If productivity means producing documents in open formats, MS office is not there.
Well it is a good thing for Microsoft that productivity and open formats are barely related at all. Word and Excel are still the defacto standards in the business world, and we still live in a world where if someone can't read your Excel document it is their fault, not yours. And you can always save to text file / csv / pdf if absolutely necessary for some kind of government regulation or long term archiving where you are worried the file format won't still be in use.
Those people are not the one who are deciding the future in companies and organisations. If websites are built for standards, why should we use internet explorer?
I never said Microsoft doesn't have problems, just that a public perception of them being evil isn't really one of them. The movement away from a Windows monopoly in consumer devices is a huge problem for Microsoft.
If documments are open office or pdf, why should we use MS office?
Because office is still the best productivity suite out there. And when it comes to increasing the productivity of a $40k/year office worker, a hundred dollars a year difference between MS office and a free version should not drive the purchasing decision. I am one of the few Microsoft Windows users in my office (a software consulting firm full of mostly Java developers), but the one thing we all agree on is that Microsoft Office still blows away its competition. Most of my coworkers still use the Mac version of MS Office, even though it is a bastardized version of the real thing. That crippled version is still better than the alternatives. One of the few reasons I still use Windows is because of MS Office.
If you are going to discuss Microsoft's problems, I suggest not bringing up MS Office. Because it is one of the few examples of areas where Microsoft is doing just fine.
I doubt there are that many people outside of the stereotypical Slashdot demographic who view Microsoft the way you are describing them. Most people I know of know Microsoft as simply the company who makes the software they are familiar with. Apple is far more often thought of as a "closed off" ecosystem than Microsoft.
You are contradicting yourself. The first part is right - many people don't see Microsoft the way that many slashdotters see them. The second part is wrong - most people don't see Apple the way that some slashdotters see them.
I don't see how it is contracting myself by saying that users see Apple this way. It could be wrong, since it is only based on my observations of the non-IT people I know, but it clearly not contradictory.
Most of the anti-Apple sentiment I see comes from a lack of options coming from Apple, since consumers are used to such a variety. They look at the number of Android mobile and Windows desktop devices to choose from and see far less options from Apple. The dislike of Apple has almost nothing to do with their software from my experience, just a lack of hardware options and a perceived Apple tax. I have bought both Apple and Android mobile devices, but by far more Android devices simply because it is more likely the device which fits my needs is going to come from the ecosystem that has the most options.
By building products that are incompatible with others and refusing to open up Office files, they have implanted themself as the evil company in the mindset of those afffected. Those affected are those that realise that the world is always changing and want to be free to use any product.
I doubt there are that many people outside of the stereotypical Slashdot demographic who view Microsoft the way you are describing them. Most people I know of know Microsoft as simply the company who makes the software they are familiar with. Apple is far more often thought of as a "closed off" ecosystem than Microsoft. As far as other major technology companies go, Google is the only one I can think of that people feel is more "good" than Microsoft, and with privacy concerns starting to spread to the general population this could be changing.
The only thing standing against Microsoft in the eyes of the general public is that most mobile software is available for Apple/Android, not Microsoft. It is the exact same problem Apple/Linux had in the desktop battle of the last decade. Almost no one is making their tablet/phone purchasing decision based on how "evil" the company making the device is.
I wouldn't be surprised if the primary predictive trait used is simply to check the biases of each judge and then assume they will vote along those biases. Assuming conservative judges will vote conservative and liberal judges will vote liberal should give you a pretty good score right off the bat.
>education is too low for just about any high tech work
Really? Places like Huntsville (NASA), Ann Arbor (U. Michigan), Raleigh (IBM), and Austin (Everybody these days) don't have top talent for tech work?
You should go back and read my post to realize I was reinforcing the idea that places such as Austin have more than enough talent for most employer needs. You took one line where I conceded that large parts of each of these states has very low education levels, and read it completely out of context. This level of reading comprehension is exactly what makes employers nervous about hiring in states with poor educational achievement levels.
Yeah, these places have laws friendlier to the employers than the employees. So all the employees with skills in demand have moved to places where they can name their prices. People left behind in those places are usually low skilled. When things like fracking or oil well drilling requires skilled labor they get imported from other places at premium prices. I know quite a few oil rig/fracking rig operators living in places like Naperville Il, and work on 4 weeks on 2 weeks off rotations.
Free market is a bitch. You skew the laws favoring employers, employees with skills leave, creating a vicious cycle.
That is why they said: "for an R&D/Skunkworks style office, drawing on local talent is worth the cost". But for tasks where you primarily need competent people, not necessarily the best of the best, these states are often great choices. While each state he mentioned has areas where the education is too low for just about any high tech work, place like Austin are more than sufficient for most employee needs.
I always recommend that our clients not rely on their ERP system to take primary control over integrations. A middle layer written in house provides far more control over the process, and helps avoid vendor lock. But vendor lock usually isn't the real problem (since it will still be very hard to switch), it is dealing with upgrades to the ERP.
I agree. If you are spending millions of dollars on your ERP, you should probably have in house developers capable of customizing your system (unless you just mean a couple million over a decade or so). You will probably always need some help from consultants, but a good deal of the work could be done by your own staff. This would likely save quite a bit of money. I work as a consultant on various ERP and CRM systems, and all of our long term clients eventually start to bring the work in house because of costs. Our load goes down as they hire more people, but we usually stay available with support contracts for years.
And the first thing your in house devs should control is the integrations between your ERP and home ground applications. Companies that rely on consultants to handle their integrations become very dependent on those consultants.
There is nothing wrong with having a large number of integrations. If you have a large system, the belief that you can get all business processes into one ERP system is probably just a dream. But getting a firm handle on all of your integrations is an attainable goal. Then you can make more informed decisions on when and how to move functionality into your ERP software. And you can be more comfortable that you are re-implementing that functionality properly.
Disclaimer: My day job is re-engineering the integrations for ERP/CRM systems, so take the importance I give to the integrations with a grain of salt.
You should have to worry about not being sure. Just look at your conversion rates. While it is hard to identify how many of your sales you would have gotten anyway without AdWords, it is very easy to tell how many of your AdWords customers are actually purchasing anyway. And the last time I worked for an e-commerce site was 2008, I'm pretty confident that their analytic tools have improved since then.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more that intelligence is highly heritable.
What is not true is the classist notion that intelligence is 100% inherited.
He said there is a link between intelligence and environment & experience. He didn't even say it is a strong link. How could you possibly say he is not right at all when you completely agreed with him?
Vegetables are cheap in terms of 'pounds per dollar', but not the more relevant 'calories per dollar'.
And there comes the "lack of education" argument for why people are overweight. Looking at 'calories per dollar' is a horrible way to plan a food budget. You should be looking at price per portion not price per calorie. A single portion of broccoli has much less calories than a single portion of Skittles, but not only is the broccoli better for you the extra fiber is probably going to make is just as filling (if not more so).
> Then the same incapability to delay gratification lack of employment paying a livable wage that causes poverty also causes obesity.
FTFY.
I was referring to root causes, not the symptoms. The lack of employment paying a livable wage is the effect, not the cause, of other problems in a person's life. It is just about as far from a root cause as you can get.
*This*. I am middle class, have all the appliances I could ever want, but since I don't know how to cook, and neither does my wife, we end up eating more frozen dinners or eating out than cooking our own food because we have no idea how, and cookbooks only work when you have more than just the basics.
Which is why I added lack of education to my list. Lack of education doesn't just apply to literature and STEM related fields; it can also apply to more home economic related areas.
Go to the meat section of any supermarket. look at the 'healthy, low fat, all beef' hot dogs, for example.
Stop looking at meat. Of course good meat is expensive. But if you are poor, why are you eating much meat at all? Vegetables are much cheaper than meat, and much better for you too.
When people claim good food is expensive always jump on the price of good meat vs "pink slime"-like meat. But they completely miss that a low income diet should have very little meat at all. And this just points towards the low levels of education and inability to delay gratification that I mentioned.
None of the above. For most poor and even lower-middle class families, the limiting factor is lack of access to food preparation equipment and facilities. Low-income housing often lacks a kitchen. Even if you have a kitchen, one often lacks appliances; trying to subsist on unprocessed food without a refrigerator or a stove is difficult to put it mildly.
Are you just making this stuff up? 97.7% of poor households have a stove and oven. While there are certainly people like the ones you describe, they do not make up a significant part of the problem.
You mean PROCESSED food, stuff that comes from McDonalds, or stuff high in cheap fillers and crap like corn syrup.
REAL food, is pretty damn expensive unless you have the luxury of your own garden. Even with meat, there is a reason why pink slime and steak glue exist... and that isn't to make something more tasty.
The only places where processed food is significantly cheaper than processed food is in food deserts where a gas station is the only nearby place to buy food. In your standard supermarket, vegetables are incredibly cheap compared to what you would even find at McDonald's. For those with access to a supermarket, a combination of lack of time, lack of education, and lack of ability to delay gratification that causes people to eat junk food. Not money.
Food is not cheap. Taking inflation into account, food prices are at an all-time high on a global basis. They're even higher than they were during World War II, when rationing was in place.
The price of food increasing far faster than wages has in fact resulted in more poverty, which has in fact resulted in more obesity is many nations around the world.
The parent post should have said developed countries instead of modern world, because in developed countries food certainly is cheap. In 1900 families spent 43% of their money on food, while in 2003 it was 13%. Food is incredibly cheap by historical standards, about a third of the cost of food 100 years ago. source
Poverty only correlates to obesity in areas where food is abundant. Then the same incapability to delay gratification that causes poverty also causes obesity. One does not cause the other, they have the same root cause.
How, exactly, does advanced math help anyone not actually working in some STEM related field in the modern world?
Unless you're talking about basic finance, understanding interest rates, rates of return and so forth - but for me this is not 'advanced' math.
Since the article was mentioning STEM degrees, the definition of 'advanced' math here is college level math. That basically means calculus and statistics, and then even more advanced as you start 300+ level courses. Most STEM degrees only require about 3-5 math courses, although math is often applied in many other courses taught in a STEM degree. I was a Physics major, and I did just as much math in my physics courses as I did in my math courses.
And as I mentioned in another post, math teaches logical thought, the use of precise definitions, the use of careful and rigorous arguments, etc. It is not the ability to do integrations that's important, it is the act of learning how to do integrations that matters. Or at least that is how the argument goes (which I agree with).
Learning high level math provides extreme advances in our current economy regardless of your actual job.
How so? That's a pretty bold statement. I don't doubt your claim (I have a math bachelors degree, and a comp sci masters in progress), but I'd just like to hear your arguments.
The arguments are pretty standard. Math teaches logical thought, the use of precise definitions, the use of careful and rigorous arguments, etc, It involves taking a general problem and defining a set of very clearly stated problems and finding precise solutions to them. Those are the abstract answers, but in a world that is becoming more and more data driven, mathematical fields such as statistics even have practical applications for most fields. The mistake made by the first poster who claimed the article said 50% of STEM workers have no degree shows the problem with insufficient mathematical literacy.
I've been in the industry for over a decade, and have used the calculus and statistics required for my CS degree precisely never.
That is no different than a philosophy student saying "I've been working for over a decade, and haven't had Plato's cave brought up in a single board meeting yet." The goal of a general education is not to train students in the tools they will use in their jobs, it is to train them how to think.
If you haven't used your increased capacity for logical thinking, or your ability to understand statistics greater than the average person, then you either never learned much in those classes or you just aren't being honest about how much you actually learned.
That's not at all what the data says. It says half of STEM graduates work in STEM. It could still be the case that 100% of STEM workers have STEM degrees.
The fact that this poster made this bad of a mistake in mathematical reading comprehension, and three other people already responded to his post without mentioning the mistake, shows why anyone with proper math training can be successful in almost any profession. People even marked the post as Insightful and Interesting when it was really just Ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
If productivity means producing documents in open formats, MS office is not there.
Well it is a good thing for Microsoft that productivity and open formats are barely related at all. Word and Excel are still the defacto standards in the business world, and we still live in a world where if someone can't read your Excel document it is their fault, not yours. And you can always save to text file / csv / pdf if absolutely necessary for some kind of government regulation or long term archiving where you are worried the file format won't still be in use.
Those people are not the one who are deciding the future in companies and organisations. If websites are built for standards, why should we use internet explorer?
I never said Microsoft doesn't have problems, just that a public perception of them being evil isn't really one of them. The movement away from a Windows monopoly in consumer devices is a huge problem for Microsoft.
If documments are open office or pdf, why should we use MS office?
Because office is still the best productivity suite out there. And when it comes to increasing the productivity of a $40k/year office worker, a hundred dollars a year difference between MS office and a free version should not drive the purchasing decision. I am one of the few Microsoft Windows users in my office (a software consulting firm full of mostly Java developers), but the one thing we all agree on is that Microsoft Office still blows away its competition. Most of my coworkers still use the Mac version of MS Office, even though it is a bastardized version of the real thing. That crippled version is still better than the alternatives. One of the few reasons I still use Windows is because of MS Office.
If you are going to discuss Microsoft's problems, I suggest not bringing up MS Office. Because it is one of the few examples of areas where Microsoft is doing just fine.
I doubt there are that many people outside of the stereotypical Slashdot demographic who view Microsoft the way you are describing them. Most people I know of know Microsoft as simply the company who makes the software they are familiar with. Apple is far more often thought of as a "closed off" ecosystem than Microsoft.
You are contradicting yourself. The first part is right - many people don't see Microsoft the way that many slashdotters see them. The second part is wrong - most people don't see Apple the way that some slashdotters see them.
I don't see how it is contracting myself by saying that users see Apple this way. It could be wrong, since it is only based on my observations of the non-IT people I know, but it clearly not contradictory.
Most of the anti-Apple sentiment I see comes from a lack of options coming from Apple, since consumers are used to such a variety. They look at the number of Android mobile and Windows desktop devices to choose from and see far less options from Apple. The dislike of Apple has almost nothing to do with their software from my experience, just a lack of hardware options and a perceived Apple tax. I have bought both Apple and Android mobile devices, but by far more Android devices simply because it is more likely the device which fits my needs is going to come from the ecosystem that has the most options.
By building products that are incompatible with others and refusing to open up Office files, they have implanted themself as the evil company in the mindset of those afffected. Those affected are those that realise that the world is always changing and want to be free to use any product.
I doubt there are that many people outside of the stereotypical Slashdot demographic who view Microsoft the way you are describing them. Most people I know of know Microsoft as simply the company who makes the software they are familiar with. Apple is far more often thought of as a "closed off" ecosystem than Microsoft. As far as other major technology companies go, Google is the only one I can think of that people feel is more "good" than Microsoft, and with privacy concerns starting to spread to the general population this could be changing.
The only thing standing against Microsoft in the eyes of the general public is that most mobile software is available for Apple/Android, not Microsoft. It is the exact same problem Apple/Linux had in the desktop battle of the last decade. Almost no one is making their tablet/phone purchasing decision based on how "evil" the company making the device is.
I wouldn't be surprised if the primary predictive trait used is simply to check the biases of each judge and then assume they will vote along those biases. Assuming conservative judges will vote conservative and liberal judges will vote liberal should give you a pretty good score right off the bat.
>education is too low for just about any high tech work
Really? Places like Huntsville (NASA), Ann Arbor (U. Michigan), Raleigh (IBM), and Austin (Everybody these days) don't have top talent for tech work?
You should go back and read my post to realize I was reinforcing the idea that places such as Austin have more than enough talent for most employer needs. You took one line where I conceded that large parts of each of these states has very low education levels, and read it completely out of context. This level of reading comprehension is exactly what makes employers nervous about hiring in states with poor educational achievement levels.
Yeah, these places have laws friendlier to the employers than the employees. So all the employees with skills in demand have moved to places where they can name their prices. People left behind in those places are usually low skilled. When things like fracking or oil well drilling requires skilled labor they get imported from other places at premium prices. I know quite a few oil rig/fracking rig operators living in places like Naperville Il, and work on 4 weeks on 2 weeks off rotations.
Free market is a bitch. You skew the laws favoring employers, employees with skills leave, creating a vicious cycle.
That is why they said: "for an R&D/Skunkworks style office, drawing on local talent is worth the cost". But for tasks where you primarily need competent people, not necessarily the best of the best, these states are often great choices. While each state he mentioned has areas where the education is too low for just about any high tech work, place like Austin are more than sufficient for most employee needs.
I always recommend that our clients not rely on their ERP system to take primary control over integrations. A middle layer written in house provides far more control over the process, and helps avoid vendor lock. But vendor lock usually isn't the real problem (since it will still be very hard to switch), it is dealing with upgrades to the ERP.
It always takes longer and costs more than anyone ever thought possible.
Although with a home remodeling project it will probably only go 50% over budget, not 500% over budget.
I agree. If you are spending millions of dollars on your ERP, you should probably have in house developers capable of customizing your system (unless you just mean a couple million over a decade or so). You will probably always need some help from consultants, but a good deal of the work could be done by your own staff. This would likely save quite a bit of money. I work as a consultant on various ERP and CRM systems, and all of our long term clients eventually start to bring the work in house because of costs. Our load goes down as they hire more people, but we usually stay available with support contracts for years.
And the first thing your in house devs should control is the integrations between your ERP and home ground applications. Companies that rely on consultants to handle their integrations become very dependent on those consultants.
There is nothing wrong with having a large number of integrations. If you have a large system, the belief that you can get all business processes into one ERP system is probably just a dream. But getting a firm handle on all of your integrations is an attainable goal. Then you can make more informed decisions on when and how to move functionality into your ERP software. And you can be more comfortable that you are re-implementing that functionality properly.
Disclaimer: My day job is re-engineering the integrations for ERP/CRM systems, so take the importance I give to the integrations with a grain of salt.
They are so literally retarded that by seeing them you forget what the term literally means.
Criticism of the use of literal when it is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true literally needs to stop.
You should have to worry about not being sure. Just look at your conversion rates. While it is hard to identify how many of your sales you would have gotten anyway without AdWords, it is very easy to tell how many of your AdWords customers are actually purchasing anyway. And the last time I worked for an e-commerce site was 2008, I'm pretty confident that their analytic tools have improved since then.
The "more and more" refers to an increasing quantity of research, not the magnitude of the link.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more that intelligence is highly heritable.
What is not true is the classist notion that intelligence is 100% inherited.
He said there is a link between intelligence and environment & experience. He didn't even say it is a strong link. How could you possibly say he is not right at all when you completely agreed with him?
Vegetables are cheap in terms of 'pounds per dollar', but not the more relevant 'calories per dollar'.
And there comes the "lack of education" argument for why people are overweight. Looking at 'calories per dollar' is a horrible way to plan a food budget. You should be looking at price per portion not price per calorie. A single portion of broccoli has much less calories than a single portion of Skittles, but not only is the broccoli better for you the extra fiber is probably going to make is just as filling (if not more so).
> Then the same incapability to delay gratification lack of employment paying a livable wage that causes poverty also causes obesity.
FTFY.
I was referring to root causes, not the symptoms. The lack of employment paying a livable wage is the effect, not the cause, of other problems in a person's life. It is just about as far from a root cause as you can get.
*This*. I am middle class, have all the appliances I could ever want, but since I don't know how to cook, and neither does my wife, we end up eating more frozen dinners or eating out than cooking our own food because we have no idea how, and cookbooks only work when you have more than just the basics.
Which is why I added lack of education to my list. Lack of education doesn't just apply to literature and STEM related fields; it can also apply to more home economic related areas.
Go to the meat section of any supermarket. look at the 'healthy, low fat, all beef' hot dogs, for example.
Stop looking at meat. Of course good meat is expensive. But if you are poor, why are you eating much meat at all? Vegetables are much cheaper than meat, and much better for you too.
When people claim good food is expensive always jump on the price of good meat vs "pink slime"-like meat. But they completely miss that a low income diet should have very little meat at all. And this just points towards the low levels of education and inability to delay gratification that I mentioned.
None of the above. For most poor and even lower-middle class families, the limiting factor is lack of access to food preparation equipment and facilities. Low-income housing often lacks a kitchen. Even if you have a kitchen, one often lacks appliances; trying to subsist on unprocessed food without a refrigerator or a stove is difficult to put it mildly.
Are you just making this stuff up? 97.7% of poor households have a stove and oven. While there are certainly people like the ones you describe, they do not make up a significant part of the problem.
You mean PROCESSED food, stuff that comes from McDonalds, or stuff high in cheap fillers and crap like corn syrup.
REAL food, is pretty damn expensive unless you have the luxury of your own garden. Even with meat, there is a reason why pink slime and steak glue exist... and that isn't to make something more tasty.
The only places where processed food is significantly cheaper than processed food is in food deserts where a gas station is the only nearby place to buy food. In your standard supermarket, vegetables are incredibly cheap compared to what you would even find at McDonald's. For those with access to a supermarket, a combination of lack of time, lack of education, and lack of ability to delay gratification that causes people to eat junk food. Not money.
Food is not cheap. Taking inflation into account, food prices are at an all-time high on a global basis. They're even higher than they were during World War II, when rationing was in place.
The price of food increasing far faster than wages has in fact resulted in more poverty, which has in fact resulted in more obesity is many nations around the world.
The parent post should have said developed countries instead of modern world, because in developed countries food certainly is cheap. In 1900 families spent 43% of their money on food, while in 2003 it was 13%. Food is incredibly cheap by historical standards, about a third of the cost of food 100 years ago. source
Poverty only correlates to obesity in areas where food is abundant. Then the same incapability to delay gratification that causes poverty also causes obesity. One does not cause the other, they have the same root cause.
How, exactly, does advanced math help anyone not actually working in some STEM related field in the modern world?
Unless you're talking about basic finance, understanding interest rates, rates of return and so forth - but for me this is not 'advanced' math.
Since the article was mentioning STEM degrees, the definition of 'advanced' math here is college level math. That basically means calculus and statistics, and then even more advanced as you start 300+ level courses. Most STEM degrees only require about 3-5 math courses, although math is often applied in many other courses taught in a STEM degree. I was a Physics major, and I did just as much math in my physics courses as I did in my math courses.
And as I mentioned in another post, math teaches logical thought, the use of precise definitions, the use of careful and rigorous arguments, etc. It is not the ability to do integrations that's important, it is the act of learning how to do integrations that matters. Or at least that is how the argument goes (which I agree with).
Learning high level math provides extreme advances in our current economy regardless of your actual job.
How so? That's a pretty bold statement.
I don't doubt your claim (I have a math bachelors degree, and a comp sci masters in progress), but I'd just like to hear your arguments.
The arguments are pretty standard. Math teaches logical thought, the use of precise definitions, the use of careful and rigorous arguments, etc, It involves taking a general problem and defining a set of very clearly stated problems and finding precise solutions to them. Those are the abstract answers, but in a world that is becoming more and more data driven, mathematical fields such as statistics even have practical applications for most fields. The mistake made by the first poster who claimed the article said 50% of STEM workers have no degree shows the problem with insufficient mathematical literacy.
I've been in the industry for over a decade, and have used the calculus and statistics required for my CS degree precisely never.
That is no different than a philosophy student saying "I've been working for over a decade, and haven't had Plato's cave brought up in a single board meeting yet." The goal of a general education is not to train students in the tools they will use in their jobs, it is to train them how to think.
If you haven't used your increased capacity for logical thinking, or your ability to understand statistics greater than the average person, then you either never learned much in those classes or you just aren't being honest about how much you actually learned.
That's not at all what the data says. It says half of STEM graduates work in STEM. It could still be the case that 100% of STEM workers have STEM degrees.
The fact that this poster made this bad of a mistake in mathematical reading comprehension, and three other people already responded to his post without mentioning the mistake, shows why anyone with proper math training can be successful in almost any profession. People even marked the post as Insightful and Interesting when it was really just Ignorant.