What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregation and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.
Except that one of best and easiest ways to make content last longer is index it make it searchable - and yet many papers are choosing to charge for their archives. I don't have answers as to what they can do to remain profitable, but I can't imagine that's it. The other problem is that the sort of content that is accessible to aggregation also happens to be the most difficult to make any sort of profit from. Text content is so easily copied & pasted and the culture of not having any appreciation for the work it took to create it is only growing.
The information/data itself has gotten to the point of nearly becoming a commodity, so good luck making any profit. I have to believe there is a market for providing a better explanation of the information...a better context...making it easier for a reader/view to digest. We are visual creatures. We like games, but more importantly, simulators that not only provide a little entertainment, but also a deeper understanding of a topic and how variables change outcomes. Whether this avenue ultimately provides more hope for profitability, I don't know. But it certainly can be a competitive advantage & value-added.
USA Today has been using some excellent interactive graphics/elements. For example, Hurricane Gustov Map and California Wildfires help provide information and context to events that happened. A couple of pieces that provide a more useful interface to a larger data set are their Iraq casualties and NFL Draft History pieces.
It's kind of nice to notice in France that grocery stores aren't normally open 24/7 (more like 10/6 or less), so no one has to work those shitty shifts.
Back before kids, my wife & I frequently did our grocery shopping after going out to the bars with friends. Beats the hell out of the packed isles, long checkout lines and maybe worst of all, old people oblivious to the world around them that you get in after work hours on weekdays or weekends. Grocery stores usually have restocking & that sort of work that needs to be done in down hours anyway, so if you're already paying to keep the lights on & a handful of staff, a couple of extras to check out customers isn't much different. My mom worked a lot of 11-7 shifts at a grocery story and there was no "has to" about it, it was purely by choice. She'd come home & help get us off to school & sleep while we were there and still had time to catch our sports & other after school activities.
Funny. I'm an employer, in a corporation, and I would *never* ask anyone to work over 40, even when on salaried pay.
Last corporation I was with, a Fortune 500 (but towards the bottom) it was at least assumed that salaried meant 45+ hours. I say at least, because in my time there, in two different divisions I had department heads (both depts had about 90 employees) who explicitly said this was their expectation and anyone who didn't work at least 45 wasn't committed. I don't know whether your situation or mine is more the norm. Citing Dilbert, I'd say mine - and I think big corps succeed in spite of themselves. With as much sincerity as one stranger can have towards another, I say good luck to you and your company, and hope there are more like both.
But I still like full-time over part-time because full time is "immersive" - people who dedicate their time and primary mind share are more productive per time unit. I get more and better work per hour from a full-time engineer than a part-time employee.
I wouldn't question that this is true in your specific situation, but I don't think you can say that in the general sense. In general, a person's dedication and professionalism are qualities of the individual, not their employment status.
Gotta disagree - in the corporations I've worked for, this percentage cutting happens anyway. Granted it's typically not 5% a year, but a boom & bust cycle, but on average it's probably about right. But as it happens, it's entirely arbitrary and just horribly done. Often very high-quality, high-productivity workers are canned and incompetent idiots are kept, even promoted. Personally, if I found company that fired 5 or 10% a year and was merciless, but based the cut solely on productivity and contribution to the company's bottom line, I'd consider returning to the corporate workforce.
Remember, once it goes into law....there is hardly a chance it will be repealed.
Because one of the many differences between politicians and decent, rational, intelligent human beings is the total unwillingness to admit they're wrong. Of course they made that bed for themselves by vilifying "flip-flopping" as a mortal sin.
Rare as it is, any time I hear a politician say anything along the lines of, "I was wrong" at the very least they get my respect and consideration, if not vote.
Obama's grass roots fund-raising was absolutely impressive. Over half a Billion dollars raised from individual donors, and half of that from small donations. But there are serious questions that deserve answers about this. The campaign was not required to, and chose not to reveal contributors who donate less than $200. But there was without question, some level of fraud in the donations, the only question is just how much. Individuals were able to string together multiple $200 contributions under $200 they could actually make unlimited contributions using multiple aliases. They refused to screen credit card donations for fraud. Don't get me wrong - I don't think this had a significant effect on the outcome of the race. And in general, the campaign was a great thing for getting people involved and active in politics and the issues. But there's a dirty underbelly and whether it was material this time around or not, it showed a way to effectively circumvent all of the soft money restrictions. Personally, I think transparency is the most important thing about money in politics. I want to see where every dime comes from and be able to assess for myself what the influence of that money...and to be able to judge the candidate accordingly once elected.
But so much of his rhetoric and policy papers are either not supported in any way by his actions and voting record (a truly remarkable list of "present" votes in such a relatively short career), or actually counter to his actions and voting record. For example, he has voted very consistently for increased gun and ammunition restrictions. Including openly supporting the DC ban and voting in favor of a similar ban in Chicago. Yet he stood behind a podium and said he believed the second amendment "must mean something" and was an individual right, rather than a collective. It was this very issue that the Supreme Court took in Heller that ruled the DC ban unconstitutional. I don't care that much about gun rights - I own none, but philosophically believe the 2nd was written for a reason. There are plenty of people more "extreme" on the issue than President Elect Obama. But he got to present himself as supporting something he has not and was never forced to answer for the inconsistency.
Um...I think it's perfectly reasonable to parse "In what respect" as asking exactly that. I read it as "what Bush doctrine" or "what are you considering the Bush doctrine in this particular question."
Gibson came off as a huge ass looking to shape the story rather than get to what she really thought about the topic.
And the "we've gotta get the money out of politics, money in politics is evil" drumbeat suddenly fell silent. Guess it's only bad when your guy raises less money.
I'm quite surprised by this about-face. I thought the whole "Windows Server 2000" or "Office 2003" was a great marketing move. Look at the typical reaction: "Here I am in 2008, and I'm still using Visual Studio 2005 -- why haven't we upgraded to VS 2008 yet?"
Well that may seem logical and all - heck it might well be true for other situations. But the general public, your average joe user knows full well that Microsoft often really messes things up with new versions-making things worse instead of better. Instead of users thinking, "why are we still using 2003 when it's 2008," they'll think "MS sucks." Microsoft's technical and equally important marketing & PR screw ups with Vista have done more damage to the company than they realize.
For one contract job I have, I have company laptop that's really locked down. It had PS 7, and when CS came out, they installed that version. Due to the anti-piracy/activation stuff, they were never able to get CS to work - activation just wouldn't stick. I finally said, the hell with it, I'll just use 7 when I need it and truthfully, I barely notice. I use my own machine with CS3 for 90% of the stuff I do, but when I just need to do something quick while working on the other machine, version 7 does the job just fine.
Damn and I just blew through 15 mod points the other day.
Though they haven't really improved Photoshop in like a decade. OK maybe slight exaggeration. And let me make no bones about it, I'm still really pissed Macromedia sold out to them. Life was much better with both Adobe & Macromedia in it.
So, you're advocating that we try to lower prices of a traded commodity by announcing something which can't make any short term changes on the basis that even if it's not going to be effective in the short term, current market factors can lower prices on the perception that in the long run this will make a difference????
WTF?? So, through the use of wishful thinking and vacuous statements, we can control market prices today?...The market will respond to actual data, and simply announcing it will have a really short term blip, if any at all.
You haven't been watching the market long, have you? The market is incredibly schizophrenic and moves on perception all the time. I've never been able to see any sort of bias whatsoever towards actual data over speculation and emotions. What happened to Apple's stock when Jobs looked a little thin & some idiot wrote that his cancer was back?
Like I said not infrastructure in a bricks & mortar manner, but infrastructure in terms of a conceptual framework for private industry. Absolutley not a direct involvement in the delivery of service. They can create a market where one really doesn't exit - so private companies can compete against each other. Say they create 4 classifications of health insurance and define what each classification must cover to be marketed as that class. From there insurers are fee to set their prices for that product and add any thing else they want to try & make their product more enticing so long as they meet the core requirements. The customer can be confident in comparison shopping two health insurance policies in the same class.
I really could not agree more. Though not just infrastructure in the sense of of roads, water, sewer & power but also in terms of conceptual and regulatory frameworks for private industry to compete. For example, the regulation of wireless spectrum. This is where the best solution to the healthcare problem. Not government running/managing any of it - instead creating tiers/classifications of healthcare plans with core requirements to these plans so that companies compete and customers can comparison shop.
No, the interpreted the law so narrowly as to be practically worthless. So much for Robert's promise to honor precedent.
So should they have interpreted the 180 days to mean any time (such as after you retire like she did)? Should they have pretended that process of a computer program generating a paycheck was a discriminatory act rather than the decision to pass her over for a raise? Ginsberg even tried to help them out, asking why they were basing their case on Title VII instead of the Equal Pay Act (which again, has a longer statute of limitations). The answer was, "we didn't think it was that important."
This all isn't much different than the argument from Eldred - except they were more explicit when they essentially said, Sonny Bono was a bad law, but not an unconstitutional one. I specifically remember the comment, "One has to wonder what Congress was thinking" referring to retroactive extensions.
It's just not the court's place to try fix bad laws.
Oh and why didn't Ledbetter sue under the Equal Pay Act? It specifically addresses discriminatory pay because of gender and has a longer statue of limitations.
But in her speech, did she call out the Republicans for filibustering the legislation to change the statute of limitations of the law? Nope, she whined about the Supreme Court ruling. I realize that's a big part of the argument for Obama to women - that if elected, McCain will bring in someone to overturn Roe. But the majority of the court got it right, interpreting the law that is on the books unlike the dissent which would rather create laws in their mind.
The statute's 180 days just doesn't make a whole lot of sense given the way pay discrimination can sometimes happen. But the Senate Republicans' filibuster on legislation to change that is the problem, not the Supreme Court. So call them evil & not concerned with preventing discrimination for not passing or even allowing a vote on the issue.
Out of curiosity, while there were a handful of Republicans who voted to end the filibuster, why didn't Harry Reid?
Exactly. As much as I think society is made up of entirely too many idiots, I also think the voting public is smarter than people give them credit for. Congress folk have plenty of channels to get the truth out there these days. Most people have no problem determining the honesty of a politician who paid for a 30 second spot to say, "I liked X and Y about this legislation, but I just couldn't support it because it also had Z."
Hell, I'd have no problem voting for someone who I different with ideologically if they showed that kind of integrity.
I wouldn't argue with the claim that Americans didn't care (or even many were for) all kinds of extreme measures shortly after 9/11. It was a crazy & emotional time. Which is exactly why knee-jerk reactions and writing and enacting laws so quickly to address a specific incident is a bad idea. With extremely rare exception, if there wasn't a law covering something already, there is absolutely no reason to be in such a rush to enact a law that public scrutiny and debate get's skipped.
Why? Because he has a history of a fighting spirit? Seriously, I don't know which guy has a legislative persona more out of whack with who they really are. "Maverick" John McCain or Daley & Chicago political machine Obama.
What exactly would lead you to believe that the rule of law is something for them to be concerned about? Didn't parading Lilly Ledbetter out show that they don't care about the rule of law because individual people are more important? Rule of law says: "Sorry, statute is clear...You must file within 180 days of a discriminatory act. You have a problem with that, get your (Democrat controlled) congress to change the statute, it's not the role of the courts to overlook the law because the particular plaintiff may or may not be sympathetic."
While you're partially correct, you're wrong on two accounts. First of all, a very good portion of these girls have their development stunted due to intense training from such an early age. Not just the trauma of the training, but very low levels of body fat also delay/prevent puberty. As for whether they will where they will be in 3 or 4 years, you're wrong there too. Many things in human development are time-sensitive. Miss it the window, you don't get a second chance.
I have to imagine there's some actual research - I'd love to see a study on the average heights of family members who have gymnasts and non-gymnasts. And I know, one of the arguments will be, "that's like saying playing basketball makes you tall." World class gymnastics (some other sports too) take kids at such a young age (often as young as 3 or 4 years old).
The IOC are making themselves look pretty scummy by association at the moment. They seem complicit in various pieces of fraud and dodgy dealings, and perfectly willing to help cover everything up.
But then I've never held them in that high a regard anyway. They're a business and they make the world's governments beg like puppydogs to be allowed to hold their games.
Frankly I find the whole thing to be something of a joke, and an incredible waste of money.
They're not a business, they're a corrupt, monopolistic organization that has no oversight what-so-ever. Take all oil companies, combine them into one then allow them to register domicile on the moon so no entity on earth can actually have jurisdiction over them.
Much in the same way anyone wishing to protest in the "designated protest areas" must file a petition to protest from the very state they'd protest against.
Slashdot Mirror
What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregation and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.
Except that one of best and easiest ways to make content last longer is index it make it searchable - and yet many papers are choosing to charge for their archives. I don't have answers as to what they can do to remain profitable, but I can't imagine that's it. The other problem is that the sort of content that is accessible to aggregation also happens to be the most difficult to make any sort of profit from. Text content is so easily copied & pasted and the culture of not having any appreciation for the work it took to create it is only growing.
The information/data itself has gotten to the point of nearly becoming a commodity, so good luck making any profit. I have to believe there is a market for providing a better explanation of the information...a better context...making it easier for a reader/view to digest. We are visual creatures. We like games, but more importantly, simulators that not only provide a little entertainment, but also a deeper understanding of a topic and how variables change outcomes. Whether this avenue ultimately provides more hope for profitability, I don't know. But it certainly can be a competitive advantage & value-added.
USA Today has been using some excellent interactive graphics/elements. For example, Hurricane Gustov Map and California Wildfires help provide information and context to events that happened. A couple of pieces that provide a more useful interface to a larger data set are their Iraq casualties and NFL Draft History pieces.
It's kind of nice to notice in France that grocery stores aren't normally open 24/7 (more like 10/6 or less), so no one has to work those shitty shifts.
Back before kids, my wife & I frequently did our grocery shopping after going out to the bars with friends. Beats the hell out of the packed isles, long checkout lines and maybe worst of all, old people oblivious to the world around them that you get in after work hours on weekdays or weekends. Grocery stores usually have restocking & that sort of work that needs to be done in down hours anyway, so if you're already paying to keep the lights on & a handful of staff, a couple of extras to check out customers isn't much different. My mom worked a lot of 11-7 shifts at a grocery story and there was no "has to" about it, it was purely by choice. She'd come home & help get us off to school & sleep while we were there and still had time to catch our sports & other after school activities.
Funny. I'm an employer, in a corporation, and I would *never* ask anyone to work over 40, even when on salaried pay.
Last corporation I was with, a Fortune 500 (but towards the bottom) it was at least assumed that salaried meant 45+ hours. I say at least, because in my time there, in two different divisions I had department heads (both depts had about 90 employees) who explicitly said this was their expectation and anyone who didn't work at least 45 wasn't committed. I don't know whether your situation or mine is more the norm. Citing Dilbert, I'd say mine - and I think big corps succeed in spite of themselves. With as much sincerity as one stranger can have towards another, I say good luck to you and your company, and hope there are more like both.
But I still like full-time over part-time because full time is "immersive" - people who dedicate their time and primary mind share are more productive per time unit. I get more and better work per hour from a full-time engineer than a part-time employee.
I wouldn't question that this is true in your specific situation, but I don't think you can say that in the general sense. In general, a person's dedication and professionalism are qualities of the individual, not their employment status.
Gotta disagree - in the corporations I've worked for, this percentage cutting happens anyway. Granted it's typically not 5% a year, but a boom & bust cycle, but on average it's probably about right. But as it happens, it's entirely arbitrary and just horribly done. Often very high-quality, high-productivity workers are canned and incompetent idiots are kept, even promoted. Personally, if I found company that fired 5 or 10% a year and was merciless, but based the cut solely on productivity and contribution to the company's bottom line, I'd consider returning to the corporate workforce.
Remember, once it goes into law....there is hardly a chance it will be repealed.
Because one of the many differences between politicians and decent, rational, intelligent human beings is the total unwillingness to admit they're wrong. Of course they made that bed for themselves by vilifying "flip-flopping" as a mortal sin.
Rare as it is, any time I hear a politician say anything along the lines of, "I was wrong" at the very least they get my respect and consideration, if not vote.
Obama's grass roots fund-raising was absolutely impressive. Over half a Billion dollars raised from individual donors, and half of that from small donations. But there are serious questions that deserve answers about this. The campaign was not required to, and chose not to reveal contributors who donate less than $200. But there was without question, some level of fraud in the donations, the only question is just how much. Individuals were able to string together multiple $200 contributions under $200 they could actually make unlimited contributions using multiple aliases. They refused to screen credit card donations for fraud. Don't get me wrong - I don't think this had a significant effect on the outcome of the race. And in general, the campaign was a great thing for getting people involved and active in politics and the issues. But there's a dirty underbelly and whether it was material this time around or not, it showed a way to effectively circumvent all of the soft money restrictions. Personally, I think transparency is the most important thing about money in politics. I want to see where every dime comes from and be able to assess for myself what the influence of that money...and to be able to judge the candidate accordingly once elected.
But so much of his rhetoric and policy papers are either not supported in any way by his actions and voting record (a truly remarkable list of "present" votes in such a relatively short career), or actually counter to his actions and voting record. For example, he has voted very consistently for increased gun and ammunition restrictions. Including openly supporting the DC ban and voting in favor of a similar ban in Chicago. Yet he stood behind a podium and said he believed the second amendment "must mean something" and was an individual right, rather than a collective. It was this very issue that the Supreme Court took in Heller that ruled the DC ban unconstitutional. I don't care that much about gun rights - I own none, but philosophically believe the 2nd was written for a reason. There are plenty of people more "extreme" on the issue than President Elect Obama. But he got to present himself as supporting something he has not and was never forced to answer for the inconsistency.
Gibson came off as a huge ass looking to shape the story rather than get to what she really thought about the topic.
And the "we've gotta get the money out of politics, money in politics is evil" drumbeat suddenly fell silent. Guess it's only bad when your guy raises less money.
I'm quite surprised by this about-face. I thought the whole "Windows Server 2000" or "Office 2003" was a great marketing move. Look at the typical reaction: "Here I am in 2008, and I'm still using Visual Studio 2005 -- why haven't we upgraded to VS 2008 yet?"
Well that may seem logical and all - heck it might well be true for other situations. But the general public, your average joe user knows full well that Microsoft often really messes things up with new versions-making things worse instead of better. Instead of users thinking, "why are we still using 2003 when it's 2008," they'll think "MS sucks." Microsoft's technical and equally important marketing & PR screw ups with Vista have done more damage to the company than they realize.
For one contract job I have, I have company laptop that's really locked down. It had PS 7, and when CS came out, they installed that version. Due to the anti-piracy/activation stuff, they were never able to get CS to work - activation just wouldn't stick. I finally said, the hell with it, I'll just use 7 when I need it and truthfully, I barely notice. I use my own machine with CS3 for 90% of the stuff I do, but when I just need to do something quick while working on the other machine, version 7 does the job just fine.
Damn and I just blew through 15 mod points the other day.
Though they haven't really improved Photoshop in like a decade. OK maybe slight exaggeration. And let me make no bones about it, I'm still really pissed Macromedia sold out to them. Life was much better with both Adobe & Macromedia in it.
So, you're advocating that we try to lower prices of a traded commodity by announcing something which can't make any short term changes on the basis that even if it's not going to be effective in the short term, current market factors can lower prices on the perception that in the long run this will make a difference????
WTF?? So, through the use of wishful thinking and vacuous statements, we can control market prices today?...The market will respond to actual data, and simply announcing it will have a really short term blip, if any at all.
You haven't been watching the market long, have you? The market is incredibly schizophrenic and moves on perception all the time. I've never been able to see any sort of bias whatsoever towards actual data over speculation and emotions. What happened to Apple's stock when Jobs looked a little thin & some idiot wrote that his cancer was back?
Like I said not infrastructure in a bricks & mortar manner, but infrastructure in terms of a conceptual framework for private industry. Absolutley not a direct involvement in the delivery of service. They can create a market where one really doesn't exit - so private companies can compete against each other. Say they create 4 classifications of health insurance and define what each classification must cover to be marketed as that class. From there insurers are fee to set their prices for that product and add any thing else they want to try & make their product more enticing so long as they meet the core requirements. The customer can be confident in comparison shopping two health insurance policies in the same class.
I really could not agree more. Though not just infrastructure in the sense of of roads, water, sewer & power but also in terms of conceptual and regulatory frameworks for private industry to compete. For example, the regulation of wireless spectrum. This is where the best solution to the healthcare problem. Not government running/managing any of it - instead creating tiers/classifications of healthcare plans with core requirements to these plans so that companies compete and customers can comparison shop.
No, the interpreted the law so narrowly as to be practically worthless. So much for Robert's promise to honor precedent.
So should they have interpreted the 180 days to mean any time (such as after you retire like she did)? Should they have pretended that process of a computer program generating a paycheck was a discriminatory act rather than the decision to pass her over for a raise? Ginsberg even tried to help them out, asking why they were basing their case on Title VII instead of the Equal Pay Act (which again, has a longer statute of limitations). The answer was, "we didn't think it was that important."
This all isn't much different than the argument from Eldred - except they were more explicit when they essentially said, Sonny Bono was a bad law, but not an unconstitutional one. I specifically remember the comment, "One has to wonder what Congress was thinking" referring to retroactive extensions.
It's just not the court's place to try fix bad laws.
Oh and why didn't Ledbetter sue under the Equal Pay Act? It specifically addresses discriminatory pay because of gender and has a longer statue of limitations.
But in her speech, did she call out the Republicans for filibustering the legislation to change the statute of limitations of the law? Nope, she whined about the Supreme Court ruling. I realize that's a big part of the argument for Obama to women - that if elected, McCain will bring in someone to overturn Roe. But the majority of the court got it right, interpreting the law that is on the books unlike the dissent which would rather create laws in their mind.
The statute's 180 days just doesn't make a whole lot of sense given the way pay discrimination can sometimes happen. But the Senate Republicans' filibuster on legislation to change that is the problem, not the Supreme Court. So call them evil & not concerned with preventing discrimination for not passing or even allowing a vote on the issue.
Out of curiosity, while there were a handful of Republicans who voted to end the filibuster, why didn't Harry Reid?
Hell, I'd have no problem voting for someone who I different with ideologically if they showed that kind of integrity.
I wouldn't argue with the claim that Americans didn't care (or even many were for) all kinds of extreme measures shortly after 9/11. It was a crazy & emotional time. Which is exactly why knee-jerk reactions and writing and enacting laws so quickly to address a specific incident is a bad idea. With extremely rare exception, if there wasn't a law covering something already, there is absolutely no reason to be in such a rush to enact a law that public scrutiny and debate get's skipped.
Why? Because he has a history of a fighting spirit? Seriously, I don't know which guy has a legislative persona more out of whack with who they really are. "Maverick" John McCain or Daley & Chicago political machine Obama.
What exactly would lead you to believe that the rule of law is something for them to be concerned about? Didn't parading Lilly Ledbetter out show that they don't care about the rule of law because individual people are more important? Rule of law says: "Sorry, statute is clear...You must file within 180 days of a discriminatory act. You have a problem with that, get your (Democrat controlled) congress to change the statute, it's not the role of the courts to overlook the law because the particular plaintiff may or may not be sympathetic."
While you're partially correct, you're wrong on two accounts. First of all, a very good portion of these girls have their development stunted due to intense training from such an early age. Not just the trauma of the training, but very low levels of body fat also delay/prevent puberty. As for whether they will where they will be in 3 or 4 years, you're wrong there too. Many things in human development are time-sensitive. Miss it the window, you don't get a second chance. I have to imagine there's some actual research - I'd love to see a study on the average heights of family members who have gymnasts and non-gymnasts. And I know, one of the arguments will be, "that's like saying playing basketball makes you tall." World class gymnastics (some other sports too) take kids at such a young age (often as young as 3 or 4 years old).
The IOC are making themselves look pretty scummy by association at the moment. They seem complicit in various pieces of fraud and dodgy dealings, and perfectly willing to help cover everything up.
But then I've never held them in that high a regard anyway. They're a business and they make the world's governments beg like puppydogs to be allowed to hold their games.
Frankly I find the whole thing to be something of a joke, and an incredible waste of money.
They're not a business, they're a corrupt, monopolistic organization that has no oversight what-so-ever. Take all oil companies, combine them into one then allow them to register domicile on the moon so no entity on earth can actually have jurisdiction over them.
Much in the same way anyone wishing to protest in the "designated protest areas" must file a petition to protest from the very state they'd protest against.