It makes sense to the consumer. It doesn't make sense to the advertiser, who will see their spots stripped out in "edited" versions that will make their appearance on bittorrent about half an hour after the content is made available.
Unfortunately, television is mostly still paid for with advertising. Thank FSM for the 30 second skip.
I suppose so, but what profiteth a man if he wins the world and loses his soul?
It "profiteth" a man as in "keeping a roof over his family's head". Your "soul" argument is unrealistic and myopic. Soul is overrated, as is happiness. Nobody will pay you what you need to live on doing something that's enjoyable, that's why they call it 'work'. Deal with it.
Anyone that claims to love what they do if they make a living at it is either a liar or trying to pull a fast one on you, or both.
Money is not the reason to choose computer programming as a career.
So we're all just supposed to starve to death because we're doing something for a career that we 'enjoy', but pays shit?
While it's great to be studying computer 'science' and all, when the student loan bills come due, YOU NEED TO HAVE A JOB. Four-year universities should focus on giving students marketable skills, not a bunch of useless theory that has no real-world impact.
And cue all the overeducated computer 'scientists' claiming that they use what they learned in their 'theory' classes every day. That's great up in your ivory tower, the rest of us grunts need to be able to write actual code.
There's a huge gap between $25k/no benefits/mandatory insane hours/no dignity and $125k and Cadillac benefits packages. How about $60k (adjusted up/down for COL where you are), medical coverage, 401k, reasonable leave time/holidays, rotating call coverage/overtime, and a working environment that doesn't make you want to rip your own fingers off to improve your situation?
How about just some of those? Or any, for that matter?
Honestly, I'd get 25k/yr and medical coverage if I were unemployed. I couldn't afford to take a job like the one the GP described.
(I'm sure someone will point out the unemployment benefit number and start bitching and whining about the 'welfare state' and how there's no incentive to get a job blah blah. YOU try supporting a family on a $25k pay rate that only lasts six months, then you can complain.)
Manager must now formally acknowledge his/her decision is what will sink the ship.
Manager must do no such thing.
Manager must forge ahead heedless of the warnings from the people who actually know what the fuck they're doing, manager must watch project fail due to their poor planning/management/personal grooming habits, manager must blame people who do actual work, manager must watch people who do actual work get yelled at/demoted/passed over for raises/fired, manager must take credit for keeping salaries low.
Our buyer always seems to be shifting brands of drugs according to what is available and what is cheapest, and all those new drugs have to be inputted into the system before you can properly use them.
Then your buyer needs retraining. You're not wholesaling rubber washers here, you're affecting people's lives. Sure, buy what's cheapest IF IT MEETS THE REQUIREMENTS, which should be set by a pharmacist or doctor, not some sleazebag buyer douche.
Plus, the scanners we have to use are slow and unreliable; this past weekend, all but one of them were broken.
This is a failure of management, not a failure of technology. If the equipment is defective, REPLACE IT. Oh wait, it might cut into their bonus. Nevermind.
Probably because a lot of "pure techies" (NOT ALL, settle down) don't really have such great people skills. Sure, most can get by without making people want to strangle them, but they're notoriously bad at office politics and 'soft' skills which the world has deemed vital to success.
In a meritocracy, based purely on skill and ability, the IT departments would run most companies. We don't live in a meritocracy (probably fortunately in this case), we live in an idiocracy. Mike Judge had it right. Besides, most tech types are far too vital in their roles for management to even CONSIDER promoting them. (That's the management that has a clue. Management that doesn't have a clue figures that since they don't understand what the IT guys do, and all they hear from them is 'No' most of the time ("No, you can't install Crysis on a company computer. No, you can't avoid having to type in your password. No, you can't write down your password on a sticky note and put it on your monitor. etc etc") then what they do isn't meaningful or useful, therefore they don't deserve advancement.
For example; To explain the need for strong passwords and not writing them down on a piece of paper next to your computer. "If someone figured out or found your password they could log into our system and as far as the system is concerned they would be you. Do you really want to be blamed for something someone else did?"
No.
"Use a strong password and don't write it down, or else you'll get fired." "Don't plug your own USB key into a company computer, or else you'll get fired." "Don't surf porn sites on your company laptop, or else you'll get fired." "Don't attempt to circumvent company security policy, or else you'll get fired."
I bet you'll find security is a lot better after that, or after one or two idiots is made an example of by being shown the door in front of all his/her coworkers. The only way to enforce even a 'reasonable' security policy (strong passwords, no USB keys/boot CDs, no unauthorized equipment on company networks, don't be stupid) is to have an AUP and give it some real teeth. (And yes, "don't be stupid" is a valid part of a 'reasonable' security policy. If someone is stupid, they can work for someone else.)
It's amusing to see how often "normal" users are made to look less intelligent than your average Slashdot reader here. It's done a lot. And in my real world experience, it's just not the case.
Clearly you've never done desktop support. The average "normal" user is so thick, one wonders how they find their way out of bed in the morning. Of course, you could substitute "person" for "normal user" in that sentence and it would retain its meaning, so YMMV. After all, at least where Americans are concerned, Iraq had something to do with 9/11, shopping at Walmart is a good idea, electing George W Bush twice was Just Fine.
How do you think Windows captured the OS market in the first place? Microsoft counted on the average user to say "HURR DURR It came with my $shittyPCBrandNameComputer so I just use it HURR DURR".
Most webapps don't take up half your RAM and 75% of your CPU, and then perform slowly as well. Granted, IE and Firefox (I know there are others, but they're not worth talking about) aren't exactly slim and trim in the resources department, but they're just compiling for display purposes, not doing any intensive calculations.
Incidentally, when will Slashdot message threads stop looking like hammered ass in Firefox? I think the current issues have been around for a year or so. For such an open-source-centric site like Slashdot, it's really inexcusable to not support the dominant 'alternative' browser to IE.
Chances are if someone's participating in a discussion on Slashdot, they're probably pretty technically savvy and don't require much training to adapt to a new but similar OS. Remember though, that most users are complete drooling, mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, blithering idiots, where if the task bar or splash screen looks different, they immediately switch off their brains because they can't handle the change. These are the people that will require "training", or else they'll refuse to do their jobs because they "don't know the new system."
Personally all the training I think they should require is "READ THE FUCKING SCREEN, IDIOT", but that's just me.
How do you like it when some admin weenie comes down to your server room and says "we're implementing this brand-new system. It sucks, it's slow, it crashes, it's full of security holes... but you're going to use it or else."
You're right, I don't like it. But if my choice is to learn the system or work somewhere else, I learn the damn system. Workers in every other profession deal with this problem on a daily basis, and you don't see any of them pitching a hissy fit like doctors do. Eating shit is part of functioning in society, and if doctors have a problem with that, they can go live in a cave.
I think a similar industry-wide fiat like that directed against IT
would be called "Windows". News flash: most people in IT hate Windows just as much as everyone else, and would gladly use an alternative. However, they get no say in the matter in most cases. (Indeed, nearly every other department gets more say in what software/hardware they use than IT does.) Management thinks that since "everyone else" uses Microsoft products, they have to as well.
Is it the reaction time of the EMR that's making it 'slow', or your own unfamiliarity with the interface?
If the former, then yes, it's on the EMR authors/IT staff to make the system more responsive. Unfortunately, that frequently means more hardware, which would eat into the profits, and therefore is not approved by the bean counters.
If the latter, then GET OVER IT and learn the fucking interface! Any hospital that adopts a new system should FORCE all doctors with privileges there to complete a training course on the new software, under the threat of losing their privileges. I DON'T CARE IF THE SYSTEM SUCKS. Either try to help make it better, or STFU and do your fucking job.
The good news is that new doctors coming out of medical school don't make any money anymore, thanks to the for-profit HMO system we have in the USA, which requires that doctors see eight patients an hour just to break even. Why is this good news? No more overpaid egomaniac doctors who care more about their tee times than their patients.
Can you elaborate? I thought 4G was going to be an all IP network. So IP must be superior enough compared to other protocols.
Bad assumption IMHO. What is far more likely to me, is that using the IP network is cheaper than the alternatives, not higher in quality. Remember that these companies are in business to make money, not provide quality service. Occasionally providing the later enables the former, but not usually.
Everyone in europe has paid sick days. Don't you americans do too?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! ROFL!
You *are* kidding, right?
No, American workers are not guaranteed paid sick leave. American workers aren't guaranteed much of anything past the right to get paid for time worked, and even then maybe not (the government agencies that theoretically are there to enforce the labor laws are too overworked to take everyone's case.) No severance, no vacation time, no sick leave, no paid paternity/maternity leave, no (reasonably affordable) health coverage, no overtime pay for 'exempt' employees, no recourse for termination (in most states, you can be terminated for no stated reason whatsoever, and good luck proving otherwise), no cost of living raises, etc etc. It's like a third world country as far as labor laws go.
The overwhelming concern in engineering or the sciences is GETTING IT RIGHT. Not making money, nor paying off debts.
All that attitude gets you is exploited by others who make money off your hard work and don't share any of it with you. Your "GETTING IT RIGHT" is the product of society's deception: It claims to value knowledge gathered by the sciences and applied by engineers, but at the end of the day, all that matters is money. Those with money make the rules.
Make no mistake, if you can't make money doing a job, then don't do it. Life is too short to eat Ramen three times a day. Every time I hear someone say "I'd do this for free" I cringe, because now people will expect that from others with similar jobs. Sometimes a job is just that: a job. A way to keep a roof over one's head and food on one's family's table.
Does it really matter what language they're taught in? They should be learning the concepts of programming, not just a language.
Yes, it bloody well does. With students graduating with six-figure debts from getting a bachelor's degree, colleges have a responsibility to teach skills that are immediately applicable in the real world (meaning the mass market, not 'pure science' positions which will require experience beyond a degree anyway) so that students don't have to spend their entire lives paying off their student loans.
You want to learn FORTRAN? Great. Don't make me waste my time sitting in a FORTRAN class when I could be learning something useful (and marketable) like Java or C/C++ or even Perl, PHP, or Python. If you get these 'fundamentals' that everyone is going on about (which are great in an ivory tower) then you shouldn't have a problem picking up another language AFTER YOU GRADUATE.
If we had that, the non-intrusive advertisers could win against the evil ones, by virtue of reaching people VS being blocked.
There's a problem with that. The annoying ads (as much as we'd like to believe otherwise) work. Advertisers/marketing types don't care if something is annoying (or causes cancer, AIDS, whatever) as long as it works. Enough stupid people are out there that the animated/annoying/noisy/popping stuff activates DUMMY_MODE and the message gets hammered into their reptilian brains long enough to modify their spending/surfing/whatever behavior.
Once again, the real problem is "People are Stupid."
As a corollary, a large enough percentage of people are stupid enough to still be using IE on Windows for their web surfing, so the whole argument is moot anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes sense to the consumer. It doesn't make sense to the advertiser, who will see their spots stripped out in "edited" versions that will make their appearance on bittorrent about half an hour after the content is made available.
Unfortunately, television is mostly still paid for with advertising. Thank FSM for the 30 second skip.
Butbutbut REGULATION BAD!
Regulation/testing eats INTO THE PROFIT!!1! Who cares if people die/lose their jobs, so long as PROFIT GOOD!!!1!!2!!
It "profiteth" a man as in "keeping a roof over his family's head". Your "soul" argument is unrealistic and myopic. Soul is overrated, as is happiness. Nobody will pay you what you need to live on doing something that's enjoyable, that's why they call it 'work'. Deal with it.
Anyone that claims to love what they do if they make a living at it is either a liar or trying to pull a fast one on you, or both.
So we're all just supposed to starve to death because we're doing something for a career that we 'enjoy', but pays shit?
While it's great to be studying computer 'science' and all, when the student loan bills come due, YOU NEED TO HAVE A JOB. Four-year universities should focus on giving students marketable skills, not a bunch of useless theory that has no real-world impact.
And cue all the overeducated computer 'scientists' claiming that they use what they learned in their 'theory' classes every day. That's great up in your ivory tower, the rest of us grunts need to be able to write actual code.
There's a huge gap between $25k/no benefits/mandatory insane hours/no dignity and $125k and Cadillac benefits packages. How about $60k (adjusted up/down for COL where you are), medical coverage, 401k, reasonable leave time/holidays, rotating call coverage/overtime, and a working environment that doesn't make you want to rip your own fingers off to improve your situation?
How about just some of those? Or any, for that matter?
Honestly, I'd get 25k/yr and medical coverage if I were unemployed. I couldn't afford to take a job like the one the GP described.
(I'm sure someone will point out the unemployment benefit number and start bitching and whining about the 'welfare state' and how there's no incentive to get a job blah blah. YOU try supporting a family on a $25k pay rate that only lasts six months, then you can complain.)
Manager must do no such thing.
Manager must forge ahead heedless of the warnings from the people who actually know what the fuck they're doing, manager must watch project fail due to their poor planning/management/personal grooming habits, manager must blame people who do actual work, manager must watch people who do actual work get yelled at/demoted/passed over for raises/fired, manager must take credit for keeping salaries low.
By suing the vendor that sold them the defective crap in the first place, and replacing them with stuff that works.
Then your buyer needs retraining. You're not wholesaling rubber washers here, you're affecting people's lives. Sure, buy what's cheapest IF IT MEETS THE REQUIREMENTS, which should be set by a pharmacist or doctor, not some sleazebag buyer douche.
This is a failure of management, not a failure of technology. If the equipment is defective, REPLACE IT. Oh wait, it might cut into their bonus. Nevermind.
You're welcome to leave the country anytime you wish. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to live here.
Probably because a lot of "pure techies" (NOT ALL, settle down) don't really have such great people skills. Sure, most can get by without making people want to strangle them, but they're notoriously bad at office politics and 'soft' skills which the world has deemed vital to success.
In a meritocracy, based purely on skill and ability, the IT departments would run most companies. We don't live in a meritocracy (probably fortunately in this case), we live in an idiocracy. Mike Judge had it right. Besides, most tech types are far too vital in their roles for management to even CONSIDER promoting them. (That's the management that has a clue. Management that doesn't have a clue figures that since they don't understand what the IT guys do, and all they hear from them is 'No' most of the time ("No, you can't install Crysis on a company computer. No, you can't avoid having to type in your password. No, you can't write down your password on a sticky note and put it on your monitor. etc etc") then what they do isn't meaningful or useful, therefore they don't deserve advancement.
No.
"Use a strong password and don't write it down, or else you'll get fired."
"Don't plug your own USB key into a company computer, or else you'll get fired."
"Don't surf porn sites on your company laptop, or else you'll get fired."
"Don't attempt to circumvent company security policy, or else you'll get fired."
I bet you'll find security is a lot better after that, or after one or two idiots is made an example of by being shown the door in front of all his/her coworkers. The only way to enforce even a 'reasonable' security policy (strong passwords, no USB keys/boot CDs, no unauthorized equipment on company networks, don't be stupid) is to have an AUP and give it some real teeth. (And yes, "don't be stupid" is a valid part of a 'reasonable' security policy. If someone is stupid, they can work for someone else.)
Maybe if your reply made any sense it would mean something. Seriously, grammar fail.
Clearly you've never done desktop support. The average "normal" user is so thick, one wonders how they find their way out of bed in the morning. Of course, you could substitute "person" for "normal user" in that sentence and it would retain its meaning, so YMMV. After all, at least where Americans are concerned, Iraq had something to do with 9/11, shopping at Walmart is a good idea, electing George W Bush twice was Just Fine.
How do you think Windows captured the OS market in the first place? Microsoft counted on the average user to say "HURR DURR It came with my $shittyPCBrandNameComputer so I just use it HURR DURR".
Maybe they should stop fucking overselling their bandwidth by 500% or whatever ridiculous number they use.
Just a thought. Of course, that would make profits go down, so it can never happen, as profits dropping is, in fact, the end of the entire universe.
Careful, you let slip that you actually give a damn about people other than yourself and you'll be tarred and feathered as a 'socialist'.
Most webapps don't take up half your RAM and 75% of your CPU, and then perform slowly as well. Granted, IE and Firefox (I know there are others, but they're not worth talking about) aren't exactly slim and trim in the resources department, but they're just compiling for display purposes, not doing any intensive calculations.
Incidentally, when will Slashdot message threads stop looking like hammered ass in Firefox? I think the current issues have been around for a year or so. For such an open-source-centric site like Slashdot, it's really inexcusable to not support the dominant 'alternative' browser to IE.
Chances are if someone's participating in a discussion on Slashdot, they're probably pretty technically savvy and don't require much training to adapt to a new but similar OS. Remember though, that most users are complete drooling, mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, blithering idiots, where if the task bar or splash screen looks different, they immediately switch off their brains because they can't handle the change. These are the people that will require "training", or else they'll refuse to do their jobs because they "don't know the new system."
Personally all the training I think they should require is "READ THE FUCKING SCREEN, IDIOT", but that's just me.
You're right, I don't like it. But if my choice is to learn the system or work somewhere else, I learn the damn system. Workers in every other profession deal with this problem on a daily basis, and you don't see any of them pitching a hissy fit like doctors do. Eating shit is part of functioning in society, and if doctors have a problem with that, they can go live in a cave.
would be called "Windows". News flash: most people in IT hate Windows just as much as everyone else, and would gladly use an alternative. However, they get no say in the matter in most cases. (Indeed, nearly every other department gets more say in what software/hardware they use than IT does.) Management thinks that since "everyone else" uses Microsoft products, they have to as well.
Is it the reaction time of the EMR that's making it 'slow', or your own unfamiliarity with the interface?
If the former, then yes, it's on the EMR authors/IT staff to make the system more responsive. Unfortunately, that frequently means more hardware, which would eat into the profits, and therefore is not approved by the bean counters.
If the latter, then GET OVER IT and learn the fucking interface! Any hospital that adopts a new system should FORCE all doctors with privileges there to complete a training course on the new software, under the threat of losing their privileges. I DON'T CARE IF THE SYSTEM SUCKS. Either try to help make it better, or STFU and do your fucking job.
The good news is that new doctors coming out of medical school don't make any money anymore, thanks to the for-profit HMO system we have in the USA, which requires that doctors see eight patients an hour just to break even. Why is this good news? No more overpaid egomaniac doctors who care more about their tee times than their patients.
Bad assumption IMHO. What is far more likely to me, is that using the IP network is cheaper than the alternatives, not higher in quality. Remember that these companies are in business to make money, not provide quality service. Occasionally providing the later enables the former, but not usually.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! ROFL!
You *are* kidding, right?
No, American workers are not guaranteed paid sick leave. American workers aren't guaranteed much of anything past the right to get paid for time worked, and even then maybe not (the government agencies that theoretically are there to enforce the labor laws are too overworked to take everyone's case.) No severance, no vacation time, no sick leave, no paid paternity/maternity leave, no (reasonably affordable) health coverage, no overtime pay for 'exempt' employees, no recourse for termination (in most states, you can be terminated for no stated reason whatsoever, and good luck proving otherwise), no cost of living raises, etc etc. It's like a third world country as far as labor laws go.
All that attitude gets you is exploited by others who make money off your hard work and don't share any of it with you. Your "GETTING IT RIGHT" is the product of society's deception: It claims to value knowledge gathered by the sciences and applied by engineers, but at the end of the day, all that matters is money. Those with money make the rules.
Make no mistake, if you can't make money doing a job, then don't do it. Life is too short to eat Ramen three times a day. Every time I hear someone say "I'd do this for free" I cringe, because now people will expect that from others with similar jobs. Sometimes a job is just that: a job. A way to keep a roof over one's head and food on one's family's table.
Yes, it bloody well does. With students graduating with six-figure debts from getting a bachelor's degree, colleges have a responsibility to teach skills that are immediately applicable in the real world (meaning the mass market, not 'pure science' positions which will require experience beyond a degree anyway) so that students don't have to spend their entire lives paying off their student loans.
You want to learn FORTRAN? Great. Don't make me waste my time sitting in a FORTRAN class when I could be learning something useful (and marketable) like Java or C/C++ or even Perl, PHP, or Python. If you get these 'fundamentals' that everyone is going on about (which are great in an ivory tower) then you shouldn't have a problem picking up another language AFTER YOU GRADUATE.
There's a problem with that. The annoying ads (as much as we'd like to believe otherwise) work. Advertisers/marketing types don't care if something is annoying (or causes cancer, AIDS, whatever) as long as it works. Enough stupid people are out there that the animated/annoying/noisy/popping stuff activates DUMMY_MODE and the message gets hammered into their reptilian brains long enough to modify their spending/surfing/whatever behavior.
Once again, the real problem is "People are Stupid."
As a corollary, a large enough percentage of people are stupid enough to still be using IE on Windows for their web surfing, so the whole argument is moot anyway.
"LOSE"!! THE WORD IS "LOSE"!!
Sheesh. It's even one less letter to type.