Again. Just because you don't see the value doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I never said the value didn't exist. I asked for someone to give a decent example which would show that it did exist. That's all. All I've seen thus far is hand-waving and a varied incantation "it's quicker this way" without even some rough guesses on how that quicker way saves more money than the software and the manpower to keep the licenses paid for and avoid a BSA audit.
Scaling up goes both ways. Scheduling by hand is easier to do for 10 people than 100. But It also takes more money to enable those 100 people with the software and remain compliant. Is there, in fact, a financial arguent to be made to support the necessties of features like this? Is the salary of a good secratary, who could serve the same function, more expensive than the cost of software and a good admin's time to maintain it?
Really, I'd like to know. A case study or rough numbers based on a real office situation would suffice. Something.
That's one serious case! I just started reading it on the Cornell archives.
Sheesh! -- they sure stretched a bit on that one, eh? A little more nudging, and I'd be breaking the law by raising my own chickens. That would be interferring with Tyson's business, you know. Can't have that.
You know, when you hear of cases like that and the one that gave corporations the rights of real people, one has to wonder if the tinfoil hats really are justified. I know that the Justices are men and women, and like all people, are prone to bad days. But I can't see how anything but concerted effort to curtail the rights of individuals could result in some of these SCOTUS decisions. Yeah, that may seem to fly in the face of the huge number of cases where the common man was vindicated and his rights upheld, but one can't help but be suspect of the Court's motives sometimes.
Imagine if we go the route that many groups want which is to have local and state governments provide their own taxpayer-subsidized WiFi internet access, as is being talked about for Houston.
I look a my typical phone bill, and I see all sorts of taxes, levies, and surcharges. I'd say that the telephone infrastructure is indeed subsidized a good deal by us tax-paying folks already. That doesn't even include the subsidies that aren't so overt, like those many businesses get, the quasi-monopoly status of the regional telcos, etc.
At least, we can rightfully sue the govnerment for the breach of due process. Private companies are pretty much excluded from those protections, and they roll over like submissive dogs when the Feds come knocking. They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them those subsidies.
Oh, sure, if you want a separate web app, you can go to lots of apps.
Bingo!
If we assume that shared calendars are a necessity (which I can't see as being true), then what's wrong with another application? What's this one-integrated-application-fits-all fettish all about?
Yet another "I don't have a use for it so nobody must have a use for it" post. When you work in a department with 160 people and you have schedule meetings for say 20 of those people it is extremely difficult without Outlook/Exchange.
Oh, gimme a break. It's not just me -- thousands of people plan stuff w/o Exchange just fine. I submit the many cases where hundreds of people planned on USENET, IRC, IM, or email. Look at flash mobs -- you think they have an aan Exchange server managing this stuff?
Damn, I'd love some of the cozy features of the expensive luxury cars, but I can't justify the cost to my family. So I am pretty content to "settle" on our current car (by no means a luxury car).
My point isn't that "if I don't need it, why does anyone else?". It's closer to, if we made due without all of those fancy features a few years ago, why do companies feel the need to spend so much on those features now?
This calendar stuff is much like people refusing to buy a car without cup holders. Oh, the horror! How will I even drink my latte on the way to work! People manage just fine, thanks.;-)
I still don't get it. Why are these silly (IMO) features such deal breakers for some people when the cost and freedom benefits of the alternatives are far superior? Isn't the goal of business to be fiscally efficient? Is there really a positive ROI for you to have Exchange in your office?
Could someone make a decent argument why Exchange is so damned "important" in the private sector? I'm serious here. Managerial groupthink does not count.
I was once an admin for a M$ shop, and ran the Exchange Server 5.5. The higher-ups would get so damned pissed at me 'cause I simply refused to use the entire calendar/planner/contact-list crap that was part of LookOut. I just couldn't (and still can't) stomach that stuff. Yet I somehow managed to get the important shit done.
Please, will someone tell me what's so useful about the Exchange/Outlook combo (or either half, for that matter) that a business will spend the money on the MS Server, the Exchange Server, CALs, and the Windows/Outlook licesnes?
In an age of such fierce competition and cost-cutting measurse to increase the bottom line, I fail to see how a business can justify canning decent employees and cutting benefits, yet they're still willing to pay the MS crack dealer the annual licensing fees. Providing pet features for management doesn't seem like a good reason to me.
In all honesty, I continue to be stumped by this practice. The open source solutions we have available today are light years ahead of the commercial offerings we had ten years ago. Yet, we somehow managed with the tools back then. This isn't about not enjoying progress -- I'm no software Luddite -- it's about freedom (in the RMS sense). Isn't a little growing pain and inconvenience worth not having to worry about the BSA and the annual software audit?
So very true. Can you imagine how companies would flip out by having to explain cash paid to illegal immigrants is traced back to them? Entire sectors of business would collapse.
9/11 was, by most reasonable definitions, a terrorist act, much like the OK City bombing, the Unabomber stuff, the beltway snipers, and even possibly (gray area here) your typical serial killer.
But please... enough with naming every illegal act as one of "terror".
Look, killing is killing is killing. Columbine wasn't a terrorist act, it was a couple of messed up kids who finally went over the edge. Yeah, sure, people may have been terrorized during that event, but that makes it no more an "act of terror" any more than a typical McDonald's massacre or drive-by shooting.
Why lower the bar so much? Do we, as a society, want to equate true terrorism with random acts like this? This is simply a high-tech equivalent to kids dropping bricks from highway overpasses into rush-hour traffic. Surely these are despicable acts, but putting them in the same league of 9/11 or OK City is disingenuous at best.
What amazes me is that there have been no successful hacks against the CSS/DRM/whatever in DVD-Audio yet. At least none that I've come across on the 'net.
Also, frankly, the CG effects he added to the 'Special Ed' versions looks worse to me than the original models.
This goes for the new movies, as well. Am I the only one who thinks that the Fett/Kenonbi asteroid scene in Clones didn't hold a candle to the Tie-Fighter/Falcon asteroid scene in ESB?
I love CG as much as the next geek, but those real models are sometimes the best thing for the job.
Empire has never been my favorite (don't ask my why, I dunno. Might be that it's so dark), but I don't remember any big-huge changes in it (correct me if I'm wrong). Because of that it's the best of the Special Editions in my mind simply because there are no real glaring changes.
Like most, I enjoyed the film and sound restoration. There was an NPR story last week about the complexities of transferring old movies to DVD. Aside from the problems of acquiring the rights to do so, a major problem is finding good prints to use. The prime example was the original Star Wars trilogy, and I guess they hired the best man at the time to restore and clean up every frame.
Had Lucas stopped there, it would have been a breathtaking release. The "sunset scene", and all the others we loved so much would be immortalized in digital format in vibrant color and sound for the enjoyment of future generations.
You ask specifically about Empire. My major gripe follows. In the original ESB, the introduction of the Imperial March theme sends chills down my spine. The scene dynamic, as well as the score dynamic, is rarely duplicated in cinema. That one scene sets the tone for the rest of the movies of just how bad-ass the Empire is.
Now maybe my memory was skewed by how my young eyes and ears first experienced that scene. But when I saw ESB Special Edition, I was really pumped to see that scene on the big screen. However, I was let down. The theme was there, but they did something to the volume, or something. The impact was totally gone. I bitched to a few friends about it, and they agreed (one being a huge ESB fan). So I guess something was changed, even if I can't remember exactly what it was in that scene.
These subtle differences, these nuances, are the very heart and soul of films.
Also, wasn't Vader's "bring me my shuttle" scene totally botched in the re-make? You really think he gives a shit about having the entire guard in formation as he boards his ship before hunting down his escaped son?
For fuck's sake, Mr. Lucas! -- leave well enough alone. As soon as I can scrape the cash together, I'm gonna pay the $300 or so to get a LD player ad the true original trilogy on LD. Then I'm gonna pay even more for some A/V freak to transfer to DVD. And I may -- just maybe -- give these transfers to good friends who hate the new editions as much as I do.
Check out the online entry for TB in the Merck Manual, Second Home Edition (I have this book at home). It's an interesting read.
You may understand why doctors may default to such harsh treatment when in doubt. It's a damned tough bug. It can infect nearly any system in the body (even the brain, in rare cases), though it's most commonly found in the lungs. It'll sit dormant for an entire lifetime, popping up when the immune system is weak and/or when damage to the infected system released the cysts, activating the infection.
There are 3 primary kinds of TB: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (the kind people mostly get), M. bovis (cattle variant), and M. avis (bird variant).
I've read up on TB a bit (I also own the Merck Vet. Manual), because we own a cow. Cattle, a common vector for TB, are simply culled when bovine TB is detected. I assume that if effective treatment were possible, it would be similar to the long, expensive kind used on people and it's simply not profitable to cure a cow.
What these sources really don't address (or address clearly to the layman) is whether or not the bovine and avian variants are a threat to people, and if they're treated the same way. Maybe an M.D. can clarify for me.:)
You're not that "stop abuse of cats" guy that used to haunt the comp.unix.shell group, are you? He liked to point out extraneous cats in script snippets posted on USENET.
Been years since I've thought of that guy. Takes me back to the pre-spam days of the newsgroups.:)
The trouble with this idea is that when you allow protectionism, you give companies another way to compete -- by controlling the protectionism in their favor.
Very true. This is why the companies can ship our jobs to the lowest bidding country, and why we, as consumers, can't order DVDs direct from Asia and drugs from Canada and Mexico (well... not easily, and certainly not in any official way).
en Netflix received a DVD (and sent me an email), they would send me a new one on the same day, every time. When Blockbuster and Walmart received a DVD (and sent me an email), they often would take another full day before sending out the next one. Walmart was the worse of the three. Advantege: Netflix
This can change. It did with me.
Every once in a while I'll send all my flicks back at the exact same time. If Netflix did ship out new movies the same day they received them (rare in and of itself), they almost never sent all 3 out at the same time. They'd stagger the movies a bit, just to waste a day or two.
I'm still with them (renewed membership offer), but I'm well aware of the games they play. And I'll call them on it some day.
I'd have to say that the fact you quote must surely have something to do with the US's out-of-control, dumbass consumer culture.
I'm in the process of buying my next home. I make about $53k/yr -- modest by IT standards, but above the national average. I have a loan pre-qualification letter sitting here that says I can get a loan for about $160,000. My loan guy must be shitting a brick 'cause I made an offer on a $75k modular home, as are my agents. Everyone thinks we're crazy 'cause we neither want, nor need, the highest-priced things we can get. I don't know when the "American Dream" went from "supporting oneself and family with the fruits of one's hard work" to "buying all this over-priced shiny new shit to keep up with the Joneses", but it's a sad state of affairs out there.
How about stats of the price of 5-lb bags of flour and sugar and a 20-lb sack of potatoes now vs 50 years ago compared to the average salary. Have the basics of living increased that much in that time?
I'm not trying to be an ass -- I'm really curious here. Has the cost of modest living really gone up that much?
Decrying the plight of poor Wally World employees is tough when you see as many Satellite TV dishes in poor neighborhoods as you do in the 'burbs. Yeah, that's harsh and cynical (and a straw man to boot), but people can do much better with much less than they realize.
I remember a big stink about some song made from samples of network news. I think it was called "Rocked By Rape" -- a quote of something Dan Rather said, and a sample used over and over again in the song.
Would this ruling stifle those types of works, too?
Insurance companies are all greedy assholes. I've never filed an auto or house claim in the 16 years I've been driving and the 6 years I've owned homes. Yet Metlife Home-n-Auto dropped my homeowners' policy out of the blue. WTF? So I ditched them for my auto policy, since you nearly always get a good discount for having auto and home with a company.
So my new masters are Allstate. They ran a credit check and decided to up my auto premiums 'cause I have a bankruptcy a few years back on my credit report. What, loosing a job, then falling behind, then filing for a BK suddenly makes me a worse driver? Fuck that.
The statistics they use are just so insulting. They must use a correlation, rather than a causation methodology of determining rates, which is just patently unfair. How the fuck does turning 25 or getting marries make me a better driver? How does having a penis make me a worse driver? It doesn't, but there must be a correlation between these factors.
And does anyone else see the horrible disservice of "under-/non-insured insurance" in states that mandate by law having insurance to begin with? Once again, law-abiding people get the shaft twice.
Wow -- what a lucrative business. They've managed to get their business model written into the law books, and we're all getting bent over the barrel.
(And if anyone tows the "driving isn't a right" line, I'm gonna go postal.)
Could AbiWord be the next Paint Shop Pro? I remember when it came out, it was a great alternative for those of us who didn't need and/or couldn't afford Photoshop. Now I use GIMP.
Sure, one can't entirely replace the other feature-for-feature, but PSP does fairly well in its market. AbiWord could very well do the same.
Note : driving slower has one explicit effect : middle fingers from freaks who think their lives are so filled up, they really need those 10% they think they can shave off in traffic. Usually types who wash their car every week and thereby lose hours of time:-)
I agree with most all of your post.
I'm a cruise control addict myself. I love watching pissed-off asshats behind me, flailing their hands and making unkind gestures (uually while on a cell phone) just because they're stuck behind a speed-limit-driving car on a 2-lane highway.
Oh, and the passing lane!;-) Hey, if I'm going the posted speed limit, you can't really expect to be pissed at me when I'm inching along the passing lane, passing that car driving at 63mph, while I'm locked in at 65mph. Can you? Those speed freaks can kiss my ass, or at least read my license plate.
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I never said the value didn't exist. I asked for someone to give a decent example which would show that it did exist. That's all. All I've seen thus far is hand-waving and a varied incantation "it's quicker this way" without even some rough guesses on how that quicker way saves more money than the software and the manpower to keep the licenses paid for and avoid a BSA audit.
Scaling up goes both ways. Scheduling by hand is easier to do for 10 people than 100. But It also takes more money to enable those 100 people with the software and remain compliant. Is there, in fact, a financial arguent to be made to support the necessties of features like this? Is the salary of a good secratary, who could serve the same function, more expensive than the cost of software and a good admin's time to maintain it?
Really, I'd like to know. A case study or rough numbers based on a real office situation would suffice. Something.
Sheesh! -- they sure stretched a bit on that one, eh? A little more nudging, and I'd be breaking the law by raising my own chickens. That would be interferring with Tyson's business, you know. Can't have that.
You know, when you hear of cases like that and the one that gave corporations the rights of real people, one has to wonder if the tinfoil hats really are justified. I know that the Justices are men and women, and like all people, are prone to bad days. But I can't see how anything but concerted effort to curtail the rights of individuals could result in some of these SCOTUS decisions. Yeah, that may seem to fly in the face of the huge number of cases where the common man was vindicated and his rights upheld, but one can't help but be suspect of the Court's motives sometimes.
I look a my typical phone bill, and I see all sorts of taxes, levies, and surcharges. I'd say that the telephone infrastructure is indeed subsidized a good deal by us tax-paying folks already. That doesn't even include the subsidies that aren't so overt, like those many businesses get, the quasi-monopoly status of the regional telcos, etc.
At least, we can rightfully sue the govnerment for the breach of due process. Private companies are pretty much excluded from those protections, and they roll over like submissive dogs when the Feds come knocking. They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them those subsidies.
Simple. Shared calendars.
But is there a solution?
Oh, sure, if you want a separate web app, you can go to lots of apps.
Bingo!
If we assume that shared calendars are a necessity (which I can't see as being true), then what's wrong with another application? What's this one-integrated-application-fits-all fettish all about?
Oh, gimme a break. It's not just me -- thousands of people plan stuff w/o Exchange just fine. I submit the many cases where hundreds of people planned on USENET, IRC, IM, or email. Look at flash mobs -- you think they have an aan Exchange server managing this stuff?
Damn, I'd love some of the cozy features of the expensive luxury cars, but I can't justify the cost to my family. So I am pretty content to "settle" on our current car (by no means a luxury car).
My point isn't that "if I don't need it, why does anyone else?". It's closer to, if we made due without all of those fancy features a few years ago, why do companies feel the need to spend so much on those features now?
This calendar stuff is much like people refusing to buy a car without cup holders. Oh, the horror! How will I even drink my latte on the way to work! People manage just fine, thanks. ;-)
I still don't get it. Why are these silly (IMO) features such deal breakers for some people when the cost and freedom benefits of the alternatives are far superior? Isn't the goal of business to be fiscally efficient? Is there really a positive ROI for you to have Exchange in your office?
I was once an admin for a M$ shop, and ran the Exchange Server 5.5. The higher-ups would get so damned pissed at me 'cause I simply refused to use the entire calendar/planner/contact-list crap that was part of LookOut. I just couldn't (and still can't) stomach that stuff. Yet I somehow managed to get the important shit done.
Please, will someone tell me what's so useful about the Exchange/Outlook combo (or either half, for that matter) that a business will spend the money on the MS Server, the Exchange Server, CALs, and the Windows/Outlook licesnes?
In an age of such fierce competition and cost-cutting measurse to increase the bottom line, I fail to see how a business can justify canning decent employees and cutting benefits, yet they're still willing to pay the MS crack dealer the annual licensing fees. Providing pet features for management doesn't seem like a good reason to me.
In all honesty, I continue to be stumped by this practice. The open source solutions we have available today are light years ahead of the commercial offerings we had ten years ago. Yet, we somehow managed with the tools back then. This isn't about not enjoying progress -- I'm no software Luddite -- it's about freedom (in the RMS sense). Isn't a little growing pain and inconvenience worth not having to worry about the BSA and the annual software audit?
No, you goofball! They landed at the site of that black monolith thingy.
Go fix me a turkey pot-pie!
So very true. Can you imagine how companies would flip out by having to explain cash paid to illegal immigrants is traced back to them? Entire sectors of business would collapse.
But please... enough with naming every illegal act as one of "terror".
Look, killing is killing is killing. Columbine wasn't a terrorist act, it was a couple of messed up kids who finally went over the edge. Yeah, sure, people may have been terrorized during that event, but that makes it no more an "act of terror" any more than a typical McDonald's massacre or drive-by shooting.
Why lower the bar so much? Do we, as a society, want to equate true terrorism with random acts like this? This is simply a high-tech equivalent to kids dropping bricks from highway overpasses into rush-hour traffic. Surely these are despicable acts, but putting them in the same league of 9/11 or OK City is disingenuous at best.
What amazes me is that there have been no successful hacks against the CSS/DRM/whatever in DVD-Audio yet. At least none that I've come across on the 'net.
15 years ago, the average computer user was comfortable with the command line (DOS) and the hot word processor was Word Perfect 5.1.
Nowadays, people bitch and moan when one mentions the command promp or having to learn a new desktop or word processor GUI. Oh, the horror!
I just don't buy the ease-of-use argument in most cases.
This goes for the new movies, as well. Am I the only one who thinks that the Fett/Kenonbi asteroid scene in Clones didn't hold a candle to the Tie-Fighter/Falcon asteroid scene in ESB?
I love CG as much as the next geek, but those real models are sometimes the best thing for the job.
Like most, I enjoyed the film and sound restoration. There was an NPR story last week about the complexities of transferring old movies to DVD. Aside from the problems of acquiring the rights to do so, a major problem is finding good prints to use. The prime example was the original Star Wars trilogy, and I guess they hired the best man at the time to restore and clean up every frame.
Had Lucas stopped there, it would have been a breathtaking release. The "sunset scene", and all the others we loved so much would be immortalized in digital format in vibrant color and sound for the enjoyment of future generations.
You ask specifically about Empire. My major gripe follows. In the original ESB, the introduction of the Imperial March theme sends chills down my spine. The scene dynamic, as well as the score dynamic, is rarely duplicated in cinema. That one scene sets the tone for the rest of the movies of just how bad-ass the Empire is.
Now maybe my memory was skewed by how my young eyes and ears first experienced that scene. But when I saw ESB Special Edition, I was really pumped to see that scene on the big screen. However, I was let down. The theme was there, but they did something to the volume, or something. The impact was totally gone. I bitched to a few friends about it, and they agreed (one being a huge ESB fan). So I guess something was changed, even if I can't remember exactly what it was in that scene.
These subtle differences, these nuances, are the very heart and soul of films.
Also, wasn't Vader's "bring me my shuttle" scene totally botched in the re-make? You really think he gives a shit about having the entire guard in formation as he boards his ship before hunting down his escaped son?
For fuck's sake, Mr. Lucas! -- leave well enough alone. As soon as I can scrape the cash together, I'm gonna pay the $300 or so to get a LD player ad the true original trilogy on LD. Then I'm gonna pay even more for some A/V freak to transfer to DVD. And I may -- just maybe -- give these transfers to good friends who hate the new editions as much as I do.
You may understand why doctors may default to such harsh treatment when in doubt. It's a damned tough bug. It can infect nearly any system in the body (even the brain, in rare cases), though it's most commonly found in the lungs. It'll sit dormant for an entire lifetime, popping up when the immune system is weak and/or when damage to the infected system released the cysts, activating the infection.
There are 3 primary kinds of TB: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (the kind people mostly get), M. bovis (cattle variant), and M. avis (bird variant).
I've read up on TB a bit (I also own the Merck Vet. Manual), because we own a cow. Cattle, a common vector for TB, are simply culled when bovine TB is detected. I assume that if effective treatment were possible, it would be similar to the long, expensive kind used on people and it's simply not profitable to cure a cow.
What these sources really don't address (or address clearly to the layman) is whether or not the bovine and avian variants are a threat to people, and if they're treated the same way. Maybe an M.D. can clarify for me. :)
Don't be an asshat!
Been years since I've thought of that guy. Takes me back to the pre-spam days of the newsgroups. :)
Very true. This is why the companies can ship our jobs to the lowest bidding country, and why we, as consumers, can't order DVDs direct from Asia and drugs from Canada and Mexico (well... not easily, and certainly not in any official way).
This can change. It did with me.
Every once in a while I'll send all my flicks back at the exact same time. If Netflix did ship out new movies the same day they received them (rare in and of itself), they almost never sent all 3 out at the same time. They'd stagger the movies a bit, just to waste a day or two.
I'm still with them (renewed membership offer), but I'm well aware of the games they play. And I'll call them on it some day.
I'm in the process of buying my next home. I make about $53k/yr -- modest by IT standards, but above the national average. I have a loan pre-qualification letter sitting here that says I can get a loan for about $160,000. My loan guy must be shitting a brick 'cause I made an offer on a $75k modular home, as are my agents. Everyone thinks we're crazy 'cause we neither want, nor need, the highest-priced things we can get. I don't know when the "American Dream" went from "supporting oneself and family with the fruits of one's hard work" to "buying all this over-priced shiny new shit to keep up with the Joneses", but it's a sad state of affairs out there.
How about stats of the price of 5-lb bags of flour and sugar and a 20-lb sack of potatoes now vs 50 years ago compared to the average salary. Have the basics of living increased that much in that time?
I'm not trying to be an ass -- I'm really curious here. Has the cost of modest living really gone up that much?
Decrying the plight of poor Wally World employees is tough when you see as many Satellite TV dishes in poor neighborhoods as you do in the 'burbs. Yeah, that's harsh and cynical (and a straw man to boot), but people can do much better with much less than they realize.
Conjures up an images of SCO's lawyers sitting around a table.
Would this ruling stifle those types of works, too?
So my new masters are Allstate. They ran a credit check and decided to up my auto premiums 'cause I have a bankruptcy a few years back on my credit report. What, loosing a job, then falling behind, then filing for a BK suddenly makes me a worse driver? Fuck that.
The statistics they use are just so insulting. They must use a correlation, rather than a causation methodology of determining rates, which is just patently unfair. How the fuck does turning 25 or getting marries make me a better driver? How does having a penis make me a worse driver? It doesn't, but there must be a correlation between these factors.
And does anyone else see the horrible disservice of "under-/non-insured insurance" in states that mandate by law having insurance to begin with? Once again, law-abiding people get the shaft twice.
Wow -- what a lucrative business. They've managed to get their business model written into the law books, and we're all getting bent over the barrel.
(And if anyone tows the "driving isn't a right" line, I'm gonna go postal.)
Sure, one can't entirely replace the other feature-for-feature, but PSP does fairly well in its market. AbiWord could very well do the same.
I agree with most all of your post.
I'm a cruise control addict myself. I love watching pissed-off asshats behind me, flailing their hands and making unkind gestures (uually while on a cell phone) just because they're stuck behind a speed-limit-driving car on a 2-lane highway.
Oh, and the passing lane! ;-) Hey, if I'm going the posted speed limit, you can't really expect to be pissed at me when I'm inching along the passing lane, passing that car driving at 63mph, while I'm locked in at 65mph. Can you? Those speed freaks can kiss my ass, or at least read my license plate.