Hasn't that already happened. There have been several instances where local town councils "Adopt" new building codes. To save time and effort they adopt a standard code prodcued elsewhere. Builders then find themselved in the position of having to "Pay " to access the codes and regulations that they must follow!
You have my sympathies. I met some of the guys that used to load naval munitions with Explosive-D back in the Vietnam conflict era. They would go home after a shift tasting the 'D from the dust. Eventually their eyes, hair,skin and fingernails would get a yellowish hue.
The entry-level physics course had the option of using PLATO for all of the homework. The system could show animated demonstrations of the mechanics problems you had to solve.
Ahh who could forget the E and M homework quiz sets on PLATO for Physics 107. Of the joy of ferverishly working a problem typing in the answer as 107V, and getting PLATO to say:
It's called value pricing. All price is based on value achieved vs expenses. What is your project worth (what value do they obtain) to them? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? What is the project lifetime? Does this project meet a short term need or a long term goal?
Understanding these issue will help you find your price. Just because they could do it in house doesn't mean that they ever will - because it would mean pulling resources off of higher value projects to do this one. You know this project must be of less value than any other project in progress - otherwise they would already be working on it.
Say for the sake of argument - having your project completed to their specifications would save them $100,000 per year for the next 5 years. That $500,000 total value. Convert that to current dollars (since money today is more valueable than money tomorrow) So it is worth approximately $200k.
Can you ask for $50,000? Sure $200k - $50k = $150k --> that's a 300% return on investment!!! At $100k its a 100% ROI.
Hell, at the corporation I work at any project with a ROI > 30% is no-brainer.
Now having calculated the potential value and made an estimate of your share - ask the hard question - can you do the work in under a 1000 hours to support a $50/hour wage
Programming languages (C in this case) are fairly orthoganal. It's easy for two people to both come up with the exact same solution in complete isolation, there's often only one "right" way to accomplish something.
Actually, the pig heart valves (and human ones as well) suffer from calcification. When the valves are removed they are process with a fixitive to perserve them. Once implanted, the valves begin to calcify (harden) and slowly begin to fail to work. To be honest the mechanical ones scare the hell out of me. When they fail, the fail quickly causing you to die unless you can get to a hospital immediately.
The basis for your question is your belief that the quick solution will bring in the revenue/land the contract/ whatever.
I think that assumption is wrong and here is why:
Outside of new economy / dotcom era, things really don't move that quickly in the business world. I work for a fortune 300 company and we are lucking to make a decision about anything less than 60 days. I used to do government contracting and that was 1-2 year contracting sales cycle.
Bottom line if your customers are existing/established businesses, then there are rules in place to prevent anyone from spending lots of money quickly. So time is always really on your side. Even when sales and marketing say that something is a done deal, its a go, we starting right now, it will probably be weeks before contracts are signed and checks cut and expenses authorized.
Stop believing the lie that everything has to happen NOW, NOW, NOW.
And ask your self, if the sucess or failure of your company is dependent on feature X being availble right now, why wasn't that identified long before this crucial moment? Whose doing the product development? Who is gathering requirements in advance of customer need? If your customer base is still in the fast and furious mode are they long for this world? If your company doesn't have a long term plan and is just reactionary are they long for this world?
I used to play RPS on the U of Illinois PLATO/ NOVENET system. Someone had written a radmon generator which you could play against. The help documents offer a summary of the various strategies (always play rock, since you win 1/3 lose 1/3 tie 1/3. Similar justification for sissors and paper. Although paper had the advantage that you could play one handed since 'P' and enter are close together) The most interesting stategy was the Blackwell Gambit - always chose the one that will win. When implemented effectively, it is great stategy, of course few implementations are effective.
I can see it working on two levels: It could aggregate the thumbs up thumbs down ratings or it could aggregate the season passes and scheduled records you request. Which I think would be great.
Actually it is even more complicated. Your examples above deal with common household type pipe nad plumbing. In the Chemical Processing industry it gets even more complex with Schedule 20, Schedule 40 pipe, each rated for different pressures and applications. Size pipe for an application involves knowing the flow rates to determine the optimum pipe inner diameter, knowing the operating conditions to determine the pipe wall thickness, and knowing the fluid composition in order to determine the additional wall thickness required to allow for corrisions and other effects.
According to a recent article in Wired Magazine, XCOR is not in the X-Priz competetion as their research vehicle is only designed to carry one not three as required by the X-Prize rules
Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship Set in the same universe as the Niven/Pournelle books Mote in God's Eye and The gripping hand and Jerry's other stand alone works involving Falkenbergs Leagions and Prince of Mercenaries
Alchol Dehydrogenase converts methonal to formaldahye which attachs the rod structure of the eye causing blindness. The treatment for methonal poisoning is large quantities of ethanol administered for days. The reason: alcohol dehydrogenase preferentially binds ethonal over methonal. By having a large quantity of ethonal arround, you inhibit the formaldahyde production. Methonal is than removed by the kidneys.
I could see them asking for a cut from the net, but the gross? That's just greed. No value added services, no special gamehouse edition, nothing.
But you read slashdot right? MPAA, RIAA, and how artists get screwed because their take is tied to the net, and nothing makes money because expenses are padded. Same thing here.
Gross revenue is the only number that means anything. Who's to say that you don;t have a umbrella company that actually owns everything and leases back to the gamehouse. And suprise suprise, the costs of leasesing everything exactly equal the net revenue. Hence zero Net, and no licensing fees paid to the suckers who agreed to the net revenue basis.
As George Lucas said, always get a cut of the gross.. and the merchandising rights..
The issue is trademark law. If you allow your trade marked name to come into common usage you lose your trade mark protection. Thats why it is called Kleenex(tm) facial tissue, or Lycra(tm) spandex or Spam(tm) luncheon meat.
If google the verb gets into the dictionary, then someone else could come along and start a MyGoogle.com search site and Google would not be able to shut them down.
Their lawsuit won't stop you or I from using google as a verb, but it will stop journalists from propogating the use. Just like everyone says they are going to make a xerox, you wont find that usage in an newspaper article (not without a nasty letter from the Xerox Corporation!!)
We spend a lot of time complaining about Copyright law on slashdot, but Trademark Law is just as screwy. I could Trademark JohnG for my online internet comment generating company and go around and get the accounts of JohnG's everywhere deactivated on every internet disucussion forum.
) ISPs should allow users to report SPAM and falsified headers,
Wouldn't a better approach be for the SMTP servers to not accept mail with falsified headers in the first place. I mean if the headers are inconsistent to the point where Joe Computer user can make the determination, why can't that activity be in the SMTP servers themselves?
So this is really a variation on brute force attacks on login/password combinations. Where you don't know a username to begin with and the system is dumb enough to tell you if it is the username or password that is incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
Hasn't that already happened. There have been several instances where local town councils "Adopt" new building codes. To save time and effort they adopt a standard code prodcued elsewhere. Builders then find themselved in the position of having to "Pay " to access the codes and regulations that they must follow!
You have my sympathies. I met some of the guys that used to load naval munitions with Explosive-D back in the Vietnam conflict era. They would go home after a shift tasting the 'D from the dust. Eventually their eyes, hair,skin and fingernails would get a yellowish hue.
Ahh who could forget the E and M homework quiz sets on PLATO for Physics 107. Of the joy of ferverishly working a problem typing in the answer as 107V, and getting PLATO to say
No.
Only to find that the correct answer was 107 V
Joy Joy Joy.
It's called value pricing. All price is based on value achieved vs expenses. What is your project worth (what value do they obtain) to them? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? What is the project lifetime? Does this project meet a short term need or a long term goal?
Understanding these issue will help you find your price. Just because they could do it in house doesn't mean that they ever will - because it would mean pulling resources off of higher value projects to do this one. You know this project must be of less value than any other project in progress - otherwise they would already be working on it.
Say for the sake of argument - having your project completed to their specifications would save them $100,000 per year for the next 5 years. That $500,000 total value. Convert that to current dollars (since money today is more valueable than money tomorrow) So it is worth approximately $200k.
Can you ask for $50,000? Sure $200k - $50k = $150k --> that's a 300% return on investment!!! At $100k its a 100% ROI.
Hell, at the corporation I work at any project with a ROI > 30% is no-brainer.
Now having calculated the potential value and made an estimate of your share - ask the hard question - can you do the work in under a 1000 hours to support a $50/hour wage
You mean Mosaic from the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois.
Mozilla was Netscape's mascot - The Mosaic Killer
Programming languages (C in this case) are fairly orthoganal. It's easy for two people to both come up with the exact same solution in complete isolation, there's often only one "right" way to accomplish something.
Yet another reason to use Perl!
Actually, the pig heart valves (and human ones as well) suffer from calcification. When the valves are removed they are process with a fixitive to perserve them. Once implanted, the valves begin to calcify (harden) and slowly begin to fail to work. To be honest the mechanical ones scare the hell out of me. When they fail, the fail quickly causing you to die unless you can get to a hospital immediately.
Reminds me of the old joke about how having a wife and a mistress is the best situation for a scientist/engineer/geek.
The wife assumes you are with the mistress,
The mistress assume you are with the wife,
So you can go to the lab and get some work done.
Of course this requires two nigh-impossible things - namely a wife and a mistress.
I guess professional sports shows that having children outside of marriage has no detrimental effect on creativity
The basis for your question is your belief that the quick solution will bring in the revenue/land the contract/ whatever.
I think that assumption is wrong and here is why:
Outside of new economy / dotcom era, things really don't move that quickly in the business world. I work for a fortune 300 company and we are lucking to make a decision about anything less than 60 days. I used to do government contracting and that was 1-2 year contracting sales cycle.
Bottom line if your customers are existing/established businesses, then there are rules in place to prevent anyone from spending lots of money quickly. So time is always really on your side. Even when sales and marketing say that something is a done deal, its a go, we starting right now, it will probably be weeks before contracts are signed and checks cut and expenses authorized.
Stop believing the lie that everything has to happen NOW, NOW, NOW.
And ask your self, if the sucess or failure of your company is dependent on feature X being availble right now, why wasn't that identified long before this crucial moment? Whose doing the product development? Who is gathering requirements in advance of customer need? If your customer base is still in the fast and furious mode are they long for this world? If your company doesn't have a long term plan and is just reactionary are they long for this world?
I used to play RPS on the U of Illinois PLATO/ NOVENET system. Someone had written a radmon generator which you could play against. The help documents offer a summary of the various strategies (always play rock, since you win 1/3 lose 1/3 tie 1/3. Similar justification for sissors and paper. Although paper had the advantage that you could play one handed since 'P' and enter are close together) The most interesting stategy was the Blackwell Gambit - always chose the one that will win. When implemented effectively, it is great stategy, of course few implementations are effective.
I can see it working on two levels: It could aggregate the thumbs up thumbs down ratings or it could aggregate the season passes and scheduled records you request. Which I think would be great.
Ask an englishmen for a recipie.
Reminds me of a sign my friend from Italy had over his desk in Grad Schoool.
Heaven is where
the Police are British
the Chefs are French
the Auto Mechanics German
the lovers Italian
and it's all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the
The Police are German
the Chefs are British
the Auto Mechanics French
the lovers Swiss
and it's all organized by the Italians.
Actually it is even more complicated. Your examples above deal with common household type pipe nad plumbing. In the Chemical Processing industry it gets even more complex with Schedule 20, Schedule 40 pipe, each rated for different pressures and applications. Size pipe for an application involves knowing the flow rates to determine the optimum pipe inner diameter, knowing the operating conditions to determine the pipe wall thickness, and knowing the fluid composition in order to determine the additional wall thickness required to allow for corrisions and other effects.
According to a recent article in Wired Magazine, XCOR is not in the X-Priz competetion as their research vehicle is only designed to carry one not three as required by the X-Prize rules
Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship
Set in the same universe as the Niven/Pournelle books Mote in God's Eye and The gripping hand and Jerry's other stand alone works involving Falkenbergs Leagions and Prince of Mercenaries
So the Issue Date is May 1987. Meaning in 2007 I'm free to use this technology for my evil purposes. BWHAHAHAHAHA!
Thought Crime!
Thought Crime!!
Thought Crime!!!
Now I have to report you to the authorites lest I be made an accessory.
AAAAHHHHHHH! The pain, the pain, make it stop!!!!!!
You cruel, cruel man. That movie was two hours of my life that I can never get back.
Alchol Dehydrogenase converts methonal to formaldahye which attachs the rod structure of the eye causing blindness. The treatment for methonal poisoning is large quantities of ethanol administered for days. The reason: alcohol dehydrogenase preferentially binds ethonal over methonal. By having a large quantity of ethonal arround, you inhibit the formaldahyde production. Methonal is than removed by the kidneys.
Biochem 305 folks.
I could see them asking for a cut from the net, but the gross? That's just greed. No value added services, no special gamehouse edition, nothing.
.. and the merchandising rights..
But you read slashdot right? MPAA, RIAA, and how artists get screwed because their take is tied to the net, and nothing makes money because expenses are padded. Same thing here.
Gross revenue is the only number that means anything. Who's to say that you don;t have a umbrella company that actually owns everything and leases back to the gamehouse. And suprise suprise, the costs of leasesing everything exactly equal the net revenue. Hence zero Net, and no licensing fees paid to the suckers who agreed to the net revenue basis.
As George Lucas said, always get a cut of the gross
If it wasn't for the Aunt Nan reference, I'd swear we must be brothers. :)
The issue is trademark law. If you allow your trade marked name to come into common usage you lose your trade mark protection. Thats why it is called Kleenex(tm) facial tissue, or Lycra(tm) spandex or Spam(tm) luncheon meat.
If google the verb gets into the dictionary, then someone else could come along and start a MyGoogle.com search site and Google would not be able to shut them down.
Their lawsuit won't stop you or I from using google as a verb, but it will stop journalists from propogating the use. Just like everyone says they are going to make a xerox, you wont find that usage in an newspaper article (not without a nasty letter from the Xerox Corporation!!)
We spend a lot of time complaining about Copyright law on slashdot, but Trademark Law is just as screwy. I could Trademark JohnG for my online internet comment generating company and go around and get the accounts of JohnG's everywhere deactivated on every internet disucussion forum.
) ISPs should allow users to report SPAM and falsified headers,
Wouldn't a better approach be for the SMTP servers to not accept mail with falsified headers in the first place. I mean if the headers are inconsistent to the point where Joe Computer user can make the determination, why can't that activity be in the SMTP servers themselves?
So this is really a variation on brute force attacks on login/password combinations. Where you don't know a username to begin with and the system is dumb enough to tell you if it is the username or password that is incorrect.