When was our last ethical president in office? Jimmy Carter, maybe. But at least Gates isn't a coke-snorting, drunk, or a shady land deal who uses his power to put interns in questionable positions, or makes backdoor, pre-election day deals with radical Muslims, or secretely bombs countries that we've not gone to war with, and so on. I mean, this century has seen some pretty unethical presidents.
But what most people forget is that a large part of politics is... politics. Someone who can bring different sides together, who can serve as a spokeperson for the nation, who can pose policy and make the compromises to get it done.
You make some good points. My only comment would be that most companies should have the capital to swing this. If not, perhaps it's not a company worth working with because there may be payment issues down the line. I know you were just making up numbers for your example, but a company with 30 employees averaging $30K per year has a $75K monthly payroll expense (and that's not counting employer taxes, 401(k) matching, health care costs, etc.). If their margins are so thin they can't outlay $90K over several months then that would be a company I would avoid working for as an independent consultant (since we are often very low on the list of priorities, payment-wise).
know this is just an example, but no 30k employee costs just 30k. There's health benefits, office equipment, and a general 'drain' on other resources like accounting, HR, IT, etc.
True, but no project estimated at $90K ends up costing $90K!:-) Even if the initial phase of the project is estimated well, there's always side costs - maintenance, training existing and, in the future, new employees on the system, and so forth.
The difficulty lies in getting a good programmer and whether or not a program is worth the cost.
I agree that it is too difficult to get a skilled programmer, but I think almost always it will be worth the cost.
Even if you find yourself a good app developer there are costs to consider. If it still cheaper to do it by hand, then why bother? Especially considering the glut of labor in the US. Heck, people go to college, get saddled with loans, and are happy to take 30,000 a year jobs. Toss in all the foreign workers chopping at the bit to come here too. From a business perspective having them do the same old makes financial sense and I'm sure some people look at automation with some amount of fears as it might make them redundant.
In the short term, yes, it may make sense to stick with a person doing the job. But in the long run, automation will be more profitable. For example, imagine it takes $90K to write the software to replace the job of a $30K/year worker. That will pay for itself in three years and by year four, the investment will have a positive ROI. While you're still paying that $30K worker, I'm getting the work done for free. Also, since I'm assuming this $30K worker has some intelligence, some ideas, and some skills in the marketplace, by automating his mundane job, I can now turn him lose on more interesting projects. He can help lead new product lines, while you are still paying his equivalent to just do repetitive tasks that are only fit for a computer.
I think the real challenges and hesitation from people to move to an automated system is from familiarity with the old system or fear/experience of failure with an automated system. All it takes is one bad experience - a poorly written program that crashes one day and wipes out weeks of data since the backups weren't setup properly, for example - and many decision makers will insist on more manual approaches. Another factor may be that some business partner or regulating agency requires that work be performed in a particular mannere or that certain items be made available that essentially have to be done by humans. I work on software for the health care industry, and some of the "complexities" in dealing with the county and state agencies greatly reduce the amount of automation that can be applied to a given task.
No, actually it says the following ("evil" is not used)
Correct, but it does say: "Whereas, domestic partner benefit policies pay employee benefits based on the employee engaging in unmarried, homosexual relations. These relations have been condemned by the major traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for a thousand years or more." And those religions have clearly stated that homosexuality is Evil.
Well, shareholders are going to get their say at the 2006 shareholders meeting, in a way. Check out item #3, Shareholder Proposal #1 from the Microsoft Corporation 2006 Proxy Statement (you have to scroll down a ways). I'll summarize it here:
John C. Harrington, 1001 2nd Street, Suite 325, Napa, California 94559 has notified the Company that he intends to submit the following proposal at this year's annual meeting:
Whereas, human and labor rights abuses may be carried out routinely by many governments in countries in which our company conducts business;
Whereas, for example, according to the U.S. State Department, the totalitarian Chinese government continues to routinely, arbitrarily arrest, detain, imprison, torture, abuse, and deny basic human and labor rights to its citizens;1
Whereas, a U. S. State Department report on China in 2005 states, "There was a trend towards increased harassment, detention, and imprisonment by government and security authorities of those perceived as threatening to government authority. The government also adopted measures to control more tightly print, broadcast and electronic media, and censored online content. Protests by those seeking to redress grievances increased significantly and where suppressed, at times violently, by security forces.;"2
... <snip/> a lot of complaints against China <snip/>...
Therefore, be it resolved, that the shareholders request that no later than January 1, 2007, our company will no longer sell products or services to any foreign government, or agency or department of any foreign government, including, but not limited to, the military and police, that knowingly can be used to deny basic human or labor rights pursuant to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Of course, the board doesn't think too much of this proposal. Immediately after that we have their analysis:
THE BOARD RECOMMENDS A VOTE AGAINST THIS PROPOSAL. We believe the availability of our products and services has increased the ability of citizens worldwide to engage in free expression and has helped transform the economic, cultural, and political landscape of nations throughout the world. We expect that continuing to provide software and Internet services in the countries in which we do business will over time promote greater social benefit than withholding our products from particular customers or markets.
Also check out Shareholder Proposal #2, which essentially says homosexuals are evil and that Microsoft should remove any mention of "we don't discriminate against sexual preference" from their equal opportunity policy. You'll be happy to know that the board recommends a vote against that proposal as well. Crazy shareholders!
Also, can't you right-click on a tab and say, "Close Other Tabs" to close all tabs but that one? I'm not sure if that's in 2.0 - I imagine it is - but it's right here for me on 1.5 (although perhaps that's a feature added by an extension). hth
Thanks for the suggestion, but this didn't work for me. I downloaded a video from YouTube using the VideoDownloader 2.0 extension for FireFox and can watch the FLV file just fine in FLV Player 1.3.3. I downloaded MPlayer 1.0pre8 Windows build from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html and ran the command "mplayer -vo null -dumpaudio FLVfilename". It created a stream.dump file, which I then renamed to.MP3. Playing it in Windows Meadia Player indicated that it was a 43 second MP3 (even though the video is close to two minutes) and it was, sadly, 43 seconds of silence.
From my understanding, those all convert YouTube videos to files for the iPod Video. My iPod Mini won't play those.:-( Do you know of any programs that will convert a YouTube video straight to MP3? TIA
I've demonstrated tabs. Their response is that they only do one thing at a time anyhow, so tabs aren't really needed. I'm telling you, most people don't use a computer like we do.
If Mark Cuban's suggestion gets implemented, then Google will be paying for everyone's music on Zune. "The number one application MicroSoft should ship with Zune or make sure is available from a 3rd party for free ? A Youtube downloader. Just read the quicklist on Youtube, and download to your Zune. Fast, friendly, free music just for your Zune. Why spend 99c or 1.99 per song on ITunes when its free for your Zune! All the music you can eat, Google pays. How great is that ! Not so great for Apple."
Google has it's own system for determining the importance of a page - and while it's still flawed, and only really geared towards their own goals, it does a good job of showing the importance of a website.
Google has more than that, actually. It has a pretty good idea of traffic patterns for any sites that use its free Google Analytics visitor/hit tracking software.
I wonder if that data gets factored into the page rank at all... probably not, at least not yet, but I imagine such information could be used to weight the "validity" or "popularity" of a web page. But I reckon Google bought ought this software (Urchin, IIRC) more for user tracking that website metrics.
A lot of people "choose" IE, too. My parents, for example. I've tried to show them FireFox, told them about its advantages, but they "know" IE and are about as interested in learning new computer stuff as I am in the plot line of CSI: Miami. I'd wager that the majority of computer users fall into this category. Happy to stick with what they know because it "works" for them.
I've always contended that globalization, in the long run (50-100 year picture), serves to level the standards of living of those nations participating in the global marketplace. Leveling can (and does) occur in two directions - those poorer countries' standards of living improve, and those richer nations' standards of living decrease, until a more balanced level is met. Hell, look at the "early adopters" of globalization - China and India. Globalization has improved their standards of living, and now they are nervous that poorer countries are going to "steal" their business (Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.).
In the long run, globalization is a Good Thing, as a more uniform and higher average standard of living across the world is a benefit to society. However, it's not going to be nearly as fun for us first world nations, as our standards of living will decrease a bit (in the short term) to help those poorer countries' standards improve. But don't think of your own situation - think of your grand children's. They will be the ones who benefit from living in a world where the wealth is far more evenly distributed than it is today. (Yes, there will still be the insanely rich and the insanely poor, but the sheer magnitude of those without electricity, without sanitation, without telephones, without computers, etc., will be much smaller, per capita, in 50-100 years that it is today, thanks primarily to globalization.)
IMO, the problem is a credit bubble, of which housing prices (both in the US and abroad) are a symptom. Too much spending, too little saving. I think we're going start experiencing a global recession/depression starting around 2008... It'll be interesting to see how central banks respond to this upcoming challenge. If the past half decade has been any indication, they'll start handing out cheap money right and left...
Credit history != credit score. The credit score is based on how much debt you've gotten yourself into and how well you've "managed" it. Credit history shows if you've paid back your debts according to schedule (if at all), and includes information like bankruptcies, foreclosures, debts settled for less than the full amount due, etc.
Ex: a guy who pays for everything with cash will not have a credit score (or a very low one), but will have excellent credit history.
CAPTCHAs have limited worth, yes, but I don't think spam guards are the solution for blogs. Rather, comments need to be limited to registered users or blog owners have to wade through approving posts before they appear on the site.
Ideally - and, admittedly, this is pie in the sky dreaming here - we need some global, universal user registry (like Passport promised to be), that allows bloggers to easily do things like:
Ban certain users from posting on their blog,
Only allow posts from users whose user account has existed for a set number of time, or who have made at least X posts, or who have been "verified" by someone they trust, etc.
With such a user registry, one could have a more permanent user presence across different blogs.
MMOGs have some different qualities, I agree, but I still don't forsee average joe sixpack getting involved with a free MMOG whose overall quality will be lower (in terms of graphics, marketing, etc.) when there are other affordable alternatives that are easy to start playing and with a sufficient user base. Just like Gnutella and BitTorrent offer free way to share content, but your average person doesn't know/want to go through the headache of setting it up and using it. For them, paying $0.99 for a song it a better option that futzing with these file sharing services in order to save a buck.
Having a free, open-source MMOG that achieved critical mass would be cool. It would be neat to see "the gamers" take back a piece of the pie from the gaming industry, and such might occur in "the corners of the gaming industry," but I cannot imagine such a game being the dominant player in a marketspace with commercial competitors. Time will tell which one of us is right!:-)
Free, open-source games will always be relegated to the corners of the gaming industry. They lack the marketing and dedicated resources that a "professional" gaming company offers. Again, the music analogy is apt - there may be some popular indie bands on indie labels, your favorite bands may all be indie bands on indie labels, but 95% of all sales and audience will still flock to the professionally written, produced, and marketed songs. It's the long tail at work...
Your analogy to Napster falls apart with games, IMO. With Napster (or Gnutella or what have you), it was easy for a user to take existing content and say, "Hey everyone, come get it." But with games, what game studio is going to make a game that can be played without a fair deal of server-side "check-ins" or whatnot? Basically, the gaming industry will use DRM to ensure that you can't throw together your own gaming server.
Who will want to play online games that aren't created by high dollar studios who have the graphics department, top coders, marketing, and so on? It's like if Napster only had on it crappy indie bands, would it have gained such popularity? (If you're curious, look at how "successful" MP3.com was, which essentially had that "legal" model. In short, people would rather pay $0.99 for a professionally-written/played/produced song than get some garage band song for free. And the same applies to the gaming world, I'd wager.)
Slashdot Mirror
When was our last ethical president in office? Jimmy Carter, maybe. But at least Gates isn't a coke-snorting, drunk, or a shady land deal who uses his power to put interns in questionable positions, or makes backdoor, pre-election day deals with radical Muslims, or secretely bombs countries that we've not gone to war with, and so on. I mean, this century has seen some pretty unethical presidents.
But what most people forget is that a large part of politics is... politics. Someone who can bring different sides together, who can serve as a spokeperson for the nation, who can pose policy and make the compromises to get it done.
You make some good points. My only comment would be that most companies should have the capital to swing this. If not, perhaps it's not a company worth working with because there may be payment issues down the line. I know you were just making up numbers for your example, but a company with 30 employees averaging $30K per year has a $75K monthly payroll expense (and that's not counting employer taxes, 401(k) matching, health care costs, etc.). If their margins are so thin they can't outlay $90K over several months then that would be a company I would avoid working for as an independent consultant (since we are often very low on the list of priorities, payment-wise).
know this is just an example, but no 30k employee costs just 30k. There's health benefits, office equipment, and a general 'drain' on other resources like accounting, HR, IT, etc.
True, but no project estimated at $90K ends up costing $90K! :-) Even if the initial phase of the project is estimated well, there's always side costs - maintenance, training existing and, in the future, new employees on the system, and so forth.
The difficulty lies in getting a good programmer and whether or not a program is worth the cost.
I agree that it is too difficult to get a skilled programmer, but I think almost always it will be worth the cost.
Even if you find yourself a good app developer there are costs to consider. If it still cheaper to do it by hand, then why bother? Especially considering the glut of labor in the US. Heck, people go to college, get saddled with loans, and are happy to take 30,000 a year jobs. Toss in all the foreign workers chopping at the bit to come here too. From a business perspective having them do the same old makes financial sense and I'm sure some people look at automation with some amount of fears as it might make them redundant.
In the short term, yes, it may make sense to stick with a person doing the job. But in the long run, automation will be more profitable. For example, imagine it takes $90K to write the software to replace the job of a $30K/year worker. That will pay for itself in three years and by year four, the investment will have a positive ROI. While you're still paying that $30K worker, I'm getting the work done for free. Also, since I'm assuming this $30K worker has some intelligence, some ideas, and some skills in the marketplace, by automating his mundane job, I can now turn him lose on more interesting projects. He can help lead new product lines, while you are still paying his equivalent to just do repetitive tasks that are only fit for a computer.
I think the real challenges and hesitation from people to move to an automated system is from familiarity with the old system or fear/experience of failure with an automated system. All it takes is one bad experience - a poorly written program that crashes one day and wipes out weeks of data since the backups weren't setup properly, for example - and many decision makers will insist on more manual approaches. Another factor may be that some business partner or regulating agency requires that work be performed in a particular mannere or that certain items be made available that essentially have to be done by humans. I work on software for the health care industry, and some of the "complexities" in dealing with the county and state agencies greatly reduce the amount of automation that can be applied to a given task.
Zing!
Hell, why not just buy Viacom and call it a day? Viacom's measley $2.34 billion market cap is nothing compared to Google's $142 billion.
No, actually it says the following ("evil" is not used)
Correct, but it does say: "Whereas, domestic partner benefit policies pay employee benefits based on the employee engaging in unmarried, homosexual relations. These relations have been condemned by the major traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for a thousand years or more." And those religions have clearly stated that homosexuality is Evil.
Well, shareholders are going to get their say at the 2006 shareholders meeting, in a way. Check out item #3, Shareholder Proposal #1 from the Microsoft Corporation 2006 Proxy Statement (you have to scroll down a ways). I'll summarize it here:
Of course, the board doesn't think too much of this proposal. Immediately after that we have their analysis:
Also check out Shareholder Proposal #2, which essentially says homosexuals are evil and that Microsoft should remove any mention of "we don't discriminate against sexual preference" from their equal opportunity policy. You'll be happy to know that the board recommends a vote against that proposal as well. Crazy shareholders!
How many words do I get?
Also, can't you right-click on a tab and say, "Close Other Tabs" to close all tabs but that one? I'm not sure if that's in 2.0 - I imagine it is - but it's right here for me on 1.5 (although perhaps that's a feature added by an extension). hth
Thanks for the suggestion, but this didn't work for me. I downloaded a video from YouTube using the VideoDownloader 2.0 extension for FireFox and can watch the FLV file just fine in FLV Player 1.3.3. I downloaded MPlayer 1.0pre8 Windows build from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html and ran the command "mplayer -vo null -dumpaudio FLVfilename". It created a stream.dump file, which I then renamed to .MP3. Playing it in Windows Meadia Player indicated that it was a 43 second MP3 (even though the video is close to two minutes) and it was, sadly, 43 seconds of silence.
Any suggestions? Did I mess up somewhere? Thanks!
From my understanding, those all convert YouTube videos to files for the iPod Video. My iPod Mini won't play those. :-( Do you know of any programs that will convert a YouTube video straight to MP3? TIA
It all depends who'se in your guild. LEROY JENKINS!!!!!!!!!! :-p
I've demonstrated tabs. Their response is that they only do one thing at a time anyhow, so tabs aren't really needed. I'm telling you, most people don't use a computer like we do.
If Mark Cuban's suggestion gets implemented, then Google will be paying for everyone's music on Zune. "The number one application MicroSoft should ship with Zune or make sure is available from a 3rd party for free ? A Youtube downloader. Just read the quicklist on Youtube, and download to your Zune. Fast, friendly, free music just for your Zune. Why spend 99c or 1.99 per song on ITunes when its free for your Zune! All the music you can eat, Google pays. How great is that ! Not so great for Apple."
Google has it's own system for determining the importance of a page - and while it's still flawed, and only really geared towards their own goals, it does a good job of showing the importance of a website.
Google has more than that, actually. It has a pretty good idea of traffic patterns for any sites that use its free Google Analytics visitor/hit tracking software.
I wonder if that data gets factored into the page rank at all... probably not, at least not yet, but I imagine such information could be used to weight the "validity" or "popularity" of a web page. But I reckon Google bought ought this software (Urchin, IIRC) more for user tracking that website metrics.
A lot of people "choose" IE, too. My parents, for example. I've tried to show them FireFox, told them about its advantages, but they "know" IE and are about as interested in learning new computer stuff as I am in the plot line of CSI: Miami. I'd wager that the majority of computer users fall into this category. Happy to stick with what they know because it "works" for them.
I've always contended that globalization, in the long run (50-100 year picture), serves to level the standards of living of those nations participating in the global marketplace. Leveling can (and does) occur in two directions - those poorer countries' standards of living improve, and those richer nations' standards of living decrease, until a more balanced level is met. Hell, look at the "early adopters" of globalization - China and India. Globalization has improved their standards of living, and now they are nervous that poorer countries are going to "steal" their business (Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.).
In the long run, globalization is a Good Thing, as a more uniform and higher average standard of living across the world is a benefit to society. However, it's not going to be nearly as fun for us first world nations, as our standards of living will decrease a bit (in the short term) to help those poorer countries' standards improve. But don't think of your own situation - think of your grand children's. They will be the ones who benefit from living in a world where the wealth is far more evenly distributed than it is today. (Yes, there will still be the insanely rich and the insanely poor, but the sheer magnitude of those without electricity, without sanitation, without telephones, without computers, etc., will be much smaller, per capita, in 50-100 years that it is today, thanks primarily to globalization.)
IMO, the problem is a credit bubble, of which housing prices (both in the US and abroad) are a symptom. Too much spending, too little saving. I think we're going start experiencing a global recession/depression starting around 2008... It'll be interesting to see how central banks respond to this upcoming challenge. If the past half decade has been any indication, they'll start handing out cheap money right and left...
That's why you go to a lender who does manual underwriting. You know, the type of underwriting they did back before the FICO score existed....
Credit history != credit score. The credit score is based on how much debt you've gotten yourself into and how well you've "managed" it. Credit history shows if you've paid back your debts according to schedule (if at all), and includes information like bankruptcies, foreclosures, debts settled for less than the full amount due, etc.
Ex: a guy who pays for everything with cash will not have a credit score (or a very low one), but will have excellent credit history.
CAPTCHAs have limited worth, yes, but I don't think spam guards are the solution for blogs. Rather, comments need to be limited to registered users or blog owners have to wade through approving posts before they appear on the site.
Ideally - and, admittedly, this is pie in the sky dreaming here - we need some global, universal user registry (like Passport promised to be), that allows bloggers to easily do things like:
With such a user registry, one could have a more permanent user presence across different blogs.
MMOGs have some different qualities, I agree, but I still don't forsee average joe sixpack getting involved with a free MMOG whose overall quality will be lower (in terms of graphics, marketing, etc.) when there are other affordable alternatives that are easy to start playing and with a sufficient user base. Just like Gnutella and BitTorrent offer free way to share content, but your average person doesn't know/want to go through the headache of setting it up and using it. For them, paying $0.99 for a song it a better option that futzing with these file sharing services in order to save a buck.
Having a free, open-source MMOG that achieved critical mass would be cool. It would be neat to see "the gamers" take back a piece of the pie from the gaming industry, and such might occur in "the corners of the gaming industry," but I cannot imagine such a game being the dominant player in a marketspace with commercial competitors. Time will tell which one of us is right! :-)
Free, open-source games will always be relegated to the corners of the gaming industry. They lack the marketing and dedicated resources that a "professional" gaming company offers. Again, the music analogy is apt - there may be some popular indie bands on indie labels, your favorite bands may all be indie bands on indie labels, but 95% of all sales and audience will still flock to the professionally written, produced, and marketed songs. It's the long tail at work...
Your analogy to Napster falls apart with games, IMO. With Napster (or Gnutella or what have you), it was easy for a user to take existing content and say, "Hey everyone, come get it." But with games, what game studio is going to make a game that can be played without a fair deal of server-side "check-ins" or whatnot? Basically, the gaming industry will use DRM to ensure that you can't throw together your own gaming server.
Who will want to play online games that aren't created by high dollar studios who have the graphics department, top coders, marketing, and so on? It's like if Napster only had on it crappy indie bands, would it have gained such popularity? (If you're curious, look at how "successful" MP3.com was, which essentially had that "legal" model. In short, people would rather pay $0.99 for a professionally-written/played/produced song than get some garage band song for free. And the same applies to the gaming world, I'd wager.)