t plays up as great comedy in the movie, Office Space, when the character says you don't want the customers talking directly to the engineers. You actually don't want that.
Sure you do. The person who wrote the bug or badly implemented feature gets first-hand knowledge of how it impacts the customer, rather than filtered through someone who is just playing "broken telephone" and doesn't have a working knowledge of how the thing actually works.
They also get to find out that 3/4 of the "must-have" features that "the customer requested" were not customer requests.
Besides, many support contracts provide for direct access to an engineer in those cases that require / pay for it. And as you lack the necessary experience, you don't know what to ask.
The customer doesn't expect programmers t be wearing suits and ties, so don't worry about the impression they make, as long as they don't have Tourettes. "Ah, but this one isn't a people person!" Then you should have hired someone else - you don't have the luxury, as a start-up, to hire people who can't serve multiple roles.
I have a masters in CS but not enough practical exposure to professional software development. I'd like to start my own software product line and I'd like to avoid outsourcing as much as I can.
Since you're getting into something you by your own admission lack domain experience in, unless you've won the Powerball and have a lot more money than brains, anyone you interview will realize that you're going nowhere and hence even the short-term prospects are, at best, poor.
At least with outsourcing, you can BS them as much as they BS you so they won't walk out the door shaking their head.
In other words, it's the old vanity press / subsidy press scam.
Or those "poetry contests" where you (and many other suckers) "win" and now have to shell out big bux for a book of crappy poetry that you couldn't pay people to read.
Of course, that's where their review process fails - even they can't pay a real editor to read the submissions. Hmm... where have I heard that before....
This includes blind review by three or more members of the international editorial review board
Possible "failure modes":
1. Blind review: The reviewers are blind, so as long as the paper passes the "sniff test"...
2. International editorial review board: Their first, second, whatever languages aren't english...
Obviously a scam, though I want to know - did he mange to get off their mailing list?
Given that they strapped a parachute on these things in case they descend too quickly, it's a safe assumption that they want to reuse these balloons as much as possible, so hydrogen is not an option
They won't be re-using the envelopes - the "balloon part", so it's perfectly fine to use hydrogen. The smart thing would be to drop the instrument package and then burn the envelope (it's plastic film) so that it doesn't result in a damage claim because you smothered someone's cow, or that the balloon fell on a roadway and distracts motorists, some who die in the ensuing accidents. It also makes it more predictable where the instrument package will land
They should use hydrogen for the actual flights. Being 2 atoms of H, instead of a monatomic atom of He, the balloon will leak far less over time, and there's no danger of running out of H.
As long as the envelope doesn't leak, there's no real danger of explosion. Even the Hindenberg didn't explode - it just burned.
So thanks to the global reduction in nuclear weapons, our best hope of lowering the earth's temperature (one that doesn't require UN agreement, just a software or hardware glitch) via global winter and population reduction, is now gone.
Talk about the law of unintended consequences...
So, if war won't do it, there's still lack of fresh water, famine, pestilence, plague, and of course GMO-zombies.
Historians have documented many such cases in which our ancestors had knowledge that their actions were leading to disasters, but they continued anyway. These are typically cases where short-term actions were profitable to the people doing them, but bad for society in the long run. History says that we humans don't respond logically to such situations. We continue to act for short-term profit, and ignore the long-term results.
We don't need to look to our ancestors. The Liars Loans and Subprime Mortgages that led to the Great Recession are pretty recent. People flipping properties based on the "greater fool" theory ended up finding they were left without a seat when the game of musical chairs stopped.
The bankruptcy of GM ("We'll continue to make gas guzzlers because that's what we made the most profit on last year") is another example. And still we don't change our actions, because "nobody else is.."
Heck, something as simple as recycling has been made dead easy ("no need to pre-sort - just dump it in the recycling bin") and most people still don't.
You can bypass the sign-up by using this link, but it's not exactly obvious (bad UI design, or if it's "by design", they hope to collect your email address by making it non-obvious that there's a back door that doesn't require you to join first).
Remember, they want their ~10% "platform costs" (gross, not net revenue, so it comes off the top). So, you create an app, the app store takes 30%, Assembly takes 10%, and they can, as per their terms of service, sell the product out from under you at any time (so, you've worked to create a great product, they make some closed mods, close down your "Assembly", and sell the modded product to a third party. And since you gave them a copyright assignment, there's nothing you can do about it).
If Assembly terminates this Agreement with you in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, any unpaid amounts in your account will be forfeit.
.. and here's the poisoned term:
THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT, FOR ANY OR NO REASON, TO (I) REFUSE TO POST ANY SUBMITTED SOFTWARE PRODUCT TO THE SITE, (II) TERMINATE THE DEVELOPMENT OR ANY PHASE RELATED TO A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, (III) TERMINATE THE SALE OF ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT RELATED TO ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT, OR (IV) SELL OR LICENSE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND/OR ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RELATED THERETO, TO ANY THIRD PARTY.
So they can pull the plug at any time, and since your license with them isn't under the AGPL or CC...
While we believe that our Members should be able to freely use, modify and distribute the Contributions of other Members, we need a separate license from our Members in order to commercialize Software Products. Accordingly, you hereby grant Assembly a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully-paid up, sublicensable (through multiple levels), transferable license under all of your Intellectual Property Rights, to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, create derivative works of, distribute, digitally transmit, sell, offer to sell, make, have made, import and otherwise exploit your Member Content, including the right to enforce your Intellectual Property Rights in your Member Content.
What are those "Intellectual Property Rights>"
“Intellectual Property Rights” means all past, present and future rights of the following types, which may exist or be created under the laws of any jurisdiction in the world: (a) rights associated with works of authorship, including exploitation rights, copyrights, moral rights, and mask work rights; (b) trademark, and trade names rights and similar rights; (c) trade secret rights; (d) patent and industrial property rights; (e) other proprietary rights in intellectual property, including Inventions, of every kind and nature; and (f) rights in or relating to registrations, renewals, extensions, combinations, divisions and reissues of, and applications for, any of the rights referred to in clauses (a) through (e) of this sentence.
Wow. What a blanket loophole. Do you really want to give anyone else the rights to anything you've done in the past or may do in the future?
You agree that the Company has the absolute right and permission to use your name, voice, image, likeness, and your applicable Member compensation information, including for example any commissions paid, App Coins earned, and your Stake percentage in a Software Product, as well as representations made by you, in any media (including, without limitation, television, print, radio and the Internet), world-wide, for the purposes of advertising, promoting, reporting and disseminating information about the Company, the Company’s business or a Software Product.
Facebook only reuses crap you post on Facebook. These guys want the right to use anything you do ANYWHERE. That's a real over-reach. You should have some say in how your name, image, and words are used.
I saw two of four projects were turning a profit, which would mean paying dividends to contributors.
They withhold amounts for chargebacks, any services they provide ("platform costs") , etc., which is why they only agree to pay out "net profits", and reserve the right to not pay out until your individual contribution is worth $100.00 or more. The music industry is very good with playing with "net profits."
Based on reading their terms of use, etc., in the majority of cases it will be zero.
Searching the whole site, I was unable to find a single example of a successful "assembly." Not good after "a year of operation."
Also, under their Terms, they can sell your project out from under you at any time:
selected App Ideas will further be developed by the Community and may ultimately be commercialized, produced and licensed or sold by Assembly
... and,,,
THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT, FOR ANY OR NO REASON, TO.... (IV) SELL OR LICENSE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND/OR ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RELATED THERETO, TO ANY THIRD PARTY.
No, Yahoo is not guaranteeing them as much revenue.
Google only renewed the previous agreement because their own browser hadn't made enough market penetration.
Google is on most smartphones sold today, and that's where the growth is. Chrome has enough penetration now that they can, for all intents, ignore firefox. Yahoo knew this, and probably offered them $150 million a year (Google may even have declined to make an offer of renewal - after all, it's no big deal changing your default search engine, and nobody's saying "Just Yahoo it" or "Just Bing it."
Well, for this to work, google has to track all the sites you visit... including those that you clicked on and then found out you never wanted to go to such a site.
Do you really want to help fund sites that tricked you to go there in the first place? This will just encourage even more SEO BS,
I'd agree but for the fact that the people most repeating this fallacy are the same libertarian idiots who back these alternate currencies. I see it as just deserts.
For nearly 70 years, Barbie has ruled the dollhouse. But Mattel’s star may now be a relic of the past.
Mattel shares sank slightly on Thursday morning after the company announced a net loss of $11.2 million and shrinking sales – $946 million, down 5% compared last year. The company’s biggest problem was its declining Barbie sales. Worldwide gross sales for the brand were down 14%.
The sharp decline was especially disappointing as Barbie is still Mattel’s biggest single brand, generating $1.15 billion in 2013 sales, according to Needham & Co. analyst Sean McGowan.
Barbie’s North American sales have now fallen for eight straight quarters, and worldwide sales have dropped in eight of the past 10 quarters, according to McGowan.
Barbie’s popularity slide has come at a time of shifting demographics.
"Barbie is sort of stuck with its own fame as a blond girl, which just doesn’t resonate with girls anymore," said Matthew Hudak, an analyst in toys and games at research firm Euromonitor.
Mattel has tried to address the issue with Barbies from different ethnic backgrounds, but it’s difficult to change consumer perception of the doll, he said.
"Barbie is just going to continue to be hard to relate to. It doesn’t look like it’s in for a fun ride the next few years," Hudak said.
Barbie also has been hurt by the marketing to girls of toys that were once geared only toward boys, such as Hasbro’s Nerf Rebelle, a feminine spin on the classic Nerf foam-dart shooter.
"Maybe Mattel should be more conscious of gender neutrality?" said Jamie Gutfreund, chief marketing officer at Noise and The Intelligence Group, adding the majority of young parents it surveyed are okay with boys playing with dolls.
While over a billion in sales is nothing to sneeze at, the fact that it's declining despite attempts to enlarge and diversify the market is significant. Mattel is now marketling Barbies to the parents, not the kids - kids just aren't asking for them any more. They want an iPod, an iPad, a Nerf gun, a Smartphone...
Or you could just use plastic money like we developed here in Australia. Either way.
... and Canada...
As long as you use paper instead of polymer, anyone with a printer will try to make fakes. Plus the plastic bills last longer, saving money in the long run.
Of course, we replaced the $1 and $2 bills with coins ages ago, and will probably replace the $5 bill as well at some point...
Slashdot Mirror
You could just google for it
t plays up as great comedy in the movie, Office Space, when the character says you don't want the customers talking directly to the engineers. You actually don't want that.
Sure you do. The person who wrote the bug or badly implemented feature gets first-hand knowledge of how it impacts the customer, rather than filtered through someone who is just playing "broken telephone" and doesn't have a working knowledge of how the thing actually works.
They also get to find out that 3/4 of the "must-have" features that "the customer requested" were not customer requests.
Besides, many support contracts provide for direct access to an engineer in those cases that require / pay for it. And as you lack the necessary experience, you don't know what to ask.
The customer doesn't expect programmers t be wearing suits and ties, so don't worry about the impression they make, as long as they don't have Tourettes. "Ah, but this one isn't a people person!" Then you should have hired someone else - you don't have the luxury, as a start-up, to hire people who can't serve multiple roles.
They're worried about the word "piss"? Heck, piss (or its variant, pisseth) appears at least half a dozen times in the King James Bible.
Oh well ...
I have a masters in CS but not enough practical exposure to professional software development. I'd like to start my own software product line and I'd like to avoid outsourcing as much as I can.
Since you're getting into something you by your own admission lack domain experience in, unless you've won the Powerball and have a lot more money than brains, anyone you interview will realize that you're going nowhere and hence even the short-term prospects are, at best, poor.
At least with outsourcing, you can BS them as much as they BS you so they won't walk out the door shaking their head.
Bonne chance, 'cuz you're gonna need it.
And how would you fund that?
In other words, it's the old vanity press / subsidy press scam.
Or those "poetry contests" where you (and many other suckers) "win" and now have to shell out big bux for a book of crappy poetry that you couldn't pay people to read.
Of course, that's where their review process fails - even they can't pay a real editor to read the submissions. Hmm ... where have I heard that before ....
This includes blind review by three or more members of the international editorial review board
Possible "failure modes":
1. Blind review: The reviewers are blind, so as long as the paper passes the "sniff test" ...
...
2. International editorial review board: Their first, second, whatever languages aren't english
Obviously a scam, though I want to know - did he mange to get off their mailing list?
Given that they strapped a parachute on these things in case they descend too quickly, it's a safe assumption that they want to reuse these balloons as much as possible, so hydrogen is not an option
They won't be re-using the envelopes - the "balloon part", so it's perfectly fine to use hydrogen. The smart thing would be to drop the instrument package and then burn the envelope (it's plastic film) so that it doesn't result in a damage claim because you smothered someone's cow, or that the balloon fell on a roadway and distracts motorists, some who die in the ensuing accidents. It also makes it more predictable where the instrument package will land
They should use hydrogen for the actual flights. Being 2 atoms of H, instead of a monatomic atom of He, the balloon will leak far less over time, and there's no danger of running out of H.
As long as the envelope doesn't leak, there's no real danger of explosion. Even the Hindenberg didn't explode - it just burned.
It's been broken, fixed for a few days, then broken for a week now. feedback@slashdot.org
It's been broken, fixed for a few days, then broken for a week now. Send a report via email to feedback@slashdot.org
Talk about the law of unintended consequences ...
So, if war won't do it, there's still lack of fresh water, famine, pestilence, plague, and of course GMO-zombies.
Historians have documented many such cases in which our ancestors had knowledge that their actions were leading to disasters, but they continued anyway. These are typically cases where short-term actions were profitable to the people doing them, but bad for society in the long run. History says that we humans don't respond logically to such situations. We continue to act for short-term profit, and ignore the long-term results.
We don't need to look to our ancestors. The Liars Loans and Subprime Mortgages that led to the Great Recession are pretty recent. People flipping properties based on the "greater fool" theory ended up finding they were left without a seat when the game of musical chairs stopped.
The bankruptcy of GM ("We'll continue to make gas guzzlers because that's what we made the most profit on last year") is another example. And still we don't change our actions, because "nobody else is .."
Heck, something as simple as recycling has been made dead easy ("no need to pre-sort - just dump it in the recycling bin") and most people still don't.
You can bypass the sign-up by using this link, but it's not exactly obvious (bad UI design, or if it's "by design", they hope to collect your email address by making it non-obvious that there's a back door that doesn't require you to join first).
Remember, they want their ~10% "platform costs" (gross, not net revenue, so it comes off the top). So, you create an app, the app store takes 30%, Assembly takes 10%, and they can, as per their terms of service, sell the product out from under you at any time (so, you've worked to create a great product, they make some closed mods, close down your "Assembly", and sell the modded product to a third party. And since you gave them a copyright assignment, there's nothing you can do about it).
If Assembly terminates this Agreement with you in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, any unpaid amounts in your account will be forfeit.
.. and here's the poisoned term:
THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT, FOR ANY OR NO REASON, TO (I) REFUSE TO POST ANY SUBMITTED SOFTWARE PRODUCT TO THE SITE, (II) TERMINATE THE DEVELOPMENT OR ANY PHASE RELATED TO A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, (III) TERMINATE THE SALE OF ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT RELATED TO ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT, OR (IV) SELL OR LICENSE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND/OR ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RELATED THERETO, TO ANY THIRD PARTY.
So they can pull the plug at any time, and since your license with them isn't under the AGPL or CC ...
While we believe that our Members should be able to freely use, modify and distribute the Contributions of other Members, we need a separate license from our Members in order to commercialize Software Products. Accordingly, you hereby grant Assembly a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully-paid up, sublicensable (through multiple levels), transferable license under all of your Intellectual Property Rights, to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, create derivative works of, distribute, digitally transmit, sell, offer to sell, make, have made, import and otherwise exploit your Member Content, including the right to enforce your Intellectual Property Rights in your Member Content.
What are those "Intellectual Property Rights>"
“Intellectual Property Rights” means all past, present and future rights of the following types, which may exist or be created under the laws of any jurisdiction in the world: (a) rights associated with works of authorship, including exploitation rights, copyrights, moral rights, and mask work rights; (b) trademark, and trade names rights and similar rights; (c) trade secret rights; (d) patent and industrial property rights; (e) other proprietary rights in intellectual property, including Inventions, of every kind and nature; and (f) rights in or relating to registrations, renewals, extensions, combinations, divisions and reissues of, and applications for, any of the rights referred to in clauses (a) through (e) of this sentence.
Wow. What a blanket loophole. Do you really want to give anyone else the rights to anything you've done in the past or may do in the future?
You agree that the Company has the absolute right and permission to use your name, voice, image, likeness, and your applicable Member compensation information, including for example any commissions paid, App Coins earned, and your Stake percentage in a Software Product, as well as representations made by you, in any media (including, without limitation, television, print, radio and the Internet), world-wide, for the purposes of advertising, promoting, reporting and disseminating information about the Company, the Company’s business or a Software Product.
Facebook only reuses crap you post on Facebook. These guys want the right to use anything you do ANYWHERE. That's a real over-reach. You should have some say in how your name, image, and words are used.
I saw two of four projects were turning a profit, which would mean paying dividends to contributors.
They withhold amounts for chargebacks, any services they provide ("platform costs") , etc., which is why they only agree to pay out "net profits", and reserve the right to not pay out until your individual contribution is worth $100.00 or more. The music industry is very good with playing with "net profits."
What I did find was crap like this:
This is a recurring bounty that will go to anyone who tweets about Helpful.
Here's a sample tweet, but you can use any one you'd like. Then, just paste the link below and you'll be awarded some...
Based on reading their terms of use, etc., in the majority of cases it will be zero.
Searching the whole site, I was unable to find a single example of a successful "assembly." Not good after "a year of operation."
Also, under their Terms, they can sell your project out from under you at any time:
selected App Ideas will further be developed by the Community and may ultimately be commercialized, produced and licensed or sold by Assembly
... and ,,,
THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT, FOR ANY OR NO REASON, TO .... (IV) SELL OR LICENSE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND/OR ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RELATED THERETO, TO ANY THIRD PARTY.
There goes any illusion that you're in control.
No, Yahoo is not guaranteeing them as much revenue.
Google only renewed the previous agreement because their own browser hadn't made enough market penetration.
Google is on most smartphones sold today, and that's where the growth is. Chrome has enough penetration now that they can, for all intents, ignore firefox. Yahoo knew this, and probably offered them $150 million a year (Google may even have declined to make an offer of renewal - after all, it's no big deal changing your default search engine, and nobody's saying "Just Yahoo it" or "Just Bing it."
and I wholeheartedly disagree with the writer's idea that everything "averages out."
Sure it does. The first 90% takes 90% of the time.
The next 10% takes 90% of the time.
Oops - specs changed - time to reset the clock ...
Do you really want to help fund sites that tricked you to go there in the first place? This will just encourage even more SEO BS,
I'd agree but for the fact that the people most repeating this fallacy are the same libertarian idiots who back these alternate currencies. I see it as just deserts.
... that's a rather dry assessment ...
Can you also walk on water
At this time of year, yes. It's COLD up here!
Barbie is in decline world-wide.
For nearly 70 years, Barbie has ruled the dollhouse. But Mattel’s star may now be a relic of the past. Mattel shares sank slightly on Thursday morning after the company announced a net loss of $11.2 million and shrinking sales – $946 million, down 5% compared last year. The company’s biggest problem was its declining Barbie sales. Worldwide gross sales for the brand were down 14%.
... and ...
The sharp decline was especially disappointing as Barbie is still Mattel’s biggest single brand, generating $1.15 billion in 2013 sales, according to Needham & Co. analyst Sean McGowan.
Barbie’s North American sales have now fallen for eight straight quarters, and worldwide sales have dropped in eight of the past 10 quarters, according to McGowan.
Barbie’s popularity slide has come at a time of shifting demographics.
"Barbie is sort of stuck with its own fame as a blond girl, which just doesn’t resonate with girls anymore," said Matthew Hudak, an analyst in toys and games at research firm Euromonitor.
Mattel has tried to address the issue with Barbies from different ethnic backgrounds, but it’s difficult to change consumer perception of the doll, he said.
"Barbie is just going to continue to be hard to relate to. It doesn’t look like it’s in for a fun ride the next few years," Hudak said.
Barbie also has been hurt by the marketing to girls of toys that were once geared only toward boys, such as Hasbro’s Nerf Rebelle, a feminine spin on the classic Nerf foam-dart shooter.
"Maybe Mattel should be more conscious of gender neutrality?" said Jamie Gutfreund, chief marketing officer at Noise and The Intelligence Group, adding the majority of young parents it surveyed are okay with boys playing with dolls.
While over a billion in sales is nothing to sneeze at, the fact that it's declining despite attempts to enlarge and diversify the market is significant. Mattel is now marketling Barbies to the parents, not the kids - kids just aren't asking for them any more. They want an iPod, an iPad, a Nerf gun, a Smartphone ...
Or you could just use plastic money like we developed here in Australia. Either way.
... and Canada ...
As long as you use paper instead of polymer, anyone with a printer will try to make fakes. Plus the plastic bills last longer, saving money in the long run.
Of course, we replaced the $1 and $2 bills with coins ages ago, and will probably replace the $5 bill as well at some point ...
The closest English-speaking nation to the USA is the UK,
Kanuckistanis don't speak English any more?
Or has Canada been merged with the US while I wasn't looking?
I kind of figure something was up when PC Cleaner said my linux machine had currupt entries in the registry;
Wait a year or two. They're just getting ready for systemd.