Before the Telecommunications Act, there was only enough money in the market to support a certain number of radio stations. Radio was a mature industry. Executives knew what types of music different cities listened to and taylored their radio station to appeal to a niche that was underserved by others. However, with the Telecommunications Act, ClearChannel and others changed those economics by allowing failing radio stations to remain and lowering the cost of doing business.
ClearChannel stations often broadcast from a national feeds during low-listener times. While arguably lowering quality, they lower their expenses. Coupled with the financial backing of CC, network broadcasting allows CC stations to compete in markets previously saturated with radio stations. Because the stations they compete against are still using the old business model, they go out of business quickly to give the CC station more listeners for less expense.
Making ClearChannel break up would quickly shut-down ClearChannel stations from the radio as they struggled with higher costs and direct competition again. Ex-CC stations would have to hire new talent to replace their networked shows, attracting less listeners than established stations. Therefore ex-CC stations would squander. Fewer radio stations would create room for more independent stations to take their place, sometimes directly replacing the old CC station.
So to answer your question, if ClearChannel was broken up, it would mostly harm Ex-ClearChannel stations financially, leaving lots of opportunity for other stations and new stations to compete fairly. After a few years, we would probably have the same number of radio stations as before, but with better selection.
The problem with having a "Do Call" list is that shady telemarketing firms would just add people from their database to the "Do Call" list. How is the organization in charge of managing the "Do Call" list supposed to verify identity so that this doesn't happen? Telemarketing lives to gather information about people, so they could easily come up with your SSN, address, birthdate, etc., to falsely sign you up.
I'd much rather have a "Do Not Call" list. The only people motivated to be added are the people themselves. There's no benefit for anyone to sign up people they don't know.
Of course, the counter argument is that "Do Not Call" lists are a big database of phone numbers and addresses that non-profits and politicals can access but don't have to obey. "Do Not Call" lists just make those agencies' lives easier and adds to people's frustrations.
"QE" is not familiar, but the Indians work "extra hard", where Americans would not? Interesting.
The American guys are working really hard. We have a big release coming up and our company's yearly revenue depends on having a good one. The Indians (QE=Testing) are being brought in so they can have direct access to the developers on the project.
I believe you've underestimated the short-sighted avarice of the typical American CEO, but I hope you're right.
It's exactly this short-sightedness that proves my point. Bluntly, CEOs want to be able to yell at the people working on the project. They want meetings and direct responsibility. If development is happening elsewhere, they have far less control over the product. I'm sure many companies will make the mistake of shipping products offshore, but they will only serve as examples of what not to do after they fail.
At my company, we have all those things, but I really feel much more motivated by meeting with people personally. I've also found that people get things done for me faster if I set up meetings with them and explain why we need what they're building. Both parties can understand the other's constraints and can also discuss work-arounds immediately.
We're a decent sized software company that develops a lot of new technology. I just graduated from college two years ago. So I wouldn't say either me or my company are 'old skewl', but 'old skewl' business practices still seem to work the best.
Overseas Outsourcing Destroying Domestic IT Jobs?
on
Lifetime Careers in IT?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Some techies are pessimistic about their prospects, citing outsourcing of IT projects overseas and workplace competition from H-1B visa holders.
People have talked about this a lot recently, on Slashdot, in the news, and around my office. But I think people really underestimate the importance of having the developers around so they can be brought into meetings and have face-to-face meetings. When developers feel their responsibility every day, they gets projects done faster and at higher quality. As a developer, I better see the importance of my work by going to more meetings and interacting more with our clients. However, if I was reporting from around the world, I wouldn't feel the same way.
In fact, at my work we're actually bringing lots of QE in from India because we want them working extra hard helping our American-based developers. There's no way real development by American companies will move offshore.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, systems that game via a webcam have probably always wanted YOU to read a Tetris game and to decide the optimum move, then input the commands to make that move! Well, now prayers answer YOU!!
Oh my god, you know there's this thing called "internet links," and when you click on them, they go to other pages? Well, here at Slashdot, the editors use this technique to link to other pages called "articles." Usually these "articles" answer basic questions you might have from reading the thread's description. Try clicking on them sometime.
If for some reason you're still confused about how to click on articles, the patent was in May 1996, and was bought by SBC from Ameritech. Cringley said it like 4 times in the article.
Maybe I'm a bit off-topic, but why do people DDOS RIAA.org? Hacking it is all good, but who actually needs to go to RIAA.org? What's the point in having it down?
I think people would be better off DOSing warner.com, columbia.com, sonymusic.com, emi.com, etc. By attacking the RIAA, it's showing the record labels they really can hide behind a nameless entity. Show them that what they spend money on to limit freedom really does come back to haunt them personally, and news stories will start focusing more on RIAA members and not a meaningless acronym.
What if a successful artist went to their record label and said, "Look, why don't we make my next CD $6.95, and in return, I'll take 90% less per CD?" The artist would be earn way less per CD, but she's risking that since the price is so low, lots of people will buy it out of impulse. I bet the first time this happens, there will be lots of news reports about it too, giving it way more publicity than most albums get.
Of course, the counterargument is that record companies are losing $10 per CD, whereas the artist is losing 25 cents. The record company would think such an offer is laughable.
Maybe an Indy label could do it, though, since artists typically receive a much greater percentage. It'd be in both party's interests.
There is a big reason the music industry targets teenagers. People that go to college and start paying bills grow cynical about the status quo, including music. Not necessarily the music industry, but of course that's where people target their cynicism because the industry profits from listener's failure to find a musical style they're consistantly happy with (which is impossible).
People in high school don't really think about the music industry as being evil. They listen to what's popular, just like most wear what's popular, etc. Even if it's not 'popular', it's finding a niche, whether it be computers and academics, social life and sports, or drama/science fiction/goth. People in different clique's have a musical style targeted at them, and they take it mostly without thinking. They may complain about CDs being expensive, but they don't complain about quality or immoral lobbying.
As you get older, you think that it's not important to fit into a clique with your musical choices. Instead you try to find things that you like, both musically and morally. It's only natural that with your more mature, broader perspective on the world that you become cynical.
In conclusion, say all you want about the industry pissing you off and quality deteriorating. Everyone outside of high school says that, they did 20 years ago, they will 20 years from now. It's natural to purchase music less as you get older. Therefore it's not logical to expound your own buying experience with the revenues of the music industry.
When you're 50 and you never buy new music, the music industry will still be around and raking in even more money than it does now. Not that it's right, but that's how it is.
I don't know about most of the companies on the list, but Adobe is currently hiring "aggressively," and Microsoft has been bringing people on for the last year or so.
I work at Adobe too, though not as a manager. You have to admit that HR does a lot of stuff in Microsoft Word. You hardly ever get anything in PDF from them. When I was a new hire two years ago, I would get invited to new-hire orientation and other meet-me events, and everything was in Microsoft Word. Since I didn't have Office installed at the time, I'd happily ask them for a PDF version, but they'd hardly ever send one back.
Beales said that during three years of operation [Miss Cleo's Psychic Hotline] charged people about $1 billion and collected half of it. The amount involved eclipses the record $215 million that Citigroup Inc. agreed to repay customers in September to settle deceptive lending charges involving mortgages and credit insurance."
$1 billion gotten illegitimately?? Holy crap that's a lot of money. And no one is going to jail!!!
Spending $10/year for topsoil is much better than having an eye-soar in the back yard. I have a small yard, so there's no way to hide a compost pile in a clump of trees or anything. The lawn creates thatch, the trees drop leaves, so we get a lot of organic material that we could potentially compost. But instead we pay our city taxes that includes weekly organic pick-up, and we buy topsoil for gardening. The organic waste still gets composted, just somewhere else.
Or is he suggesting that everyone should always make a copy of a document before editing it, just in case? Wouldn't THAT seem terrible unintuitive?
I really like the article's idea. I've lost a lot of work in my lifetime due to software crashes, power outages, or clicking things without thinking. On the other hand, it's not often that I change things temporarily and then revert back to the saved version. (Probably 20 to 1 ratio) With this paradigm, it'd be easy to get in the habit of marking a document as 'temporary' with all the benefits.
It might make even more sense when content management platforms mature. These platforms keep track of different versions of a document, allowing you to revert back or see document evolution with ease. Then you can have it both ways, your latest changes will always be saved, and you can revert to previous versions. But of course, then you'd have the non-intuitive 'Save This as New Version' button, since you wouldn't be saving your documents manually anymore.
There are a few exceptions. Adobe Acrobat is a good example. For seven years it was developed without turning a profit. PDF was originally developed as an alternative to PostScript for managing documents through printing workflows, but the Internet finally gave it a widespread purpose. Suddenly all of its strengths, such as embedding fonts to portray documents accurately across systems and platforms, became useful to a large audience. I don't really understand why John Warnock, then CEO, supported Acrobat even while PostScript (another Adobe technology) was still adored, and neither did most management. But now, after version 5.0, it's Adobe's most promising product, bringing in revenues head-to-head with Photoshop.
Ah yes, Seattle sucks too. "It rains all the time!" And stay away from Silicon Valley, "there's no nightlife!"
If I were in college, or looking to immigrate, I'd just stay away from the tech industry in general. There are much better opportunities outside of the field I'm in, especially where I live.
</sarcasm>
Your fonts are nice. Do you ever consider making more corporate or professional looking fonts? I find that there are lots of people like you creating off-the-wall goofy fonts, which is great (it's art!), but not very usable. Would it be too boring to make more traditional fonts? You can add lots of attitude and feel to your fonts and still have them be usable in papers and in more conservative outlets.
It is nice that they'll get a user base from the deals with Gateway, Dell, et al., but what kind of user base is it? The people choosing Corel Office are people that don't want to pay for a productivity suite. How does that translate into customers later on when Sun's giving away OpenOffice? It's not like Corel Office has proprietary document formats that lock users in.
Yesterday, C-Net wrote a very good article explaining why Corel Office bundling will be a failure. I'd suggest reading it if you're interested in the subject.
Actually, Corel isn't making any money from bundling their productivity suite with PCs. They're planning on using the OEM bundling to show off WordPerfect, without any support, in the hopes that customers will like it and follow the upgrades. In this sense, they're competing head-on with the no-cost model of OSS's OpenOffice.
However, financial analysts point out that when customers of low-cost PCs upgrade their productivity software, they probably still won't want to pay. They're likely to try other low-cost alternatives instead. This could boost usage of OpenOffice and other OSS word-processing applications.
Is $77k/year a lot? No! That money's not just salary, but also benefits (which they're legally required to provide salaried employees), support costs, office space, etc. A human resources manager once told me that salary is only 50% of the total cost of having an employee, and I think that's accurate. So, $40-$45k for employees, $60-$70k for managers... that seems perfectly fair.
(Excluding the fact that WorldCom is a corrupt company, this money is coming from taxpayers, and instead WorldCom should be shut down instead to set an example.)
This is exactly the converse of what people were saying in the first comments of this thread. "It costs more to call mobile phones in Europe, so get used to it."
Well, in the US, people on mobile phones always pay for their incoming calls. The minutes you get per month are for both outgoing and incoming calls, and if you're roaming, it doesn't matter who called whom. And we don't feel ripped off, because we're used to paying for our half of the connection.
This brings up an interesting situation. I was living in the UK for a semester, from the US, and my dad would call my UK-based mobile phone. He was on a 10-cents-to-Europe plan, so he expected to be charged 10 cents per minute. Well, that's not what happened -- he had to pay per-minute international mobile charges. These were essentially the same charges UK land-line owners pay to call UK mobile phones, but three times as much. He fought the charges, and since AT&T didn't really understand international mobile calls, he won.
But what should have happened? I'd suspect US land-line callers to UK mobile phones should pay a higher rate. Otherwise who's paying for the mobile connection?
Slashdot Mirror
Before the Telecommunications Act, there was only enough money in the market to support a certain number of radio stations. Radio was a mature industry. Executives knew what types of music different cities listened to and taylored their radio station to appeal to a niche that was underserved by others. However, with the Telecommunications Act, ClearChannel and others changed those economics by allowing failing radio stations to remain and lowering the cost of doing business.
ClearChannel stations often broadcast from a national feeds during low-listener times. While arguably lowering quality, they lower their expenses. Coupled with the financial backing of CC, network broadcasting allows CC stations to compete in markets previously saturated with radio stations. Because the stations they compete against are still using the old business model, they go out of business quickly to give the CC station more listeners for less expense.
Making ClearChannel break up would quickly shut-down ClearChannel stations from the radio as they struggled with higher costs and direct competition again. Ex-CC stations would have to hire new talent to replace their networked shows, attracting less listeners than established stations. Therefore ex-CC stations would squander. Fewer radio stations would create room for more independent stations to take their place, sometimes directly replacing the old CC station.
So to answer your question, if ClearChannel was broken up, it would mostly harm Ex-ClearChannel stations financially, leaving lots of opportunity for other stations and new stations to compete fairly. After a few years, we would probably have the same number of radio stations as before, but with better selection.
The problem with having a "Do Call" list is that shady telemarketing firms would just add people from their database to the "Do Call" list. How is the organization in charge of managing the "Do Call" list supposed to verify identity so that this doesn't happen? Telemarketing lives to gather information about people, so they could easily come up with your SSN, address, birthdate, etc., to falsely sign you up.
I'd much rather have a "Do Not Call" list. The only people motivated to be added are the people themselves. There's no benefit for anyone to sign up people they don't know.
Of course, the counter argument is that "Do Not Call" lists are a big database of phone numbers and addresses that non-profits and politicals can access but don't have to obey. "Do Not Call" lists just make those agencies' lives easier and adds to people's frustrations.
"QE" is not familiar, but the Indians work "extra hard", where Americans would not? Interesting.
The American guys are working really hard. We have a big release coming up and our company's yearly revenue depends on having a good one. The Indians (QE=Testing) are being brought in so they can have direct access to the developers on the project.
I believe you've underestimated the short-sighted avarice of the typical American CEO, but I hope you're right.
It's exactly this short-sightedness that proves my point. Bluntly, CEOs want to be able to yell at the people working on the project. They want meetings and direct responsibility. If development is happening elsewhere, they have far less control over the product. I'm sure many companies will make the mistake of shipping products offshore, but they will only serve as examples of what not to do after they fail.
At my company, we have all those things, but I really feel much more motivated by meeting with people personally. I've also found that people get things done for me faster if I set up meetings with them and explain why we need what they're building. Both parties can understand the other's constraints and can also discuss work-arounds immediately.
We're a decent sized software company that develops a lot of new technology. I just graduated from college two years ago. So I wouldn't say either me or my company are 'old skewl', but 'old skewl' business practices still seem to work the best.
Some techies are pessimistic about their prospects, citing outsourcing of IT projects overseas and workplace competition from H-1B visa holders.
People have talked about this a lot recently, on Slashdot, in the news, and around my office. But I think people really underestimate the importance of having the developers around so they can be brought into meetings and have face-to-face meetings. When developers feel their responsibility every day, they gets projects done faster and at higher quality. As a developer, I better see the importance of my work by going to more meetings and interacting more with our clients. However, if I was reporting from around the world, I wouldn't feel the same way.
In fact, at my work we're actually bringing lots of QE in from India because we want them working extra hard helping our American-based developers. There's no way real development by American companies will move offshore.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, systems that game via a webcam have probably always wanted YOU to read a Tetris game and to decide the optimum move, then input the commands to make that move! Well, now prayers answer YOU!!
Oh my god, you know there's this thing called "internet links," and when you click on them, they go to other pages? Well, here at Slashdot, the editors use this technique to link to other pages called "articles." Usually these "articles" answer basic questions you might have from reading the thread's description. Try clicking on them sometime.
If for some reason you're still confused about how to click on articles, the patent was in May 1996, and was bought by SBC from Ameritech. Cringley said it like 4 times in the article.
Maybe I'm a bit off-topic, but why do people DDOS RIAA.org? Hacking it is all good, but who actually needs to go to RIAA.org? What's the point in having it down?
I think people would be better off DOSing warner.com, columbia.com, sonymusic.com, emi.com, etc. By attacking the RIAA, it's showing the record labels they really can hide behind a nameless entity. Show them that what they spend money on to limit freedom really does come back to haunt them personally, and news stories will start focusing more on RIAA members and not a meaningless acronym.
What if a successful artist went to their record label and said, "Look, why don't we make my next CD $6.95, and in return, I'll take 90% less per CD?" The artist would be earn way less per CD, but she's risking that since the price is so low, lots of people will buy it out of impulse. I bet the first time this happens, there will be lots of news reports about it too, giving it way more publicity than most albums get.
Of course, the counterargument is that record companies are losing $10 per CD, whereas the artist is losing 25 cents. The record company would think such an offer is laughable.
Maybe an Indy label could do it, though, since artists typically receive a much greater percentage. It'd be in both party's interests.
I've heard from a few people that CDs deteriorate. The engineer in me knows that it's not from being played too much or the laser burning the data...
But it's possible that CDs deteriorate like paper turns yellow. Slowly over time, the CD surface would distort and become unplayable.
Does anyone know if this happens? Have you heard of record companies researching this stuff to purposely deteriorate CDs?
Is the industry really producing poorer music?
There is a big reason the music industry targets teenagers. People that go to college and start paying bills grow cynical about the status quo, including music. Not necessarily the music industry, but of course that's where people target their cynicism because the industry profits from listener's failure to find a musical style they're consistantly happy with (which is impossible).
People in high school don't really think about the music industry as being evil. They listen to what's popular, just like most wear what's popular, etc. Even if it's not 'popular', it's finding a niche, whether it be computers and academics, social life and sports, or drama/science fiction/goth. People in different clique's have a musical style targeted at them, and they take it mostly without thinking. They may complain about CDs being expensive, but they don't complain about quality or immoral lobbying.
As you get older, you think that it's not important to fit into a clique with your musical choices. Instead you try to find things that you like, both musically and morally. It's only natural that with your more mature, broader perspective on the world that you become cynical.
In conclusion, say all you want about the industry pissing you off and quality deteriorating. Everyone outside of high school says that, they did 20 years ago, they will 20 years from now. It's natural to purchase music less as you get older. Therefore it's not logical to expound your own buying experience with the revenues of the music industry.
When you're 50 and you never buy new music, the music industry will still be around and raking in even more money than it does now. Not that it's right, but that's how it is.
I don't know about most of the companies on the list, but Adobe is currently hiring "aggressively," and Microsoft has been bringing people on for the last year or so.
I work at Adobe too, though not as a manager. You have to admit that HR does a lot of stuff in Microsoft Word. You hardly ever get anything in PDF from them. When I was a new hire two years ago, I would get invited to new-hire orientation and other meet-me events, and everything was in Microsoft Word. Since I didn't have Office installed at the time, I'd happily ask them for a PDF version, but they'd hardly ever send one back.
Beales said that during three years of operation [Miss Cleo's Psychic Hotline] charged people about $1 billion and collected half of it. The amount involved eclipses the record $215 million that Citigroup Inc. agreed to repay customers in September to settle deceptive lending charges involving mortgages and credit insurance."
$1 billion gotten illegitimately?? Holy crap that's a lot of money. And no one is going to jail!!!
Spending $10/year for topsoil is much better than having an eye-soar in the back yard. I have a small yard, so there's no way to hide a compost pile in a clump of trees or anything. The lawn creates thatch, the trees drop leaves, so we get a lot of organic material that we could potentially compost. But instead we pay our city taxes that includes weekly organic pick-up, and we buy topsoil for gardening. The organic waste still gets composted, just somewhere else.
Or is he suggesting that everyone should always make a copy of a document before editing it, just in case? Wouldn't THAT seem terrible unintuitive?
I really like the article's idea. I've lost a lot of work in my lifetime due to software crashes, power outages, or clicking things without thinking. On the other hand, it's not often that I change things temporarily and then revert back to the saved version. (Probably 20 to 1 ratio) With this paradigm, it'd be easy to get in the habit of marking a document as 'temporary' with all the benefits.
It might make even more sense when content management platforms mature. These platforms keep track of different versions of a document, allowing you to revert back or see document evolution with ease. Then you can have it both ways, your latest changes will always be saved, and you can revert to previous versions. But of course, then you'd have the non-intuitive 'Save This as New Version' button, since you wouldn't be saving your documents manually anymore.
There are a few exceptions. Adobe Acrobat is a good example. For seven years it was developed without turning a profit. PDF was originally developed as an alternative to PostScript for managing documents through printing workflows, but the Internet finally gave it a widespread purpose. Suddenly all of its strengths, such as embedding fonts to portray documents accurately across systems and platforms, became useful to a large audience. I don't really understand why John Warnock, then CEO, supported Acrobat even while PostScript (another Adobe technology) was still adored, and neither did most management. But now, after version 5.0, it's Adobe's most promising product, bringing in revenues head-to-head with Photoshop.
Ah yes, Seattle sucks too. "It rains all the time!" And stay away from Silicon Valley, "there's no nightlife!"
If I were in college, or looking to immigrate, I'd just stay away from the tech industry in general. There are much better opportunities outside of the field I'm in, especially where I live. </sarcasm>
Your fonts are nice. Do you ever consider making more corporate or professional looking fonts? I find that there are lots of people like you creating off-the-wall goofy fonts, which is great (it's art!), but not very usable. Would it be too boring to make more traditional fonts? You can add lots of attitude and feel to your fonts and still have them be usable in papers and in more conservative outlets.
It is nice that they'll get a user base from the deals with Gateway, Dell, et al., but what kind of user base is it? The people choosing Corel Office are people that don't want to pay for a productivity suite. How does that translate into customers later on when Sun's giving away OpenOffice? It's not like Corel Office has proprietary document formats that lock users in.
Yesterday, C-Net wrote a very good article explaining why Corel Office bundling will be a failure. I'd suggest reading it if you're interested in the subject.
Actually, Corel isn't making any money from bundling their productivity suite with PCs. They're planning on using the OEM bundling to show off WordPerfect, without any support, in the hopes that customers will like it and follow the upgrades. In this sense, they're competing head-on with the no-cost model of OSS's OpenOffice.
However, financial analysts point out that when customers of low-cost PCs upgrade their productivity software, they probably still won't want to pay. They're likely to try other low-cost alternatives instead. This could boost usage of OpenOffice and other OSS word-processing applications.
- 10 Ugly People for MCI Neighborhood commercials
- 1 WorldCom Guy to ride around office on mini-scooter
- 1 Michael Jordan to continue MCI 5-cent Sunday commercials with Donald Duck
- 10 UUNet people to help spammers contribute to Usenet
- 303 Telemarketers
Without these key positions, how could WorldCom possibly go on as a going concern?!Is $77k/year a lot? No! That money's not just salary, but also benefits (which they're legally required to provide salaried employees), support costs, office space, etc. A human resources manager once told me that salary is only 50% of the total cost of having an employee, and I think that's accurate. So, $40-$45k for employees, $60-$70k for managers... that seems perfectly fair.
(Excluding the fact that WorldCom is a corrupt company, this money is coming from taxpayers, and instead WorldCom should be shut down instead to set an example.)
This is exactly the converse of what people were saying in the first comments of this thread. "It costs more to call mobile phones in Europe, so get used to it."
Well, in the US, people on mobile phones always pay for their incoming calls. The minutes you get per month are for both outgoing and incoming calls, and if you're roaming, it doesn't matter who called whom. And we don't feel ripped off, because we're used to paying for our half of the connection.
This brings up an interesting situation. I was living in the UK for a semester, from the US, and my dad would call my UK-based mobile phone. He was on a 10-cents-to-Europe plan, so he expected to be charged 10 cents per minute. Well, that's not what happened -- he had to pay per-minute international mobile charges. These were essentially the same charges UK land-line owners pay to call UK mobile phones, but three times as much. He fought the charges, and since AT&T didn't really understand international mobile calls, he won.
But what should have happened? I'd suspect US land-line callers to UK mobile phones should pay a higher rate. Otherwise who's paying for the mobile connection?