Q&D will usually win out I've found. The best answer is documentation.
Take a few hours to figure out how to word things so that you don't sound antagonistic or hostile.
Look at everything from the COMPANY'S perspective and never write it with 'I think or I recommend.' Use 'The company's interests would be best served by...., or From the company's final liability/cost viewpoint....' etc.
Outline the situation on one or two pages using language similar to the above.
Send this document to your manager/project director.
List the pro/con/liabilities/final costs of each scenario on a separate page and send the summary along with these pages to the person over the project manager, and the project budgeter/finance dept.
Date everything.
Date everything.
Did I say Date everything?:)
Keep copies showing who got sent what.
You might make some enemies, but you will make some friends in high places, especially those people who control costs. This will earn you a reputation as a person who truly has the company's best interest at heart but will also allow you to know that whatever the fallout you will have done your best to make sure everyone is advised of the situation. And more importantly, the interested/relevent parties will not be able to say "I didn't know, you never said that to me!"
It wasn't just pricing that killed this unit. I attempted contact with Gemstar repeatedly over a two year period when we were trying to decide on a portable unit for all our internal documentation, whitepapers, etc, for our Network Operations Centre.
I really wanted to go with the REB units for this, but I could never get commitment from them on the ability to produce/convert our own content for both the 1100 and 1200 series. If we had ever received useful feedback from them it could have resulted in several hundred unit sales over the course of a couple of years.
Poor customer service and refusal to deal with technical issues killed this company.
I work for a semi-smallish ISP and frankly we dont' care what you run.:) We offer DSL and as long as you pay your bill and we don't get any spam complaints, DMCA violations, or notices from law enforcement agencies you can run whatever you want. I guess our policy is best described as "hey, you're paying for it, so you can use it however you want to as long as it's legal and doesn't impact our ability to provide service to all our customers."
In fact one of our customers is running a small NATted ISP himself using our DSL service. I think he thinks we don't know. *shrug* Whatever.:)
Actually their backbone is much larger than that. They essentially ride the NOANET SONET loop around the Pacific Northwest, and given proper configuration could drop off 100 MB ethernet at any node on the ring, offering full scale ISP services around the entire northwest. If they desired to do so.
This has actually been in place for some time and there are a couple of other ISP's in Mason offering fibre connectivity via the open access network, but full scale rollout has been slowed down for a number of reasons. Some political and some financial. Currently they are reviewing a wireless solution for lastmile due to unexpectedly high costs for lastmile fiber solution. Last commisioners meeting I went to had some interesting discussion taking place regarding alternative solutions for last-mile.
Real per customer business costs far exceed various estimates due to the fact that to sign up customer X at the end of the street you have to essentially lay out fiber for EVERY home between your splice point and customer X. And unless every one of those customers signs up, you may have just expended $15k or more (since they Mason is doing an underground install not poletop) for one customer.
I agree that it is an energy problem, not an oil problem. But that isn't even the real issue. It is a political problem. We have the technology and resources to put already known solutions to the problem in place. But it would require a multi-national cooperative effort. Fat chance of that happening.
Solar power beamed down from satellite via MASER would allow us to power hydrogen generation facilities using filtered seawater. Not to mention many other solutions such as tidal power generation, LARGE scale solar arrays, etc.
Actually I wrap comments at 72.:) Manually. For that very reason. I don't hard wrap the code lines themselves since any semi-useful editor (Emacs, Ultraedit, pico (just kidding!!) should be able to handle softwrapped indenting correctly.
Actually you aren't unique in aligning braces by column. I use a fairly small font in GUI mode, and have my text console set at 100x60 so that I have plenty of room to indent my braces. I also do the same thing with html tags (especially nested tables).
But then again I'm one of those wierd people who believe in commenting code.;)
Key point from the article: " Users pick a friend, spouse or other confidant".
This will work - depending on the sincerity of the person using it. If they choose people close to them - who share similar values - they it will work to the extent of their value system. If they choose Joe Blow from church of the whatever who believe that women are from the devil, then yes it will fail. But if they choose someone from their peer group that they trust and know shares similar values as they do, the it will work to the level they choose it to.
I'd have to disagree. I see this 'accountability' in the same viewpoint as a support group for any addictive or undesirable behaviour that one wants to stay clear of but has a problem doing so due to addictive behaviour patterns. It could be gambling, alcohol, smoking, or even someone who has an history of RPG addiction.
I don't see belonging to peer-accountibility group as the article mentions as calling for a defacto label of 'unhealthy'. In fact I'd call it the opposite. Someone who sees a behaviour they deem as self-negative and takes steps to correct/modify that behaviour without imposing their own standard on the rest of society is probably more healthy (IMHO) than many of the rest of us.
Up until I moved recently I had well over 5,000 non-technical books in my library, and probably close to 500 technical/reference books. I myself have read all but about 100 of them, many multiple times.
I started buying books in my mid-teens, and am now 34. Recently I figured out that up until I got married two years ago I averaged 5 to 10 books per week. Now I only average 2 two 3 (except during wrestling season since my son wrestles). I often would read four or five books over the weekend alone, and during a weeks vacation I could easily read 15 or more. I've read L.R. Hubbard's 'Battlefield Earth' over 20 times. It takes me about 5.5 hours to get through now, and took me about seven hours the first time I read it.
So I have no problem with their saying they own and have read 4,000 books. Apparently you might want to invest in some extra reading time yourself.
Arrgh....stupid 'Your comment has too few characters per line....'. (7.5) Of course it does, it's a freaking LIST OF BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Arrgh!!! (7.9) how many freaking "characters per line" do I have to have to get it to submit?!? (9.2) *sob* Now I'm at 10.6 and I still don't have enough? Do I have to write a freaking book now? I mean it's not like I'm posting as an AC, or as if I have bad karma or anything. Sheesh....shouldn't these things be taken into account when figuring out things like this? Oh my goodness....I'm at 14.2 now and it STILL WON'T TAKE MY FREAKING POST!!!!! THIS IS INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!!! 15.3??? WHAT THE FREAKING HECK IS THE PROBLEM HERE? First of all, I looked at the lines above, and I don't know HOW this math works out, but there are more than 7.2 chars per line, even if you discount the html tags. WHAT? 18.9? and STILL NOT POSTING? WTH(eck) ? Ok, I'm starting to think seriously about never posting a reply again. I mean, come on, this is absolutely ridiculous!!!!!!!!!!. Good grief, get OVER IT ALREADY!
Ammunition production. Chemicals needed for gunpoweder are easily produced or found and refined without any high-tech needed. Ammunition is easily produced en masse by any culture/society that has even mid-1800's style industrial capacity.
Technically, George Washington was a traitor and broke many, many laws. Yet we hail him as a hero and a founding father of our nation here in the US.
Gahndi also broke many laws using civil disobedience tactics. yet wouldn't you trust Gahndi over former Presidents Clinton who apparently didn't break any laws?
Now wouldn't that be a nice first step to enforcing DRM and 'copyright theft protection' hardware mods.
Start by making it illegal to hack your cell phone, then a next logical step would be to make it illegal to modify your PC in any way that could have the effect of circumventing any DRM hardware mods.
Slashdot Mirror
You might make some enemies, but you will make some friends in high places, especially those people who control costs. This will earn you a reputation as a person who truly has the company's best interest at heart but will also allow you to know that whatever the fallout you will have done your best to make sure everyone is advised of the situation. And more importantly, the interested/relevent parties will not be able to say "I didn't know, you never said that to me!"
It wasn't just pricing that killed this unit. I attempted contact with Gemstar repeatedly over a two year period when we were trying to decide on a portable unit for all our internal documentation, whitepapers, etc, for our Network Operations Centre.
I really wanted to go with the REB units for this, but I could never get commitment from them on the ability to produce/convert our own content for both the 1100 and 1200 series. If we had ever received useful feedback from them it could have resulted in several hundred unit sales over the course of a couple of years.
Poor customer service and refusal to deal with technical issues killed this company.
I work for a semi-smallish ISP and frankly we dont' care what you run. :) We offer DSL and as long as you pay your bill and we don't get any spam complaints, DMCA violations, or notices from law enforcement agencies you can run whatever you want. I guess our policy is best described as "hey, you're paying for it, so you can use it however you want to as long as it's legal and doesn't impact our ability to provide service to all our customers."
:)
In fact one of our customers is running a small NATted ISP himself using our DSL service. I think he thinks we don't know. *shrug* Whatever.
When can we post using beer? :)
Actually their backbone is much larger than that. They essentially ride the NOANET SONET loop around the Pacific Northwest, and given proper configuration could drop off 100 MB ethernet at any node on the ring, offering full scale ISP services around the entire northwest. If they desired to do so.
This has actually been in place for some time and there are a couple of other ISP's in Mason offering fibre connectivity via the open access network, but full scale rollout has been slowed down for a number of reasons. Some political and some financial. Currently they are reviewing a wireless solution for lastmile due to unexpectedly high costs for lastmile fiber solution. Last commisioners meeting I went to had some interesting discussion taking place regarding alternative solutions for last-mile.
Real per customer business costs far exceed various estimates due to the fact that to sign up customer X at the end of the street you have to essentially lay out fiber for EVERY home between your splice point and customer X. And unless every one of those customers signs up, you may have just expended $15k or more (since they Mason is doing an underground install not poletop) for one customer.
I agree that it is an energy problem, not an oil problem. But that isn't even the real issue. It is a political problem. We have the technology and resources to put already known solutions to the problem in place. But it would require a multi-national cooperative effort. Fat chance of that happening.
Solar power beamed down from satellite via MASER would allow us to power hydrogen generation facilities using filtered seawater. Not to mention many other solutions such as tidal power generation, LARGE scale solar arrays, etc.
But once again, it comes back to politics.
Actually I wrap comments at 72. :) Manually. For that very reason. I don't hard wrap the code lines themselves since any semi-useful editor (Emacs, Ultraedit, pico (just kidding!!) should be able to handle softwrapped indenting correctly.
Yes it was a joke.....or so I thought. Apparently my humour was a little too subtle.... :)
Actually you aren't unique in aligning braces by column. I use a fairly small font in GUI mode, and have my text console set at 100x60 so that I have plenty of room to indent my braces. I also do the same thing with html tags (especially nested tables).
;)
But then again I'm one of those wierd people who believe in commenting code.
I thought Corel was some giant endangered reef near New Zealand.....
I wonder how much the black-market value of that database will be after a year of building a list of known, good, current phone numbers.
"...about this, "blind leading the blind". Basically I get to pick my judge!
Ok, then what is your opinion vis-a-vis AA, NA, or GA? Isn't that peer review/peer accountability on the same order?
Key point from the article: " Users pick a friend, spouse or other confidant".
This will work - depending on the sincerity of the person using it. If they choose people close to them - who share similar values - they it will work to the extent of their value system. If they choose Joe Blow from church of the whatever who believe that women are from the devil, then yes it will fail. But if they choose someone from their peer group that they trust and know shares similar values as they do, the it will work to the level they choose it to.
I'd have to disagree. I see this 'accountability' in the same viewpoint as a support group for any addictive or undesirable behaviour that one wants to stay clear of but has a problem doing so due to addictive behaviour patterns. It could be gambling, alcohol, smoking, or even someone who has an history of RPG addiction.
I don't see belonging to peer-accountibility group as the article mentions as calling for a defacto label of 'unhealthy'. In fact I'd call it the opposite. Someone who sees a behaviour they deem as self-negative and takes steps to correct/modify that behaviour without imposing their own standard on the rest of society is probably more healthy (IMHO) than many of the rest of us.
There needs to be a new moderator choice - 'Depressing' :)
Yeah, but I don't want to become a Scientologist!
And methinks thou art a moron.
Up until I moved recently I had well over 5,000 non-technical books in my library, and probably close to 500 technical/reference books. I myself have read all but about 100 of them, many multiple times.
I started buying books in my mid-teens, and am now 34. Recently I figured out that up until I got married two years ago I averaged 5 to 10 books per week. Now I only average 2 two 3 (except during wrestling season since my son wrestles). I often would read four or five books over the weekend alone, and during a weeks vacation I could easily read 15 or more. I've read L.R. Hubbard's 'Battlefield Earth' over 20 times. It takes me about 5.5 hours to get through now, and took me about seven hours the first time I read it.
So I have no problem with their saying they own and have read 4,000 books. Apparently you might want to invest in some extra reading time yourself.
Goodkind, Terry
Arrgh....stupid 'Your comment has too few characters per line....'. (7.5) Of course it does, it's a freaking LIST OF BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Arrgh!!! (7.9) how many freaking "characters per line" do I have to have to get it to submit?!? (9.2) *sob* Now I'm at 10.6 and I still don't have enough? Do I have to write a freaking book now? I mean it's not like I'm posting as an AC, or as if I have bad karma or anything. Sheesh....shouldn't these things be taken into account when figuring out things like this? Oh my goodness....I'm at 14.2 now and it STILL WON'T TAKE MY FREAKING POST!!!!! THIS IS INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!!! 15.3??? WHAT THE FREAKING HECK IS THE PROBLEM HERE? First of all, I looked at the lines above, and I don't know HOW this math works out, but there are more than 7.2 chars per line, even if you discount the html tags. WHAT? 18.9? and STILL NOT POSTING? WTH(eck) ? Ok, I'm starting to think seriously about never posting a reply again. I mean, come on, this is absolutely ridiculous !!!!!!!!!!. Good grief, get OVER IT ALREADY!
You missed what I thought was another good point:
Ammunition production. Chemicals needed for gunpoweder are easily produced or found and refined without any high-tech needed. Ammunition is easily produced en masse by any culture/society that has even mid-1800's style industrial capacity.
Technically, George Washington was a traitor and broke many, many laws. Yet we hail him as a hero and a founding father of our nation here in the US.
Gahndi also broke many laws using civil disobedience tactics. yet wouldn't you trust Gahndi over former Presidents Clinton who apparently didn't break any laws?
Now wouldn't that be a nice first step to enforcing DRM and 'copyright theft protection' hardware mods.
Start by making it illegal to hack your cell phone, then a next logical step would be to make it illegal to modify your PC in any way that could have the effect of circumventing any DRM hardware mods.
Heh....wouldn't it be ironic (and hilarious) if they social engineering calls have already been made and taped - before the event?
Homeowner: "Hey, Mr. Robber, you better watch out! I'm going to keep my eye on you from 1730 to 2300!"
Mr. Robber: "Oh, dearie me, guess I'd better wait until 2301 to break in then!"
Yeah, and look what happened to it! :)