There is an option to hide your friends lists even from your friends. Anything you do on that site is purely voluntary as far as divulging information. But you need to spend a view minutes in the privacy settings to set them how you like.
You mean if people can view your social networks on facebook they can deduce some basic facts about you? Shocking! People really need to think about the compromise that they are making when they make their FB profiles and info visible to anyone but their immediate friends. It's ok if you want to do it, but just realize what you are doing.
Being on a social network site at all exposes you a lot. I decided I didn't give a crap, but I have everything set to 'friends only' and I don't use apps or quizzes. Reasonable compromise for a non-tin-foil-hatter.
I have a few friends with large book collections. I consider them hoarders. I only keep books that I really like and also feel would bring benefit to read or reference again down the road. That narrows it down quite a bit. The only legitimate excuse for a giant library is if you are an academic researcher or an author. A good writer is a good reader, as they say. I am not a writer so I have no such need to keep things on file like that.
I went through a phase in my life where I collected a bunch of crap, and now I'm moving past that. Less is more, within moderation.:)
Agreed. Print on demand is much more efficient in regards to resource utilization. Many books printed today do not sell completely and are returned to the publisher. They then tear off the covers, rendering them un-sellable. Hopefully these books are recycled into pulp for making more books.
With POD (print on demand) publishing, you get no wastage. The downside is the higher cost to publish a POD book. However, at the $8 level, depending on the page count or usefulness of the content, that price is within the relm of the reasonable. In another post on this topic I mentioned how much more it costs to do a full color photo book using POD publishing, which is way out of line with how much it costs to do a mass produced printing press version of same.
I have a feeling that we will not see a 100% electronic book world in our future, it will be a mix of POD and electronic. Even best-sellers could be POD produced at the store for anyone who wants them. No more inventory problems, except for bulk paper and ink supplies.
The big problem with the iPhone (I have one) is that the screen is very small compared to a book, and I know that it will damage my eyesite if I read on it for a prolonged period, even with larger zoomed text. (then you have a too-frequent line wrapping problem) It is not pleasurable to read books articles on the iPhone. I only do it to alleviate boredom while waiting in line for something or sitting on the john.
I have 20/20 vision and I wish to keep it that way. I retain my eyesite by taking frequent breaks from my computer screen and not sitting too close or too far from it.
Discounting the cost of printing the book. POD (print on demand) publication as compared to traditional mass press printings is still expensive due to the cost of developing and operating the machine and individually handling each book. Black and white interior paperbacks have become fairly inexpensive however. For what you're getting for ~$8, it's pretty reasonable. I'm still hoping that full color POD printing will come down in price. If I want to make a POD photo book, the cost through the various online POD publishers (lulu, xlibris, etc.) makes it prohibitive to turn even a small profit or sell a photo book for what people are accustomed to paying. You can get beautiful, large format mass printed photo books at Barnes and Noble for a fraction of the price of a POD book. The POD revolution has not quite reached all sectors yet when I have to charge $55 for my 8 1/2 X 11 photo book.
As long as those thousands of copies are not DRM encrypted.
Also, all the books I own were mass produced using the printing press, something the monk scholars did not have. So there already are thousands of copies of the books I have circulating around. Bad analogy is right. Most good old books do not get thrown away or destroyed on purpose, they are passed around, bought and sold and remain in private collections and in libraries. The electronic books kept on a thumb drive have the same chance of being lost by fire, flood or other natural cause as one copy of a press book, with the further chance that there could be no electricity or computers to read them by down the road.
With a paper book, it takes only the book itself and the knowledge to interpret the letters to read it. With an e-book, you need another device that relies on an electricity grid to recharge or power it. That other device can also break down over time (older motherboards almost always become unusable without repair thanks to capacitor and other semiconducter breakdowns). This creates an untenable chain of requirements to keep them in readable order in a world devoid of technological infrastructure.
I'm one of those people that greatly savors a paper book. I have a nice little library of books that I keep around on two bookcases, and every now and then I'll browse over the shelves and go "Oh yea, I haven't read this one in 10 years, it deserves another go round." I also have a good sized collection of oversized art and photography books. These are particularly well suited to a permanent print format.
The thing is, if a major catastrophic event breaks down modern civilization, little to none of this electronic stuff is going to survive. There will be a big black hole, made especially worse with anything that was encrypted with DRM.
Think about things from antiquity that have survived to modern day - very well stored paper books, scrolls and things made out of clay, granite, stone and marble and very occasionally steel. That's about it.
I wonder if they will have any more resolution than the PDFs you can get from their online service. Some of the books have technical drawings that could use ahout 50 - 75 more DPI. Does anyone know if they were scanned in a higher native resolution than what they present online?
This company managed to launch one high powered amateur rocket in the 1990s. That's it. Nothing since then. Complete vapor. The only serious orbital launch company is currently SpaceX. The only serious near term suborbital launch companies are XCOR and Virgin Galactic, with the various VTVL / lunar X-Prize people (Masten, Armadillo, etc.) filling in a different but useful niche down the road.
SpaceX finally succeeded in orbital launch after many millions of dollars of hardware and testing. XCOR has 66 manned rocket flights to its credit (the largest share of manned rocket flights worldwide since 2000.) Virgin/Scaled has SS1, Armadillo and Masten have a large number of VTVL flights under their belt and years of hardware development.
The problem with supporting an effort like this is that 90% of your payment goes to middlemen. Artists need to stop making the deal with the devil for promotion, and increasingly they don't have to. Set up your own online store (not hard) or find an artist friendly aggregated store that gives the vast majority of the income to the artist, charging a small percentage for the service (not more than 20%!)
I believe there is an excellent business model to be had by setting up an artist friendly website. The trick would be to get a few major artists onboard for this effort in the beginning to attract attention. If I had time and VC capital, I'd run of and do this today.
What is needed is a mass abandonment of the ASCAP/BMI regime, so that it will collapse. How much of your 99 cent purchase at the itunes store goes to the artist, when the music is being licensed to the itunes store through traditional record companies? Very little, from what I have read. pennies on the buck. Itunes is part of the problem.
This whole thing has gone on far too long. Artists who are -good- should be able to stand on their own without the help of the major record companies, with all the tools that are available to the artist directly these days.
The record companies are similar to film companies in that they will obfuscate the profit sheets as much as possible to show a loss. That is why most major film talent now negotiates income percentage on the front end gross as opposed to the back end net, in addition to their fixed salary. The net income from any given film is proving increasingly elusive, if you ask the accounting department at the studio.
the one thing that can prove me wrong is if someone can show me that selling your music the traditional way is still more profitable than going it on your own, due to the sheer quantity of sales.
Could someone please explain Apple's rationale for their extremely conservative (and stupid) position on keeping everything suitable for a 6 year old? Why not let everything in and have parental controls if they're so concerned? I mean you can surf porn sites with the built in safari browser, so they should allow all 'look up' type apps with that same rationale, or ban safari or censor its web access.
I'm surprised they haven't banned Brushes because you can draw naked ladies with it.
Well, in any case, my iPhone is still slated to be pounded into ground glass as soon as my contract is up. Pretty much had it with the thing.
Heh, I've never found NiMH AA's to be cheap either! If it comes with a battery and its rechargeable, that's fine with me, by the time the battery wears out, I will long have upgraded cameras.
Anyone complaining about the projector quality should stop and think for a moment...
It's a VIDEO PROJECTOR....on a COMPACT CAMERA....and it's the FIRST ONE...a cool moment in gadget history. Video projectors use to be three tube CRTs and weighed at least 40 pounds for a portable. You had to spend an hour waiting for it to warm up and performing tube alignment, keystone, etc. (been there, done that in 'the olden days' of multimedia presentation)
Yep, it's going to be very low power. Projectors are battery hungry. Yep it's going to be low resolution at first (640X480) but it's way better than nothing! That instant-review might be very useful, even at low resolution.
Yep, the badly produced PR video is faked. (why not just have the guy set it down on the table first?) but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it works, since it will be sold as a consumer product fairly shortly. They can make the projector image stabilization feature come later.:)
Why don't they just work on easing up the bureaucratic burden in the first place?
A: Likely because it's impossible. An aging and entrenched organization, with no incentive to compete, receives the same amount of tax payer money per year no matter what they do.
My friend works for a branch of the millitary as an accountant, and oh the stories. Just watch Office Space and multiply it by ten. It's comedy gold. I laugh and tell her to quit but she's addicted to the huge paycheck.
Which brings up the point again...traditional media outlets will need to figure out how to monetize and stay in business, or all those blogs will no longer have a source for their stories. Then we'll have nothing left but crowdsourced news. Which is OK in a riot or a protest, but otherwise does not come with the depth of research from a good, non-lazy journalist that does his or her homework, uses multiple sources to back up facts, etc. etc.
So what's the future look like? A merging of the blogosphere and traditional media to something new?
This is especially irritating because I was just starting to look around for an iPhone alternative that would allow tethering, background apps and no restrictive app store policies, etc. etc. all the reasons why the iPhone is essentially a nerfed technology demonstrator.
Here is a great case of the technology being far ahead of the networks that support it. I think some of the major device providers should get together and form a network that is designed from the ground up to support data first and voice second.
So do the cel companies have a legitimate concern about their networks being overloaded by people running torrents over tethered devices, or is it just a 'we are sitting on our collective arses figuring out how much we can get away with charging for it' thing?
My feeling is that cel carriers in the US are discreetly colluding to keep tethering as an expensive, premium service.
I would like to see a carrier break ranks and include it as a standard unlimited data plan feature. That would force all the other carriers down eventually.
This reminds me of internet access in Australia being metered long after it became flat rate in most parts of the world. The companies have a cash cow and want to keep it that way. However, I would like to think that the popularity of an inexpensive tethering service would make up for that in numbers, provided that the network can handle the traffic.
I should also add that this works with a small to medium sized companies. large corporations in an enterprise environment must take on more intricate data management policies.
Digital Domain had / has around 300 employees, and this company has less. DD at that size already had internal tools to manage and archive the files, and check for compliance with the structure.
I also did not address the issue of compartmentalization and security for classified vs. non classified material. The government has its own IT security standards that you must adhere to when dealing with classified information.
I use the 'job' system, which I learned from working at Digital Domain (the Visual Effects Company) and then passed it on to the Aerospace company where I now work.
Effects companies deal with enormous amounts of data, and many different versions of a shot as well as all the elements that make up that shot, along with other data such as project settings files from software used in the making of that shot. They had a very specific file naming system to keep that all organized, and it was referred to as the job system, because first and foremost everything was logically separated by project.
How that has translated for me into the Aerospace field is at the root of the main drive share, there are two primary folders, job and departments. Departments contains generic documents for each department such as forms, standards, etc.
The 'job' folder contains several categories of jobs or projects, such as vehicles, engines, pumps, etc.
Inside those are folders with the project name. Inside each project folder is a series of folders for different data types, such as solidworks, reports, proposals, documentation images, etc.
File naming:
File naming should be consistent, and I always start my own files with the date with year first, because I do not trust meta-data one single iota. I have had dates wiped out when a backup system kept a backup, but did not preserve the file creation / modify date on copy.
After that it is the thing, then the version.
So 09-06-10_widget_v01.sldprt
version two should be exactly the same, with the number iterated up. There should never be a document named something_FINAL because you always end up with FINAL_FINAL_FINAL etc.:)
Now, as you probably know, the difficulty is enforcing a uniform standard when people are busy doing actual work. Things get sloppy, things get messy. You have to keep up after people, and policing stuff like this is not fun. At Digital Domain is was an urgent necessity for everyone to use the standard and there was automated software that relied upon it. At the aerospace company, I gave up years ago trying to enforce a perfect policy. Now, people generally follow the example I set to a point where you can easily find things. When I first got to this company, when it was really small, all files were (seriously) piled nearly in a single folder. This was when the company was very small, but it was already a disaster and it was impossible to find anything. People were used to working on their own computer and did not have a concept of a shared file server, at least not in a modern sense.
Now you can just swatch down the left pane in windows explorer and get what you want very quickly.
This system is designed to use the left pane (lots of folders for organization) and people who were used to the Windows 3.1 way of double clicking through folders without the left pane had to change their (awful) habits. That was the biggest concession among the old school users.
The trick is also not to over-do the nested folders. Just enough to keep it nice and tidy.
Every once in a long while you run into a file that really wants to belong to several folders, and that's what shortcuts are for. Even if the shortcut gets broken you can look at the shortcut file to see what it originally pointed to, and you can probably find it that way.
At home I use the same methodology to archive 30,000 photographs. I can find anything in an instant by expanding folder icons. When that fails, plain old windows search is able to turn up what I am looking for, in those rare instances.
I have always been against anything that 'collects' your files into meta data, such as iTunes, or various photo editing programs. It's a big mess because one day that software won't be around and your files will be a mess.
Even my MP3s are organized by genre/album/1.song.MP3. I just drag album folders or songs into Winamp and I am off and running as my own DJ. I don't use a media organize
Slashdot Mirror
There is an option to hide your friends lists even from your friends. Anything you do on that site is purely voluntary as far as divulging information. But you need to spend a view minutes in the privacy settings to set them how you like.
You mean if people can view your social networks on facebook they can deduce some basic facts about you? Shocking! People really need to think about the compromise that they are making when they make their FB profiles and info visible to anyone but their immediate friends. It's ok if you want to do it, but just realize what you are doing.
Being on a social network site at all exposes you a lot. I decided I didn't give a crap, but I have everything set to 'friends only' and I don't use apps or quizzes. Reasonable compromise for a non-tin-foil-hatter.
I have a few friends with large book collections. I consider them hoarders. I only keep books that I really like and also feel would bring benefit to read or reference again down the road. That narrows it down quite a bit. The only legitimate excuse for a giant library is if you are an academic researcher or an author. A good writer is a good reader, as they say. I am not a writer so I have no such need to keep things on file like that.
I went through a phase in my life where I collected a bunch of crap, and now I'm moving past that. Less is more, within moderation. :)
-Mike
Agreed. Print on demand is much more efficient in regards to resource utilization. Many books printed today do not sell completely and are returned to the publisher. They then tear off the covers, rendering them un-sellable. Hopefully these books are recycled into pulp for making more books.
With POD (print on demand) publishing, you get no wastage. The downside is the higher cost to publish a POD book. However, at the $8 level, depending on the page count or usefulness of the content, that price is within the relm of the reasonable. In another post on this topic I mentioned how much more it costs to do a full color photo book using POD publishing, which is way out of line with how much it costs to do a mass produced printing press version of same.
I have a feeling that we will not see a 100% electronic book world in our future, it will be a mix of POD and electronic. Even best-sellers could be POD produced at the store for anyone who wants them. No more inventory problems, except for bulk paper and ink supplies.
The big problem with the iPhone (I have one) is that the screen is very small compared to a book, and I know that it will damage my eyesite if I read on it for a prolonged period, even with larger zoomed text. (then you have a too-frequent line wrapping problem) It is not pleasurable to read books articles on the iPhone. I only do it to alleviate boredom while waiting in line for something or sitting on the john.
I have 20/20 vision and I wish to keep it that way. I retain my eyesite by taking frequent breaks from my computer screen and not sitting too close or too far from it.
Discounting the cost of printing the book. POD (print on demand) publication as compared to traditional mass press printings is still expensive due to the cost of developing and operating the machine and individually handling each book. Black and white interior paperbacks have become fairly inexpensive however. For what you're getting for ~$8, it's pretty reasonable. I'm still hoping that full color POD printing will come down in price. If I want to make a POD photo book, the cost through the various online POD publishers (lulu, xlibris, etc.) makes it prohibitive to turn even a small profit or sell a photo book for what people are accustomed to paying. You can get beautiful, large format mass printed photo books at Barnes and Noble for a fraction of the price of a POD book. The POD revolution has not quite reached all sectors yet when I have to charge $55 for my 8 1/2 X 11 photo book.
As long as those thousands of copies are not DRM encrypted.
Also, all the books I own were mass produced using the printing press, something the monk scholars did not have. So there already are thousands of copies of the books I have circulating around. Bad analogy is right. Most good old books do not get thrown away or destroyed on purpose, they are passed around, bought and sold and remain in private collections and in libraries. The electronic books kept on a thumb drive have the same chance of being lost by fire, flood or other natural cause as one copy of a press book, with the further chance that there could be no electricity or computers to read them by down the road.
With a paper book, it takes only the book itself and the knowledge to interpret the letters to read it. With an e-book, you need another device that relies on an electricity grid to recharge or power it. That other device can also break down over time (older motherboards almost always become unusable without repair thanks to capacitor and other semiconducter breakdowns). This creates an untenable chain of requirements to keep them in readable order in a world devoid of technological infrastructure.
I'm one of those people that greatly savors a paper book. I have a nice little library of books that I keep around on two bookcases, and every now and then I'll browse over the shelves and go "Oh yea, I haven't read this one in 10 years, it deserves another go round." I also have a good sized collection of oversized art and photography books. These are particularly well suited to a permanent print format.
The thing is, if a major catastrophic event breaks down modern civilization, little to none of this electronic stuff is going to survive. There will be a big black hole, made especially worse with anything that was encrypted with DRM.
Think about things from antiquity that have survived to modern day - very well stored paper books, scrolls and things made out of clay, granite, stone and marble and very occasionally steel. That's about it.
I wonder if they will have any more resolution than the PDFs you can get from their online service. Some of the books have technical drawings that could use ahout 50 - 75 more DPI. Does anyone know if they were scanned in a higher native resolution than what they present online?
I thought someone might say this :)
I needed to have prefaced that with "NEW private space companies" :)
This company managed to launch one high powered amateur rocket in the 1990s. That's it. Nothing since then. Complete vapor. The only serious orbital launch company is currently SpaceX. The only serious near term suborbital launch companies are XCOR and Virgin Galactic, with the various VTVL / lunar X-Prize people (Masten, Armadillo, etc.) filling in a different but useful niche down the road.
SpaceX finally succeeded in orbital launch after many millions of dollars of hardware and testing. XCOR has 66 manned rocket flights to its credit (the largest share of manned rocket flights worldwide since 2000.) Virgin/Scaled has SS1, Armadillo and Masten have a large number of VTVL flights under their belt and years of hardware development.
Interorbital has paper and mockups.
The problem with supporting an effort like this is that 90% of your payment goes to middlemen. Artists need to stop making the deal with the devil for promotion, and increasingly they don't have to. Set up your own online store (not hard) or find an artist friendly aggregated store that gives the vast majority of the income to the artist, charging a small percentage for the service (not more than 20%!)
I believe there is an excellent business model to be had by setting up an artist friendly website. The trick would be to get a few major artists onboard for this effort in the beginning to attract attention. If I had time and VC capital, I'd run of and do this today.
What is needed is a mass abandonment of the ASCAP/BMI regime, so that it will collapse. How much of your 99 cent purchase at the itunes store goes to the artist, when the music is being licensed to the itunes store through traditional record companies? Very little, from what I have read. pennies on the buck. Itunes is part of the problem.
This whole thing has gone on far too long. Artists who are -good- should be able to stand on their own without the help of the major record companies, with all the tools that are available to the artist directly these days.
The record companies are similar to film companies in that they will obfuscate the profit sheets as much as possible to show a loss. That is why most major film talent now negotiates income percentage on the front end gross as opposed to the back end net, in addition to their fixed salary. The net income from any given film is proving increasingly elusive, if you ask the accounting department at the studio.
the one thing that can prove me wrong is if someone can show me that selling your music the traditional way is still more profitable than going it on your own, due to the sheer quantity of sales.
Could someone please explain Apple's rationale for their extremely conservative (and stupid) position on keeping everything suitable for a 6 year old? Why not let everything in and have parental controls if they're so concerned? I mean you can surf porn sites with the built in safari browser, so they should allow all 'look up' type apps with that same rationale, or ban safari or censor its web access.
I'm surprised they haven't banned Brushes because you can draw naked ladies with it.
Well, in any case, my iPhone is still slated to be pounded into ground glass as soon as my contract is up. Pretty much had it with the thing.
Heh, I've never found NiMH AA's to be cheap either! If it comes with a battery and its rechargeable, that's fine with me, by the time the battery wears out, I will long have upgraded cameras.
Anyone complaining about the projector quality should stop and think for a moment...
It's a VIDEO PROJECTOR....on a COMPACT CAMERA....and it's the FIRST ONE...a cool moment in gadget history. Video projectors use to be three tube CRTs and weighed at least 40 pounds for a portable. You had to spend an hour waiting for it to warm up and performing tube alignment, keystone, etc. (been there, done that in 'the olden days' of multimedia presentation)
Yep, it's going to be very low power. Projectors are battery hungry. Yep it's going to be low resolution at first (640X480) but it's way better than nothing! That instant-review might be very useful, even at low resolution.
Yep, the badly produced PR video is faked. (why not just have the guy set it down on the table first?) but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it works, since it will be sold as a consumer product fairly shortly. They can make the projector image stabilization feature come later. :)
Good thing they did not try to compare breast size and hip to waist ratios as compared to real world...
Why don't they just work on easing up the bureaucratic burden in the first place?
A: Likely because it's impossible. An aging and entrenched organization, with no incentive to compete, receives the same amount of tax payer money per year no matter what they do.
My friend works for a branch of the millitary as an accountant, and oh the stories. Just watch Office Space and multiply it by ten. It's comedy gold. I laugh and tell her to quit but she's addicted to the huge paycheck.
That's a very old phrase, goes back to the early 20th century. I think they were just stating the current use of it stemming from that instance.
Which brings up the point again...traditional media outlets will need to figure out how to monetize and stay in business, or all those blogs will no longer have a source for their stories. Then we'll have nothing left but crowdsourced news. Which is OK in a riot or a protest, but otherwise does not come with the depth of research from a good, non-lazy journalist that does his or her homework, uses multiple sources to back up facts, etc. etc.
So what's the future look like? A merging of the blogosphere and traditional media to something new?
can you imagine living with this guy?
I'd rather just not get up at all.
Waking up naturally is far better for your health. All you 9-5ers have fun being shocked out of bed every morning.
This is especially irritating because I was just starting to look around for an iPhone alternative that would allow tethering, background apps and no restrictive app store policies, etc. etc. all the reasons why the iPhone is essentially a nerfed technology demonstrator.
Here is a great case of the technology being far ahead of the networks that support it. I think some of the major device providers should get together and form a network that is designed from the ground up to support data first and voice second.
So do the cel companies have a legitimate concern about their networks being overloaded by people running torrents over tethered devices, or is it just a 'we are sitting on our collective arses figuring out how much we can get away with charging for it' thing?
My feeling is that cel carriers in the US are discreetly colluding to keep tethering as an expensive, premium service.
I would like to see a carrier break ranks and include it as a standard unlimited data plan feature. That would force all the other carriers down eventually.
This reminds me of internet access in Australia being metered long after it became flat rate in most parts of the world. The companies have a cash cow and want to keep it that way. However, I would like to think that the popularity of an inexpensive tethering service would make up for that in numbers, provided that the network can handle the traffic.
So essentially, the whole data center or the rack itself becomes the cooling case. I like it.
I should also add that this works with a small to medium sized companies. large corporations in an enterprise environment must take on more intricate data management policies.
Digital Domain had / has around 300 employees, and this company has less. DD at that size already had internal tools to manage and archive the files, and check for compliance with the structure.
I also did not address the issue of compartmentalization and security for classified vs. non classified material. The government has its own IT security standards that you must adhere to when dealing with classified information.
I use the 'job' system, which I learned from working at Digital Domain (the Visual Effects Company) and then passed it on to the Aerospace company where I now work.
Effects companies deal with enormous amounts of data, and many different versions of a shot as well as all the elements that make up that shot, along with other data such as project settings files from software used in the making of that shot. They had a very specific file naming system to keep that all organized, and it was referred to as the job system, because first and foremost everything was logically separated by project.
How that has translated for me into the Aerospace field is at the root of the main drive share, there are two primary folders, job and departments. Departments contains generic documents for each department such as forms, standards, etc.
The 'job' folder contains several categories of jobs or projects, such as vehicles, engines, pumps, etc.
Inside those are folders with the project name. Inside each project folder is a series of folders for different data types, such as solidworks, reports, proposals, documentation images, etc.
File naming:
File naming should be consistent, and I always start my own files with the date with year first, because I do not trust meta-data one single iota. I have had dates wiped out when a backup system kept a backup, but did not preserve the file creation / modify date on copy.
After that it is the thing, then the version.
So 09-06-10_widget_v01.sldprt
version two should be exactly the same, with the number iterated up. There should never be a document named something_FINAL because you always end up with FINAL_FINAL_FINAL etc. :)
Now, as you probably know, the difficulty is enforcing a uniform standard when people are busy doing actual work. Things get sloppy, things get messy. You have to keep up after people, and policing stuff like this is not fun. At Digital Domain is was an urgent necessity for everyone to use the standard and there was automated software that relied upon it. At the aerospace company, I gave up years ago trying to enforce a perfect policy. Now, people generally follow the example I set to a point where you can easily find things. When I first got to this company, when it was really small, all files were (seriously) piled nearly in a single folder. This was when the company was very small, but it was already a disaster and it was impossible to find anything. People were used to working on their own computer and did not have a concept of a shared file server, at least not in a modern sense.
Now you can just swatch down the left pane in windows explorer and get what you want very quickly.
This system is designed to use the left pane (lots of folders for organization) and people who were used to the Windows 3.1 way of double clicking through folders without the left pane had to change their (awful) habits. That was the biggest concession among the old school users.
The trick is also not to over-do the nested folders. Just enough to keep it nice and tidy.
Every once in a long while you run into a file that really wants to belong to several folders, and that's what shortcuts are for. Even if the shortcut gets broken you can look at the shortcut file to see what it originally pointed to, and you can probably find it that way.
At home I use the same methodology to archive 30,000 photographs. I can find anything in an instant by expanding folder icons. When that fails, plain old windows search is able to turn up what I am looking for, in those rare instances.
I have always been against anything that 'collects' your files into meta data, such as iTunes, or various photo editing programs. It's a big mess because one day that software won't be around and your files will be a mess.
Even my MP3s are organized by genre/album/1.song.MP3. I just drag album folders or songs into Winamp and I am off and running as my own DJ. I don't use a media organize