"Outsourcing" - an annoying neologism, I admit - means rather more than "getting someone else to do something for you". Consumers, in particular, do not "outsource".
Economy of scale/specialisation does not kick in by default, and even when it does, that usually justifies only a cooperative effort, not outsourcing to a third party. The third party option is only appropriate to consider when a complex business process needs to be implemented which is already delivered well by an established provider.
Really, geeks didn't have a problem understanding the fallacy of outsourcing only a decade ago. Times have changed.
Eh? If for some reason the baby was thrown out with the bathwater because of your bitching, then MS would just step up their game and "insist" on a variant of secure boot on whatever system replaced it.
Randall Munroe is an embarrassing illustration of the mediocrity of the average modern nerd. He says nothing which isn't either cliche or oversimplified.
I thought I was alone in this until a few weeks ago I found a site called xkcdsucks, and it appears I'm not alone in thinking this.
That's like saying metal should be dismissed because one application is the building of nuclear bombs.
UEFI's just a more modular/uniform sort of BIOS. Even the old 16-bit BIOSes could have had anti-competitive restrictions bolted on, but it wouldn't have been as easy to sell.
it's a job. They should do the job; particularly, they should do the job their dispatcher promised they would do on their behalf. If they have an argument with the dispatcher, that should be their problem, not mine.
Your beef is with the dispatch company. And it is your problem, evidently. And being able to watch "your" taxi approach with a creepy GPS monitoring device won't guarantee anything per se, will it?
they bill by GPS start and end point
Wow, that's absurd. In a city (particularly an organic one), straight distance between two points is a really unreliable way of assessing journey difficulty, hence cost.
Fourth, as far as "doing it wrong", I suppose you are suggesting that I, and my one friend, and my other friend with the walker, go 10 blocks down to 19th street and just hail a passing cab. You have obviously never had a physical disability.
Wait, did you just play some sort of disability card? I "obviously" don't helplessly wait for 60 minutes beyond the expected arrival time of a single cab, regardless of my health or the health of any of my companions. Although if I have special requirements or am familiar with the town - and I regularly travel with someone with a significant physical disability, so I am familiar with the dickish behaviour that a minority of service providers displays - I already know which companies I can rely on, so this sort of problem is less likely to happen.
1) Are you sure that merely calling for a cab obliges both parties? And has this ever been tested in SF?
2) It was not turning up which caused the loss, not the lie about turning up.
3) "Sue them!!!" is still a daft, overkill way to handle the problem of every crap business deciding not to serve you when you haven't even paid them anything yet. Anyway, the taxi company almost certainly won't have an obligation to pay for consequential loss, so good luck with that.
4) If your local (it'll depend on the city, not the country) taxi regulator ignores complaints, deal with the regulator as community - don't inefficiently and selfishly focus on your single loss.
Dunno about you, but using my card gives me up to 56 day interest free credit, generous cashback, and statutory and/or provider purchase protection. I find maintaining a credit card to be more hassle and more intrusive than just using cash, but the benefits often outweigh the drawbacks. To implicitly pay the 1-2% credit card surcharge just because it's convenient would be absurd.
I sometimes forget I'm on an American site, then I read stuff like, "The caller should be able to sue because the cab company lied about the cab arriving," and I'm reminded again.
Company isn't delivering? Find another. Lodge complaint with regulator. But sue?!
I'd rather be able to speak to an experienced human on a 'phone when arranging a service than use another shitty automated middle man which can only deal with the simplest cases and which operates on volume rather than quality. There's always a significant cost to automation for the end user - it's just more profitable for the system's owner.
Outsourcing is logically less efficient, because someone else is always taking a cut of pure profit which they wouldn't if you provided a service in-house or cooperatively. Giving a middleman control of the initial sale (cf. Amazon, eBay) is one of the worst ways of permanently guaranteeing that a leech will make sure that you have to do an ever-increasing amount of work while they do very little new on your behalf. It's just not business sense.
I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services of those who they perceive as lower down in the pecking order.
Being a cabby is obviously a stressful and fairly tedious job (and I speak only as an occasional rider). More importantly, it's a job, not servitude. Of course they're going to prefer to the more profitable routes, and there are going to be some providers more competent than others. And if you were sat for an hour waiting for a single cab company in one place in a city, you were doing it completely wrong.
If you delegate, YOU are responsible for the fuck-up. It's that simple. Doesn't matter whether it's CEO, employee, or contractor - Samsung have fucked up here.
At least it wasn't outsourcing to the private sector by government. That's the worst thing to happen to modern Western society, as the tail's now permanently wagging the dog.
My understanding is that only straw men regard CSIRO as having "invented" Wifi - like you said, it was a combination of inputs. The difference is that most organisations were already private or decided to privatise themselves to exploit the technology, whereas CSIRO has kept to its public research purpose. How else do you suggest that it receive its share?
You mean a couple of enterprising managers/scientists didn't immediately spin themselves off into a new company so they could personally collect the profits rather than give back to the universities and public sector research bodies which gave them education, experience, equipment, salary, thousands of articles upon which to base their research, and an almost infinite number of grad students, like with almost all groundbreaking modern research?
Queen Liz has achieved a lot of things, most of which were possible only because of the family she was born into and the intelligence she inherited.
Many other people (almost all otheres on the banknotes, in fact) have achieved lots of things, most of which were only possible because of the family they are born into and the intelligence they inherited.
Elizabeth has been a statesperson (advisor and figurehead) since 1952. Even the most ardent republican - and I think that every country has one or more royal families, whether they claim to or not - cannot deny her influence on the world stage.
bastardized version of a 15 year old shell script that you've been using since they wrote it in their first year out of college
That's exactly what puppet gives you, only you also have to remember another tedious infrastructure that's out of your control and constrains what you can do.
Some of these tools are really just resume-fillers. Any sysadmin worth anything has always done centralised automation.
They have convinced themselves that they are good people on no basis whatsoever,
All people do this, and I am continually amazed when people make comments like GP, wondering how someone can live with certain actions.
Oh, that's terribly defeatist. What makes you think it? It's certainly not been my observation at all.
Its as if they think the "big bads" of the 20th century (Mao, Stalin, et al)
Not sure why you slipped in that little list, but are you by any chance looking at this problem from quite far to the right? I've noticed a tendency of ideologues (rather than ethical pragmatists) to view everyone as evil hypocrites by nature, and to use that as an excuse for their worldview.
I'd regard not being able to achieve unless I deceive those who put their trust in me to be a grand admission of failure. Maybe some people just have low standards for themselves? Even the dullest person can get things done with a bottomless pit of money and lies.
What I wonder about right now are the NSA employees who - some surely being geeks who read Slashdot - are reading this comment. How do they sleep at night?
Do they speak like so many mid-20th century "soldiers", absolving themselves because they're only following orders? Have they been brainwashed into thinking that there's suuuuuuch a threat from terrorists to the American Way Of Life that what they do is essential? Or do they just enjoy the power trip in a dying empire? At least one such NSA employee will be reading this, and their conscience will twinge, just for a second.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot has become a venue for amateur lawyers and hangers-on. Every so often I return to this site and it has got worse each time.
"Outsourcing" - an annoying neologism, I admit - means rather more than "getting someone else to do something for you". Consumers, in particular, do not "outsource".
Economy of scale/specialisation does not kick in by default, and even when it does, that usually justifies only a cooperative effort, not outsourcing to a third party. The third party option is only appropriate to consider when a complex business process needs to be implemented which is already delivered well by an established provider.
Really, geeks didn't have a problem understanding the fallacy of outsourcing only a decade ago. Times have changed.
Eh? If for some reason the baby was thrown out with the bathwater because of your bitching, then MS would just step up their game and "insist" on a variant of secure boot on whatever system replaced it.
And how long has writing existed for?
Randall Munroe is an embarrassing illustration of the mediocrity of the average modern nerd. He says nothing which isn't either cliche or oversimplified.
I thought I was alone in this until a few weeks ago I found a site called xkcdsucks, and it appears I'm not alone in thinking this.
That's like saying metal should be dismissed because one application is the building of nuclear bombs.
UEFI's just a more modular/uniform sort of BIOS. Even the old 16-bit BIOSes could have had anti-competitive restrictions bolted on, but it wouldn't have been as easy to sell.
it's a job. They should do the job; particularly, they should do the job their dispatcher promised they would do on their behalf. If they have an argument with the dispatcher, that should be their problem, not mine.
Your beef is with the dispatch company. And it is your problem, evidently. And being able to watch "your" taxi approach with a creepy GPS monitoring device won't guarantee anything per se, will it?
they bill by GPS start and end point
Wow, that's absurd. In a city (particularly an organic one), straight distance between two points is a really unreliable way of assessing journey difficulty, hence cost.
Fourth, as far as "doing it wrong", I suppose you are suggesting that I, and my one friend, and my other friend with the walker, go 10 blocks down to 19th street and just hail a passing cab. You have obviously never had a physical disability.
Wait, did you just play some sort of disability card? I "obviously" don't helplessly wait for 60 minutes beyond the expected arrival time of a single cab, regardless of my health or the health of any of my companions. Although if I have special requirements or am familiar with the town - and I regularly travel with someone with a significant physical disability, so I am familiar with the dickish behaviour that a minority of service providers displays - I already know which companies I can rely on, so this sort of problem is less likely to happen.
1) Are you sure that merely calling for a cab obliges both parties? And has this ever been tested in SF?
2) It was not turning up which caused the loss, not the lie about turning up.
3) "Sue them!!!" is still a daft, overkill way to handle the problem of every crap business deciding not to serve you when you haven't even paid them anything yet. Anyway, the taxi company almost certainly won't have an obligation to pay for consequential loss, so good luck with that.
4) If your local (it'll depend on the city, not the country) taxi regulator ignores complaints, deal with the regulator as community - don't inefficiently and selfishly focus on your single loss.
Dunno about you, but using my card gives me up to 56 day interest free credit, generous cashback, and statutory and/or provider purchase protection. I find maintaining a credit card to be more hassle and more intrusive than just using cash, but the benefits often outweigh the drawbacks. To implicitly pay the 1-2% credit card surcharge just because it's convenient would be absurd.
I sometimes forget I'm on an American site, then I read stuff like, "The caller should be able to sue because the cab company lied about the cab arriving," and I'm reminded again.
Company isn't delivering? Find another. Lodge complaint with regulator. But sue?!
I'd rather be able to speak to an experienced human on a 'phone when arranging a service than use another shitty automated middle man which can only deal with the simplest cases and which operates on volume rather than quality. There's always a significant cost to automation for the end user - it's just more profitable for the system's owner.
Outsourcing is logically less efficient, because someone else is always taking a cut of pure profit which they wouldn't if you provided a service in-house or cooperatively. Giving a middleman control of the initial sale (cf. Amazon, eBay) is one of the worst ways of permanently guaranteeing that a leech will make sure that you have to do an ever-increasing amount of work while they do very little new on your behalf. It's just not business sense.
I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services of those who they perceive as lower down in the pecking order.
Being a cabby is obviously a stressful and fairly tedious job (and I speak only as an occasional rider). More importantly, it's a job, not servitude. Of course they're going to prefer to the more profitable routes, and there are going to be some providers more competent than others. And if you were sat for an hour waiting for a single cab company in one place in a city, you were doing it completely wrong.
Of course. But they would have to make good with me.
If you delegate, YOU are responsible for the fuck-up. It's that simple. Doesn't matter whether it's CEO, employee, or contractor - Samsung have fucked up here.
At least it wasn't outsourcing to the private sector by government. That's the worst thing to happen to modern Western society, as the tail's now permanently wagging the dog.
My understanding is that only straw men regard CSIRO as having "invented" Wifi - like you said, it was a combination of inputs. The difference is that most organisations were already private or decided to privatise themselves to exploit the technology, whereas CSIRO has kept to its public research purpose. How else do you suggest that it receive its share?
You mean a couple of enterprising managers/scientists didn't immediately spin themselves off into a new company so they could personally collect the profits rather than give back to the universities and public sector research bodies which gave them education, experience, equipment, salary, thousands of articles upon which to base their research, and an almost infinite number of grad students, like with almost all groundbreaking modern research?
Queen Liz has achieved a lot of things, most of which were possible only because of the family she was born into and the intelligence she inherited.
Many other people (almost all otheres on the banknotes, in fact) have achieved lots of things, most of which were only possible because of the family they are born into and the intelligence they inherited.
Elizabeth has been a statesperson (advisor and figurehead) since 1952. Even the most ardent republican - and I think that every country has one or more royal families, whether they claim to or not - cannot deny her influence on the world stage.
bastardized version of a 15 year old shell script that you've been using since they wrote it in their first year out of college
That's exactly what puppet gives you, only you also have to remember another tedious infrastructure that's out of your control and constrains what you can do.
Some of these tools are really just resume-fillers. Any sysadmin worth anything has always done centralised automation.
...so, honestly curious, why is the FSF engaged in an exercise which promotes the Google ecosystem?
They've always struck me as being far-sighted, not narrow-sighted.
Argh, sophomores everywhere.
Security through obscurity isn't "no security at all". It's just inadequate. There's still the hurdle of overcoming obscurity.
Just like strong cryptography is great but not perfect because 1) implementation is often flawed; 2) rubber hose.
Me too. Practice!
And if you still can't remember something, remember how to find it out. Never rely on a crutch.
really? Cool, certainly, but it seems there hasn't been a need to evolve the skill in many species.
They have convinced themselves that they are good people on no basis whatsoever,
All people do this, and I am continually amazed when people make comments like GP, wondering how someone can live with certain actions.
Oh, that's terribly defeatist. What makes you think it? It's certainly not been my observation at all.
Its as if they think the "big bads" of the 20th century (Mao, Stalin, et al)
Not sure why you slipped in that little list, but are you by any chance looking at this problem from quite far to the right? I've noticed a tendency of ideologues (rather than ethical pragmatists) to view everyone as evil hypocrites by nature, and to use that as an excuse for their worldview.
I'd regard not being able to achieve unless I deceive those who put their trust in me to be a grand admission of failure. Maybe some people just have low standards for themselves? Even the dullest person can get things done with a bottomless pit of money and lies.
If you don't know your representative's name in a representative democracy, something's very broken.
Rogue? Seems complicit to me.
What I wonder about right now are the NSA employees who - some surely being geeks who read Slashdot - are reading this comment. How do they sleep at night?
Do they speak like so many mid-20th century "soldiers", absolving themselves because they're only following orders? Have they been brainwashed into thinking that there's suuuuuuch a threat from terrorists to the American Way Of Life that what they do is essential? Or do they just enjoy the power trip in a dying empire? At least one such NSA employee will be reading this, and their conscience will twinge, just for a second.