Ahh, FIOS. The one thing I actually like Verizon for.
I never thought I'd see the day when a major service provider would run fiber for the last mile. And at very affordable prices. They're going to save a lot of money over the long run.
Now, if I could just convince them to keep the speed of my connection over 50 mbps...
I'm actually surprised that Google hasn't started getting into the film business. With all the dark fiber they've bought, they have the capacity to service the entire country.
I'd prefer a company with a spine. The problem with certain business types is that man times they are too afraid to tell their clients or their suppliers when something just isn't going to happen.
It's the classic problem of valuing one relationship over another. NetFlix doesn't want to piss off the content providers by telling them that they aren't going to license their content for higher prices, for fear that the content providers will cut them off; instead, out of fear, they are playing into the content provider's hands, and screwing up their relationship with their customers.
In the end, NetFlix ends up pissing off a lot of their customers, and charging them higher prices. The content providers, who have NetFlix now on this treadmill, will continue jacking up content prices until NetFlix keels over and dies. NetFlix's demise will be greatly aided by the content provider's themselves coming out with their own competing service, for less money than NetFlix.
You see, the content providers (these particular ones) have a particular MO, and have a penchant for avarice that compares favorably with that of a two year old. They want ALL of the money, not just SOME of it. See the history of DRM if you need examples of content providers going a little insane.
The best thing NetFlix can do is tell the content providers that while they would like to continue offering their content to end users, they cannot for the prices they ask. If they have to make a choice, they'd prefer to remove the content provider's content, and stay in business, rather than lose their customers through attrition, ultimately resulting in NetFlix's collapse. After all, NetFlix has a duty to its shareholders, and they can make more money, by offering less content at lower prices, than more content at prices likely to bankrupt them.
One of the biggest problems the Japanese had with adapting to the American automobile market was a miscalculation in what Americans wanted in a car. The Japanese, at one point, were shipping cars that focused on luxury, and were not really selling. After some market research, they found that Americans prefer utility over luxury, and have since modified their offerings to match American tastes.
So, instead of cars with leather seats and soft rides, you have cars whose focus is on versatility. Notice how many of these cars these days do not really fit into the station wagon, sedan, or compact paradigms of old? Notice how they kind of hit two or more of them? Your Subaru is good for rough trails, driving around with friends, picking up groceries, putting a bike rack on top, etc., but it's not as smooth a ride as a Rolls Royce. It has a MP3 CD player, but it doesn't have leather seats. It has great fuel efficiency, but the acceleration isn't very high. It doesn't have a built-in teapot or umbrella, but it does have 4-wheel drive.
Hmm. Sounded more like there was a falling out between the guy who actually made the company (performed the actual work of consequence), and the guy who owned the company. So, guy who made the company resigned / was fired, and guy who owns the company brings in someone who is green to replace him (thinking to mold him into the kind of subservient tech he wants him to be). Battle of the Egos, and if only one person made the company beforehand, the new guy is going to fail. Probably tons of undocumented code, business logic, and designs which will run for a while, then stop.
Probably going to have to replace everything, in the long run.
As opposed to management and their insistence that anyone is replaceable (except themselves) for pennies on the dollar. Sometimes, the lone wolf thing is just a HR-speak for "not a team player," sometimes it's a precursor to replacing someone with someone else who costs less.
The only place I can see that possibly making any sense is if you were a genius level programmer, at the head of your own company, and had a net worth of more than a million. Since he mentioned at least one other person (predecessor) and talks about a position...I'm thinking not.
And dual-timing IT / programming for commerce is NOT a good idea, for any site with any traffic. You split those roles if you have that much traffic.
So, I'm guessing it's a LAMP shop, doing stuff that most (seasoned) programmers would run from.
Color laser printers aren't cheap upfront; they're incredibly cheap over the long run, assuming you print more than 20 pages ever.
It's the razor blade model of printing that's screwing things up. Everyone gets a free inkjet printer with their computer these days, and doesn't think about the cost of the ink. It seems such a small, but constant cost. Who is going to perform the math to find out they are paying out the ass? Who is good at estimating how much they print for a given time period? Chances are, people think they print less than they actually do.
Perhaps a sports analogy will work here: if you only see one game a season, buy just the one ticket; if you see more than one (5,6? more?), why not try the season pass?
I'm trying to grasp the mental gymnastics involved in going from owning a color laser to leasing one. Was any drinking involved? Did any of the male executives suddenly spring out of their office smelling like the leasing company's female representative?
Sell off the capital buildings, then rent them from the new owners. Claim profits during your term, and put it into the programs of your supporters. Let the next guy figure out how to pay the rent.
A company switches from high-quality, expensive software to low-quality, inexpensive software, and over several years fall apart. It just takes longer than the average attention span to notice this somewhat predictable pattern, and it's rarely reversed.
Some executives are so deadly to companies, they might actually be government agents. But of course, by the time the company crashes, those executives have long since moved onto greener pastures.
Greenhouses, gotcha. And other crew members, if you really crave a steak. ^_^
The one thing that bothers me about using recycled waste to create more food is the problem of parasites. If one person has it, soon everyone will. Though thoroughly cooking the food might work, I still have some doubts for certain types of cysts / eggs. Microwaves do not work on some of them.
I think I'd pass everything through a blowtorch before using it with the plants. Or perhaps through the ship's engines.
At some point, with all the things that can go wrong, with a need for replacement parts, you might need to fit a ship with a machine room, so you can fabricate the parts on site. You would also need another room(s) for storing the resources to be used in the machine room. And people intelligent and well trained enough to be able to use those machine. I can understand why the training for astronauts was so rigorous (fixing a breadboard while spinning, that sort of thing).
Of course, the need for such things is somewhat lessened by improving the speed by which we travel through space. If you are traveling out of the solar system, and it will take 20 years, you tend to screen people quite extensively (25 years of age, perfect health, polymath, can outswim a shark...that sort of thing). If you are traveling out of the solar system, and it takes 5 days, well, even the geek with diabetes, coke bottle glasses, and partially deaf can make the journey (also the guy who helped develop the engines used in those ships...you know those scientists / engineers want to fly the freaking thing, and they'd fake the screenings if they could found out how).
Perhaps some mining equipment or matter scoops? Still going to need to replenish materials from time to time...perhaps something directed towards asteroid mining?
Still is, but since we have an election (here in the US) coming up shortly, I've developed an allergy to everything even remotely political.
While I don't mind my political (or any, for that matter) views being challenged (and either confirmed or mended, as the occasion merits), I am loathe to spend time with people with whom logic and reasoning (let alone science, math, or philosophy) is as a forgotten third-removed cousin, even among people who agree with my views.
I'm just not a fan of the NFL way we are running politics.
Which, of course, is where seasoned IT people eventually end up. You get so exposed to confidential data, that after a while, you don't even want to know anymore.
When you're young, privilege escalation is fun (not just necessary, for when you need to get sh*t done in a timely fashion); when you get older, it's no longer fun, as you become the sole person responsible for some critical functions that will get you out of bed at 3 AM, because only you have the access rights to fix the problem.
And yes, working with someone on a daily basis whose (not very well hidden) pictures include someone else (within the company, married, but not to this person), the boardroom table (after hours), a black paddle, and something to do with the new espresso coffee machine in the company break room (from which you will never drink another cup of coffee, ever again), can be a trifle unnerving (mentally suppressing those images ever time you see them).
I can live in a society without absolute moral authority; moral authority, IMHO, is only brought up someone wants to fight a war without a good reason.
I cannot live, for long, in any society, where reason is considered unnecessary to life. As a personal anecdote, I ran across an article a while back, which detailed a study by psychologists, who, in the article's summary conclusion, promoted the idea that the origin of reason was the need for yet another weapon.
Allow me to restate that sentence: Reason is just another form of psychological warfare, according to this article.
Not "reason is what helps you decide whether or not to walk off a cliff, or reminds to you keep your hand off the hot stove," but "reason is as a sword with which to stick your opponent."
The practical upshot of this little tidbit, having been disseminated by the masses, was a conversation I had with a family member some time afterwards, who said, to the effect, "Now there you go trying to use reason to get your way again." Not rhetoric, mind you, but reason. Apparently, now that reason had been identified as some sort of psychological weapon, people are making a pointed effort not to understand what you are attempting to convey so as to not "get hurt." We've gone past the mark of lacking proper vocabulary, understanding of grammar, maths, or sciences as a problem of understanding when conversing with one another, and have reached the point where reason itself is held in contempt.
Agreed, which is why third-party cloud services are so vexing. I get nightmares about uploading a new program to a cloud, and having someone (in-house) just "taking a look" at it. And having done IT for many, many years, I know for a sad fact that if someone sees something they might want, they will make a copy of it. You know, as well as I do, that at least one person in your IT department (>5 people) will make a copy of something they find interesting (if you don't, just wait a few years for experience to teach you otherwise). No amount of legalese will prevent that. The more people you have, the more people will be making copies; doubly so with anyone who claims to be in charge of security. All it takes is one poorly paid (or not so poorly paid) tech trying to make rent that month, and suddenly that new algorithm you were working on is up for sale to the competition.
Of course, that's what libertarians are about, you know, giving money to corrupt industry leaders and politicians, and bailing out huge banks. - Sarcasm, to the 9th degree.
Interesting. Though I am curious why Silicon life hasn't already evolved on the Earth.
Think about it. There isn't necessarily a reason why Silicon / Carbon / other-based lifeforms can't all evolve in the same environment. There's no law, save those of Physics / Chemistry / etc., that says that if you have one, you cannot have the other.
So, why is earth filled with only Carbon-based lifeforms (to our knowledge)? Perhaps there is something poisonous about our planet, with regards to Silicon lifeforms, such that they might evolve on other, more hospitable planets.
Were I a lawyer, I'd be looking at fraud...messages sent to and from people's phones without their authorization, silently jacking up people's phone bills (not everyone has unlimited data/messaging/talk). And were I Congress, I'd consider it under my jurisdiction because of their favorite clause in the constitution, the interstate commerce clause...someone is going to buy something, even if it's a ringtone, on one of those phones, and chances are the ringtone company is out of state, ergo it's interstate commerce, ergo "Congress must regulate it."
I'll be in the other room, drinking. Thinking like this always depresses me. That it's getting easier to do so is a sure sign that the pills aren't working anymore...^_^
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, FIOS. The one thing I actually like Verizon for.
I never thought I'd see the day when a major service provider would run fiber for the last mile. And at very affordable prices. They're going to save a lot of money over the long run.
Now, if I could just convince them to keep the speed of my connection over 50 mbps...
I'm actually surprised that Google hasn't started getting into the film business. With all the dark fiber they've bought, they have the capacity to service the entire country.
I'd prefer a company with a spine. The problem with certain business types is that man times they are too afraid to tell their clients or their suppliers when something just isn't going to happen.
It's the classic problem of valuing one relationship over another. NetFlix doesn't want to piss off the content providers by telling them that they aren't going to license their content for higher prices, for fear that the content providers will cut them off; instead, out of fear, they are playing into the content provider's hands, and screwing up their relationship with their customers.
In the end, NetFlix ends up pissing off a lot of their customers, and charging them higher prices. The content providers, who have NetFlix now on this treadmill, will continue jacking up content prices until NetFlix keels over and dies. NetFlix's demise will be greatly aided by the content provider's themselves coming out with their own competing service, for less money than NetFlix.
You see, the content providers (these particular ones) have a particular MO, and have a penchant for avarice that compares favorably with that of a two year old. They want ALL of the money, not just SOME of it. See the history of DRM if you need examples of content providers going a little insane.
The best thing NetFlix can do is tell the content providers that while they would like to continue offering their content to end users, they cannot for the prices they ask. If they have to make a choice, they'd prefer to remove the content provider's content, and stay in business, rather than lose their customers through attrition, ultimately resulting in NetFlix's collapse. After all, NetFlix has a duty to its shareholders, and they can make more money, by offering less content at lower prices, than more content at prices likely to bankrupt them.
A while ago.
One of the biggest problems the Japanese had with adapting to the American automobile market was a miscalculation in what Americans wanted in a car. The Japanese, at one point, were shipping cars that focused on luxury, and were not really selling. After some market research, they found that Americans prefer utility over luxury, and have since modified their offerings to match American tastes.
So, instead of cars with leather seats and soft rides, you have cars whose focus is on versatility. Notice how many of these cars these days do not really fit into the station wagon, sedan, or compact paradigms of old? Notice how they kind of hit two or more of them? Your Subaru is good for rough trails, driving around with friends, picking up groceries, putting a bike rack on top, etc., but it's not as smooth a ride as a Rolls Royce. It has a MP3 CD player, but it doesn't have leather seats. It has great fuel efficiency, but the acceleration isn't very high. It doesn't have a built-in teapot or umbrella, but it does have 4-wheel drive.
Hmm. Sounded more like there was a falling out between the guy who actually made the company (performed the actual work of consequence), and the guy who owned the company. So, guy who made the company resigned / was fired, and guy who owns the company brings in someone who is green to replace him (thinking to mold him into the kind of subservient tech he wants him to be). Battle of the Egos, and if only one person made the company beforehand, the new guy is going to fail. Probably tons of undocumented code, business logic, and designs which will run for a while, then stop.
Probably going to have to replace everything, in the long run.
As opposed to management and their insistence that anyone is replaceable (except themselves) for pennies on the dollar. Sometimes, the lone wolf thing is just a HR-speak for "not a team player," sometimes it's a precursor to replacing someone with someone else who costs less.
Thank you. That sentence bothered me as well.
The only place I can see that possibly making any sense is if you were a genius level programmer, at the head of your own company, and had a net worth of more than a million. Since he mentioned at least one other person (predecessor) and talks about a position...I'm thinking not.
And dual-timing IT / programming for commerce is NOT a good idea, for any site with any traffic. You split those roles if you have that much traffic.
So, I'm guessing it's a LAMP shop, doing stuff that most (seasoned) programmers would run from.
Color laser printers aren't cheap upfront; they're incredibly cheap over the long run, assuming you print more than 20 pages ever.
It's the razor blade model of printing that's screwing things up. Everyone gets a free inkjet printer with their computer these days, and doesn't think about the cost of the ink. It seems such a small, but constant cost. Who is going to perform the math to find out they are paying out the ass? Who is good at estimating how much they print for a given time period? Chances are, people think they print less than they actually do.
Perhaps a sports analogy will work here: if you only see one game a season, buy just the one ticket; if you see more than one (5,6? more?), why not try the season pass?
I'm trying to grasp the mental gymnastics involved in going from owning a color laser to leasing one. Was any drinking involved? Did any of the male executives suddenly spring out of their office smelling like the leasing company's female representative?
Same tactic politicians use.
Sell off the capital buildings, then rent them from the new owners. Claim profits during your term, and put it into the programs of your supporters. Let the next guy figure out how to pay the rent.
Might I suggest the same outcome may be found by switching from inkject printers and copiers to the color laser variants? :-p
And you don't even need to purchase the auditing software...
Oh, it certainly does, over the long term.
A company switches from high-quality, expensive software to low-quality, inexpensive software, and over several years fall apart. It just takes longer than the average attention span to notice this somewhat predictable pattern, and it's rarely reversed.
Some executives are so deadly to companies, they might actually be government agents. But of course, by the time the company crashes, those executives have long since moved onto greener pastures.
Greenhouses, gotcha. And other crew members, if you really crave a steak. ^_^
The one thing that bothers me about using recycled waste to create more food is the problem of parasites. If one person has it, soon everyone will. Though thoroughly cooking the food might work, I still have some doubts for certain types of cysts / eggs. Microwaves do not work on some of them.
I think I'd pass everything through a blowtorch before using it with the plants. Or perhaps through the ship's engines.
Hmm. I always wondered about that.
At some point, with all the things that can go wrong, with a need for replacement parts, you might need to fit a ship with a machine room, so you can fabricate the parts on site. You would also need another room(s) for storing the resources to be used in the machine room. And people intelligent and well trained enough to be able to use those machine. I can understand why the training for astronauts was so rigorous (fixing a breadboard while spinning, that sort of thing).
Of course, the need for such things is somewhat lessened by improving the speed by which we travel through space. If you are traveling out of the solar system, and it will take 20 years, you tend to screen people quite extensively (25 years of age, perfect health, polymath, can outswim a shark...that sort of thing). If you are traveling out of the solar system, and it takes 5 days, well, even the geek with diabetes, coke bottle glasses, and partially deaf can make the journey (also the guy who helped develop the engines used in those ships...you know those scientists / engineers want to fly the freaking thing, and they'd fake the screenings if they could found out how).
Perhaps some mining equipment or matter scoops? Still going to need to replenish materials from time to time...perhaps something directed towards asteroid mining?
Still is, but since we have an election (here in the US) coming up shortly, I've developed an allergy to everything even remotely political.
While I don't mind my political (or any, for that matter) views being challenged (and either confirmed or mended, as the occasion merits), I am loathe to spend time with people with whom logic and reasoning (let alone science, math, or philosophy) is as a forgotten third-removed cousin, even among people who agree with my views.
I'm just not a fan of the NFL way we are running politics.
Which, of course, is where seasoned IT people eventually end up. You get so exposed to confidential data, that after a while, you don't even want to know anymore.
When you're young, privilege escalation is fun (not just necessary, for when you need to get sh*t done in a timely fashion); when you get older, it's no longer fun, as you become the sole person responsible for some critical functions that will get you out of bed at 3 AM, because only you have the access rights to fix the problem.
And yes, working with someone on a daily basis whose (not very well hidden) pictures include someone else (within the company, married, but not to this person), the boardroom table (after hours), a black paddle, and something to do with the new espresso coffee machine in the company break room (from which you will never drink another cup of coffee, ever again), can be a trifle unnerving (mentally suppressing those images ever time you see them).
I can live in a society without absolute moral authority; moral authority, IMHO, is only brought up someone wants to fight a war without a good reason.
I cannot live, for long, in any society, where reason is considered unnecessary to life. As a personal anecdote, I ran across an article a while back, which detailed a study by psychologists, who, in the article's summary conclusion, promoted the idea that the origin of reason was the need for yet another weapon.
Allow me to restate that sentence: Reason is just another form of psychological warfare, according to this article.
Not "reason is what helps you decide whether or not to walk off a cliff, or reminds to you keep your hand off the hot stove," but "reason is as a sword with which to stick your opponent."
The practical upshot of this little tidbit, having been disseminated by the masses, was a conversation I had with a family member some time afterwards, who said, to the effect, "Now there you go trying to use reason to get your way again." Not rhetoric, mind you, but reason. Apparently, now that reason had been identified as some sort of psychological weapon, people are making a pointed effort not to understand what you are attempting to convey so as to not "get hurt." We've gone past the mark of lacking proper vocabulary, understanding of grammar, maths, or sciences as a problem of understanding when conversing with one another, and have reached the point where reason itself is held in contempt.
If this doesn't bother you, it should.
Agreed, which is why third-party cloud services are so vexing. I get nightmares about uploading a new program to a cloud, and having someone (in-house) just "taking a look" at it. And having done IT for many, many years, I know for a sad fact that if someone sees something they might want, they will make a copy of it. You know, as well as I do, that at least one person in your IT department (>5 people) will make a copy of something they find interesting (if you don't, just wait a few years for experience to teach you otherwise). No amount of legalese will prevent that. The more people you have, the more people will be making copies; doubly so with anyone who claims to be in charge of security. All it takes is one poorly paid (or not so poorly paid) tech trying to make rent that month, and suddenly that new algorithm you were working on is up for sale to the competition.
UPS Ground?
Law of unintended consequences.
Of course, that's what libertarians are about, you know, giving money to corrupt industry leaders and politicians, and bailing out huge banks. - Sarcasm, to the 9th degree.
Interesting. Though I am curious why Silicon life hasn't already evolved on the Earth.
Think about it. There isn't necessarily a reason why Silicon / Carbon / other-based lifeforms can't all evolve in the same environment. There's no law, save those of Physics / Chemistry / etc., that says that if you have one, you cannot have the other.
So, why is earth filled with only Carbon-based lifeforms (to our knowledge)? Perhaps there is something poisonous about our planet, with regards to Silicon lifeforms, such that they might evolve on other, more hospitable planets.
Were I a lawyer, I'd be looking at fraud...messages sent to and from people's phones without their authorization, silently jacking up people's phone bills (not everyone has unlimited data/messaging/talk). And were I Congress, I'd consider it under my jurisdiction because of their favorite clause in the constitution, the interstate commerce clause...someone is going to buy something, even if it's a ringtone, on one of those phones, and chances are the ringtone company is out of state, ergo it's interstate commerce, ergo "Congress must regulate it."
I'll be in the other room, drinking. Thinking like this always depresses me. That it's getting easier to do so is a sure sign that the pills aren't working anymore...^_^
Then it may be time to remind them that they cannot. ;-)
Why not both?
If the programmer is lazy enough, he'll write one tool that does both.