IF YOU CARE, then you will have a clue. If you don't care (and don't read the 17 pages of literature that come with every account you open ANYWHERE, Insurance, Bank, Credit, etc), then you pretty much deserve to be rolled over"
Which is exactly the sort of "war of all against all", resulting in a life which is "nasty, brutish, and short", that Thomas Hobbes cited as a legitimate reason for the weak to band together to form a government to protect them from powerful forces. Sort of where this discussion began.
"You CAN pay cash for nearly everything. Don't get a car loan, save up $400 a month for 5 years, and then go buy a car cash, and while you drive that car for 5 years, save up another $20,000 (plus interest) to buy your next car."
If you pay for a car that costs more than $10,000 in cash, the car dealership is required, under penalty of imprisonment, to report your purchase to the federal government. Similarly if you store this cash in a savings account (whether at Citicorp or your brother's neighborhood bank). This is because people who use cash are presumed to be drug dealers.
And while I do understand what you are saying, I would also ask that you respond to the word "realistic" in my post. While it might be possible for a few hundred privacy nuts (such as you and I) to live this way, it isn't realistic for the majority of the population.
Or are you saying only the really clueful deserve to be protected from forces beyond their control?
"You know, stuff like this will keep getting passed until several (hundred) congresspeople wake up and find that their bank accounts have been cleaned out, and their credit cards maxed out, because you can buy anyone's personal info for $39.95."
Not so easy, I am afraid. Congress usually adds sections to these laws that povide special treatment for current and former members of Congress. I would be willing to bet that there is a section in this law making it a federal crime with a billion $ fine to misuse information about Congress-critters and their families. With no "opt-out", and with the burden of proof on the financial institution.
"Where's the problem? It's a free market, companies should be able to do what they want to do, and if you don't like it, don't use that company. Find a small family run FDIC insured bank, or better yet, a credit union that promises not to do it. If they do share, then leave."
50 years ago, that might have been true. It was possible to live a quiet life, taking your paycheck in cash, paying rent in cash, riding the bus/trolley everywhere, shopping at the local mom-n-pop grocery.
That is essentially no longer possible in the Western world, today. Employers no longer pay in cash, so you have to have an account with some sort of financial institution, which in turn is required to report various information about you to other organizations. Public transportation no longer exists, and where it does it doesn't reach the majority of jobs. Mom-n-pops no longer exist. You MUST have a credit card to rent a car, or even a movie.
And so on. For any one of these actions, you could say, "Well, don't do that. Or go to another provider". But when EVERYTHING you do requires providing information, there are only a few institutions for critical services (hint: Visa), and you realistically must do certain things to stay alive, then you don't really have a choice.
The wilds of Montana can only support a few hunderd thousand people; most of the population is forced to live where they can actually make a living. And there are no realistic options to giving up information about oneself in many circumstances. This is why people form govenrments, BTW (read Hobbes).
Has anyone tried sending the Nader letter to a financial institution, in place of that institution's preprinted form? What was your experience? Did you receive any sort of response, positive or negative?
One thing that occurs to me is that most form letters I have received have included a specific address to use in returning the form (and typicall, that address is very bizarre and complex, and must be copied by hand onto a separate envelope). If you send the Nader letter to a company's general address, will it be processed, or will it just be shredded. Would it be better to send it to the address the company lists in its incorporation papers for accepting legal correspondence?
True. Even at the best of the best, there will be better and "less better" people. And anyone can have an off day.
OTOH, I also had the experience of a TAC rep spending 2 hours on the phone with a competitor's tech support line, explaining to them why their config wasn's working. He was right, too.
A good long-term sales tactic, though: guess whose product I specified the next time.
I do wonder what will happen to the quality level at Cisco TAC with the recent layoffs, though. The first sign of impending doom at both WordPerfect and Novell was when the tech support quality suddenly headed down the tubes.
Yes, if you have a SmartNet contract for that device, it's pretty much true. Cisco, mid-1990's Novell, and Oracle are the only organizations I know of that provide this kind of help. Microsoft "Gold" support plan, anyone? (gag).
Caveat: Cisco basically does not have first level support (i.e. "'Is the router plugged in?' 'What's a router?') - you are supposed to have second level knowledge and have completed the first level troubleshooting before you call TAC.
But - I have been out of the office and had brand-new network techs call Cisco with a problem, and they did help out even then.
"In their view, government and universities (funded by taxes and philanthropy) should do fundamental research, which should then be placed in the public domain where commercial interests are free to exploit it. "
Except that's not what's been going on in the last 20 years. I will leave private universities out of it, as they can do what they desire. But the trend has been for government agencies (can you say National Weather Service) and public universities to spend taxpayer dollars doing research and collecting information, then turn around and license the results of that research to private entities such that taxpayers have to pay the licensee to use the information.
Pretty neat trick: charge the taxpayer twice for the same stuff. This is the model that Microsoft wants to keep alive, and which the GPL threatens.
sPh
Re:Compaq much more than people perceive
on
Compaq Shifts Focus
·
· Score: 2
"Compaq created the first PC BIOS"
Um, I think that would be "the first legal 100% compatible clone of the IBM PC BIOS".
Point being:
* There were PC BIOS' before the IBM PC
* The Compaq Portable and Compaq Deskpro were clones (PCM or "plug-compatibles" in the jargon of the day) of the original IBM PC.
sPh
Re:Vertical markets with nice profit margins
on
Compaq Shifts Focus
·
· Score: 3
"Pretty standard in the business. Look on any oil rig, medical shop, mineral company, steel mill, etc, and you'll see standard technology selling at super premiums"
While niche markets are the place to be to make money, the gross margin for the whole business isn't what you would think from the mark-up on the components. R&D, conformance to industry specs, support, and quality/reliability expectations eat up a lot of that money.
Industrial customers don't accept the "blue screens happen" philosophy - they expect your products to work, and for you to stand behind them. I once saw the follow-up from the customer when a mission-critical product failed in a steel mill. 15 member team roaming the halls and shop floor grilling randomly selected employees on procedures, specifications, etc.; parts pulled off shelves at random and tested for specs., etc. Can you imagine the typical commercial software supplier surviving that kind of inspection?
sPh
Too bad lemmings turned out to be a myth...
on
Compaq Shifts Focus
·
· Score: 2
...because there seems to be something about human nature that works that way. Particularly in the business world. Two cases in point:
* IBM made a lot of money shifting focus from hardware to services. Therefore we (for large values of "we") must shift focus to services, and we will also make lots of money. Logical flaws in this line of reasoning too numerous to point out!
* Some companies out there (Cisco, fooConsulting) are making insane gross margins. Therefore, all of our product lines must make insane gross margins. Therefore, we must "exit" (i.e. sell or trash) any business which doesn't make insane margins this quarter. Prime example: HP begets Agilent, because instruments "aren't growing fast enough". Agilent sells medical instruments, because they "aren't profitable enough". In 2 or 3 quarters I wonder if HP will wish they had those medical instruments back, given that people will still be using hospitals when all the dotcoms are dead?
Why can't business "leaders" see that _everyone_ can't do the same thing, or everyone will end up with a zero profit margin? And I ask that as an evil MBA, too!
sPh
Someone forgot to tell the insurance companies
on
Heredity and Humanity
·
· Score: 3
Not to worry - _Gattica_ won't come to pass. That's comforting.
Too bad that the author forgot to discuss this with the health insurance companies. These profit-maximizing entities are already going hell bent for leather toward requiring all kinds of genetic tests, and filtering out people based on the results of those tests.
So what, you say? Haven't insurance companies always screened for, say, family history of heart disease? The answer is that although they attempted to screen, and developed some broad exclusion categories, the practical impossibility of actually tracking and classifying health information about millions of individuals meant that, in practice, individual screening did not occur.
Today, with massive collection of personal information and interconnected databases, the situation is quite different. "Mr. Jones, this is your insurance agent. Your supermarket discount card shows that you purchased two cases of beer this week. As a result your car insurance rates are going up $50. Please send payment by this afternoon or your policy will be cancelled".
And now we have genetic mapping. The author says its only one part of the picture. Great. Then why are the insurance companies so intent on preserving their right to collect and classify based on this information?
Given that in the U.S., you are either part of a group health plan, or you are pretty much doomed to die a slow death from lack of treatment, genetic screening is essentially a death sentence for many people who in the past would have been invisible in group pools.
But don't worry - this information can't be used that way.
In the original edition, when the bounty hunter confronts Han Solo in the bar, Solo shoots him under the table in cold blood. Establishing that for all his rough and loveable exterior, he is a cold-blooded mercenary at heart. This colors his entire relationship with Leia and his decision to return and helt the Alliance.
In the Special Edition, Lucas adds a few seconds where _the bounty hunter fires the first shot_, turning Solo from a ruthless mercenary to just another guy defending himself in a tough world.
You forgot the step where he releases a "Special Edition" with a few "minor improvements" that have the effect of changing the entire story line and fundamental definition of one of the main characters (Han Solo vs. the bounty hunter in SW:AHN).
This would be a good candidate for RISKS. This month's issue of "GPS World" has an article from a research team in Adelaide (Oz), which is working on an urban tracking system for vehicles. Small problem: in urban areas, GPS coverage tends to be spotty. The article described how it was necessary to include inertial tracking hardware and accelerometers in the system, with all three components working together to figure out when the others were providing bad information. Otherwise, the GPS would tend to show things like the vehicle going from 0-120 km/hr in 10 meters.
Not necessarily a bad point, but people still talk about "the Cadillac of x" or "as good as a VAX", even though Cadillac hasn't been a leader in engineering, quality, or sales for 30 years, nor DEC for 20. It's just a culturally-recognized shorthand, like kleenex.
"Of course, vendors can stop innovating and concentrate on quality. But do you _really_ want to use word processor from 1991? It would be quite reliable after 10 years of testing, but I wouldn't like this tradeoff"
I am not totally unsympathetic to that point of view (how's that for a qualified double negative), but it isn't the whole story from the consumers point of view.
First, I do know quite a few people who use WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS as their word processor, for exactly the reasons you state. It can do just about everything that newer word processors can do and is highly stable.
Second, I am not asking for perfection: I am just asking for a reasonable standard of care. The software industry today is about where the auto industry was in the 1950's, when it argued that there was NO WAY to design steering wheels such that they wouldn't impale the driver in an accident. Not "not injure", mind you, but "not impale", which was a very common result of a collision in those days. Not until the consumer safety zealots started raising cain, filing lawsuits, and getting laws passed did the auto companies discover, that, hey, yeah, it can be done, and it really doesn't cost us more either.
"If vendors are made legally responsible for the reliability/security/usability of their products, the potential for class action suits is immense."
From the perspective of a software purchaser and implementer, that would be TERRIBLE. Why just think - software vendors might have to stop innovating and concentrate on product quality and meeting the standard of warrenty of merchentability. Just like every other producer of goods in the Western world. How awful!! What demanding standards you consumers have - expecting software to actually _work_. Wah waah waaaah.
"What is a "Harvard equivalent"? Just curious... "
Business Week or Wall Street Journal top 20 MBA list. Actually, Harvard hasn't been on top of any of those lists for quite a while.
Now, I am NOT commenting here on the value of an MBA, nor trying to reopen the discussion of the value of learning something vs. having a piece of paper that says you have learned it (although both Competitive Strategy and Labor Economics courses discuss why this seemingly "stupid" behaviour is quite rational).
I AM saying that if you are going to sell your soul to the dark side, it is best to sell it to one of the top ten on those two lists. And again, Labor Economics can help you understand why.
"I'm considering an MBA or equivalent form of buisness education myself. Why? Because, as any truly aspring techie does, I want to work for -myself"
Based on my experience (MBA from a Harvard equivalent), if you want to work for yourself you would be better off to take a few semesters of Intro Accounting (so you understand the finance lingo) and Business Law at a local community college, then just go start your business.
MBAs are more useful for working in established organizations, or stepping in to provide adult supervision once the person with the new idea/startup drive hits the wall in terms of organization and management.
MBAs don't much help with having the idea or (dare I say it) the entrepreneural spark.
That depends on your view of work and organizational behaviour. If you truely believe in the creed of the Second Dilbert Era (that is, Dilberts penned after Scott Adams left his day job):
* All "managers" are idiots
* Resource allocation and setting priorities are useless functions
* All problems have one correct answers
* Per the second and third points, project management and conflict resolution are just political wastes of time
* Marketing departments are only good as sources of dating prospects
then you won't find much use in an MBA. Similarly, if it is very important to you to stay current with a detailed technical speciality (say router network design), you will have a very hard time finding a management job that lets you do that.
If you are interested in learning more about how and why organizations are structured, why people behave as they do, and how to handle resource allocation and project management, then an MBA could be useful to you. Or if you would like to catch up on some of the non-engineering techncial skills, such as financial theory.
However, based on many years of observing technical people and managers, I think there are very few techies who are really interested in, or would really like, jobs in management.
"I've had some conversations w/ friends of mine about this very idea. I think that assembly should be the first language taught in CS. To be a skilled programmer, you MUST know how a computer works at the fundamental level. Teaching java to beginning programmers only encourages sloppy programming, despite any admonitions from profs"
And if tomorrow a new CPU is released that doesn't have a von Neumann architecture? How does the person whose fundamental thinking processes w.r.t. application developement were structured by assembly adapt to that?
Personally, I would go a step farther. One of the reasons that ordinary human beings have so much trouble using software is that the programmers are far too close to the details of the machine architecture.
How exactly would any of the RBOC's know that a trouble report was bogus? Given the level of attention that they give to most trouble calls, particularly when a competitor is involved.
As an ASP employee, you are of course entitled to your idea of how the relationship should work.
As a person who has negotiated such contracts for large corporate purchasers, however, I can report that the customer is _entitled_ to what the contract says he is entitled to. And anyone who signs such a contract that doesn't say the customer is entitled to a copy of the application configuration (e.g. the SAP config tables)... well, that customer will get what it deserves. (In fact I had meant to say "application config" in my original post, but I was pounding it in quick at lunch).
Luckily, these contracts are usually negotiated by the sales force, and if you catch them at the end of their quarter and let them know you have two alternatives in your back pocket, they will browbeat their own lawyers and management into agreeing to just about anything you need!
By the way, I have also worked on ore processing contracts. And it isn't unusual to include a clause that says if you are unable to deliver the refined product, I am in fact entitled to an amount of your natural gas equivalent to what I need to smelt it myself.
"And I can see little reason why anyone should use it for their business. Having your HR, email, accounting run by complete strangers leaves your company wide open to all sorts of disasters"
Organizations have been outsourcing these computerized services for nigh on 40 years now. And probably for 10,000 years before that, in non-electronic form. I would guess that 90% of the paychecks issued in North America are handled on an outsourced basis by ADP, Ceridian, or PayChex. Same with HR and e-mail. Where do you think IBM has been making all its money in the last 5 years?
High volume, low value transactions are always going to be a candidate for outsourcing. The keys to doing it successfully are due diligance, a good contract lawyer, and auditing.
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes, that is what I am saying, unfortunately
IF YOU CARE, then you will have a clue. If you don't care (and don't read the 17 pages of literature that come with every account you open ANYWHERE, Insurance, Bank, Credit, etc), then you pretty much deserve to be rolled over"
Which is exactly the sort of "war of all against all", resulting in a life which is "nasty, brutish, and short", that Thomas Hobbes cited as a legitimate reason for the weak to band together to form a government to protect them from powerful forces. Sort of where this discussion began.
sPh
"You CAN pay cash for nearly everything. Don't get a car loan, save up $400 a month for 5 years, and then go buy a car cash, and while you drive that car for 5 years, save up another $20,000 (plus interest) to buy your next car."
If you pay for a car that costs more than $10,000 in cash, the car dealership is required, under penalty of imprisonment, to report your purchase to the federal government. Similarly if you store this cash in a savings account (whether at Citicorp or your brother's neighborhood bank). This is because people who use cash are presumed to be drug dealers.
And while I do understand what you are saying, I would also ask that you respond to the word "realistic" in my post. While it might be possible for a few hundred privacy nuts (such as you and I) to live this way, it isn't realistic for the majority of the population.
Or are you saying only the really clueful deserve to be protected from forces beyond their control?
sPh
"You know, stuff like this will keep getting passed until several (hundred) congresspeople wake up and find that their bank accounts have been cleaned out, and their credit cards maxed out, because you can buy anyone's personal info for $39.95."
Not so easy, I am afraid. Congress usually adds sections to these laws that povide special treatment for current and former members of Congress. I would be willing to bet that there is a section in this law making it a federal crime with a billion $ fine to misuse information about Congress-critters and their families. With no "opt-out", and with the burden of proof on the financial institution.
sPh
"Where's the problem? It's a free market, companies should be able to do what they want to do, and if you don't like it, don't use that company. Find a small family run FDIC insured bank, or better yet, a credit union that promises not to do it. If they do share, then leave."
50 years ago, that might have been true. It was possible to live a quiet life, taking your paycheck in cash, paying rent in cash, riding the bus/trolley everywhere, shopping at the local mom-n-pop grocery.
That is essentially no longer possible in the Western world, today. Employers no longer pay in cash, so you have to have an account with some sort of financial institution, which in turn is required to report various information about you to other organizations. Public transportation no longer exists, and where it does it doesn't reach the majority of jobs. Mom-n-pops no longer exist. You MUST have a credit card to rent a car, or even a movie.
And so on. For any one of these actions, you could say, "Well, don't do that. Or go to another provider". But when EVERYTHING you do requires providing information, there are only a few institutions for critical services (hint: Visa), and you realistically must do certain things to stay alive, then you don't really have a choice.
The wilds of Montana can only support a few hunderd thousand people; most of the population is forced to live where they can actually make a living. And there are no realistic options to giving up information about oneself in many circumstances. This is why people form govenrments, BTW (read Hobbes).
sPh
Has anyone tried sending the Nader letter to a financial institution, in place of that institution's preprinted form? What was your experience? Did you receive any sort of response, positive or negative?
One thing that occurs to me is that most form letters I have received have included a specific address to use in returning the form (and typicall, that address is very bizarre and complex, and must be copied by hand onto a separate envelope). If you send the Nader letter to a company's general address, will it be processed, or will it just be shredded. Would it be better to send it to the address the company lists in its incorporation papers for accepting legal correspondence?
sPh
True. Even at the best of the best, there will be better and "less better" people. And anyone can have an off day.
OTOH, I also had the experience of a TAC rep spending 2 hours on the phone with a competitor's tech support line, explaining to them why their config wasn's working. He was right, too.
A good long-term sales tactic, though: guess whose product I specified the next time.
I do wonder what will happen to the quality level at Cisco TAC with the recent layoffs, though. The first sign of impending doom at both WordPerfect and Novell was when the tech support quality suddenly headed down the tubes.
sPh
Yes, if you have a SmartNet contract for that device, it's pretty much true. Cisco, mid-1990's Novell, and Oracle are the only organizations I know of that provide this kind of help. Microsoft "Gold" support plan, anyone? (gag).
Caveat: Cisco basically does not have first level support (i.e. "'Is the router plugged in?' 'What's a router?') - you are supposed to have second level knowledge and have completed the first level troubleshooting before you call TAC.
But - I have been out of the office and had brand-new network techs call Cisco with a problem, and they did help out even then.
sPh
"In their view, government and universities (funded by taxes and philanthropy) should do fundamental research, which should then be placed in the public domain where commercial interests are free to exploit it. "
Except that's not what's been going on in the last 20 years. I will leave private universities out of it, as they can do what they desire. But the trend has been for government agencies (can you say National Weather Service) and public universities to spend taxpayer dollars doing research and collecting information, then turn around and license the results of that research to private entities such that taxpayers have to pay the licensee to use the information.
Pretty neat trick: charge the taxpayer twice for the same stuff. This is the model that Microsoft wants to keep alive, and which the GPL threatens.
sPh
"Compaq created the first PC BIOS"
Um, I think that would be "the first legal 100% compatible clone of the IBM PC BIOS".
Point being:
* There were PC BIOS' before the IBM PC
* The Compaq Portable and Compaq Deskpro were clones (PCM or "plug-compatibles" in the jargon of the day) of the original IBM PC.
sPh
"Pretty standard in the business. Look on any oil rig, medical shop, mineral company, steel mill, etc, and you'll see standard technology selling at super premiums"
While niche markets are the place to be to make money, the gross margin for the whole business isn't what you would think from the mark-up on the components. R&D, conformance to industry specs, support, and quality/reliability expectations eat up a lot of that money.
Industrial customers don't accept the "blue screens happen" philosophy - they expect your products to work, and for you to stand behind them. I once saw the follow-up from the customer when a mission-critical product failed in a steel mill. 15 member team roaming the halls and shop floor grilling randomly selected employees on procedures, specifications, etc.; parts pulled off shelves at random and tested for specs., etc. Can you imagine the typical commercial software supplier surviving that kind of inspection?
sPh
...because there seems to be something about human nature that works that way. Particularly in the business world. Two cases in point:
* IBM made a lot of money shifting focus from hardware to services. Therefore we (for large values of "we") must shift focus to services, and we will also make lots of money. Logical flaws in this line of reasoning too numerous to point out!
* Some companies out there (Cisco, fooConsulting) are making insane gross margins. Therefore, all of our product lines must make insane gross margins. Therefore, we must "exit" (i.e. sell or trash) any business which doesn't make insane margins this quarter. Prime example: HP begets Agilent, because instruments "aren't growing fast enough". Agilent sells medical instruments, because they "aren't profitable enough". In 2 or 3 quarters I wonder if HP will wish they had those medical instruments back, given that people will still be using hospitals when all the dotcoms are dead?
Why can't business "leaders" see that _everyone_ can't do the same thing, or everyone will end up with a zero profit margin? And I ask that as an evil MBA, too!
sPh
Not to worry - _Gattica_ won't come to pass. That's comforting.
Too bad that the author forgot to discuss this with the health insurance companies. These profit-maximizing entities are already going hell bent for leather toward requiring all kinds of genetic tests, and filtering out people based on the results of those tests.
So what, you say? Haven't insurance companies always screened for, say, family history of heart disease? The answer is that although they attempted to screen, and developed some broad exclusion categories, the practical impossibility of actually tracking and classifying health information about millions of individuals meant that, in practice, individual screening did not occur.
Today, with massive collection of personal information and interconnected databases, the situation is quite different. "Mr. Jones, this is your insurance agent. Your supermarket discount card shows that you purchased two cases of beer this week. As a result your car insurance rates are going up $50. Please send payment by this afternoon or your policy will be cancelled".
And now we have genetic mapping. The author says its only one part of the picture. Great. Then why are the insurance companies so intent on preserving their right to collect and classify based on this information?
Given that in the U.S., you are either part of a group health plan, or you are pretty much doomed to die a slow death from lack of treatment, genetic screening is essentially a death sentence for many people who in the past would have been invisible in group pools.
But don't worry - this information can't be used that way.
sPh
In the original edition, when the bounty hunter confronts Han Solo in the bar, Solo shoots him under the table in cold blood. Establishing that for all his rough and loveable exterior, he is a cold-blooded mercenary at heart. This colors his entire relationship with Leia and his decision to return and helt the Alliance.
In the Special Edition, Lucas adds a few seconds where _the bounty hunter fires the first shot_, turning Solo from a ruthless mercenary to just another guy defending himself in a tough world.
That's a bit of a change, don't you think?
sPh
You forgot the step where he releases a "Special Edition" with a few "minor improvements" that have the effect of changing the entire story line and fundamental definition of one of the main characters (Han Solo vs. the bounty hunter in SW:AHN).
sPh
This would be a good candidate for RISKS. This month's issue of "GPS World" has an article from a research team in Adelaide (Oz), which is working on an urban tracking system for vehicles. Small problem: in urban areas, GPS coverage tends to be spotty. The article described how it was necessary to include inertial tracking hardware and accelerometers in the system, with all three components working together to figure out when the others were providing bad information. Otherwise, the GPS would tend to show things like the vehicle going from 0-120 km/hr in 10 meters.
Not bad for a minivan.
sPh
Not necessarily a bad point, but people still talk about "the Cadillac of x" or "as good as a VAX", even though Cadillac hasn't been a leader in engineering, quality, or sales for 30 years, nor DEC for 20. It's just a culturally-recognized shorthand, like kleenex.
sPh
"Of course, vendors can stop innovating and concentrate on quality. But do you _really_ want to use word processor from 1991? It would be quite reliable after 10 years of testing, but I wouldn't like this tradeoff"
I am not totally unsympathetic to that point of view (how's that for a qualified double negative), but it isn't the whole story from the consumers point of view.
First, I do know quite a few people who use WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS as their word processor, for exactly the reasons you state. It can do just about everything that newer word processors can do and is highly stable.
Second, I am not asking for perfection: I am just asking for a reasonable standard of care. The software industry today is about where the auto industry was in the 1950's, when it argued that there was NO WAY to design steering wheels such that they wouldn't impale the driver in an accident. Not "not injure", mind you, but "not impale", which was a very common result of a collision in those days. Not until the consumer safety zealots started raising cain, filing lawsuits, and getting laws passed did the auto companies discover, that, hey, yeah, it can be done, and it really doesn't cost us more either.
Not perfection - just basic functionality.
sPh
"If vendors are made legally responsible for the reliability/security/usability of their products, the potential for class action suits is immense."
From the perspective of a software purchaser and implementer, that would be TERRIBLE. Why just think - software vendors might have to stop innovating and concentrate on product quality and meeting the standard of warrenty of merchentability. Just like every other producer of goods in the Western world. How awful!! What demanding standards you consumers have - expecting software to actually _work_. Wah waah waaaah.
sPh
"What is a "Harvard equivalent"? Just curious... "
Business Week or Wall Street Journal top 20 MBA list. Actually, Harvard hasn't been on top of any of those lists for quite a while.
Now, I am NOT commenting here on the value of an MBA, nor trying to reopen the discussion of the value of learning something vs. having a piece of paper that says you have learned it (although both Competitive Strategy and Labor Economics courses discuss why this seemingly "stupid" behaviour is quite rational).
I AM saying that if you are going to sell your soul to the dark side, it is best to sell it to one of the top ten on those two lists. And again, Labor Economics can help you understand why.
sPh
"I'm considering an MBA or equivalent form of buisness education myself. Why? Because, as any truly aspring techie does, I want to work for -myself"
Based on my experience (MBA from a Harvard equivalent), if you want to work for yourself you would be better off to take a few semesters of Intro Accounting (so you understand the finance lingo) and Business Law at a local community college, then just go start your business.
MBAs are more useful for working in established organizations, or stepping in to provide adult supervision once the person with the new idea/startup drive hits the wall in terms of organization and management.
MBAs don't much help with having the idea or (dare I say it) the entrepreneural spark.
sPh
(wish I had time to write a 2 page essay on this)
That depends on your view of work and organizational behaviour. If you truely believe in the creed of the Second Dilbert Era (that is, Dilberts penned after Scott Adams left his day job):
* All "managers" are idiots
* Resource allocation and setting priorities are useless functions
* All problems have one correct answers
* Per the second and third points, project management and conflict resolution are just political wastes of time
* Marketing departments are only good as sources of dating prospects
then you won't find much use in an MBA. Similarly, if it is very important to you to stay current with a detailed technical speciality (say router network design), you will have a very hard time finding a management job that lets you do that.
If you are interested in learning more about how and why organizations are structured, why people behave as they do, and how to handle resource allocation and project management, then an MBA could be useful to you. Or if you would like to catch up on some of the non-engineering techncial skills, such as financial theory.
However, based on many years of observing technical people and managers, I think there are very few techies who are really interested in, or would really like, jobs in management.
sPh
"I've had some conversations w/ friends of mine about this very idea. I think that assembly should be the first language taught in CS. To be a skilled programmer, you MUST know how a computer works at the fundamental level. Teaching java to beginning programmers only encourages sloppy programming, despite any admonitions from profs"
And if tomorrow a new CPU is released that doesn't have a von Neumann architecture? How does the person whose fundamental thinking processes w.r.t. application developement were structured by assembly adapt to that?
Personally, I would go a step farther. One of the reasons that ordinary human beings have so much trouble using software is that the programmers are far too close to the details of the machine architecture.
sPh
How exactly would any of the RBOC's know that a trouble report was bogus? Given the level of attention that they give to most trouble calls, particularly when a competitor is involved.
sPh
As an ASP employee, you are of course entitled to your idea of how the relationship should work.
... well, that customer will get what it deserves. (In fact I had meant to say "application config" in my original post, but I was pounding it in quick at lunch).
As a person who has negotiated such contracts for large corporate purchasers, however, I can report that the customer is _entitled_ to what the contract says he is entitled to. And anyone who signs such a contract that doesn't say the customer is entitled to a copy of the application configuration (e.g. the SAP config tables)
Luckily, these contracts are usually negotiated by the sales force, and if you catch them at the end of their quarter and let them know you have two alternatives in your back pocket, they will browbeat their own lawyers and management into agreeing to just about anything you need!
By the way, I have also worked on ore processing contracts. And it isn't unusual to include a clause that says if you are unable to deliver the refined product, I am in fact entitled to an amount of your natural gas equivalent to what I need to smelt it myself.
sPh
"And I can see little reason why anyone should use it for their business. Having your HR, email, accounting run by complete strangers leaves your company wide open to all sorts of disasters"
Organizations have been outsourcing these computerized services for nigh on 40 years now. And probably for 10,000 years before that, in non-electronic form. I would guess that 90% of the paychecks issued in North America are handled on an outsourced basis by ADP, Ceridian, or PayChex. Same with HR and e-mail. Where do you think IBM has been making all its money in the last 5 years?
High volume, low value transactions are always going to be a candidate for outsourcing. The keys to doing it successfully are due diligance, a good contract lawyer, and auditing.
sPh