The A students fail second year maths and drop out, start their own business, make a packet in a few years, go insolvent, and end up getting a job.
The B students get jobs, realise that they won't be able to keep up with the pace of change forever, study management, get promoted.
Most of the C students go out and get jobs. They will be replaced in time by younger C students with more recent education. Some of them may get promoted to management, where they will be flamed by their underlings for incompetence.
The remainder of the C students go into academia, where they remain blissfully unaware that half of the knowledge and skill behind software engineering is management.
Let me see if I understand this. You want to invest cash into upgrading the developer PCs. No additional money will be made by this investment (because your company business model is to bill by the hour).
In other words its not an investment so much as an expense.
The problem here comes from (1) your lack of understanding of "the Jewish principle", and (2) your lack of understanding of productivity.
The Jewish principle is pretty simple. $1 out, more than $1 in. As long as you're doing this consistently, you're doing good business.
Productivity, on the other hand, is poorly understood. You think you are being more productive because you are able to work faster. But that's efficiency, not productivity. You see, to be productive you must also be effective, that is, there must be some commercial value in what you are doing.
By way of example: a factory that produces 10,000,000 tins of powdered ethernet cable per day has a productivity of zero because there is no market for powdered ethernet cable. It is a marvelously effecient factory, but it is adding no value, and its not being productive.
The fundamental part of productivity is adding value. If you're not adding value, then you're not being productive. Most people think of "unproductive" as the time they spend shirking off, browsing the Internet, chatting to friends on IRC, etc. But if the "real work" you are doing doesn't add some value to the business, then it's no different to shirking off -- its unproductive.
From a business perspective, your boss is exactly right. If the PC upgrades cannot bring in more money for the business, then they will not make you more productive, just more efficient. No value is added, so the expense cannot be justified (*).
If, on the other hand, you could spend the time you save on activities that add value to the business, it would make sense to upgrade.
(*) There are of course other justifications for expenses, for example, the upgrades could improve the working environment and the morale of employees.
... or you stop trying to fuck Africa by stealing the one industry it can turn into a cash cow (tourism), and instead encourage development of ecotourism which will see the conservation of these species in their natural habitat.
There are dozens of public and private initiatives throughout Africa to save various endangered species, but most are cash strapped. Instead of supporting actual people doing actual work, these "scientists" are creaming themselves over a pet experiment that has no basis in reality.
Let's assume for a moment that all "alternative" therapies are hogwash, and that a placebo-controlled study will show that they are no more effective than a placebo. Does that make them ineffective, or wrong?
Western medicine measures its effectiveness compared to a placebo, but sometimes a placebo is sufficiently effective not to require the medicine.
For example, bed rest may get you through an illness in 7 days. A treatment you believe is effective may have you up after 5 days; with a provably effective pill it may be just 4 days. Isn't the placebo treatment worth something?
And here's the really interesting question: what if you give the provably effective pill to a group and tell them it is a placebo and won't do anything? Will they still be up in 4 days, or will it be 5 or 6?
Because you're telling them things like "Stop smoking, don't drink so much, cut down the fat, get some excersize, brush your teeth and watch your diet".
Really? I speak to plenty of people who are disillusioned with doctors. Their doctors don't tell them to eat right or exercise until they're already on blood pressure pills and facing late onset diabetes. Face the facts: doctors have a vested interest in your continued illness.
As with any career, the vast majority of doctors are out there to make money, not to make the world a better place. They'll get by listening to as few symptoms as they can, and prescribing anti-biotics for your cold because you want it and otherwise you'll visit the competition down the road. Then they'll bitch about money-grabbing charlatans with their "alternative therapies" that are equally ineffective.
On a personal note, I was diagnosed with IBS after consulting two doctors and three specialists. As with most IBS cases, I didn't respond well to treatment. Drugs simply didn't help, nor did a diet with reduced insoluable fibers and fats. Cut the fried foods, the red meat, the caffine and chocolate, and the alcohol, and guess what? The problem gets worse.
Why? Because I'm fucking gluten intolerant, not IBS.
Big surprise that. Considering it took two GPs, an ENT and an assortment of other acronyms six burst eardrums and nine years of "incurable" sinusitis to figure out that I had a dust allergy. Wait -- they didn't. That was an optometrist who realised my eyes were unusually dry. Back at the doctors and its "take this antihistamine to relieve your symptoms". Mmm... no reference to 'nasal corticosteriods' in the category 'improved quality of life'. And they certainly won't tell you that salt water up yer schnoz before bed will probably do just as well.
I've heard a doctor tell a patient that you shouldn't take vitamins because they "clog up your system"; tell an asthmatic to "grow up" and learn to breath without medication; recommend back surgery to someone who just needed a new mattrass. But I've never heard a doctor say "Sorry, my mistake" or "You can pay once I've cured you".
Take a look at the people you work with (or have worked with). How many of them do you trust to do their jobs right, first time, without supervision? 50%? 25%? Just you? So how many shit doctors do you figure there are out there?
The attitude and lack of knowledge of (most of) the Slashdot crowd never ceases to amaze me. How is it that supposedly intelligent people who get uppity when other professions question their idiosyncrasies, are unable to grasp the concept that other professions have bodies of knowledge with theoretical models and their own technical jargon?
The list on Watson's website is one third corrupted management terminology, one third English idiom (as in real English, not Americanisationalicismal English), and one third journalist creativity. The list simply shows that untrained people are attempting to use words they don't understand; in much the same way as a user will explain to tech support that their 20 Gigahertz hard drive won't boot, or Thunderbird won't dial up (both real examples).
Management, economics, law and accounting are all business sciences. They use observation, modelling and model testing to build a body of knowledge that can be applied to real-world situations. In this process each discipline develops its own jargon that has specific meaning within the discipline.
For example, "core competence" is mentioned in another thread. Most people understand it to be either the essential or base skills necessary to do a job ("at the core"), or the things that a person or company does really well ("our/my core competence is Java programming"). It is neither. The management idiom "core competence" refers to the distinctive skills that are difficult to imitate and that give a business a competitive advantage. Read the wikipedia .
In the interview Watson talks about the CIA having "internal clients". This is like an author mocking the concept of internal interfaces in a modular software system. A business is an interconnected system; each employee performs some function that is either an output to the customers of the business, or an input to the function of another employee. By establishing a supplier-customer relationship between employees or functions, each employee becomes more involved in the quality of inputs and outputs, and accountable to employees other than their manager. This is the basis of TQM.
Here's a big finger for White Wolf and their bullshit posturing. There is no legal basis for the enforcement on these "rules", not to mention that they've phrased it as a request.
The only relevant law in this case is Copyright. By using their legal monopolgy, a Copyright owner can force you to agree to the terms of a license in order to use their products (or simply not sell you the product), BUT:
1. That only applies when the license is agreed up-front, as part of the contract of sale;
2. That does not apply when the purchaser does not have the opportunity to review and agree to the license before purchase (or to return the purchased item at no cost to themselves).
Here WW is attempting to apply new terms to copies they have already sold, and those copies are books where the purchaser does not have the opportunity to review the license.
In addition, courts apply the doctrine of first sale to books, which (for consumers) translates to doing whatever you want with it as long as you don't infringe the basic rights given to the holder under Copyright law: duplication, translation, derivation.
The only leg WW has to stand on is to claim that by role playing using their system and world you are creating a derived work. Since the book is sold explicitly for this purpose, that's going to get a whole lot of laughter.
Any arguments regarding commercial use are bullshit. Copyright doesn't distinguish between commercial and non-commercial use. The right is either reserved by the holder, or not. Unless the books came with a "license" that forbade commercial use (they cite DVDs for example, which explicitly prohibit renting or public performance) then they have no basis to enforce these "rules".
ActiveState pays several developers to work full-time on PHP, Python and Tcl, and a lot of their work goes into the core distributions not just ActiveState's proprietary development environments.
None of these products in under copyleft. Enlightened self-interest is more effective than a big stick.
Corporate management has a fiduciary duty to maximize stakeholder wealth in the long term. Maintaining acceptable profit levels is only one aspect of that goal. Companies that go all-out to maximize return to shareholders find that their business model is unsustainable and they burn out.
Contrary to your assertions regarding short term self interest, most people engage in long term planning and understand the risks of sacrificing long term returns for short term profits. Around the world most public companies now face government regulation or bourse rules for corporate governance, which makes stakeholder wealth (not shareholder profit) their fiduciary duty.
So if a company can sustain a business model by taking and not giving back, it will probably do so. But in most cases it is in the company's interests to give back. For example, it makes economic sense for a company with an embedded Linux platform to contribute fixes back to the original source tree, because it takes more effort to maintain a separate patch tree in-house.
The way you present this makes me think: shouldn't derived or adapted works have a shorter term of protection than the original? This makes original work even more lucrative, while still offering sufficient protection to adaptions, and allowing for more rapid growth of the public domain.
For digital electronics, O'Reilly's Designing Embedded Hardware is brilliant. I have the first edition, and it takes you through digital circuits with practical examples of putting together AVRs and other small chips with memory and peripherals. It doesn't cover FPGAs or VHDL though.
I've suffered from the billion bookmarks problem too, and I believe "delete it" is sound advise.
For some background, take a look at the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. You'll realise that having so many bookmarks doesn't assist you in any way. There are too many to be used for reference material, and too many to consult regularly.
Instead, try to do the following:
1. Have a list of "TO DO" bookmarks. Those sites you want to take a closer look at, articles you want to read, etc. When you have spare time, work over this list. Once handled the bookmark must be moved off this list.
2. Have a list of "Regular" bookmarks. These are sites you want to visit regularly. You could subcategorise them as daily, weekly, monthly (or hourly for Slashdot;) ).
3. Have a list of "Reference" bookmarks and criteria for adding new ones. Carefully choosing your criteria is important. I suggest that you never put a bookmark directly into reference, but put it into "TO DO" first so that you review it at least one at a later time before deciding on its importance. Then omit any bookmarks to information that can be easily found by searching. Then ask yourself "would I use this as reference if I printed it out and filed it in a cabinet?" If yes, then it makes it in as a reference bookmark.
You'll suddenly find that you have a managable amount of reference material, and can categorise it easily according to your needs.
IANAEE, but you can protect your hardware with a switching regulator. You can also ensure correct polarity by using a bridge rectifier, if your regulator chip doesn't provide that functionality for you.
If horror films have taught us nothing it's that when freakishly large mutant insects attack (TM) you just run and hope you aren't the extra with no name who's destined to die in the first 20 minutes.
Absolutely true. In fact, the best thing you can do is grab a nearby member of the opposite gender who knows your name, exclaim each other's names loudly and with emotion, have a brief but emotional dialog about seeing each other when this is all over, then run for cover.
Although this will almost certainly put you in line for some nasty incidents, you're more or less guaranteed to survive until the reunion at the end of the first victory. Careful behaviour at that time will make you a main character in the sequel and you should survive that too.
I know SFA about cars. But if a mechanic tells me my car needs to be fixed, I'll ask for clarification. Typically the mechanic pops the hook, points at things and says stuff like "well as you can see this elbow has worn through and is leaking oil; some of that go onto engine which is what caused the smoke, but it also burned through some electrics over there". He could be bullshitting me blind, but the approach and the fact that he can show me something that doesn't look right (I know what a pipe with a hole in it looks like) gives me confidence.
Switch to Joe Average Computer Support. He comes in, screws with the system for four hours, then says its fixed, and bills me. So what was wrong? "Well I downloaded an anti-virus update, new patches for your operating system, upgraded your anti-spyware, cleaned the computer, changed some configurations in Internet Explorer, emptied the recycle bin, shut down and restarted, installed a new graphics driver, changed the network adapter, and then it worked." Okay... so I'm paying you how much for the diagnostics because you're incompetent, and how much to actually fix my problem?
Forget computer irregulars -- I know plenty of "geeks" that get nailed by every type of malware out there.
Here's the "test yourself" bit: You get an e-mail purportedly from a reputable magazine publisher; they're doing a pre-launch offer on their new IT magazine and invite you to get a free 12 month subscription if you complete an IT profile questionnaire (you know, general stuff about you and your industry). There are links to the publisher's site and to the subscription / questionnaire. The questionnaire needs some personal information like name, postal address and telephone number, plus you need to create a password for an account and give some password recovery info (mother's maiden name, etc).
So is it a scam? Note that this is pre-launch, so there's nothing on the publisher's site about this new magazine. The publisher does make this sort of offer (subscription in exchange for IT profile information) quite often though. The subscription link is on a different domain to the publisher's site, although the domain home points to the publisher's site.
How far will you go in investigating the validity of this offer? Will you ignore the offer of a years' free subscription? Did you notice that you're giving away enough information to be subject to identify theft?
1. Many drivers are expected to demonstrate basic comprehension of the car interface as part of acquiring their driving license. There is no equivalent license requirement for Internet access because the Internet is not an inherently deadly technology.
2. Car interfaces have remained consistent over time. The top-of-the-line 2005 Mercedes and a cheap Japanese import from 1980 use the same basic approach to control the car and notify drivers about its status.
3. Despite that, many people have no idea what any car status information means. If they see a light on the dash that isn't usually there, they take the car to an auto garage.
4. Computers don't have such a simplistic model of status reporting as cars do, nor can they determine if there is a problem (as you can with many engine faults), not can a user be expected to contact an expert every time on account of the frequency of incidents.
Yes, users need to learn to use the technology and respond correctly. This is done by making the interface simple and consistent, and educating users.
Expecting users to understand the differences between a virus, a trojan, a keylogger, spyware, phishing, 419 scams, spam, junk mail, and a crash bug in Internet Explorer is not only ridiculous, but pointless. If you can detect the problem (the computer is behaving differently to normal) you can either fix it by hitting the "Download Updates and Check My System" button, or you call in an expert.
Haven't seen any conspiracy theorists so far pick up on the "32 bit password" bit. Assuming the drive doesn't delay or stop responding to access attempts after a number of tries, this could be cracked in a matter of hours.
Ah, the simplicity of licenses and Copyright law:)
Here's the full picture:
The original code from DeveloperWorks is under the GPL.
The GPL is concerned with distribution. This is a really important fact that most people miss. You can take GPL source, modify it and use it without restriction as long as you don't distribute your modifications. Once you start to distribute, you must comply with the GPL's requirements (to distribute the source code on demand). In short you only create a derivative work once you begin to distribute your modifications.
Code that you write belongs to you, or possibly by contract to some other intellectual proprty owner. We'll call whoever owns this code "The Owner".
If you add code to a GPL application, that code belongs to The Owner. The GPL license does not automatically trump The Owner's absolute rights to the code.
To distribute a modified GPL application, The Owner must take a decision to surrender rights and abide by the GPL. The GPL prohibits distribution unless The Owner takes this course of action, but The Owner has an alternative course of action which is not to distribute the modified (derived) GPL application.
So you are very correct in saying "If they distribute it, they *must* obey the GPL".
Going a step further...
If someone (not The Owner) distributes a derived GPL application, they are in shit. They have contravened Copyright law by taking the additional / modified code (which is the property of The Owner) and released it under the GPL license, which they don't have the right to do. Only The Owner has the right to surrender the rights they hold.
The Owner can take the additional / modified code and move it to modify an application that isn't under the GPL (e.g. under BSD or a proprietary license). As long as they never took the decision to distribute the derived GPL application (and to surrender their rights) that code remains their proprietary property.
The situation here is a little more complicated in terms of what happened when. The employer doesn't have any rights to the code that was written before the employee joined, unless they have obtained those rights by some agreement (which clearly didn't happen)... but any further changes since the start of employment could (and probably do) belong to the employer.
If those changes made during the period of employment contain the patentable aspects, then the employer's actions in terms of seeking a patent appear to be legitimate. Otherwise they are not.
The employer certainly has no right to distribute this derived GPL application without making the source code available on demand.
Actually, drugs cost money, so it's back to your primary cure;)
But more seriously, with the exception of chronic conditions, drugs should only be used to assist the body to overcome some temporary condition. Behavioural therapy is often a more effective long-term treatment for many mental conditions.
vanity publishers don't limit selection of authors to the set of readers. Indeed they work on the asumption that there will be no readers.
If you bothered to read up on vanity publishing, you'd find that there are several forms. They include limiting publication to subscribers (with or without a payment to submit an article), and the "no readers" model you describe, plus others.
But the publisher only gets payed if you are published. Vanity publication.
Congratulations on joining the FUD brigade. Define an arbitrary category of something you disagree with to be <some nasty-sounding name>, then tell everyone about it.
Let's get something straight: the point of vanity publishing is to get your work into a publication at low risk to the publisher. It occurs because you want to get published for personal or commercial reasons, but don't want to go through the problem of selling yourself to a publishing house, or aren't good enough in their eyes. Vanity publishers generally don't care about what they are publishing, because they've created a low-risk commercial model. As a result vanity publishing tends to result in lower quality to the reader.
Vanity publishing is not defined by who pays who; that's just a correlation based on the commercial model that has been adopted. So saying "the author pays, it must be vanity publishing" is bullshit.
No, you pay to have your work reviewed by a panel selected by the publisher. If the publisher only gets payed if you are published that might just influence selection don't you think?
Finish the loop: publisher selects a poorer panel and publishes more and lower quality articles in order to make money, readership drops off as the journal loses its reputation for quality, this means authors are less eager to submit to your journal and prefer others with a better reputation, so you're forced to publish more of the lower-quality articles that you receive. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Capatalist economics certainly works more directly and obviously with a reader-pays system, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work with an author-pays system. These journals can only survive by reputation when the author pays.
The alternative (current model) is to have readers pay, which (i) reduces the potential audience of your work
A system which puts your work undr the eyes of interested readers optimised use of those hours. it is more likely that someone who is in the right position to build on your work doesn't subscribe to that particular journal
Almost no one subscribes to journals. Institutions do.
You missed the point. There are many journals out there. People get access (via whatever channel is available) to only a few of the many available in their field, on account of the cost involved. Thus in a reader-pays model, the work of a particular author will only be seen by a small portion of the potentially interested audience.
In an author-pays model, it costs nothing (except time) to read journals. Assuming that the quality of the journal remains the same, every reader can read every journal in the field, giving the author a wider audience, all of whom are interested in the paper.
Ie the people who would pay to vanity publish if they could.
Only they can't pay to get published. They pay to get reviewed, which gives them a shot at publication if their paper passes the review. So if you're only able to produce crap, then you're paying to waste money.
I don't feel that the overall economic cost of the journal system is at all significant in the context of the economy of the world
Its probably not. But it does account for 100% of the economic cost and efficiency of the journal system. If it costs (say) $1 to filter out a paper before it goes to re
No, it's not. The author-pays model does not limit submissions to subscribers only (subscription is open and free), nor does payment guarantee you publication.
You pay to have your work reviewed by an independent panel of experts in the field, to ensure its quality and applicability, and to ensure that readers can rely on the information they acquire from the journal.
The alternative (current model) is to have readers pay, which (i) reduces the potential audience of your work, (ii) reduces scientific advancement because it is more likely that someone who is in the right position to build on your work doesn't subscribe to that particular journal, and (iii) is ecnomoically more costly as a whole because of the filtering that must take place to eliminate "chancers".
Once your paper has passed the review process, the "best" (according to the subjective judgement of the editor) make it into a particular issue.
Perhaps a more suitable model is to separate the publication from the review. A number of institutions (universities, journals, etc) work together to maintain a large group of experts who are "lead reviewers". Authors pay to submit papers to a review process, and may voluntarily get involved in reviewing papers of other authors in order to offset their costs. Each paper requires at least one lead reviewer, and every reviewer must have published at least one reviewed paper. Then the author submits the reviewed paper to a journal, and the journal selects the "best" and most appropriate papers (from the editor's perspective) for their journal. If you are rejected you can go to another journal, but you don't have to have your paper reviewed again.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange. In the "real world" ...
The A students fail second year maths and drop out, start their own business, make a packet in a few years, go insolvent, and end up getting a job.
The B students get jobs, realise that they won't be able to keep up with the pace of change forever, study management, get promoted.
Most of the C students go out and get jobs. They will be replaced in time by younger C students with more recent education. Some of them may get promoted to management, where they will be flamed by their underlings for incompetence.
The remainder of the C students go into academia, where they remain blissfully unaware that half of the knowledge and skill behind software engineering is management.
Let me see if I understand this. You want to invest cash into upgrading the developer PCs. No additional money will be made by this investment (because your company business model is to bill by the hour).
In other words its not an investment so much as an expense.
The problem here comes from (1) your lack of understanding of "the Jewish principle", and (2) your lack of understanding of productivity.
The Jewish principle is pretty simple. $1 out, more than $1 in. As long as you're doing this consistently, you're doing good business.
Productivity, on the other hand, is poorly understood. You think you are being more productive because you are able to work faster. But that's efficiency, not productivity. You see, to be productive you must also be effective, that is, there must be some commercial value in what you are doing.
By way of example: a factory that produces 10,000,000 tins of powdered ethernet cable per day has a productivity of zero because there is no market for powdered ethernet cable. It is a marvelously effecient factory, but it is adding no value, and its not being productive.
The fundamental part of productivity is adding value. If you're not adding value, then you're not being productive. Most people think of "unproductive" as the time they spend shirking off, browsing the Internet, chatting to friends on IRC, etc. But if the "real work" you are doing doesn't add some value to the business, then it's no different to shirking off -- its unproductive.
From a business perspective, your boss is exactly right. If the PC upgrades cannot bring in more money for the business, then they will not make you more productive, just more efficient. No value is added, so the expense cannot be justified (*).
If, on the other hand, you could spend the time you save on activities that add value to the business, it would make sense to upgrade.
(*) There are of course other justifications for expenses, for example, the upgrades could improve the working environment and the morale of employees.
... or you stop trying to fuck Africa by stealing the one industry it can turn into a cash cow (tourism), and instead encourage development of ecotourism which will see the conservation of these species in their natural habitat.
There are dozens of public and private initiatives throughout Africa to save various endangered species, but most are cash strapped. Instead of supporting actual people doing actual work, these "scientists" are creaming themselves over a pet experiment that has no basis in reality.
Let's assume for a moment that all "alternative" therapies are hogwash, and that a placebo-controlled study will show that they are no more effective than a placebo. Does that make them ineffective, or wrong?
Western medicine measures its effectiveness compared to a placebo, but sometimes a placebo is sufficiently effective not to require the medicine.
For example, bed rest may get you through an illness in 7 days. A treatment you believe is effective may have you up after 5 days; with a provably effective pill it may be just 4 days. Isn't the placebo treatment worth something?
And here's the really interesting question: what if you give the provably effective pill to a group and tell them it is a placebo and won't do anything? Will they still be up in 4 days, or will it be 5 or 6?
Really? I speak to plenty of people who are disillusioned with doctors. Their doctors don't tell them to eat right or exercise until they're already on blood pressure pills and facing late onset diabetes. Face the facts: doctors have a vested interest in your continued illness.
As with any career, the vast majority of doctors are out there to make money, not to make the world a better place. They'll get by listening to as few symptoms as they can, and prescribing anti-biotics for your cold because you want it and otherwise you'll visit the competition down the road. Then they'll bitch about money-grabbing charlatans with their "alternative therapies" that are equally ineffective.
On a personal note, I was diagnosed with IBS after consulting two doctors and three specialists. As with most IBS cases, I didn't respond well to treatment. Drugs simply didn't help, nor did a diet with reduced insoluable fibers and fats. Cut the fried foods, the red meat, the caffine and chocolate, and the alcohol, and guess what? The problem gets worse.
Why? Because I'm fucking gluten intolerant, not IBS.
Big surprise that. Considering it took two GPs, an ENT and an assortment of other acronyms six burst eardrums and nine years of "incurable" sinusitis to figure out that I had a dust allergy. Wait -- they didn't. That was an optometrist who realised my eyes were unusually dry. Back at the doctors and its "take this antihistamine to relieve your symptoms". Mmm ... no reference to 'nasal corticosteriods' in the category 'improved quality of life'. And they certainly won't tell you that salt water up yer schnoz before bed will probably do just as well.
I've heard a doctor tell a patient that you shouldn't take vitamins because they "clog up your system"; tell an asthmatic to "grow up" and learn to breath without medication; recommend back surgery to someone who just needed a new mattrass. But I've never heard a doctor say "Sorry, my mistake" or "You can pay once I've cured you".
Take a look at the people you work with (or have worked with). How many of them do you trust to do their jobs right, first time, without supervision? 50%? 25%? Just you? So how many shit doctors do you figure there are out there?
And 16 photocopied pages of tables.
At least its not Role Master.
The attitude and lack of knowledge of (most of) the Slashdot crowd never ceases to amaze me. How is it that supposedly intelligent people who get uppity when other professions question their idiosyncrasies, are unable to grasp the concept that other professions have bodies of knowledge with theoretical models and their own technical jargon?
The list on Watson's website is one third corrupted management terminology, one third English idiom (as in real English, not Americanisationalicismal English), and one third journalist creativity. The list simply shows that untrained people are attempting to use words they don't understand; in much the same way as a user will explain to tech support that their 20 Gigahertz hard drive won't boot, or Thunderbird won't dial up (both real examples).
Management, economics, law and accounting are all business sciences. They use observation, modelling and model testing to build a body of knowledge that can be applied to real-world situations. In this process each discipline develops its own jargon that has specific meaning within the discipline.
For example, "core competence" is mentioned in another thread. Most people understand it to be either the essential or base skills necessary to do a job ("at the core"), or the things that a person or company does really well ("our/my core competence is Java programming"). It is neither. The management idiom "core competence" refers to the distinctive skills that are difficult to imitate and that give a business a competitive advantage. Read the wikipedia .
In the interview Watson talks about the CIA having "internal clients". This is like an author mocking the concept of internal interfaces in a modular software system. A business is an interconnected system; each employee performs some function that is either an output to the customers of the business, or an input to the function of another employee. By establishing a supplier-customer relationship between employees or functions, each employee becomes more involved in the quality of inputs and outputs, and accountable to employees other than their manager. This is the basis of TQM.
Here's a big finger for White Wolf and their bullshit posturing. There is no legal basis for the enforcement on these "rules", not to mention that they've phrased it as a request.
The only relevant law in this case is Copyright. By using their legal monopolgy, a Copyright owner can force you to agree to the terms of a license in order to use their products (or simply not sell you the product), BUT:
1. That only applies when the license is agreed up-front, as part of the contract of sale;
2. That does not apply when the purchaser does not have the opportunity to review and agree to the license before purchase (or to return the purchased item at no cost to themselves).
Here WW is attempting to apply new terms to copies they have already sold, and those copies are books where the purchaser does not have the opportunity to review the license.
In addition, courts apply the doctrine of first sale to books, which (for consumers) translates to doing whatever you want with it as long as you don't infringe the basic rights given to the holder under Copyright law: duplication, translation, derivation.
The only leg WW has to stand on is to claim that by role playing using their system and world you are creating a derived work. Since the book is sold explicitly for this purpose, that's going to get a whole lot of laughter.
Any arguments regarding commercial use are bullshit. Copyright doesn't distinguish between commercial and non-commercial use. The right is either reserved by the holder, or not. Unless the books came with a "license" that forbade commercial use (they cite DVDs for example, which explicitly prohibit renting or public performance) then they have no basis to enforce these "rules".
Hence requirements gathering as the first step in the developmenbt process.
None of these products in under copyleft. Enlightened self-interest is more effective than a big stick.
Corporate management has a fiduciary duty to maximize stakeholder wealth in the long term. Maintaining acceptable profit levels is only one aspect of that goal. Companies that go all-out to maximize return to shareholders find that their business model is unsustainable and they burn out.
Contrary to your assertions regarding short term self interest, most people engage in long term planning and understand the risks of sacrificing long term returns for short term profits. Around the world most public companies now face government regulation or bourse rules for corporate governance, which makes stakeholder wealth (not shareholder profit) their fiduciary duty.
So if a company can sustain a business model by taking and not giving back, it will probably do so. But in most cases it is in the company's interests to give back. For example, it makes economic sense for a company with an embedded Linux platform to contribute fixes back to the original source tree, because it takes more effort to maintain a separate patch tree in-house.
The way you present this makes me think: shouldn't derived or adapted works have a shorter term of protection than the original? This makes original work even more lucrative, while still offering sufficient protection to adaptions, and allowing for more rapid growth of the public domain.
For digital electronics, O'Reilly's Designing Embedded Hardware is brilliant. I have the first edition, and it takes you through digital circuits with practical examples of putting together AVRs and other small chips with memory and peripherals. It doesn't cover FPGAs or VHDL though.
I've suffered from the billion bookmarks problem too, and I believe "delete it" is sound advise.
For some background, take a look at the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. You'll realise that having so many bookmarks doesn't assist you in any way. There are too many to be used for reference material, and too many to consult regularly.
Instead, try to do the following:
1. Have a list of "TO DO" bookmarks. Those sites you want to take a closer look at, articles you want to read, etc. When you have spare time, work over this list. Once handled the bookmark must be moved off this list.
2. Have a list of "Regular" bookmarks. These are sites you want to visit regularly. You could subcategorise them as daily, weekly, monthly (or hourly for Slashdot ;) ).
3. Have a list of "Reference" bookmarks and criteria for adding new ones. Carefully choosing your criteria is important. I suggest that you never put a bookmark directly into reference, but put it into "TO DO" first so that you review it at least one at a later time before deciding on its importance. Then omit any bookmarks to information that can be easily found by searching. Then ask yourself "would I use this as reference if I printed it out and filed it in a cabinet?" If yes, then it makes it in as a reference bookmark.
You'll suddenly find that you have a managable amount of reference material, and can categorise it easily according to your needs.
IANAEE, but you can protect your hardware with a switching regulator. You can also ensure correct polarity by using a bridge rectifier, if your regulator chip doesn't provide that functionality for you.
Also take a look at the 'pedia's info on DC to DC converters.
Absolutely true. In fact, the best thing you can do is grab a nearby member of the opposite gender who knows your name, exclaim each other's names loudly and with emotion, have a brief but emotional dialog about seeing each other when this is all over, then run for cover.
Although this will almost certainly put you in line for some nasty incidents, you're more or less guaranteed to survive until the reunion at the end of the first victory. Careful behaviour at that time will make you a main character in the sequel and you should survive that too.
Damnit Jim. I'm a driver, not a mechanic.
I know SFA about cars. But if a mechanic tells me my car needs to be fixed, I'll ask for clarification. Typically the mechanic pops the hook, points at things and says stuff like "well as you can see this elbow has worn through and is leaking oil; some of that go onto engine which is what caused the smoke, but it also burned through some electrics over there". He could be bullshitting me blind, but the approach and the fact that he can show me something that doesn't look right (I know what a pipe with a hole in it looks like) gives me confidence.
Switch to Joe Average Computer Support. He comes in, screws with the system for four hours, then says its fixed, and bills me. So what was wrong? "Well I downloaded an anti-virus update, new patches for your operating system, upgraded your anti-spyware, cleaned the computer, changed some configurations in Internet Explorer, emptied the recycle bin, shut down and restarted, installed a new graphics driver, changed the network adapter, and then it worked." Okay ... so I'm paying you how much for the diagnostics because you're incompetent, and how much to actually fix my problem?
Forget computer irregulars -- I know plenty of "geeks" that get nailed by every type of malware out there.
Here's the "test yourself" bit: You get an e-mail purportedly from a reputable magazine publisher; they're doing a pre-launch offer on their new IT magazine and invite you to get a free 12 month subscription if you complete an IT profile questionnaire (you know, general stuff about you and your industry). There are links to the publisher's site and to the subscription / questionnaire. The questionnaire needs some personal information like name, postal address and telephone number, plus you need to create a password for an account and give some password recovery info (mother's maiden name, etc).
So is it a scam? Note that this is pre-launch, so there's nothing on the publisher's site about this new magazine. The publisher does make this sort of offer (subscription in exchange for IT profile information) quite often though. The subscription link is on a different domain to the publisher's site, although the domain home points to the publisher's site.
How far will you go in investigating the validity of this offer? Will you ignore the offer of a years' free subscription? Did you notice that you're giving away enough information to be subject to identify theft?
1. Many drivers are expected to demonstrate basic comprehension of the car interface as part of acquiring their driving license. There is no equivalent license requirement for Internet access because the Internet is not an inherently deadly technology.
2. Car interfaces have remained consistent over time. The top-of-the-line 2005 Mercedes and a cheap Japanese import from 1980 use the same basic approach to control the car and notify drivers about its status.
3. Despite that, many people have no idea what any car status information means. If they see a light on the dash that isn't usually there, they take the car to an auto garage.
4. Computers don't have such a simplistic model of status reporting as cars do, nor can they determine if there is a problem (as you can with many engine faults), not can a user be expected to contact an expert every time on account of the frequency of incidents.
Yes, users need to learn to use the technology and respond correctly. This is done by making the interface simple and consistent, and educating users.
Expecting users to understand the differences between a virus, a trojan, a keylogger, spyware, phishing, 419 scams, spam, junk mail, and a crash bug in Internet Explorer is not only ridiculous, but pointless. If you can detect the problem (the computer is behaving differently to normal) you can either fix it by hitting the "Download Updates and Check My System" button, or you call in an expert.
Achoo!
Your subscription to Allergy Weekly has been paid. Thank you.
Haven't seen any conspiracy theorists so far pick up on the "32 bit password" bit. Assuming the drive doesn't delay or stop responding to access attempts after a number of tries, this could be cracked in a matter of hours.
Ah, the simplicity of licenses and Copyright law :)
Here's the full picture:
So you are very correct in saying "If they distribute it, they *must* obey the GPL".
Going a step further ...
Mod +1 (Sad But True)
Actually, drugs cost money, so it's back to your primary cure ;)
But more seriously, with the exception of chronic conditions, drugs should only be used to assist the body to overcome some temporary condition. Behavioural therapy is often a more effective long-term treatment for many mental conditions.
If you bothered to read up on vanity publishing, you'd find that there are several forms. They include limiting publication to subscribers (with or without a payment to submit an article), and the "no readers" model you describe, plus others.
Congratulations on joining the FUD brigade. Define an arbitrary category of something you disagree with to be <some nasty-sounding name>, then tell everyone about it.
Let's get something straight: the point of vanity publishing is to get your work into a publication at low risk to the publisher. It occurs because you want to get published for personal or commercial reasons, but don't want to go through the problem of selling yourself to a publishing house, or aren't good enough in their eyes. Vanity publishers generally don't care about what they are publishing, because they've created a low-risk commercial model. As a result vanity publishing tends to result in lower quality to the reader.
Vanity publishing is not defined by who pays who; that's just a correlation based on the commercial model that has been adopted. So saying "the author pays, it must be vanity publishing" is bullshit.
Finish the loop: publisher selects a poorer panel and publishes more and lower quality articles in order to make money, readership drops off as the journal loses its reputation for quality, this means authors are less eager to submit to your journal and prefer others with a better reputation, so you're forced to publish more of the lower-quality articles that you receive. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Capatalist economics certainly works more directly and obviously with a reader-pays system, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work with an author-pays system. These journals can only survive by reputation when the author pays.
You missed the point. There are many journals out there. People get access (via whatever channel is available) to only a few of the many available in their field, on account of the cost involved. Thus in a reader-pays model, the work of a particular author will only be seen by a small portion of the potentially interested audience.
In an author-pays model, it costs nothing (except time) to read journals. Assuming that the quality of the journal remains the same, every reader can read every journal in the field, giving the author a wider audience, all of whom are interested in the paper.
Only they can't pay to get published. They pay to get reviewed, which gives them a shot at publication if their paper passes the review. So if you're only able to produce crap, then you're paying to waste money.
Its probably not. But it does account for 100% of the economic cost and efficiency of the journal system. If it costs (say) $1 to filter out a paper before it goes to re
No, it's not. The author-pays model does not limit submissions to subscribers only (subscription is open and free), nor does payment guarantee you publication.
You pay to have your work reviewed by an independent panel of experts in the field, to ensure its quality and applicability, and to ensure that readers can rely on the information they acquire from the journal.
The alternative (current model) is to have readers pay, which (i) reduces the potential audience of your work, (ii) reduces scientific advancement because it is more likely that someone who is in the right position to build on your work doesn't subscribe to that particular journal, and (iii) is ecnomoically more costly as a whole because of the filtering that must take place to eliminate "chancers".
Once your paper has passed the review process, the "best" (according to the subjective judgement of the editor) make it into a particular issue.
Perhaps a more suitable model is to separate the publication from the review. A number of institutions (universities, journals, etc) work together to maintain a large group of experts who are "lead reviewers". Authors pay to submit papers to a review process, and may voluntarily get involved in reviewing papers of other authors in order to offset their costs. Each paper requires at least one lead reviewer, and every reviewer must have published at least one reviewed paper. Then the author submits the reviewed paper to a journal, and the journal selects the "best" and most appropriate papers (from the editor's perspective) for their journal. If you are rejected you can go to another journal, but you don't have to have your paper reviewed again.