the data that seems logical to flow in a persistent manner may actually be better suited to an object-oriented manner, where a single top level object, say a particular invoice, may actually point to a variety of objects that aren't relational in the 2D sense. Sure, business data entry has always been simplified in almost a spreadsheet manner (when querying the database overview), but we've found that while this system has always been intuitive from a simplicity perspective, it doesn't actually facilitate objects that are way more complicated than the simple relational format forces you to accept. I know that is a jumble of words, but read it again and you'll see where I'm coming from.
For simple clients, simple databases make sense. But most of our clients are large businesses with a massive amount of data, and shoehorning that data into a relational format leaves a LOT to be desired, even if it makes logical sense from a tiny example perspective. Once you have data that is readily adaptable to different needs for different jobs, you open the door to having software that adapts better to changing needs, no matter how complex those needs are. We have individuals within companies who want varying degrees of complexity for data input, relating data to other data, and even report generating, and no matter who I've subbed work out to, I've often heard "Oh, that can't be done." When I ask why not, they said that the database just can't handle all the different directions the various individuals at the client's office want. Yes, it is complicated, but only from a relational view. Once you open the system up to allowing more complexity in how objects refer to one another, you give individuals a better opportunity to enter data that THEY see important, even if others within the organization would simply ignore it or not enter it all together.
Again, I'm not a programmer, so I'm not familiar with all the issues, but I have worked hard in the past few years to develop (on paper, and eventually in code through programmers) systems that take the flat/relational invoice idea to another level, giving employees at different levels of the organization the ability to convey information they feel is important into a database, so others CAN utilize the information if needed, but it is still there for that particular complex employee's needs. Not all our systems work well, yet, but they work better than before even with the glitches.
Object-oriented databases are scary, they can be a real mess, and they can make simple tasks slightly more complex, but I think the added efficiency of allowing people to work with a larger dataset in various manners is worth the initial mess of coding what I want into reality. From what I can tell, most younger database programmers seem to WANT more complexity because they also can see the added incentive of a short term inefficiency (design and coding) that leads to a long term added efficiency (more adaptable data sets, entry and reporting) because the objects are tied down relationally.
If that didn't make sense, I'm sorry -- it is had to convey what I want to do without giving away the cow to someone else to beat me to market
Your invoice example is one that historically seems to only work with a purely relationship database, but I beg to differ because I've seen systems in place (custom coded) where an invoice front end was way more interactive in how you entered data. Searches were faster, and for large companies, the shoehorning to get data into place can be almost violent because they have such a variety of what they want to enter, or search for, or assemble by, etc.
We have one customer, a large contractor, who is trying a new PO system that isn't relational, and uses a ton of non-persistent data. Each supplier, each job, each inventory item might be completely different on a particular job, and the relational database system fails because it is so complex to try to make everything work with one another properly.
I'm NOT saying that relational isn't the best solution for a simple invoice or inventory system, but it isn't the perfect solution for many companies that have a need to provide a different "mapping" for items that might seem similar. I recall one example where the company orders items from 3 suppliers, with those same invoices being distributed to different jobs that had different invoicing structures and different billing situations. It was a mess if we just said "10,000 items from supplier A, 10,000 items from supplier B, etc" because of the sheer number of fields involved. The system we provided for them, while proprietary to my business, is a much more fluid and adapting system that made the entry clerks and the project managers happy because the system WAS so fluid and capable of dealing with really sticky situations of having 15 suppliers for 35 jobs and 20 different processes to invoice, bill, collect, process and track. What we did was "revolutionary" according to the client, and I'm hoping to integrate it for future clients as well. We tried for years to work these problems out relationally, but it never worked, even hiring some top database consultants who said "just do it the way it has always been done."
I really think the relational database WILL eventually die as we find more ways to balance the idea of persistent data versus non-persistent data versus how we look things up, store them, and regurgitate them in a different way for different tasks. I am not a database programmer, but I always try to attack ongoing problems using newer tools and unique ways to look at things.
In my IT business, a vast majority of our top tier clients (grossing over US$100 million annually) are still using antiquated software that is still using a relational database backend. While these companies are generally VERY efficient in terms of providing services or products to their market, their accounting, purchase orders and project management software is decades outdated. Many of the companies that maintain these packages have merely made the interface more current (but still 5+ years old, but are still using terribly outdated software. I can't begin to tell you how often the words "FoxPro" and "MS SQL" come up and it ends up being a relational database "solution" or even worse.
It is very frustrating because we do have programmers on staff that create third party plug-ins to these databases to try to make solutions that the OEM code doesn't. When you meet younger programmers, many of them are frustrated themselves to work on ancient solutions that have no hope of being upgraded, because these industries we work in are not in a rush to try anything new and shiny, but instead are happy with the status quo.
I just bid a job a few months back that would cost $150,000 to upgrade their database infrastructure, and likely save the company $300,000+ annually in added efficiency, less downtime, and a more robust report system. Guess what they said? "We all think it is fine the way it is." That's money thrown out the window, employees who are frustrated (without knowing why), and forcing the company to lose efficiency by not being able to compete with newer companies that are utilizing newer technology to better their bottom line.
Ugh.
You're just a right-wing nut. I should have known better.
No, I don't like the right-wing. Right and Left are both wings of the same side of the coin: authoritarians. I'm on the other side of the coin, anti-authoritarian.
Who was President in 1973? What party was he from?
Doesn't matter, both parties conspire to reduce freedom, increase taxation, and use both to support their friends and cronies.
BTW, the market did cause the healthcare crisis. There is an economic phenomenon called "cost disease" that occurs when a skill that can only turn out so much efficiency (such as surgery) fails to keep up with the broader market (which, at large, is in fact efficient and therefore surpasses its inefficient sections). It is no mistake that medicine became a problem around the time that efficiency took off.
If you look carefully at the health care system, you see the obvious causes for the crises: reduced supply of doctors, and a high cost to pay for services.
BOTH of these problems are caused by Congressional force.
1. Congress, the AMA, and the ADA artificially place a cap on new doctors licensed. This reduces the supply of doctors, which increases cost. Low supply + high demand = high price. In a market economy, people could become doctors, putting added competition in the market.
2. The high cost of services comes from two factors: a. the government's money flow into the industry (acquired through theft), and the laws legislating criminal response to what a market economy would provide for. For example, rather than having doctors hold liability insurance, the market economy would let each individual acquire their own liability insurance for each medical treatment based on what they need and what they can afford. This is currently ILLEGAL to get. This way, you would pay for the insurance you need, per treatment, based on the doctor's history with your insurer. Tort lawyers would hate this. This is called negative outcome insurance, and you are a criminal if you try to acquire it.
I find this funny considering you're posting this comment on the INTERNET of all places.
I started my first telecom business as a BBS when I was 11 years old. The Internet may have been a government-started entity, but it was the market that provided what we have today. Heck, I had an X.25 network in my house in my teen years before I could get a decent Internet connection -- and X.25 worked wonderfully for interconnection before the market started providing T1s and ISDL to those willing to foot the bill. The government-designed Internet was not an efficient process, and it would have happened naturally soon enough through X.25 or other communication, too. Remember FidoNet? I remember when the nightly dial-ups started to disappear as more large BBSes had X.25 packet networks to connect real-time through. FidoNet was a market-provided network, and it worked fine for a long time.
Research requires patronage. And that patronage will fund a lot of broken and useless crap.
Nothing is useless, all products have markets, however large or small. Yet some "useless crap" today can be a useful treasure tomorrow, based on what each individual needs and is willing to pay for.
Also, the efficient markets theory isn't true. Companies fund tons of useless, unmarketable crap, too. Look at half the semiconductor and pharm industries.
Stepping stones to finding products and services that they can offer. All my research also helps me find a market for my solutions.
A lot of research is useless. But you don't always know until you get in there and see what things really do. And people do abuse the system. It doesn't matter what system you use. Every system is prone to abuse because there will always being people looking to abuse the system. All the market does is give capitalist interests an excuse to claim their abuses are profitable and therefore no one should bitch because the consumer gets to foot the bill.
The consumer who foots the bill is the same individual who AGREED to foot the bill. Today, taxpayers foot the bill -- taxpayers who do NOT agree to foot each particular expenditure. Consumers spending = voluntary, government taxes = theft. How hard is that to understand?
Think about market-driven research itself before thinking it is so great. Some monkey actually sat down and built the actuarial tables and policies that today are screwing up the healthcare system and making sure that even people who have insurance somehow don't get procedures covered. Yep. Market-driven research really did a lot of good there.
Sorry, my friend, but it was not the market that created the health care problem. The biggest destroyer of cheap and excellent health care in the United States was, guess who? Government, starting with the HMO Act of 1973.
Without state funded research into relativity (something that appears uselss to the market) we wouldn't have accurate GPS and other accurate measuring systems. Science cannot be judged by the market because the market cannot predict what is useful in the realm of the unknown.
And you know this how?
Ground-based GPS has been around as long as triangulation has, it just wasn't a product that consumers wanted when it was available. It wasn't BECAUSE of government research that we have GPS, it was because the market demanded it as the discoveries were made.
I find it ridiculous that people think that just because government-research paid for SOME discoveries that those same discoveries wouldn't exist in a market economy. Not only would they exist, but we'd have even more research produced as people are challenged to be the first to market with a product.
I know some "scientists" who have government grants for "research" that I likely pay a part of through my taxes. One of my best friends from High School is a PhD in an earth science, and he's always jumping from grant to grant to grant, and his research is mostly useless from a market perspective.
How about instead of "freeing up" research based on money that is stolen, we just stop the steal-and-pay mentality of government research grants, and let the market economy support what it needs and deny what it doesn't need?
If some poor researcher loses funding, and industry realizes they had something good to say or study, they'll get the money quick enough, plus they can decide who to offer it to and at what price. It is no different than the guy who washes cars: if government paid him to do it, he'd be charging $100 an hour and would forget to use water.
I don't doubt it, and I actually live it. I serve hundreds of churches and faith groups with my church printing ministry, and am active in my community as an anti-tax and anti-force advocate. People know be my name, and I'm the first to shell out a few bucks for a single mom who needs gas or groceries.
But I don't support the "them" mentality. Each person I deal with is an individual. I don't look at "the black folks" or "the Pentecostals" or "the drug addicts" because that is groupthink that causes harm to the individual's uniqueness.
Even when I am in my "community," I am still dealing with individuals. I live life through relationships of "you and I" verses "us and them."
I'll get beaten up for this, but the next 50 years in space will continue to be more of the same: I'll be stolen from more (through taxes), with more lost opportunities for people to work in a real market rather than a State-planned market that focuses on generating new technology for the war machine, rather than new technology that will actually solve some real problems. Yes, yes, some of NASA's discoveries over the years have been adapted for consumers or health or what-not, but this is more an accident than it is a regular reality.
I could care less which country gets to Mars first -- I don't believe in "us versus them." We're individuals, regardless of citizenship, and it is always "me versus everyone" until I am comfortable enough to be able to help others through charity, purchasing goods or services, or hopefully saving in a full-reserve bank so my money can be honestly loaned to those who can use it wisely. I don't need to venture to space, even though I'm a Sci-Fi geek. I'll look forward to McDevitt's next book and get my fantasies worked out there rather than in billions or trillions lost to government waste, bureaucracies, and preferential treatment for their elite friends.
Space is a waste UNTIL the market economy provides for it. Let the private industries battle it out competitively, with lessened regulations, than what we've had for the first 50 years.
Isn't that more than are running Vista right now?
If a price goes up, or down, there are always two reasons, one is based on a market economy, and one is based on the use of force (government, generally, but sometimes mob pressure):
1. Supply and demand. These curves tend to meet at the equilibrium, which changes daily and is benefited by competition and technological changes, as well as market needs. Supply goes up, price goes down. Demand goes up, price goes up. We don't pay much for horse-shoers anymore, but it wasn't the result of bootleg horseshoers, it was just a lack of demand for a product or service.
2. Government-forced regulation. This is where competition is destroyed because of preferential treatment of elite parties. Copyright regulations have been so over-encroaching on the art market that consumers are now finding new ways to acquire their product. Black markets thrive on governments giving too many favors to their buddies. MP3 is the new crack, and I'm sure we'll see a War on Piracy soon enough. Think about the children.
The music industry, as a whole, is growing faster than ever. Never in all of history have we seen the sheer amount of new artists creating sometimes fantastic music. Not only that, but the popular artists are pricing themselves out of the market. As embarassing as it is to say, I bought my wife two tickets to Madonna's Chicago show and I think I dropped $400 for the two tickets (each). She loved it, but I'm sure a lot of fans were disturbed. Me? I scour MySpace for local bands with talent -- and I'm happy to pay $10 for a ticket and $20 for a T-shirt and CD. Local Chicago shows are PACKED lately, with hundreds of fans going out to dozens of bars/pubs on the same night to see different local bands. You can talk to the bands, learn their guitar tabs straight from them, and have a relationship with bands to entice them to continue their entertainment.
The market amazes me, because even with government-forced monopoly on distribution, the music gets out there, and it is many times better than the mass-produced, monopoly-enriched mainstream distribution media outlets.
I can't wait until indie music is illegal.
No, what he has is a communal office for independent consultants. They get paid by the job, but he runs the show - bringing in work and doling it out. It's a bigger-company with individual talents - good to keep clients happy (we have lots of support), but you get targeted experts. He makes money herding the cats. The pay thing is just to keep the government happy.
Bingo. There are two skills spheres I have always been concerned with in my entire business life (I started a successful BBS at the age of 13 with this same mindset):
1. Those who are risk takers and are able to penetrate a market or a project early. These folks are not the most responsible in the long term (that's me).
2. Those who are responsible and are able to carry projects through to completion. These folks are not risk takers (not me).
A successful business needs a combination of both. The consultants who work with me are usually type 2, in fact I have never met a type 1 individual who competes on my level. This isn't egotistic, it is just a fact since I've been looking for a replacement for years.
Herding the cats is exactly what I do. There are 1000 projects in our markets (primarily Midwest US, Southwest US, Poland and India) that I can't reach because I can't find a way to do them more efficiently. Yet when I know what my consultants CAN do, and what they HAVE done, and what they WANT to do, I can jump into a bid or a decision process and sell our talents and come in well under budget. Most of the type 2 people I know won't take the risk of NOT having work or the risk of collections or the risk of keeping customers as contracts in the future. I'm the king of expensive dinners, bid submittals, comparison summaries and collections. I even use factoring companies when necessary to keep the cash coming in, even at a 5-11% hit. Most consultants are good at doing their job and scheduling their responsibilities, where I am not, so we work very well together. If I could find another 2-3 guys like me (type 1), we could probably take on 600% more work, but it is difficult to assess someone's abilities in the grayer business actions that I perform versus what an actual consultant does.
What it all boils down to is that I don't see the point of earning 6-10x what my average consultant earns. In most years, I am the BOTTOM of the income chart at my own company, but I also like to keep capital within the company as much as possible. Happy employees = future stability. People don't quit if they feel like they are earning slightly more than they are worth, but they'll quit if they smell the potential of earning more elsewhere.
That is interesting - what do you use to allow employees to bill time? Just a simple note, or something different like Act! or (for the tax prep folks)Lacerte (something similar).
I wrote a VB app years ago (I'm a terrible programmer but can read any code fluently, so I hacked it out) and a year ago we transcoded it to work under Windows Mobile (not sure what it is programmed in now). Simple to note your work, time in/time out, and have the customer sign the PDA. Works well, and I think we only lose about 6% of our work orders when customers have disagreed. I have a principle about disagreements: the customer is always right. If they say no to a work order, I toss it.
As a salaried employee, I know my employer doesn't care if I write a note or surf here or there; checking my bank account, etc... for much the same reasons. The 8,000 employee firm I work for has payroll out on time, charges go out and come in, etc etc...
You're probably correct, but I wonder what their operating efficiency is. My consultants tend to work as hard as they feel they are worth -- the only time I've split with consultants is when I felt they were underpaid in our system, and I've actively helped former consultants start their own (competitive) business. I try to cap our growth at 15-20% a year maximum, and we've been in business since 1989 and stuck to that growth consistently. I know I could never, nor would I ever, run a company with thousands or even hundreds of employees. I feel I lose my competitive edge if I have more than 15-20 projects to keep track of, even with a full time CFO on staff.
But, you are very much right - employing salaried people means you have to contain them, have them "on site" in some way or form, and point them in the right direction.
I'm also restricted to allowing the market proceed to where it needs to go. A few years ago, our telephony consultants were warned that their billable rate might have to drop to stay competitive. I explained that a rate drop would keep us 30-40% cheaper than the big boys, but we'd grow in business. That did, in fact, happen, with people working slightly more for slightly less, but they stayed employed where many of my competitors lost market share or went under completely. Salaried staff isn't as ready to take a cut when the market sends warnings that the business is becoming over-saturated with a supply of labor. The same thing is happening in residential construction development (which accounted for 40% of our work in 2004, but I knew would fall in 2006+), and it will soon happen in IT, too. If I had to meet salaries for inefficient divisions, I'd have to steal from profitable ones.
Since everyone works on projects based on profitability, when I issue a warning about a market it also comes with the invitation to switch to a different market over time, to learn the trade or convert their current talents to be useful in a future growth market. Salaried staff with specific permanent departments is a very inelastic way to run a business, and I am surprised the business model still exists in such numbers (namely, everywhere).
Actually, I offered 2 consulting gigs (1099) to people I met from here. My concern is an impending Recession (big "R") in the next year, so we're capping our expenses until the market shakes itself out. If it tanks, Dubai here we come.
My employees are free to spend as much time as they want in the office surfing any site they want do: slashdot, porn, the anarchist's cookbook, whatever. It is useless to me to tell them what they can or can't do when they've met their personal goals for projects.
I also pay my employees differently than most consulting firms. We pay close to minimum wage, plus a very large bonus on each project. I've never had anyone quit, and I've never had anyone complain about their monthly paychecks. By offering a large portion of a project's profits, I know my employees won't waste my money (in salary), won't have to lie on their time sheets, and they'll do the best job they can do because they won't want to go and finish a punch list without pay or handle warranty work at a low rate. It is win-win, and a big reason why I'd prefer full 1099's than W2's if the IRS didn't prevent us from working that way.
When you're salaried or on wages, the employer has to focus a lot more on containing the employee and sending them in the proper direction, constantly. We have zero managers at my company, just consultants. It works fine. Our customers love us because we're 40% cheaper than others in the industry but we excel at handling their needs.
So this all lets me "not care" if an employee decides to spend all day long on the web, and only 1 hour on a project. If the customer is happy, and the work is good, and they do it quickly and correctly, they'll make a killing on the profit sharing, and they'll have a ton of free time to kill at the office if they want to be there. Our top employee works 2 days a week, I think, and earns a very respectable income. He can now spend 3 days at the office playing some MMOG, or go home and sleep. I could care less, the customers are happy.
No, we're not hiring.
I think YouTube is fantastic -- I can grab snippets of information that I'm interested in, plus also have the option to search for proam video from events that normally don't get broadcast in the MSM. I think YouTube should offer some sort of "revenue sharing" options, though. This would quickly destroy the MSM as pro-am or pro videographers and filmographers could find income for their ventures.
I'd prefer to see YouTube offer a "subscriber" option -- pay $x/month or $x/GB transferred to skip ads of all sorts. Sure, you can block some ads, but the video inserts you can't. Flash Video is capable of skipping segments based on server-data, such as seeing if a person has a subscription and if they have free gigs left. I'd happily pay for my video snippets -- even moreso if part of my subscription went to the video author or "owner."
One-way TV is too limiting -- either you get all a channel's offerings, or you don't get it at all. Some channels are starting to allow PPV on-demand, which is excellent, but I still have to get the full buffet of channels (Digital ones) to get PPV. I'd rather do an a la carte selection, honestly. In 2 years, the amount I'd save over having to maintain a decent media center PC would be worth it for me (considering my media center PC is probably worth $1500 and has to be upgraded every so often) for the limited TV we watch.
YouTube has a huge opportunity here to offer snippets, full shows, and amateur content, while offering the viewer the option to pay up front, or watch ads rather than paying. Bandwidth and hosting ain't free, not even for Google, who can also handle fee distribution between their hosting office and the content "owner." This is a big step to also reduce the need for companies to monitor for copyright infringement, as it gives them the option to host their own stuff and make the pennies per hit.
I'm not a frequent soap user at all, unless I really have some grime going on. I find that a simple rinsing a few times a day, along with the good ole pumice scrub, works wonder -- and keeps my hands soft enough to work with. Since I do a lot of hands-on production, I absolutely HATE the feeling of dry hands that comes along with using soap. Moisturizers are worse, since they always leave a greasy feel -- and when working with print jobs for churches, I can't leave smudges behind.
I've always told the wifey to stay away from anti-bacterial anything. A lot of bacteria is GOOD, and the ones that are bad are relatively easy to defend against if you're healthy. We want our bodies to adjust to whatever new bacteria is growing in our homes. Between cleanings, you'll have some growth. The body has a great defensive system already -- it builds the necessary defenses to learn and kill whatever comes into the body.
I've been sick twice in the last 2 decades -- once when I shook the hand of someone who was days later became VERY ill, and once after I rubbed my eyes after playing craps in a casino late one night. Both times I didn't rinse my hands after -- and I recovered well enough in a matter of days (much faster than the guy I got sick from).
Let others be suckers and buy into the manufacturer's marketing campaigns about what is healthy and what isn't. Humans have been around for a long time -- longer than soap. Running water > most daily chemicals for living longer and healthier.
If you don't copyright your works, your "Moralip" license is unenforceable. Because either it is a license, or it is not, in which case you're just asking people to do what they think is right. Which is fine - IP rights are yours to claim or disavow, whatever suits you. In that case, however, you've consigned yourself to a rather Hobbesian IP environment. So I wouldn't call this system of yours "protection."
It isn't meant to be protection, it is merely a moral reminder of what the content author wishes for the content they've created. I repudiate the use of force, and copyright and creative commons both require the use of force to enforce protection. Copyright, and creative commons, eventually fall to the mafia-regime we call the State to enforce what a person wants. I do not give the State the right to use force against individuals who disagree with me. Instead, I "pander" to their moral side, in hopes that they will understand what I want done with works I have spent my time creating or designing.
If someone wishes to go against what the original author wishes, the best the author can do is to use other options against someone going against the MORALip "license." They can use public ridicule, or guilt, or a variety of other options that appeal to a person's guilt/moral side. It may work, it may not work. But I do believe it is the best, and most moral, form of "protection" for content that is easily copied or distributed by others.
Now, a correction - you do in fact copyright your works. Copyright is automatic. In the Berne Convention Implementation Act Congress abolished formalities, meaning that you don't need to get a copyright registration in order to receive a copyright. You have a copyright in your post unless you explicitly devote it to the public domain; I have a copyright in this post as well. [Whether Slashdot's ToU claims a right to our posts- and whether that's enforceable- is an interesting question worthy of another thread.]
I have never signed an agreement with the Berne Convention, or with Congress, or with anyone regarding State-based protections of my creations. I won't. On slashdot, I probably DID sign an agreement not to copy or distribute items posted here -- so in slashdot's case I have probably agreed to not copy content (I'm not sure, I didn't read the ToS fully). Yet I personally don't copy other's content (except to quote and reference, which I believe increases their market), so I don't really care about the restrictions here.
Our IP system isn't wrong or immoral; it is merely out of balance - and today, it is drastically out of balance, in a manner that can undermine the progress of science and the useful arts, rather than promote it. A properly tuned IP system, however, is a invaluable asset to an information economy.
I find that incredibly wrong. Copyright, and all State-restricted IP, is both wrong and immoral. First, it uses the force of the gun and jail and financial penalties to restrict a resource that has near-unlimited distribution potential at nearly no cost. Secondly, it supports large distributors with money over individuals -- can you afford to fight a legal battle against a large corporation who "steals" your "creation"? I think not. That is both wrong, and immoral, to believe that it helps the individual over the group.
That being said, it shouldn't be held against you that you don't appreciate this. Our IP system's excesses are themselves responsible for IP's crisis of credibility. Yet we must recognize that the ultimate solution lies in reform, not repudiation.
Again, I repudiate all use of force against another, except in the personal defense of one's physical property. I personally no longer believe in defending my own property against theft or attack, since I know I can easily work to replace it quickly. Yet I don't believe I should push my responsibilities to the State or any group without their direct approval of supporting my needs and goals. I don't believe in social contracts, or any contracts that do not directly have the signed contract support of each individual. That is freedom, not tyranny.
Poisonous toothpaste and dead regulatory officials?
I don't support force-heavy laws of the State, but I firmly believe that those who get paid directly by any State should be the ones who fall under the law. In this case, this was the State that failed, not the market. Get rid of all State-regulations on medication and let the retailers and independent testing organization test products for safety. Underwriters' Laboratories does a great job as an independent testing organization -- so great that many retailers won't sell electric products that isn't UL-rated for consumers.
Some do. Most invent because there's a financial reward attached in the form of a paycheck.
There are two ways to invest and make a profit:
1. Invent your own product, try to find marketing and production, and then hope to make a profit. This is highly risky, but can be highly rewarding, too.
2. Go work for an R&D think-tank and get a paycheck. Your risk is cut, but so is your reward.