I think maybe it is a matter or culture and expectations. For instance, if I was away from my computer with a wifi connection for long periods to time, then maybe something like watching tv on my phone would a major deal. However, I mostly have access to a computer and wifi. For traveling, when I am not driving, I am used to reading and listening to my music player. I know for others watching a movie is of more interest, so they would want this feature.
Likewise triangulation of cell towers have always been more than good enough for my applications. I am used to pretty much knowing where I am going before hand, so I don't really need turn by turn directions. I any case, such directions often are inefficient, and i have been burned when I have relied on google or mapquest to tell my where I am going rather than studying the map myself.
as far as the phone service, the cell phone companies certainly do cause problems for customers. However, in the US the culture is generally not to change phones often. To me this is the key. If one is a culture where a product is replaced every year or even more often, then one can have very frequent and innovative product cycles, with the primary goal being adding features, no matter how lame, to drive the sales of the product. In a country where people keep phones for two or three years, the impetus to do such things are not as great. Outside of the teenage market, where there is expendable income and they do not understand that are being locking until they are 25, or those that lose the phone often, there is just not the incentive to add gee golly whiz features.
It is true that features like TV and the like are probably limitied by the cell phone companies. Other features may be limited by technology. I like my 1G iPhone and see little reason to give it up, other than ATT may be doing stuff to make it less useful. Certainly for my applications, 3G or GPS is not a huge plus. It is the same with computers. Some may need or want the absolutely latest in computers, so maybe want to buy a PC because it is expandable or cheap enough to replace every six months. But for doing actual work, such an aggressive upgrade cycle seems counter productive. Much better to get a couple years use out of a working machine, then invest time and money into a new machine that will give another couple years of use.
What is really being said is that a significant percentage of the people on xBox live are really intolerant. Rather than losing the income from these people, which they would if MS actually banned members who made slurs against others based on arbitrary characteristics, MS chooses to tacitly condone this behavior. It is no big deal. It is unlikely that GBLT customers would make up the income lost from those who feel strongly that GLBT are devil worshippers.
The best thing to do online is proclaim yourself a straight white male. That way if those guys who sit and watch the border crossing cameras for Mexicans crossing into the US find out your mexican, they won't start telling you go home and quite spending all thier tax money on the hundred illegitimate babies you have at home. Or maybe the follower os the extremely traditional catholics might find out that you are one of those devil worshipping protestants. And who knows what would happen if anyone found out that someone might be divorced and on their second marriage, why that might start a flame war on polygomy.
The reality is that people who are comfortable being in an exclusive environment like xBox live, or believe that such exclusive environments do no harm, will continue to do so. This is a significant portion of america, given the results of the last presidential election. Almost no one is going to turn in their xBox simply because MS supports bigoted behavior, any more than we would stop shopping at wal mart because we are concerned about the trade imbalance or stop buying meat becuase we are concerned about illegal immigration and the abuse of undocumented workers.
In the end those that wish to express themselves will go somewhere else, those that wish to attack other people will stay with xBox, and we will continue to have segregated communities that never talk to each other. Because, as has been said so many times in this post, why should i listen to someone who believes differently from me. I should have every right to taunt and slander such people if they have the audacity to think that I should be compelled to even associate with them.
I largely agree with two caveats. First, if this is the middle of a project with an absolute end point or milestone in the near future, then leaving before the project is finished is questionable. Even if a longer term thing, then I would say leaving without negotiating a departure data is also questionable. Often if a supervisor does this it is because a person is bailing in the middle of a project. In either case, it may have been a mistake not to discuss the issue prior to making a decision to leave. In many cases, especially is one has been at a company for a long time, and there may be some bond, people just like to be asked. It may not be too late to take this approach.
If the company just wants you around to be their go to person, then good references may be a moot point. I assume that you are leaving to expand your horizons. It could be that management still sees you a s the person you were when you started at the company, and they don't want to lose you, or have some misplaced parental feelings. Who knows, but if they want to keep you just to have you around, then there are likely to be negative feelings. Going to HR may just compound those feelings. Despite this, it will probably be necessary for you to put a letter in response to any negative letter put in because of your leaving. As was mentioned on the recent farewell letter thread, it is better to be as positive as possible. For instance, focus on your record, that you are leaving to expand yourself personally, and that you will never be able to repay the thoughtfulness and help of the people you have worked with. You know, the standard bull shit.
The lat bit is probably the best advice as far as I am concerned. Many of references have been peers, as my peers tend to know my real skills while my supervisors simply know that I finish work quickly. I wonder if any of you other coworkers have left, and therefore will make good references as they are no longer part of the office politic.
Internet advertising was overvalued with the intent of embezzling money. This is essentially equivalent to what Enron did.
Let's say that deal could reasonable be worth $20,000 in advertising over the lifetime of the deal. To make the deal, the salesman agrees to have the company incur all upfront costs, and the customer would only pay a fixed hosting cost based on page views. Advertising would be split down the middle. This seemed to be a pretty typical deal. Development and hosting costs would be at least half the expected amount to be realized from advertising. After commissions and the like, the company might realize 10-15% profit. The problem with this situation is that everyone on commission would be fighting over a couple thousand dollars of commission. Since many were on commision only, or a very low salary, and a deal like this might happen only once a month for each group, there was some incentive for fraud.
The fraud appeared to take the form of the inflated advertising numbers that so many pointed to as a reason why ad based service did not work. I think these services do work, if the expectations is realistic. In this case, instead of marking the deal as 20K, it would be marked as $50K. Commission would be paid up front assuming the ad revenue estimate was in good faith. The commission people would now receive something closer to the several thousand dollar rand, and they would be happy. Note that the commission now represents a significant portion of the money the the company can expect to see. As this money is paid up front, when the real advertising numbers come in, the company now realizes that it is operating at a loss. Sales blames marketing for not getting ads, or the customer for not pushing eyeballs to the site. There is growth in revenue, as there is in anything that is new, but it never quite pays for the service. Management always questions sales figures, but sales wins because the customer wants to see that it will be making all this money in ad revenue, which is what sales uses to compete against other products.
So we think that MS is so backwards that a human typed the lettered, or entered data in a form letter. For 1400 employees. We don't think that these letters were generated using, for instance, a datbase query that picked all employees terminated on a certain day, subtracted the hire data to the current date, multiplied by a factor representing the severance pay per time period for the job function, then added any additional severance based on job function. From these calculated values, a letter would be automatically generated. And we don't think that upper management reviewed the severance values before and after they were entered into the database. I am not positive, because I don't use MS products for real work, but I am told they have the technology to do this.
Even if MS were still using stone age technology you can be sure that all letters were passed by management for final approval.
Lets get real here. Most of our problem come from the fact that for the past 12 years, greed and revenge has occupied the governments every working moment. The Clinton people were drunk on greed, and as soon as the republicans won the legislative branch they were drunk on revenge, spending nearly 100 million dollars to prove that he allowed waifs to give him blowjobs.
This greed and revenge continued, with a unsupported war that is little other than a means to funnel government funds to the people who already have enough money. This wouldn't be so bad, but it has necessitated the killing of countless women and children.
Now the democrats have said enough is enough. Pelosi all but said everyone who is objective knows Bush and Cheney are criminals, and those who don't will never be convinced. So why waste tax payer money and other limited resources dredging up the past. The children that bush and cheney killed in their greed will not be returned, so lets move on.
This email thing is the same. Bush criminal activity, shown best to lying to the country about the WMD in the state of union address, is well documented. The fact that he would hide emails is obvious, just like clinton hid documents. It is over. Bush got away with it. We need to move on and fix the problems caused by his greed and megalomania, and fell sorry for those that worship him and cannot accept the fact that he is a criminal. This is the way of the cult.
So, Obama needs to fix problems, not waste time hashing over old problems for no other reason than to satisfy the needs of the cult. That is what republicans do. Obama needs to get of Iraq and solve the problem in Afganistan, just like should have done on September 12, 2001. He needs to solve the problems in Saudi Arabia, which is where so much of the money for September 11 came from. He needs to refocus the country on community and spiritual happiness, and away from using material goods to hide a otherwise miserable soul. We need to accept that there are always greedy people or all kinds, from the layabout who will abuse social security for a few hundred dollars month to the executive who will rob our treasury of 10 million dollars. These people will have to answer in the end, but we should not damage ourselves by letting ourselves becoming as bad as they are.
I don't know if it was crafted with the best of intentions. It is was it would have had the ability to turned off by default, just like image loading. The reason so many people use it is because it couldn't be turened off by default. So it became the preferred option to animated gifs. As of now, I have it turned off on the browser I notrmally use, and move to another browser when I have to use a flash intensive site.
This is why I am perfectly having having a phone that does not run flash. I can see myself not buying net devices that are flash dependent.
In fact, they are not asking for anything more on that platform then they permit for Windows or the Xbox.
So MS offers a free IDE that lets you develop programs on the MS platform. It offers developer memberships that the average developer can afford that includes hardware discounts and tickets to conferences. I suppose MS uses open standards like vcard and webdav, and come with svn installed.
I am not saying that what MS wants is unfair, just that what it wants may not be reasonable. MS likes to have a sheltered and protected position in any market it enters. With Apple and Linux it does not. It has to play the game by the rules that everyone else does. This means that it cannot write a linux interface, and change the standards just enough so that all other interfaces become incompatible. It cannot write an iphone application that will interfere with other programs. I see no reason why it can't write anything within reason. It certainly could pay Apple enough to get on board.
All MS is doing is demanding that Apple let it publish whatever software MS wishes, with no regard what it might do to the market. I think we can check to see how much MS really want to develop smart phone software by looking at the products it has created for other smart phones, like the G1 and Openmoko. Both of these are 100% open. In fact MS did not develop and exchange client, a third party did.
Things have to be paid for, and if money is not available, things cannot be bought. As a growing business model, internet purchases should not be taxed. But the model is pretty mature. the players that are competitive and make money are clear. Those that did not have a good model have pretty much gone. If the only advantage of an online shop is the tax savings, then that online shop is not really saving any money. All they are doing is leeching.
This have further fascinating implications. For instance, the US goes into a situation that drives the US national debt up to 10 trillion(for the rush fans out there, we are talking the total debt, not the yearly deficit: on in this case the total debt is about 80% of GDP which happens when you run a 5% yearly deficit for 8 years, assuming that you start with a 40% debt). Every one complains that the soldiers in the situation do not have enough equipment, but they really can't because at the same time we are spending too much money, we are also cutting the taxes(another note for rush listeners, the DOE is about 13% of the budget, while military and terrorism spending is spread along 3 departments, about 25% of the budget, including a new spending item, department of homeland security, which was added by a conservative government to the tune of 2% of the budget).
Now, if we as people would reduce out garbage so it could be picked up every other week(food wastes for composting picked up every week) or our driving of big cars so the roads would not get so torn up, or sent kids to school with supplies and computers and food so that schools would not have to provide these items, then maybe we could complain about taxes. But since we like to spend the money, then we have to pay the money. That is the true conservative model. Not the foo foo french model where only the peasants pay the taxes, and the aristocracy gets to buy a new pair of silk stocking every day of the year.
How do you figure. Is their music so lame that it cannot be downloaded for free P2P clients or bittorrent? Are their CDs not for sale at resale shops for a few dollars? Can you not borrow a CD from a friend and rip it. IS the music available nowhere as a free stream that can be heard over the generic smart phone?
This is just another way to deliver music, and not an exceptional method at that. Complaining, as you do, would be like complaining about them putting music on iTunes. Only those rich enough to own a music player can have access to this sort of thing. Even now music players are not cheap. A few years ago when iTunes opened, it was only the rich who have the option of choice, while the rest had to live with a CD player.
Get real. There is little value in this. Only those who like the band well enough to toss them another few dollars are going to this. Everyone else will just rip and load like we always have done. With no significant new stuff in three years, they had to do something to revitalize the catalog, and box sets are not what they used to be.
While this is funny, it is another example of how artifacts of an experiment can lead to misinterpretation of otherwise valid results. The last big example of this was the man from mars. The most recent is clear and indisputable picture of this humanoid walking across mars. Then of course there is carving of the face on mars. All this comes from the mistaken assumption that somehow a photograph captures the complete reality of a situation. Even without the processing of such photographs, there is always a chance of injecting an artifact.
And the data hosted on a free service must be considered only that valuable, which is pretty much not at all. Since everyone is making fun on macs, let me say this. I have been paying for.mac. I know that people think that is stupid but I do. In all the years since.mac has been around, and even it's predecessor, I have not lost a single email, file, or bookmark. The same can be said for a few years on paid for cvs/svn servers.
On a service like free social networking, I would say that 100% reliable backups are excessive. This is the kind of thing where multiple failures, albeit predictable failures, cause things to go wrong. The only thing think would have absolutely saved this, since we dont' know exactly when the database became corrupt, would be tape backups. Weekly or monthly offsite tape that is never reused. incremental after that. Over a year such a solution would require a few thousand dollars of tapes, plus the cost of the drive. This is a bit more than payig a few hundred dollars for drives.
At this point, my understanding is that the UK filters content for items that are arguably illegal under the the law.. This is pretty much a sovereign government making the decision to impose a consequence without due process, which might be ok under the current conditions. It is still possible for non-casual viewers to get access to the content, and if the content is of the category that many casual people view it and want to continue to view it, then evidently pressure can be placed on the policy makers to reverse the decision. The question of whether lots of arguably legitimate content has been blocked is at least ill posed and likely non-sensical. Most images that going to be blocked are going to be considered legitimate by at least some people, and if that is the standard the board is to be held up to, then this would require some sort of legal decision, and might lead to real censorship. Here is why.
Under the current plan it seems to me that content it allowed to remain on the web. This means that even though it may be illegal in the UK, persons outside of the UK and motivated viewers in the UK can still get access to it. But what if the user were contacted? Well, first any well known organization would likely remove that content rather than experience the publicity of hosting such content if the knowledge became pubic. Second, any public hosting company would likely remove such content just as a matter of course. One can imaging parents posting pictures that some might consider questionable, and the free hosting service removing those pictures, thereby leading to a reduced ability for the common person to express him or herself. Third, some people may sue to have the content taken off the list. if most of the content is not legitimate, then one might see a string of cases in which every outcome was in favor of the filter. This might lead to a situation where it is assumed that the filter was accurate, and therefore solidify the de-facto status as a means of limiting freedom of expression without due process.
IMHO, the best option is have no mandatory filtering. ISPs who want to filter are of course free to, and can use different types of filtering as a method to sell their service. In the US, Christian filters are quite popular(it is interesting that a search also brings up software to allow a wife to spy on her husband, indicated that christians might have a problem). A nation might also impose a certain type of filtering as an option that ISPs are required to provide, but user are free to choose or reject. In the UK solution, which I think is kind of lame, it seems that contacting users would be costly and counter indicated. While one could reduce cost by publishing a list, this would just make matters even worse.
What I found most interesting was the report that one defacement included a complaint that innocent people were on trail. I though the idea that only guilty people are tried was an United States philosophy, along with idea that defense lawyers sole purpose was to get the guilty off on technicalities.
In fact, as annoying as the trial is, this is how a court system should work. There is an ambiguity in law. The copyright owners believe that one is true, the Pirate Bay believes another thing is true. Rather than complaining that the process of justice is moving along, we should be thankful that we live in a world where somewhere such a process is available, and the Pirate Bay was not just summarily destroyed and the people involved were not just summarily fined to oblivion, which is what happens in America.
I hope that the rest of the world is not being infected with the meme of the court system as a tool of the criminal, because it is sure nice to have an place where a relatively impartial educated person can hear and adjudicate on legitimate differences of opinion.
Let us be reminded of this again. Space exploration is hard, very hard. You might think that your job is hard, but it is just a simple high school assembly project compared to space exploration. The reason is that space explorations involve things that not only do we not know, but we have no experience with. No matter how much we read, no matter how much we think, can we really intuitively say how long it will take for a bit of grit to clear out of a micro-g environment, or how to deal with soil like matter that has nearly 0% water, or how to deal with soil like grit where the liquid is primarily liquids we do not see on this planet. A single error in such intuition can change the focus of an entire expedition. Success in such a situation depends not on how many random toys have been added to deal with random contingencies, but whether the proper foresight has been applied so that enough data can be gathered to determine what happened.
In addition, reliability is the key. Every new component reduces reliability, and increases the complexity of the failure analysis.In the suggestion given here, the complexity of the mechanism, the power it would use, and dependence on unknown air, would likely provide an unacceptable level of complexity. A more acceptable solution would be existing nitrogen technology. This, though, would also be a time limited solution. I am sure the reasoning went like a relatively secure 90 days or much less secure longer time. Of course without reading the mission profile it is hard to say exactly.
Where have you been over that past 8 years of anit-intellectual pro-superstition conservative rule. No one in this country is forced to go to school, much less learn anything that it not bible based. The only students who are in school truly against their will or their parents will are those who parents don't care enough to take them out. This is the kind of student who insist on using a cell phone, one who has not rules set a home, and who was given a cell phone because it was easier than discipline.
It is true that child under 10 must be looked after, so the parent may use the school as cheap baby sitting, and that a child cannot really work until at least 15. But there are all sorts of places that will sell a student a diploma for a price that is affordable to most families. If money is tight, the family can set up a home business to help cover costs. The child can piece work.
Then there is always homeschool. These sites say that homeschool is so efficient that it hardly takes any time out of the day. By the time the is 15, there is no reason for the kid not to hold down a full time job.
Of course, the kid likely prefers being in school than work, as at work if the phone was used, the kid would get fired, and the parent would certainly take action against that, due to lack of income.
The world is a complex and unfair place, and complying with an authority figure, especially when it is a simple request, is something we all learn to do, but some do not.
For instance, when a police pulls behind us while driving, we have two choices. Run away or stop. Kids and other with similar development will run, thinking it is fun. Most rational adults will stop and do whatever is necessary to avoid a scene. It is a choice, and the expedient choice is made with training.
I know that the expedient choice is not always the right choice, but at least in america there are ways to make the expedient choice, admit no guilt,and deal with the situation later. This of course requires maturity and practice.
And training with proper use of phones is important. The teacher obviously asked her nicely to stop and the situation only escalated when she would not. What happens when she is so addicted to the phone, which she obviously is, that she cannot sit for her SATS without using the phone? Or if she is in an interview for college? Or when she starts to drive. I am sure that many of you would be happy to have your young children on the same street as a phone addicted adolescent that has just learned to drive.
This is what you get for using euphemisms like detention centers instead of jails, prisons, or punishment centers. What most kids do not realize is that life is unfair, and those that do engage in random foolish activity have every right to complain that they are unfairly punished, but that does not get their life back.
There is also this thing called a 'free service'. There are limitations to what one can expect a free service to accommodate, and limits to what a free service can provide so it can stay free. This is the kind of game that routinely played with free services.
Let's look at some examples. Suppose I ran a free posting board at my chain of stores. Now suppose you went around and posted you listed at all of my stores. Further suppose that you found an embarrassing mistake on the copy you posted, and called me demanding that I ask my staff to remove all the crap you posted, and that if I did not you would sue me for copyright infringement. I would have every right to tell you to fuck off. This may not be a perfect analogy, but it does illustrate a key concept. I give away a bit of space at my stores for the public good under the assumption that it will not cost me any more that the cost of the space. I am not obligated to incur further costs just because a user of the free space is insane. Yes you own the copyright of what you post on facebook, but by voluntarily posting it you are transferring some rights, and certainly it would unfair to use such posting to set a trap for facebook. I think if you ask the average facebook user if they would rather have a $100 fee or the risk of undeleted content, I think they would say the former. Just look at the number of people who think Apple is ripping them off by charging $100 a year for web services, but madly go to google and post all sorts of stuff, fully knowing that it is going to be there to haunt them forever.
Second example. I am an agent for a for a traveling fashion show. I invite persons to come a try out. They must bring a several photographs which I then keep. It ia clearly stated that I might use these photographs in some way, and that I have every right to. All comers are volunteers, and voluntarily give me the photos and voluntarily sign the release. I give no incentive to the photos, but will only see people with photos. Can I be sued for using these photos in future publicity materials? I don't think so. Papers were signed.
All this may be questionable behavior, but again most people want a free service, even if it is a little riskier.
For consumers that use these services just for TV, they may in fact lose customers. That is why it is all about bundling. Even ATT is not happy with just your land line. They want you land, cell, internet, and cable all on the same bill. Services like comcast want the same thing, but they don't really have cell.
In any case, I suspect that while basic cable service is important to cover costs, not much profit it made.
While one can be correct in saying that those that do not drive should not have to pay for the infrastructure for those that do excessively, defining that line is difficult. For instance we all require some infrastructure to deliver foods and goods, deliver emergency services, and provide evacuation routes. Therefore, some roads will be necessary.
This leads to the question to what to do with the people who choose to live far away from where they may need to go on a frequent basis and use more resources than choose to live closer. Since the former choice is often an economic decision, he economics should play a role. In many cases, it seems that such people are asking to be subsidized by the more fiscally responsible people who perhaps needs fewer subsidies. In this case I think there is a justification for alternative routes to be built and those alternatives to be toll roads. The problem I see is that often these alternative routes are still build with public money. What I would like to see is a requirement, for instance, for those who build the large subdivisions, for instance, to enter into partnership to also build roads that will allow the persons in those large subdivisions to get from point a to point b. Not that the local governments wil not build roads as normal, but it is hardly the responsibility of the state to build a new high way just because some investor wants to turn farm land into houses.
There is no competition for the Apple app store because without breaking the iPhone there is no way to get an unsanctioned app on the iPhone. Other app stores might provide competition for the iPhone, and now that Apple has shown, once again, that one can sell products at a premium if one offers customer service, it seems that many more are trying to cash in on the deal.
The advantage of the Apple Store, though, is exactly what most people complain about. Apple vets the software, which means that iPhone users are limited on choice, but have a sense of security. It is unlikely that Apple would let, for instance, malware appear on the store.
The problem is if the other stores allow anything on the store, then the security is gone. Since there is not that level of customer service, the stores are not the same. In fact, I don't think we need any new stores or sites at all, especially for android. What I would trust most are OSS applications on something like sourceforge. I don't download unknown applications for my computer, why would I do so for my phone.
Apple stores are boutiques where people come in, are greeted, browse, play, learn, get help, and maybe buy a computer on the spot, without lines. MS stores are to managed by an ex-wal mart executives. This means that customers will be screened by an older person, have all the merchandise they want out of their reach with no one to help, followed by security if they spend too much time staking out one place,have to wait in long lines, and get frisked on the way out, all to get the a good deal.
How is this store going to work. Most customer service is done by third parties, so where will be the help desk? Computers are sold by third parties, so where will be computers? How will it be decided which brands to stock? How will the store not look like Comp USA.
OTOH, I disagree that this is a bad time to start this. The economy is down, but MS has money. Strip center space is going to be cheap. Consumers will be looking for low prices with a big name to back the sales up. The problem is MS is not going to be abe to offer low prices without annoying it's retail partners. And consumers are not going to make a special trip just to experience the MS Store.
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Likewise triangulation of cell towers have always been more than good enough for my applications. I am used to pretty much knowing where I am going before hand, so I don't really need turn by turn directions. I any case, such directions often are inefficient, and i have been burned when I have relied on google or mapquest to tell my where I am going rather than studying the map myself.
as far as the phone service, the cell phone companies certainly do cause problems for customers. However, in the US the culture is generally not to change phones often. To me this is the key. If one is a culture where a product is replaced every year or even more often, then one can have very frequent and innovative product cycles, with the primary goal being adding features, no matter how lame, to drive the sales of the product. In a country where people keep phones for two or three years, the impetus to do such things are not as great. Outside of the teenage market, where there is expendable income and they do not understand that are being locking until they are 25, or those that lose the phone often, there is just not the incentive to add gee golly whiz features.
It is true that features like TV and the like are probably limitied by the cell phone companies. Other features may be limited by technology. I like my 1G iPhone and see little reason to give it up, other than ATT may be doing stuff to make it less useful. Certainly for my applications, 3G or GPS is not a huge plus. It is the same with computers. Some may need or want the absolutely latest in computers, so maybe want to buy a PC because it is expandable or cheap enough to replace every six months. But for doing actual work, such an aggressive upgrade cycle seems counter productive. Much better to get a couple years use out of a working machine, then invest time and money into a new machine that will give another couple years of use.
The best thing to do online is proclaim yourself a straight white male. That way if those guys who sit and watch the border crossing cameras for Mexicans crossing into the US find out your mexican, they won't start telling you go home and quite spending all thier tax money on the hundred illegitimate babies you have at home. Or maybe the follower os the extremely traditional catholics might find out that you are one of those devil worshipping protestants. And who knows what would happen if anyone found out that someone might be divorced and on their second marriage, why that might start a flame war on polygomy.
The reality is that people who are comfortable being in an exclusive environment like xBox live, or believe that such exclusive environments do no harm, will continue to do so. This is a significant portion of america, given the results of the last presidential election. Almost no one is going to turn in their xBox simply because MS supports bigoted behavior, any more than we would stop shopping at wal mart because we are concerned about the trade imbalance or stop buying meat becuase we are concerned about illegal immigration and the abuse of undocumented workers.
In the end those that wish to express themselves will go somewhere else, those that wish to attack other people will stay with xBox, and we will continue to have segregated communities that never talk to each other. Because, as has been said so many times in this post, why should i listen to someone who believes differently from me. I should have every right to taunt and slander such people if they have the audacity to think that I should be compelled to even associate with them.
If the company just wants you around to be their go to person, then good references may be a moot point. I assume that you are leaving to expand your horizons. It could be that management still sees you a s the person you were when you started at the company, and they don't want to lose you, or have some misplaced parental feelings. Who knows, but if they want to keep you just to have you around, then there are likely to be negative feelings. Going to HR may just compound those feelings. Despite this, it will probably be necessary for you to put a letter in response to any negative letter put in because of your leaving. As was mentioned on the recent farewell letter thread, it is better to be as positive as possible. For instance, focus on your record, that you are leaving to expand yourself personally, and that you will never be able to repay the thoughtfulness and help of the people you have worked with. You know, the standard bull shit.
The lat bit is probably the best advice as far as I am concerned. Many of references have been peers, as my peers tend to know my real skills while my supervisors simply know that I finish work quickly. I wonder if any of you other coworkers have left, and therefore will make good references as they are no longer part of the office politic.
Let's say that deal could reasonable be worth $20,000 in advertising over the lifetime of the deal. To make the deal, the salesman agrees to have the company incur all upfront costs, and the customer would only pay a fixed hosting cost based on page views. Advertising would be split down the middle. This seemed to be a pretty typical deal. Development and hosting costs would be at least half the expected amount to be realized from advertising. After commissions and the like, the company might realize 10-15% profit. The problem with this situation is that everyone on commission would be fighting over a couple thousand dollars of commission. Since many were on commision only, or a very low salary, and a deal like this might happen only once a month for each group, there was some incentive for fraud.
The fraud appeared to take the form of the inflated advertising numbers that so many pointed to as a reason why ad based service did not work. I think these services do work, if the expectations is realistic. In this case, instead of marking the deal as 20K, it would be marked as $50K. Commission would be paid up front assuming the ad revenue estimate was in good faith. The commission people would now receive something closer to the several thousand dollar rand, and they would be happy. Note that the commission now represents a significant portion of the money the the company can expect to see. As this money is paid up front, when the real advertising numbers come in, the company now realizes that it is operating at a loss. Sales blames marketing for not getting ads, or the customer for not pushing eyeballs to the site. There is growth in revenue, as there is in anything that is new, but it never quite pays for the service. Management always questions sales figures, but sales wins because the customer wants to see that it will be making all this money in ad revenue, which is what sales uses to compete against other products.
This continues until the comapny goes bankrupt.
Even if MS were still using stone age technology you can be sure that all letters were passed by management for final approval.
Even though they have tons of cash in the bank, they risk bad publicity to get the overpayment back
Instead of declining comment, they admit the letter is valid, thus proving a general lack of confidence
This greed and revenge continued, with a unsupported war that is little other than a means to funnel government funds to the people who already have enough money. This wouldn't be so bad, but it has necessitated the killing of countless women and children.
Now the democrats have said enough is enough. Pelosi all but said everyone who is objective knows Bush and Cheney are criminals, and those who don't will never be convinced. So why waste tax payer money and other limited resources dredging up the past. The children that bush and cheney killed in their greed will not be returned, so lets move on.
This email thing is the same. Bush criminal activity, shown best to lying to the country about the WMD in the state of union address, is well documented. The fact that he would hide emails is obvious, just like clinton hid documents. It is over. Bush got away with it. We need to move on and fix the problems caused by his greed and megalomania, and fell sorry for those that worship him and cannot accept the fact that he is a criminal. This is the way of the cult.
So, Obama needs to fix problems, not waste time hashing over old problems for no other reason than to satisfy the needs of the cult. That is what republicans do. Obama needs to get of Iraq and solve the problem in Afganistan, just like should have done on September 12, 2001. He needs to solve the problems in Saudi Arabia, which is where so much of the money for September 11 came from. He needs to refocus the country on community and spiritual happiness, and away from using material goods to hide a otherwise miserable soul. We need to accept that there are always greedy people or all kinds, from the layabout who will abuse social security for a few hundred dollars month to the executive who will rob our treasury of 10 million dollars. These people will have to answer in the end, but we should not damage ourselves by letting ourselves becoming as bad as they are.
This is why I am perfectly having having a phone that does not run flash. I can see myself not buying net devices that are flash dependent.
So MS offers a free IDE that lets you develop programs on the MS platform. It offers developer memberships that the average developer can afford that includes hardware discounts and tickets to conferences. I suppose MS uses open standards like vcard and webdav, and come with svn installed.
I am not saying that what MS wants is unfair, just that what it wants may not be reasonable. MS likes to have a sheltered and protected position in any market it enters. With Apple and Linux it does not. It has to play the game by the rules that everyone else does. This means that it cannot write a linux interface, and change the standards just enough so that all other interfaces become incompatible. It cannot write an iphone application that will interfere with other programs. I see no reason why it can't write anything within reason. It certainly could pay Apple enough to get on board.
All MS is doing is demanding that Apple let it publish whatever software MS wishes, with no regard what it might do to the market. I think we can check to see how much MS really want to develop smart phone software by looking at the products it has created for other smart phones, like the G1 and Openmoko. Both of these are 100% open. In fact MS did not develop and exchange client, a third party did.
This have further fascinating implications. For instance, the US goes into a situation that drives the US national debt up to 10 trillion(for the rush fans out there, we are talking the total debt, not the yearly deficit: on in this case the total debt is about 80% of GDP which happens when you run a 5% yearly deficit for 8 years, assuming that you start with a 40% debt). Every one complains that the soldiers in the situation do not have enough equipment, but they really can't because at the same time we are spending too much money, we are also cutting the taxes(another note for rush listeners, the DOE is about 13% of the budget, while military and terrorism spending is spread along 3 departments, about 25% of the budget, including a new spending item, department of homeland security, which was added by a conservative government to the tune of 2% of the budget).
Now, if we as people would reduce out garbage so it could be picked up every other week(food wastes for composting picked up every week) or our driving of big cars so the roads would not get so torn up, or sent kids to school with supplies and computers and food so that schools would not have to provide these items, then maybe we could complain about taxes. But since we like to spend the money, then we have to pay the money. That is the true conservative model. Not the foo foo french model where only the peasants pay the taxes, and the aristocracy gets to buy a new pair of silk stocking every day of the year.
This is just another way to deliver music, and not an exceptional method at that. Complaining, as you do, would be like complaining about them putting music on iTunes. Only those rich enough to own a music player can have access to this sort of thing. Even now music players are not cheap. A few years ago when iTunes opened, it was only the rich who have the option of choice, while the rest had to live with a CD player.
Get real. There is little value in this. Only those who like the band well enough to toss them another few dollars are going to this. Everyone else will just rip and load like we always have done. With no significant new stuff in three years, they had to do something to revitalize the catalog, and box sets are not what they used to be.
While this is funny, it is another example of how artifacts of an experiment can lead to misinterpretation of otherwise valid results. The last big example of this was the man from mars. The most recent is clear and indisputable picture of this humanoid walking across mars. Then of course there is carving of the face on mars. All this comes from the mistaken assumption that somehow a photograph captures the complete reality of a situation. Even without the processing of such photographs, there is always a chance of injecting an artifact.
On a service like free social networking, I would say that 100% reliable backups are excessive. This is the kind of thing where multiple failures, albeit predictable failures, cause things to go wrong. The only thing think would have absolutely saved this, since we dont' know exactly when the database became corrupt, would be tape backups. Weekly or monthly offsite tape that is never reused. incremental after that. Over a year such a solution would require a few thousand dollars of tapes, plus the cost of the drive. This is a bit more than payig a few hundred dollars for drives.
Under the current plan it seems to me that content it allowed to remain on the web. This means that even though it may be illegal in the UK, persons outside of the UK and motivated viewers in the UK can still get access to it. But what if the user were contacted? Well, first any well known organization would likely remove that content rather than experience the publicity of hosting such content if the knowledge became pubic. Second, any public hosting company would likely remove such content just as a matter of course. One can imaging parents posting pictures that some might consider questionable, and the free hosting service removing those pictures, thereby leading to a reduced ability for the common person to express him or herself. Third, some people may sue to have the content taken off the list. if most of the content is not legitimate, then one might see a string of cases in which every outcome was in favor of the filter. This might lead to a situation where it is assumed that the filter was accurate, and therefore solidify the de-facto status as a means of limiting freedom of expression without due process.
IMHO, the best option is have no mandatory filtering. ISPs who want to filter are of course free to, and can use different types of filtering as a method to sell their service. In the US, Christian filters are quite popular(it is interesting that a search also brings up software to allow a wife to spy on her husband, indicated that christians might have a problem). A nation might also impose a certain type of filtering as an option that ISPs are required to provide, but user are free to choose or reject. In the UK solution, which I think is kind of lame, it seems that contacting users would be costly and counter indicated. While one could reduce cost by publishing a list, this would just make matters even worse.
In fact, as annoying as the trial is, this is how a court system should work. There is an ambiguity in law. The copyright owners believe that one is true, the Pirate Bay believes another thing is true. Rather than complaining that the process of justice is moving along, we should be thankful that we live in a world where somewhere such a process is available, and the Pirate Bay was not just summarily destroyed and the people involved were not just summarily fined to oblivion, which is what happens in America.
I hope that the rest of the world is not being infected with the meme of the court system as a tool of the criminal, because it is sure nice to have an place where a relatively impartial educated person can hear and adjudicate on legitimate differences of opinion.
the person in the utility belt is supposed to be Gary Coleman.
In addition, reliability is the key. Every new component reduces reliability, and increases the complexity of the failure analysis.In the suggestion given here, the complexity of the mechanism, the power it would use, and dependence on unknown air, would likely provide an unacceptable level of complexity. A more acceptable solution would be existing nitrogen technology. This, though, would also be a time limited solution. I am sure the reasoning went like a relatively secure 90 days or much less secure longer time. Of course without reading the mission profile it is hard to say exactly.
It is true that child under 10 must be looked after, so the parent may use the school as cheap baby sitting, and that a child cannot really work until at least 15. But there are all sorts of places that will sell a student a diploma for a price that is affordable to most families. If money is tight, the family can set up a home business to help cover costs. The child can piece work.
Then there is always homeschool. These sites say that homeschool is so efficient that it hardly takes any time out of the day. By the time the is 15, there is no reason for the kid not to hold down a full time job.
Of course, the kid likely prefers being in school than work, as at work if the phone was used, the kid would get fired, and the parent would certainly take action against that, due to lack of income.
For instance, when a police pulls behind us while driving, we have two choices. Run away or stop. Kids and other with similar development will run, thinking it is fun. Most rational adults will stop and do whatever is necessary to avoid a scene. It is a choice, and the expedient choice is made with training.
I know that the expedient choice is not always the right choice, but at least in america there are ways to make the expedient choice, admit no guilt,and deal with the situation later. This of course requires maturity and practice.
And training with proper use of phones is important. The teacher obviously asked her nicely to stop and the situation only escalated when she would not. What happens when she is so addicted to the phone, which she obviously is, that she cannot sit for her SATS without using the phone? Or if she is in an interview for college? Or when she starts to drive. I am sure that many of you would be happy to have your young children on the same street as a phone addicted adolescent that has just learned to drive.
This is what you get for using euphemisms like detention centers instead of jails, prisons, or punishment centers. What most kids do not realize is that life is unfair, and those that do engage in random foolish activity have every right to complain that they are unfairly punished, but that does not get their life back.
Let's look at some examples. Suppose I ran a free posting board at my chain of stores. Now suppose you went around and posted you listed at all of my stores. Further suppose that you found an embarrassing mistake on the copy you posted, and called me demanding that I ask my staff to remove all the crap you posted, and that if I did not you would sue me for copyright infringement. I would have every right to tell you to fuck off. This may not be a perfect analogy, but it does illustrate a key concept. I give away a bit of space at my stores for the public good under the assumption that it will not cost me any more that the cost of the space. I am not obligated to incur further costs just because a user of the free space is insane. Yes you own the copyright of what you post on facebook, but by voluntarily posting it you are transferring some rights, and certainly it would unfair to use such posting to set a trap for facebook. I think if you ask the average facebook user if they would rather have a $100 fee or the risk of undeleted content, I think they would say the former. Just look at the number of people who think Apple is ripping them off by charging $100 a year for web services, but madly go to google and post all sorts of stuff, fully knowing that it is going to be there to haunt them forever.
Second example. I am an agent for a for a traveling fashion show. I invite persons to come a try out. They must bring a several photographs which I then keep. It ia clearly stated that I might use these photographs in some way, and that I have every right to. All comers are volunteers, and voluntarily give me the photos and voluntarily sign the release. I give no incentive to the photos, but will only see people with photos. Can I be sued for using these photos in future publicity materials? I don't think so. Papers were signed.
All this may be questionable behavior, but again most people want a free service, even if it is a little riskier.
In any case, I suspect that while basic cable service is important to cover costs, not much profit it made.
This leads to the question to what to do with the people who choose to live far away from where they may need to go on a frequent basis and use more resources than choose to live closer. Since the former choice is often an economic decision, he economics should play a role. In many cases, it seems that such people are asking to be subsidized by the more fiscally responsible people who perhaps needs fewer subsidies. In this case I think there is a justification for alternative routes to be built and those alternatives to be toll roads. The problem I see is that often these alternative routes are still build with public money. What I would like to see is a requirement, for instance, for those who build the large subdivisions, for instance, to enter into partnership to also build roads that will allow the persons in those large subdivisions to get from point a to point b. Not that the local governments wil not build roads as normal, but it is hardly the responsibility of the state to build a new high way just because some investor wants to turn farm land into houses.
The advantage of the Apple Store, though, is exactly what most people complain about. Apple vets the software, which means that iPhone users are limited on choice, but have a sense of security. It is unlikely that Apple would let, for instance, malware appear on the store.
The problem is if the other stores allow anything on the store, then the security is gone. Since there is not that level of customer service, the stores are not the same. In fact, I don't think we need any new stores or sites at all, especially for android. What I would trust most are OSS applications on something like sourceforge. I don't download unknown applications for my computer, why would I do so for my phone.
How is this store going to work. Most customer service is done by third parties, so where will be the help desk? Computers are sold by third parties, so where will be computers? How will it be decided which brands to stock? How will the store not look like Comp USA.
OTOH, I disagree that this is a bad time to start this. The economy is down, but MS has money. Strip center space is going to be cheap. Consumers will be looking for low prices with a big name to back the sales up. The problem is MS is not going to be abe to offer low prices without annoying it's retail partners. And consumers are not going to make a special trip just to experience the MS Store.