And they are correct. China is the emerging superpower while the US is the declining superpower.
How did the US gain superpower status? By snatching up the colonies of declining empires (Spanish, and later British). China will do the same, so they want to pay attention to whats going on in the US empire.
it has nothing to do with government grants and everything to do with corporate culture. The priority now is marketing and getting new customers. Supporting the customers you have already? Thats the lowest priority. They all outsource that to whichever call center can do it the cheapest. Its like taking out the trash: it has to be done but its not as glamorous as a snazzy ad campaign. None of the big corporations regard this as priority regardless of whether they've gotten government money in the past.
The logic is this: if you're calling for support, you've already bought the product. They've already made their money from you. So giving you good support is just costing them money. They have done all the market research and they know that very few people buy a product because of good support. Its just playing the percentages. Maybe only 3% of the a certain model will have issues needing support. The have some people on the phone following the script that will resolve 90% of these issues. The other 20%? well you need some more technical people for that. Those people demand twice as much pay as the people just following a script. The look at the cost of having those people on staff vs. how much money they'll lose if the ~%0.3 don't get their issue resolved. That %0.3 have had an issue with the product which was not easily resolved, so there's a strong likelihood they aren't going to but more of their products even if the company makes a herculean effort and manages to fix all the problems and give good customer support.
There are some issues that costs the company more to resolve than the lost future profits you would make of that customer. Those issues don't get fixed. Sucks if you have an issue that occurs 0.3% of the time. But it cuts into the corporation's profits to deal with it, so they choose not to deal with it.
With many industries, good support is incompatible with maximizing profits.
Don't blame the government for bad support from verizon. They've done the calculations, and the support they provide maximizes profits.
I doubt the "drone" would even have the ability to waive the fee. I am certain they don't give that authority to anyone taking calls, and I seriously doubt even their managers have that authority themselves.
So unless the "drone" was willing to pay the $350 out of his/her own pocket it just wouldn't happen.
Unfortunately, to the modern day corporation, customer support is a problem to be disposed of as cheaply as possible. That means encouraging the people working the phones to get the customer to go way as quickly and cheaply as possible. If they allow people at the call center (almost always outsourced) to give refunds and waive fees, increases costs. Much more profitable to have the call center give people the run around until they give up. And tell the call center that is someone from the media calls to direct those to a people who do have extra authority.
Here's a tip: if you want to get awesome support for so piece of technology, when you call, say "I'm writing a review for." They'll bend over backwards for you. If you aren't in the media no corporation will give a shit about your problem. Your problem isn't their problem. Their problem is to get rid of you.
but what if you have two clients get the MAX(pkey_column) at the same time? wouldn't they both be inserting the same key?
I'd rather just have the database handle it, its trivial to implement in every database system I've used. And seems a hell of a lot safer than having every single app accessing the database handle it themselves.
Yeah its not hard to figure out that kind of thing. But the problem comes when getting used to it.
Say you have an employee thats entering orders that arrive from email. Say they do this task a thousand times a day. Once they've been doing this for a few months, they likely have all their shortcuts, toolbars, taskbars, etc. exactly where they want them to do things quickly and thus maximise their productivity. It gets so its all automatic. Get an email from customer X, switch over to application Y, enter data Z. When they've done it a million times they can probably do it blindfolded. because they always click in the same part of the screen each time.
You make any change to that, their productivity drops. Now they get an email from customer X, they have to think for a few seconds about how to swtich to application Y. Now things are grouped so you have to hover over the icon and then click. Now multiply that couple of seconds by 1000 times per day.
Eventually everyone gets used to the new system, or figures out how to change the interface back so its like the old way. But you shouldn't under estimate the amount of lost productivity.
From what little of Win 7 I've seen it looks like they've made things more intuitive by sacrificing user-friendliness. Intuitive != User-friendly.
1. NUKE IT 2. Use tax dollars to hire oil industry experts to deal with the problem. 3. Have BP use their money to hire oil industry experts to deal with the problem.
The result of #1 will be oil continuing to leak into the gulf but add a bunch of radiation to the mix. The results of #2 and #3 are the same, its just that #2 is just a big subsidy to BP.
Even issuing a fine to BP that's so massive it'll bankrupt them would result in the people working on the problem spending time worrying if they're going to get paid instead of actually working. So you have to put that off until the situation is under control. Even then, the President doesn't have the power to do that, you have to look to the congress for that kinda of thing. But you're gonna have to wait, unless you want to sabotage the ongoing efforts.
I'd say Apple's appstore is immature given there aren't any real guidelines. Wild west nightmare? You're an honest merchant in a wild west town and Stevie "the kid" Jobs comes to town and blasts you with his six shooter. There is no Marshall the only law is Stevie's law. Sounds like a wild west nightmare to me.
Its not unreasonable to ask that Apple publicize what their requirements are. Companies are investing time and money developing apps that increase the value of Apple's product. The least Apple can do is have published guidelines of what is allowed in their appstore. Then a company can look at those guidelines and know if a product they're planning isn't allowed. If its not allowed then the compnay need not waste anymore time on it.
Yes Apple has the power to reject apps from its store. But just because you have power doesn't mean you should be a dick about it.
"Any content which will get us banned by a country for being obscene, we will remove it"
They don't really need to spell it out, its implied. They choose between have a couple of million less people clicking on ads or having one less page where asshats can be have a few laughs at the expense of someone else's religion. Its a no-brainer.
If facebook operated the way you wanted it to, within a couple of months it would contain nothing but scat porn. The only users left would be the dozen or so weirdos that enjoy scat porn, while the rest of the users would be using some other social website.
If you want a website that normal people will want to use, you have to take a balanced approach. Allow people to do what they want as long as it won't offend too many other users of the site.
The Mohamed cartoons were very offensive to millions of facebook users. Facebook did the right thing here.
On one hand the muslims are bad for trying to make people respect their beliefs. You go on to say how its bad to try to enforce beliefs on others.
Next you say you want to force muslims to behave the way you want them to behave. You don't think its right to believe that cartoons of a prophet is blasphemous. So you're going to *force* those "primitive" muslims to look at cartoons of their prophet. Desensitize them so that they believe the same things you do.
The crusader mentality isn't dead. Its alive and well in you, buddy.
And why would freedom friendly America need huge fleets of missile boats (and aircraft carriers)?
I think China recognises that the American Empire is on the decline and they're getting ready to take its place. This is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run. Having a global superpower is better than not having one. Without a single superpower, you end up with all the regional powers having wars all over the place trying to form their own mini-empires. When there's a superpower, the regional powers aren't allowed to have a war without approval of the superpower. And since wars are usually bad for business, the superpower vetoes most of them. The only real conflict comes from asynchronous warfare groups such as the taliban, al qaeda, etc.
Of course when there are two competing superpowers (like in the cold war) some wars get approved by the superpowers so they can show off their capabilities to the other side. In the nuclear age you end up with spheres of influence and most places are safe from those kinds of conflicts.
Yeah, China is definitely eyeing up Africa. But Chinese colonialism will probably be an improvement over the current state of war and disease on that continent. They can't really make things much worse.
Re:Copyright expiration is all over the map
on
The Hobbit On Hold
·
· Score: 1
JRR Tolkien died in 1973, Walt Disney died in 1966. Laws will be changed to make sure Disney's copyrights will never expire. Since Tolkien dies after Disney, that means his copyright will never expire either.
Re:Do you want more religion with your scifi?
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
A good % of the *human race* has "supernatural feelings"
People like to see supernatural stuff in fiction because it makes thinks interesting.
ESP makes you angry but warp engines and teleporters don't? Warp engines and teleporters aren't possible in our understanding of science, so they could be considered supernatural. There is no proof of aliens existing, so put them in the supernatural category too.
Some people like stories about aliens, some people like stories about ESP.
yes. do proper booming in areas that need it most. Catch as much as you can and protect as much as you can.
In medicine when there's a disaster or war, you have too many patients and not enough doctors so you do whats called triage. Yeah it looks bad when some patients die because they don't get treatment, but you save more lives. You don't run around putting band-aids on everyone just so you look like you're doing something.
What they're doing now is not protecting anything. They're just making it look like the booms don't work. But the booms do work if used properly. But they don't have enough, because they weren't prepared.
They right thing to do would be to admit they don't have enough booms to protect the entire gulf, and use what they have to protect as much as they can. But they'd rather shift the blame from themselves (for not being prepared) to the booms for not being effective. And then cover up that the booms are ineffective because they aren't using them right.
Slashdot Mirror
And they are correct. China is the emerging superpower while the US is the declining superpower.
How did the US gain superpower status? By snatching up the colonies of declining empires (Spanish, and later British). China will do the same, so they want to pay attention to whats going on in the US empire.
maybe they should hire smarter peons.
or maybe the management isn't smart enough to hire qualified people.
it has nothing to do with government grants and everything to do with corporate culture. The priority now is marketing and getting new customers. Supporting the customers you have already? Thats the lowest priority. They all outsource that to whichever call center can do it the cheapest. Its like taking out the trash: it has to be done but its not as glamorous as a snazzy ad campaign. None of the big corporations regard this as priority regardless of whether they've gotten government money in the past.
The logic is this: if you're calling for support, you've already bought the product. They've already made their money from you. So giving you good support is just costing them money. They have done all the market research and they know that very few people buy a product because of good support. Its just playing the percentages. Maybe only 3% of the a certain model will have issues needing support. The have some people on the phone following the script that will resolve 90% of these issues. The other 20%? well you need some more technical people for that. Those people demand twice as much pay as the people just following a script. The look at the cost of having those people on staff vs. how much money they'll lose if the ~%0.3 don't get their issue resolved. That %0.3 have had an issue with the product which was not easily resolved, so there's a strong likelihood they aren't going to but more of their products even if the company makes a herculean effort and manages to fix all the problems and give good customer support.
There are some issues that costs the company more to resolve than the lost future profits you would make of that customer. Those issues don't get fixed. Sucks if you have an issue that occurs 0.3% of the time. But it cuts into the corporation's profits to deal with it, so they choose not to deal with it.
With many industries, good support is incompatible with maximizing profits.
Don't blame the government for bad support from verizon. They've done the calculations, and the support they provide maximizes profits.
I doubt the "drone" would even have the ability to waive the fee. I am certain they don't give that authority to anyone taking calls, and I seriously doubt even their managers have that authority themselves.
So unless the "drone" was willing to pay the $350 out of his/her own pocket it just wouldn't happen.
Unfortunately, to the modern day corporation, customer support is a problem to be disposed of as cheaply as possible. That means encouraging the people working the phones to get the customer to go way as quickly and cheaply as possible. If they allow people at the call center (almost always outsourced) to give refunds and waive fees, increases costs. Much more profitable to have the call center give people the run around until they give up. And tell the call center that is someone from the media calls to direct those to a people who do have extra authority.
Here's a tip: if you want to get awesome support for so piece of technology, when you call, say "I'm writing a review for ." They'll bend over backwards for you. If you aren't in the media no corporation will give a shit about your problem. Your problem isn't their problem. Their problem is to get rid of you.
Fun fact: that dude is actually a descendent of the original Assassins
but what if you have two clients get the MAX(pkey_column) at the same time? wouldn't they both be inserting the same key?
I'd rather just have the database handle it, its trivial to implement in every database system I've used. And seems a hell of a lot safer than having every single app accessing the database handle it themselves.
Yeah its not hard to figure out that kind of thing. But the problem comes when getting used to it.
Say you have an employee thats entering orders that arrive from email. Say they do this task a thousand times a day. Once they've been doing this for a few months, they likely have all their shortcuts, toolbars, taskbars, etc. exactly where they want them to do things quickly and thus maximise their productivity. It gets so its all automatic. Get an email from customer X, switch over to application Y, enter data Z. When they've done it a million times they can probably do it blindfolded. because they always click in the same part of the screen each time.
You make any change to that, their productivity drops. Now they get an email from customer X, they have to think for a few seconds about how to swtich to application Y. Now things are grouped so you have to hover over the icon and then click. Now multiply that couple of seconds by 1000 times per day.
Eventually everyone gets used to the new system, or figures out how to change the interface back so its like the old way. But you shouldn't under estimate the amount of lost productivity.
From what little of Win 7 I've seen it looks like they've made things more intuitive by sacrificing user-friendliness. Intuitive != User-friendly.
It'll be very diluted by the time it gets that far.
What can Obama do? here are his options:
1. NUKE IT
2. Use tax dollars to hire oil industry experts to deal with the problem.
3. Have BP use their money to hire oil industry experts to deal with the problem.
The result of #1 will be oil continuing to leak into the gulf but add a bunch of radiation to the mix. The results of #2 and #3 are the same, its just that #2 is just a big subsidy to BP.
Even issuing a fine to BP that's so massive it'll bankrupt them would result in the people working on the problem spending time worrying if they're going to get paid instead of actually working. So you have to put that off until the situation is under control. Even then, the President doesn't have the power to do that, you have to look to the congress for that kinda of thing. But you're gonna have to wait, unless you want to sabotage the ongoing efforts.
I'd say Apple's appstore is immature given there aren't any real guidelines. Wild west nightmare? You're an honest merchant in a wild west town and Stevie "the kid" Jobs comes to town and blasts you with his six shooter. There is no Marshall the only law is Stevie's law. Sounds like a wild west nightmare to me.
like the economist cover?
Its not unreasonable to ask that Apple publicize what their requirements are. Companies are investing time and money developing apps that increase the value of Apple's product. The least Apple can do is have published guidelines of what is allowed in their appstore. Then a company can look at those guidelines and know if a product they're planning isn't allowed. If its not allowed then the compnay need not waste anymore time on it.
Yes Apple has the power to reject apps from its store. But just because you have power doesn't mean you should be a dick about it.
Yeah, how dare you not host content that a billion people think is obscene!
I demand that facebook martyr it's revenues for the cause of anti-islamicism!
simple policy:
"Any content which will get us banned by a country for being obscene, we will remove it"
They don't really need to spell it out, its implied. They choose between have a couple of million less people clicking on ads or having one less page where asshats can be have a few laughs at the expense of someone else's religion. Its a no-brainer.
If facebook operated the way you wanted it to, within a couple of months it would contain nothing but scat porn. The only users left would be the dozen or so weirdos that enjoy scat porn, while the rest of the users would be using some other social website.
If you want a website that normal people will want to use, you have to take a balanced approach. Allow people to do what they want as long as it won't offend too many other users of the site.
The Mohamed cartoons were very offensive to millions of facebook users. Facebook did the right thing here.
LOL
On one hand the muslims are bad for trying to make people respect their beliefs. You go on to say how its bad to try to enforce beliefs on others.
Next you say you want to force muslims to behave the way you want them to behave. You don't think its right to believe that cartoons of a prophet is blasphemous. So you're going to *force* those "primitive" muslims to look at cartoons of their prophet. Desensitize them so that they believe the same things you do.
The crusader mentality isn't dead. Its alive and well in you, buddy.
even funnier since thats kinda the plot of Sunshine.
And why would freedom friendly America need huge fleets of missile boats (and aircraft carriers)?
I think China recognises that the American Empire is on the decline and they're getting ready to take its place. This is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run. Having a global superpower is better than not having one. Without a single superpower, you end up with all the regional powers having wars all over the place trying to form their own mini-empires. When there's a superpower, the regional powers aren't allowed to have a war without approval of the superpower. And since wars are usually bad for business, the superpower vetoes most of them. The only real conflict comes from asynchronous warfare groups such as the taliban, al qaeda, etc.
Of course when there are two competing superpowers (like in the cold war) some wars get approved by the superpowers so they can show off their capabilities to the other side. In the nuclear age you end up with spheres of influence and most places are safe from those kinds of conflicts.
Yeah, China is definitely eyeing up Africa. But Chinese colonialism will probably be an improvement over the current state of war and disease on that continent. They can't really make things much worse.
JRR Tolkien died in 1973, Walt Disney died in 1966. Laws will be changed to make sure Disney's copyrights will never expire. Since Tolkien dies after Disney, that means his copyright will never expire either.
hard to fit 2 drives into a laptop.
A good % of the *human race* has "supernatural feelings"
People like to see supernatural stuff in fiction because it makes thinks interesting.
ESP makes you angry but warp engines and teleporters don't? Warp engines and teleporters aren't possible in our understanding of science, so they could be considered supernatural. There is no proof of aliens existing, so put them in the supernatural category too.
Some people like stories about aliens, some people like stories about ESP.
yes. do proper booming in areas that need it most. Catch as much as you can and protect as much as you can.
In medicine when there's a disaster or war, you have too many patients and not enough doctors so you do whats called triage. Yeah it looks bad when some patients die because they don't get treatment, but you save more lives. You don't run around putting band-aids on everyone just so you look like you're doing something.
What they're doing now is not protecting anything. They're just making it look like the booms don't work. But the booms do work if used properly. But they don't have enough, because they weren't prepared.
They right thing to do would be to admit they don't have enough booms to protect the entire gulf, and use what they have to protect as much as they can. But they'd rather shift the blame from themselves (for not being prepared) to the booms for not being effective. And then cover up that the booms are ineffective because they aren't using them right.
Republican congress *and* president 2001 to 2009
those numbers only go up to 1999. You should find the numbers for 2000 and 2001. That is if you want to be honest about it.
So its basically your version of the DMCA. Security through making it illegal.