That's partly caused by another characteristic of modern society: EVERYTHING has somebody who is responsable of. We don't believe in accidents anymore. Shit happens, wait no, it doesn't. When something goes wrong people always start looking for someone to blame.
This seems to more or less track the mutation of responsibility from expecting people to be active to expecting them to be "pro-active".
I hate that word. It sounds ugly, is frequently mis-used when "active" would be sufficient and we managed to to quite well without it for many, many years.
The only thing stopping the richest from protecting themselves by exterminating everyone else is the shitty quality of the robots.
And the fact that the poorer people ultimately control what the richest people can and cannot do through politics. As long as the very rich are a tiny minority, they will always be at the mercy of the majority, that can 'democratically' decide to steal their wealth and do with it whatever they please.
I'm sure that any number of medieval serfs would have been interested in knowing that.
You've paid your share of the fixed costs of the PHYSICAL medium... Now it's time to pay your share of the fixed cost to GENERATE and HOST ebooks/pdfs.
Although the "master" copy of the book is most likely in digital form somewhere, you can't say with a straight face that it costs nothing to turn that into something available on amazon (or elsewhere). Time to convert it to the standard ebook/pdf, programming to provide service, hard drive space, electricity, ISP charges, etc... Its undoubtedly less, when considering mass "production", than $3/per but it's still Amazon's prerogative to make money.
(I say this knowing full well that I'll "pirate" PDF/ebooks for stuff I already "own" without guilt. I wouldn't consider paying $10-15+ for an ebook when I have the physical copy... I will consider up to $3, personally, just to know I'm not getting a bad copy - virus', bad scans, etc.)
(I wish this was an option for audio-books... I can't see myself paying $10 for a paper book and then $45 for the audio book, which is too common. I don't buy audio books for this reason, although I own the hard copies for most of my audio books)
Unless the general book market is a lot different than what I have seen working in more specialized areas, I doubt very seriously that you'll find a publisher willing to accept a manuscript submitted on typewritten pages. Unless maybe it was from Stephen King, where it would be worth it to pay a typist. And King isn't a Luddite anyway. He's been using computers longer than a lot of people.
There is a certain amount of work to be done in converting to ebook format, but not that much. The computer-ready manuscript already needs to be made flexible by the initial editors, since a book will often be printed in different form factors: hardbound, trade edition, paperback. And book files are generally pretty compact by Terabyte standards, so a single drive could hold much, if not all of their entire inventory. Drives are cheap. Servers are cheap. Even electricity isn't that expensive. In short, ebook costs above and beyond the basics required for hardcover publication aren't going to be that high. I won't say that there's a flat minimum price I'd pay for the ebook edition, although any publisher who wants to throw one in for free gets my hearty approval.
And, of course, the ones who charge more for unshareable electronic editions than the paperback price can go sit in the corner,
I loved that book. Also The Space Merchants, and pretty much anything of his I've encountered. One of the greats.
I'm going to have to number The Space Merchants among the classics of SF. Lesser-known and much later came the sequel The Merchants War, which points out the problem of going to extremes and ends with the perhaps unsatisfying, but very true-to-life conclusion that there Is No Perfect Answer.
Pohl was good at keeping himself fresh. Every couple of years, long after you'd have thought he'd retired and passed on, something new would pop up on the bookstore shelves. All good things must come to an end, alas.
Perhaps he will replace Ballmer. He does appear to have the desired 'consumers should just shut the fsck up and buy what we tell them to' attitude to consumer relations and seems as adept at handling employees and morale to make the shift in leadership seamless.
Somehow I suspect the problem at Microsoft is the board. They aquired the stock while liking the mindset of the management and having kept Ballmer for so long they obviously want that. They'll keep running it the same way, all the way into the eventual crash into the ground.
There are those who have speculated that this may be the case.
I think that anyone who do something as foolish as tie their company's future to an also-ran platform would not the be best choice to resuscitate the moribund Microsoft, but they don't pay me vast sums of money because I'm required to make the right decisions.
Re:Happened in L.A., too...
on
Building Melts Car
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· Score: 3, Informative
Locally, I worked in a building that had an IBM mainframe on the 9th floor. A large building erected across the river had an an angled base and reflective sides and about 4 in the afternoon, the focal point was right on us. Had to install solar film to keep from overheating.
I'm not sure what the vegans and homosexuals have to do with this, but if i remember, a lot of this started under bush and has been embraced wholeheartedly by the present administration. If you think this is about left vs. right, you don't understand american politics.
I dont think anyone understands 'Murican politics and if anyone did understand 'Murican politics it would be instantaneously replaced with something even more unexplainable and convoluted.
A lot of it started under Reagan Maybe earlier, but it under that old lefty-wing Librul Gipper's watch, "Innocent until proven Guilty" went right out the window.
Time was, you didn't have to present papers (proof of citizenship) or take drug tests just to get the average job. Reagan changed all that.
Your history is curiously lacking in examples of demand-driven systems. There is a major difference between "took public transportation" and "was forced to use a state-mandated public transportation system', for example.
I was very impressed with the public transportation system in Boston. I am very UNimpressed with public transportation in the major cities of Florida. In Florida, everyone drives, thanks to urban sprawl and only poor people use the public system.
. It may also get you thrown in prison for a while
On what charges? They may deny you entry, and detain you for a little while, but actual imprisonment without charges seems like it would be a huge constitutional issue.
'Provide arrival times for the city's buses'. Yes, like the LED displays in bus shelters or the operator's website. Or even the SF Muni's own app! With countdown to arrival feature...
Where's the innovation other than he makes a profit using ads?
Seriously, not everything that is repackaged as an app exhibits entrepreneurial innovation.
A common trope by rich people who worked their tails off and sacrificed a lot in the beginning, who are told that "their fair share" has to go to support people who spend their money on frivolous gratifications. I'm not rich yet, but I plan to be. I went into the SS office and half of the people there had out their Androids/iPhones. I am a guy who is pretty into tech, but have gone without a smart phone because the ridiculous price for a data plan isn't worth it for the instant gratification of checking my email between work and home. I go without to get ahead a bit only to be told I now have to subsidize those things for others. My wife and I spend $240 a month total on food, and that includes a couple date nights out a month. Getting fast food or whatever everyday would be so much easier, but I want to improve my place. The lesson in this: Be irresponsible and you get it now and later.
Though, most rich people still look past it and still care enough for humanity that even beyond their higher taxes they are also the most generous and donate a much high percentage to charity. Keep blaming rich people and buying beer and cigarettes (if you are poor) or big screen TVs and new cars (if you are middle class) and the greatest chance in the history of the world for social mobility will never be yours.
Keep planning. If you are lucky, life won't get in the way of that plan.
And then it's only a common trope amongst the right-wing ultra wealthy crowd. Many of which were born into money.
Sorry, no. It's also a common trope amongst the right-wing wealthy-wannabe crowd. Including the ones who are pretty damned poor themselves and will only be rich, or even well-off in their dreams.
Been "rich". Been poor. Poor makes you feel like you're jammed inside a tin can with limited options. Even if you're poor with money in the bank, but unsure when you're going to become rich again.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy your way out of a lot of everyday problems. It can also offer a buffer in case the way out turned out to be a bust and you have to try something else. When you have money you can afford to make mistakes.
Stop these constant terror threats of broadcasting when the perfect weather for an attack will occur. It's insane!
You think that's funny? Ask the Spanish Armada.
There's a reason why military services maintain meteorological divisions. Weather can be a life-or-death situation. Thus, anyone who disseminates weather forecasts can be considered giving aid and comfort to the Enemy.
As vague and alarming as the UK's allegations against Miranda are, for all we know, the most damning evidence against him may be a copy of the Sunday Times.
Lets see... smoking 10 to 20 g of tobacco a day? Pretty average... smoking 10-20g of MJ everyday? good luck with that...Even as a pretty heavy user you can grow your pot at home with a growbox on 1-2 square-meter, where you'd need a rather big area to grow your daily need of tobacco (which almost surely rules out indoor growing)...considering you can harvest your weed every 8-12 weeks (depending on which sort you grow) compared to 1 harvest/year for tobacco in most climates... etc etc etc... I think you get the point. Homegrown weed comes down to about 3-5 euros per g (equipment, electricity, nutrition, etc included) so go on... try to tax the hell out of me.
Yeah, tobacco is grown commercially around here. As far as I know, you could grow it for personal use, but you don't hear about anyone doing it, despite the high taxes.
Regulate it like alcohol, including enforcing bans on driving while high, just like alcohol. Now tax the hell out of it, and end of discussion.
Question. Would taxing it control it? Unlike tobacco, or even alcohol, I thought weed was supposed to grow just like, um, weed.
Taxation can control a lot of things, but only until alternatives become less expensive ("expensive" not being solely in dollars and sense). In the case of Marijuana, the bar appears pretty low to me.
Then again, I never went that route, so I'm just guessing.
Why was it important to management that the money be earmark for a specific invoice”able” item?
If you wanted to street the project to something specific, then maybe. But retroactively ? I can’t think of any specific trigger in the tax code that would require that of a donation.
And I can’t think of any good reasons from a management viewpoint. If you want to make sure the money is spent wisely then you need to review the quality of management (or whomever decides to spend the money) not on a particular purchase. (example, the management may have done a very good job in choosing which 3D printer to purchase, but if it is a software project and does need a 3D printer it is a waste )
This just seems weird. If I were working at a charity and received this I am not sure how I would respond.
Good point.
I ran into similar problems in the corporate world where I wanted to buy products, but accounting needed an invoice and the vendor wasn't set up to deal with invoices. It was rather awkward.
More than that, however, you can you be a "non-profit organization" while invoicing? An invoice implies that you are demanding to be paid, not accepting a donation. Once you're demanding payment, you would seem to have dropped one of the primary characteristics of a charitable organization.
And then, of course, there's the final catch. Not all open-source projects are operating as legal corporations. They may not have a corporate bank account to deposit the check into. They often won't have a treasurer, much less one who can deal with large amounts of money - where not only do you have to deal with tax implications, but other things like money-laundering laws. And international finance, since open-source is often not geographically localized.
In short, there's no easy answer. It depends on who you want to give it to and how well they're set up to receive it.
An adjective such as 'hard' should be reserved for things that are adamantious. (but does it matter if adamantious is a word or not? you still know what it means....)
And they said that William F. Buckley was dead.
Actually, "adamantious" is a word more applicable to physical objects. "Hard" in the sense of "English is a language that is hard to master" is well within the bounds of acceptable usage according to the dictionaries I have.
The disgusting criminals at the top sacrificing a few pawns.
Are they pawns or are they the developers responsible for the bug? Given the extremely high salaries devs working for wall street receive, didn't you think that there was a catch. i.e. if there is a bug that causes significant embarrassment or a significant loss of money you get fired.
If so the proceeding would seem fair. You want to name your price then your performance better be damn near flawless.
If you're a CEO and you get fired, they'll often pay you more to go away than most people will make in their entire lifetime. For example, Mattel had a loser CEO who managed to make their stock worth half of what it had been. His punishment? Well, he got fired. And paid $25million.
This whole idea that the C-level guys are somehow "earning" those massive benefits by being superhuman beings needs to die, be decapitated, have a stake driven through it, burned and scattered to the winds.
A good worker is valuable, no question. But there's an old management aphorism about what you're supposed to do to irreplaceable people. The reason they get away with it has less to do with the scarcity of their talents than it does with the fact that they have one of the tightest unions around.
Slashdot Mirror
That's partly caused by another characteristic of modern society: EVERYTHING has somebody who is responsable of. We don't believe in accidents anymore. Shit happens, wait no, it doesn't. When something goes wrong people always start looking for someone to blame.
This seems to more or less track the mutation of responsibility from expecting people to be active to expecting them to be "pro-active".
I hate that word. It sounds ugly, is frequently mis-used when "active" would be sufficient and we managed to to quite well without it for many, many years.
The only thing stopping the richest from protecting themselves by exterminating everyone else is the shitty quality of the robots.
And the fact that the poorer people ultimately control what the richest people can and cannot do through politics. As long as the very rich are a tiny minority, they will always be at the mercy of the majority, that can 'democratically' decide to steal their wealth and do with it whatever they please.
I'm sure that any number of medieval serfs would have been interested in knowing that.
You've paid your share of the fixed costs of the PHYSICAL medium... Now it's time to pay your share of the fixed cost to GENERATE and HOST ebooks/pdfs.
Although the "master" copy of the book is most likely in digital form somewhere, you can't say with a straight face that it costs nothing to turn that into something available on amazon (or elsewhere). Time to convert it to the standard ebook/pdf, programming to provide service, hard drive space, electricity, ISP charges, etc... Its undoubtedly less, when considering mass "production", than $3/per but it's still Amazon's prerogative to make money.
(I say this knowing full well that I'll "pirate" PDF/ebooks for stuff I already "own" without guilt. I wouldn't consider paying $10-15+ for an ebook when I have the physical copy... I will consider up to $3, personally, just to know I'm not getting a bad copy - virus', bad scans, etc.)
(I wish this was an option for audio-books... I can't see myself paying $10 for a paper book and then $45 for the audio book, which is too common. I don't buy audio books for this reason, although I own the hard copies for most of my audio books)
Unless the general book market is a lot different than what I have seen working in more specialized areas, I doubt very seriously that you'll find a publisher willing to accept a manuscript submitted on typewritten pages. Unless maybe it was from Stephen King, where it would be worth it to pay a typist. And King isn't a Luddite anyway. He's been using computers longer than a lot of people.
There is a certain amount of work to be done in converting to ebook format, but not that much. The computer-ready manuscript already needs to be made flexible by the initial editors, since a book will often be printed in different form factors: hardbound, trade edition, paperback. And book files are generally pretty compact by Terabyte standards, so a single drive could hold much, if not all of their entire inventory. Drives are cheap. Servers are cheap. Even electricity isn't that expensive. In short, ebook costs above and beyond the basics required for hardcover publication aren't going to be that high. I won't say that there's a flat minimum price I'd pay for the ebook edition, although any publisher who wants to throw one in for free gets my hearty approval.
And, of course, the ones who charge more for unshareable electronic editions than the paperback price can go sit in the corner,
I loved that book. Also The Space Merchants, and pretty much anything of his I've encountered. One of the greats.
I'm going to have to number The Space Merchants among the classics of SF. Lesser-known and much later came the sequel The Merchants War, which points out the problem of going to extremes and ends with the perhaps unsatisfying, but very true-to-life conclusion that there Is No Perfect Answer.
Pohl was good at keeping himself fresh. Every couple of years, long after you'd have thought he'd retired and passed on, something new would pop up on the bookstore shelves. All good things must come to an end, alas.
He's a self-contained eunuch. Er, Unit! I meant Unit!
Perhaps he will replace Ballmer. He does appear to have the desired 'consumers should just shut the fsck up and buy what we tell them to' attitude to consumer relations and seems as adept at handling employees and morale to make the shift in leadership seamless.
Somehow I suspect the problem at Microsoft is the board. They aquired the stock while liking the mindset of the management and having kept Ballmer for so long they obviously want that. They'll keep running it the same way, all the way into the eventual crash into the ground.
There are those who have speculated that this may be the case.
I think that anyone who do something as foolish as tie their company's future to an also-ran platform would not the be best choice to resuscitate the moribund Microsoft, but they don't pay me vast sums of money because I'm required to make the right decisions.
Locally, I worked in a building that had an IBM mainframe on the 9th floor. A large building erected across the river had an an angled base and reflective sides and about 4 in the afternoon, the focal point was right on us. Had to install solar film to keep from overheating.
I'm not sure what the vegans and homosexuals have to do with this, but if i remember, a lot of this started under bush and has been embraced wholeheartedly by the present administration. If you think this is about left vs. right, you don't understand american politics.
I dont think anyone understands 'Murican politics and if anyone did understand 'Murican politics it would be instantaneously replaced with something even more unexplainable and convoluted.
A lot of it started under Reagan Maybe earlier, but it under that old lefty-wing Librul Gipper's watch, "Innocent until proven Guilty" went right out the window.
Time was, you didn't have to present papers (proof of citizenship) or take drug tests just to get the average job. Reagan changed all that.
It must be horribly painful for you these days then, surfing the intarwebs, reading them bad grammars'stuff.
Oh it is. They just have free reign these days. It's enough to make you loose your mind. I wish they'd learn to tow the line.
If every single person took public transportation, would public transportation improve?
If every single person lived in public housing, would public housing improve?
If every single person was on food stamps, would food stamps improve?
History indicates that way of thinking doesn't work out well.
Your history is curiously lacking in examples of demand-driven systems. There is a major difference between "took public transportation" and "was forced to use a state-mandated public transportation system', for example.
I was very impressed with the public transportation system in Boston. I am very UNimpressed with public transportation in the major cities of Florida. In Florida, everyone drives, thanks to urban sprawl and only poor people use the public system.
. It may also get you thrown in prison for a while
On what charges? They may deny you entry, and detain you for a little while, but actual imprisonment without charges seems like it would be a huge constitutional issue.
Two words.
Enemy Combatant.
Sorry, not feeling a lot of sympathy here.
'Provide arrival times for the city's buses'. Yes, like the LED displays in bus shelters or the operator's website. Or even the SF Muni's own app! With countdown to arrival feature...
Where's the innovation other than he makes a profit using ads?
Seriously, not everything that is repackaged as an app exhibits entrepreneurial innovation.
You have to add "On the Internet" to it.
Money can't buy happiness
Ever notice how people who say this are usually people with a lot of money?
If you're not happy, you're doing it wrong. How about you hand me your bank account and I'll give it a go?
Trust me, there's not near enough happiness in MY bank account! I'm too lazy!
Seriously, you can have a fat bank balance and be miserable - beenthere/donethat. Although being broke is grounds for unhappiness all by itself.
A common trope by rich people who worked their tails off and sacrificed a lot in the beginning, who are told that "their fair share" has to go to support people who spend their money on frivolous gratifications. I'm not rich yet, but I plan to be. I went into the SS office and half of the people there had out their Androids/iPhones. I am a guy who is pretty into tech, but have gone without a smart phone because the ridiculous price for a data plan isn't worth it for the instant gratification of checking my email between work and home. I go without to get ahead a bit only to be told I now have to subsidize those things for others. My wife and I spend $240 a month total on food, and that includes a couple date nights out a month. Getting fast food or whatever everyday would be so much easier, but I want to improve my place. The lesson in this: Be irresponsible and you get it now and later.
Though, most rich people still look past it and still care enough for humanity that even beyond their higher taxes they are also the most generous and donate a much high percentage to charity. Keep blaming rich people and buying beer and cigarettes (if you are poor) or big screen TVs and new cars (if you are middle class) and the greatest chance in the history of the world for social mobility will never be yours.
Keep planning. If you are lucky, life won't get in the way of that plan.
And then it's only a common trope amongst the right-wing ultra wealthy crowd. Many of which were born into money.
Sorry, no. It's also a common trope amongst the right-wing wealthy-wannabe crowd. Including the ones who are pretty damned poor themselves and will only be rich, or even well-off in their dreams.
Been "rich". Been poor. Poor makes you feel like you're jammed inside a tin can with limited options. Even if you're poor with money in the bank, but unsure when you're going to become rich again.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy your way out of a lot of everyday problems. It can also offer a buffer in case the way out turned out to be a bust and you have to try something else. When you have money you can afford to make mistakes.
In short, I already knew this firsthand.
Stop these constant terror threats of broadcasting when the perfect weather for an attack will occur. It's insane!
You think that's funny? Ask the Spanish Armada.
There's a reason why military services maintain meteorological divisions. Weather can be a life-or-death situation. Thus, anyone who disseminates weather forecasts can be considered giving aid and comfort to the Enemy.
As vague and alarming as the UK's allegations against Miranda are, for all we know, the most damning evidence against him may be a copy of the Sunday Times.
Lets see... smoking 10 to 20 g of tobacco a day? Pretty average... smoking 10-20g of MJ everyday? good luck with that...Even as a pretty heavy user you can grow your pot at home with a growbox on 1-2 square-meter, where you'd need a rather big area to grow your daily need of tobacco (which almost surely rules out indoor growing)...considering you can harvest your weed every 8-12 weeks (depending on which sort you grow) compared to 1 harvest/year for tobacco in most climates ... etc etc etc... I think you get the point.
Homegrown weed comes down to about 3-5 euros per g (equipment, electricity, nutrition, etc included) so go on... try to tax the hell out of me.
Yeah, tobacco is grown commercially around here. As far as I know, you could grow it for personal use, but you don't hear about anyone doing it, despite the high taxes.
Indoor/outdoor pot farms, however...
I modded you insightful but I'd like to challenge one point of yours: what makes you believe that smoking marijuana impairs one's ability to drive?
Because the whole point of it is to alter one's mental state?
Granted, some people drive so badly, that any change is likely for the better. I, of course, am not one of them.
Regulate it like alcohol, including enforcing bans on driving while high, just like alcohol. Now tax the hell out of it, and end of discussion.
Question. Would taxing it control it? Unlike tobacco, or even alcohol, I thought weed was supposed to grow just like, um, weed.
Taxation can control a lot of things, but only until alternatives become less expensive ("expensive" not being solely in dollars and sense). In the case of Marijuana, the bar appears pretty low to me.
Then again, I never went that route, so I'm just guessing.
funny, I wish more republicans thought about science.
They do. They think it's "a Lie straight from Hell".
I wish I was joking. Or at least that I was quoting a minor fringe Representative.
Why was it important to management that the money be earmark for a specific invoice”able” item?
If you wanted to street the project to something specific, then maybe. But retroactively ? I can’t think of any specific trigger in the tax code that would require that of a donation.
And I can’t think of any good reasons from a management viewpoint. If you want to make sure the money is spent wisely then you need to review the quality of management (or whomever decides to spend the money) not on a particular purchase. (example, the management may have done a very good job in choosing which 3D printer to purchase, but if it is a software project and does need a 3D printer it is a waste )
This just seems weird. If I were working at a charity and received this I am not sure how I would respond.
Good point.
I ran into similar problems in the corporate world where I wanted to buy products, but accounting needed an invoice and the vendor wasn't set up to deal with invoices. It was rather awkward.
More than that, however, you can you be a "non-profit organization" while invoicing? An invoice implies that you are demanding to be paid, not accepting a donation. Once you're demanding payment, you would seem to have dropped one of the primary characteristics of a charitable organization.
And then, of course, there's the final catch. Not all open-source projects are operating as legal corporations. They may not have a corporate bank account to deposit the check into. They often won't have a treasurer, much less one who can deal with large amounts of money - where not only do you have to deal with tax implications, but other things like money-laundering laws. And international finance, since open-source is often not geographically localized.
In short, there's no easy answer. It depends on who you want to give it to and how well they're set up to receive it.
... Or, maybe only the CEO was saved, and the rest of the employees were safe at their desks in Bangladesh.
You've read recent headlines about workplace safety in Bangladesh, haven't you?
Correction... English is difficult
An adjective such as 'hard' should be reserved for things that are adamantious. (but does it matter if adamantious is a word or not? you still know what it means....)
And they said that William F. Buckley was dead.
Actually, "adamantious" is a word more applicable to physical objects. "Hard" in the sense of "English is a language that is hard to master" is well within the bounds of acceptable usage according to the dictionaries I have.
ActiveMQ, Ant, Avro, Cassandra, Derby, Geronimo, HBase, Hive, Hadoop, JMeter, Lucene, Maven, Pig, Solr, Subversion, Thrift, Tomcat, Zookeeper.
Don't underestimate the impact Apache has had.
Subversion was originally tigris.org. Geronimo and Derby were IBM products (all donated). Also log4j.
Apache has developed or adopted more products than I can count. OpenJPA, Apache Commons, Axis, CXF, Velocity, Struts. The list goes on and on.
The disgusting criminals at the top sacrificing a few pawns.
Are they pawns or are they the developers responsible for the bug? Given the extremely high salaries devs working for wall street receive, didn't you think that there was a catch. i.e. if there is a bug that causes significant embarrassment or a significant loss of money you get fired.
If so the proceeding would seem fair. You want to name your price then your performance better be damn near flawless.
If you're a CEO and you get fired, they'll often pay you more to go away than most people will make in their entire lifetime. For example, Mattel had a loser CEO who managed to make their stock worth half of what it had been. His punishment? Well, he got fired. And paid $25million.
This whole idea that the C-level guys are somehow "earning" those massive benefits by being superhuman beings needs to die, be decapitated, have a stake driven through it, burned and scattered to the winds.
A good worker is valuable, no question. But there's an old management aphorism about what you're supposed to do to irreplaceable people. The reason they get away with it has less to do with the scarcity of their talents than it does with the fact that they have one of the tightest unions around.