The teenage girls who swooned to that dipshit DiCaprio in that half-assed movie? Those would be "fangirls", and yeah, romantic would be the term they use. (Not sure if landing an uppercut on a teenage girl's jaw would be all that appropriate through).
The folks who have been straight-up fascinated by the actual disaster, to the point of learning as much of it as they could, like Baseball or Basketball fans do their favorite teams? Few would call it romantic, and they usually keep it to themselves.
Guess which of those had a greater impact on modern-day life? (Hint: It's all of them.)
Not so certain about that one. The RMS Titanic disaster was directly responsible for:
* The FCC (because it highlighted the problems with folks stepping all over each other on a given frequency, especially when there's an emergency going on) * The International Ice Patrol (which still exists today, and greatly impacts trans-Atlantic commerce) * Regulation requiring enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew, on every commercial vessel. (for obvious reasons) * Required safety drills on any commercial passenger-carrying vessel (because the disaster perfectly outlined the confusion and general fuck-uppery that occurs when you don't) * Radical changes in vessel design and engineering * The death of quite a few big-name people, which in turn radically altered a lot of the (at the time) big-name companies that they owned or ran.
For some odd reason, I'm not seeing LifeSavers as having that kind of immediate and radical impact on anything, let alone history.
It's bad enough that profs happily write textbooks and have a partner do a quid pro quo arrangement (each prof in a pair requires the other's pricey textbook in a given class to get around the rules forbidding you to require your own). It's worse that textbooks "change" from year-to-year (often with no substantial content changes at all) in order to keep a revenue stream coming in. It's worse still the practices used to hamper the used textbook markets...
The iPad and such might make it easier (especially when it comes to the really big books, as it definitely saves bulk in many cases), but I do have one nitpick with the summary...
re: " 'There was a severe concern among ministers who were afraid the printed page would be such a distraction if you put it in the hands of people in worship."
Err, the vast majority of a given population back then couldn't read, so on what rational basis would that concern be placed?
Citation? Simple market forces. See also computers, telephones, Internet service providers (once you have more than one choice), and damned near any other product or service in which competition either exists or has arisen.
Dude, I empathize, seriously I do. But then, you already nailed the reason why the cablecos wouldn't even bother... most foreign-language TV can be had streaming online.
Hell, one of my co-workers is Indian, and he was busy catching Cricket games all day, streamed live to his desk *shrug*.
I don't think there is a credible and overwhelming demand from the users for an early release, as much as there is a credible and overwhelming demand from the beancounters and Board of Directors to release as early as practical (without screwing it up too badly... obviously they time that metric wrong on occasion).
I mean, it doesn't have to have the timeline of DNF (oh, Lordy...) but the primary rule should be that, like the old wine commercial, no game is released before its time.
Get the thing right and reasonably polished, then release it. And tell the board and beancounters to go fuck themselves if they demand otherwise. If you don't, it'll be an endless parade of variants on Daikatana, over and over and over... (and really, nobody wants that, I promise).
I think you and GP have a bad assumption - that each channel will cost a higher amount by default.
The problem with that assumption is that I could actually choose in many niches. For example, do I choose History International, or do I get NatGeo? Telemundo or Univision? NatGeo Wild or Animal Planet? Does the missus want OWN, Oxygen, or Lifetime?
Price (and competition to provide the lowest) will of course figure into this greatly. Why? Because many channels know they have competition, and you can bet your ass that the popular niche channels which do not will begin to see some pretty quickly.
Also, a LOT of channels will begin dropping prices on their own (and demanding the lower price be passed on to the end-users) as they take a good hard look at their shrinking balance sheets and try to make it up in volume. The shopping channels will likely pay the cablecos just to be put in the lineup for free.
Long story short, it's not as cut-and-dried as you and GP think.
I would add to that the prediction that most of the flagship Discovery Network channels would likely still rake in the monies (Discovery, Science, Travel, History, TLC, etc). TBS would hold out okay as well, but mostly because they're smart enough to capture and re-run the good sitcoms and dramas). Comedy Channel? It would probably do okay. Cartoon Network? Adult Swim (usually) makes it worth keeping. NatGeo? Likely would do okay, but that's only semi-certain.
I think channels like Univision and Telemundo would do pretty well also, but channels that cater to other ethnicities (Vietnamese, Korean, Persian, Russian, etc) would likely wither pretty quickly. Lifetime, Oxygen, and all the estrogen-laced channels? The channels in that niche would go all Highlander on each other (as in: there can be only one!). Others that would also see some hard intra-niche fighting would be Animal Planet vs. NatGeo Wild.
SyFy would die a well-deserved death, as would MTV (no, seriously - fuck 'em. Aside from Jackass, IMHO they've contributed little-to-nothing since 1995 or so that would justify its continued existence). Golf channel? Yeah, it'll die, but slowly (at the same rate its fan base does). The Weather Channel? Sadly, but yeah it'll die, or at least its TV component likely would.
The *really* niche stuff? Likely dead on arrival: Tennis channel, NASA channel, SOAP Network, etc.
All said though, I really don't mind a lot, with one caveat: The survivors would concentrate on either the lowest common denominator (booo!) or on producing the best damned content available. OTOH, from a parenting perspective, it returns power to Mom and Dad ("Dear teenage kid: if you want to watch that channel here, it'll cost you $n per month, so I suggest you go get a job.")
You expected any other reason for ex-Microsoftie Stephen Elop to suddenly show up as CEO of Nokia?
Not sure what Microsoft would do with it beyond the patent portfolio, though. the brand is a perishable item, and by the time the company well and truly dies, it may well have about the same reputation as the AOL or Tandy brand.:/
As for the patents, I'm not really sure what they expect to get from those, other than income off the Android OEMs.
Seriously... the skills and knowledge can come in handy someday.
Maybe someone desperately needs to retrofit modern code to crappy old equipment? Maybe the ultra low power requirements of an extreme low-end machine makes this a fit somewhere?
Most importantly though, he did it because he could. Doing it puts his skill set far above that of most people, and having that on the resume would get him in good with nearly any semiconductor corp on the planet that needs a software or firmware developer.
3 years ago was 2009, two years after the iPhone came out, and when iOS and Android combined began to surpass RIM's marketshare. This was (IIRC) the same year the Storm crashed so hard that seismographs could register it.
No idea where you got the "exponential growth" bit from, since RIM was bleeding marketshare madly, even as early as 3 years back.
Most of RIM's employees are likely (until today) unaware that things were that bad, or dimly aware at best. They don't read the tech news, much less keep up with the industry. Hell, I bet RIM is *still* hiring right now.
It's not that they're forced to stay, it's that they don't know any better, and won't until a month or two from now. That'll be when the PR-spun "re-org" didn't fix anything, and the layoffs really begin.
I figure by now, if you're still working for RIM, you're boned.
The time to leave was 3 years ago, and not when the big boys are lined up at the hatches with golden parachutes strapped to their backs.
(All I can say is, I'm damned glad I turned down an offer from RIM two years back as an email admin... a part of me always regretted that a little. Not anymore. Now if only I can get my employer to dump this crappy little BB Curve and get me a real phone...)
Publish or perish is good. As a scientist you MUST communicate your ideas or you're a failure. What's wrong is the use of simple metrics like paper count or journal "quality." As usual, if you want to properly evaluate someone's worth you need to use your brain, not your calculator.
I agree with the latter, but as for the first sentence? Not so much. The reason why? We need look no further than a gent by the name of Jan Hendrik Schön
Yes and no. Yes, someone with kids would be more likely to go to a diaper store or something.
Forget diapers... The real money comes from selling those parents toys, clothing, extra life insurance, sugar-frosted{quasi-food name}, and a mountain of stuff that they didn't really need until you convinced them that they did.
All that said, it's easier to sell parents your kid-oriented stuff by directly manipulating the kid, which means that Facebook is likely not going to charge you as much in advertising rates.
He created a sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility.
Oh, c'mon! Where the frig in the Periodic Table does one find "Unobtanium"? Seriously? I heard that, and gave up on the flick from that point on.
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders
Entity, meet biological warfare (easily possible, given the ease with which the DNA was replicated) and a gaggle of large asteroids being flung at the surface just for good measure (also possible, given the massive energy require to go FTL (or was it near-light?) speeds in the first place). There's at least half a dozen ways, given that story's tech, in which to destroy the inhabitants without harming the material, endangering a single human being, and basically turning the place into an airless rock that can be strip-mined.
Seriously... good visual effects (easily give it that), but the story had more holes in it than a sieve.
I just love the fact he took a famous chick-flick and turned it 3D so he could force a ton of guys out there to take women to see that movie all over again, at prices greater than the original ticket price. Although, in that situation there could be a silver lining.
Silver lining indeed! If that dude who bounces off the propeller in the original gets a little special treatment in the 3D version (including the curiously satisfying distant "PONGG!" sound when he hits it), it might just be worth the (inflated) ticket price.
I see no reason why they would particularly care about turnover.
Plenty of reasons, actually:
* Training You don't have to waste days/weeks (therefore money and time) orienting/training the new guy if the existing guy didn't leave. * Familiarity/Rhythm The existing employee can slip right into the daily routine without having to spend weeks (or even months) figuring out where everything is and how things really happen in his area. In manufacturing, this can account for a huge chunk of productivity. * Trade Secrets/Competition When the guy you spent all that time training leaves, he takes everything he knows about your company and everything in it with him... usually straight to your competition. * Quality Degradation If your more experienced and higher-qualified people are the bulk of those leaving, you trade known quality for unknowns.
You do realize that we're talking about manufacturing jobs here, and not disposable jobs such as retail or fast-food, right?
The big difference is that with local control of data, you (the biz owner) will make sure the backups are done, tested, and sent off for storage at a remote site, knowing full well that if anything goes wrong, it's up to you to fix it. There's also the fact that if anything does go wrong, and you were diligent about backups, you know where they are, and can get them quickly.
Contrast this with the cloud... not even known about by the company IT department in too many cases, you get instances where IT gets to eat the big one but can't do anything about it. Example? Joe Dumbass in Accounting whips up a cloud solution for payroll, and doesn't back up a damned thing (or worse, has some halfassed (and rarely updated) spreadsheet stored on his network file share and calls that his "backup"). Worse, he doesn't even say anything to IT about it beyond "oh, we're taking care of it now". Soon, the company is doing all of its payroll on it because it's cheaper than what the IT department 'charges' (inter-departmentally).
When (not if, "when") something goes heinously wrong cloud-side (or even with a local client/workstation app), company payroll blows up, and nobody has sufficient backups on the client side. The cloud provider might have something backed up (well, likely does), but won't be able to 'prioritize' any restoration for days, or perhaps a week or more. Only problem is, your pay period ends tomorrow morning, and there's a lot of complex overtime involved, it's tax season, etc.
Are they going to jump Joe Dumbass for it? Of course not... even if they did (rightfully) sack him for it, you and I both know that the frazzled CFO is going to mosey on over to the IT department and hotly demand that someone pull a rabbit out of their ass to save his (and given that a llot of CIOs report to the CFO, well...) That, or given company politics, the CIO or IT head is going to get demands to perform some sort of magic trick to restore the missing data sooner, and "no" is not among the options.
Now certainly a slack IT department could not test backups, not have redundancy, etc... but the blame for failure lies in the same place as the responsibility for execution in that case - and not in some far-off cloud with a half-assed SLA that may or may not be honored.
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Please define what kind of "fanbois"
The teenage girls who swooned to that dipshit DiCaprio in that half-assed movie? Those would be "fangirls", and yeah, romantic would be the term they use. (Not sure if landing an uppercut on a teenage girl's jaw would be all that appropriate through).
The folks who have been straight-up fascinated by the actual disaster, to the point of learning as much of it as they could, like Baseball or Basketball fans do their favorite teams? Few would call it romantic, and they usually keep it to themselves.
Guess which of those had a greater impact on modern-day life? (Hint: It's all of them.)
Not so certain about that one. The RMS Titanic disaster was directly responsible for:
* The FCC (because it highlighted the problems with folks stepping all over each other on a given frequency, especially when there's an emergency going on)
* The International Ice Patrol (which still exists today, and greatly impacts trans-Atlantic commerce)
* Regulation requiring enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew, on every commercial vessel. (for obvious reasons)
* Required safety drills on any commercial passenger-carrying vessel (because the disaster perfectly outlined the confusion and general fuck-uppery that occurs when you don't)
* Radical changes in vessel design and engineering
* The death of quite a few big-name people, which in turn radically altered a lot of the (at the time) big-name companies that they owned or ran.
For some odd reason, I'm not seeing LifeSavers as having that kind of immediate and radical impact on anything, let alone history.
It's bad enough that profs happily write textbooks and have a partner do a quid pro quo arrangement (each prof in a pair requires the other's pricey textbook in a given class to get around the rules forbidding you to require your own). It's worse that textbooks "change" from year-to-year (often with no substantial content changes at all) in order to keep a revenue stream coming in. It's worse still the practices used to hamper the used textbook markets...
Now students have to deal with crap like this?
Glad I left academia years ago. :(
The iPad and such might make it easier (especially when it comes to the really big books, as it definitely saves bulk in many cases), but I do have one nitpick with the summary...
re: " 'There was a severe concern among ministers who were afraid the printed page would be such a distraction if you put it in the hands of people in worship."
Err, the vast majority of a given population back then couldn't read, so on what rational basis would that concern be placed?
Citation? Simple market forces. See also computers, telephones, Internet service providers (once you have more than one choice), and damned near any other product or service in which competition either exists or has arisen.
Seriously? You need a citation for Economics 101?
Dude, I empathize, seriously I do. But then, you already nailed the reason why the cablecos wouldn't even bother... most foreign-language TV can be had streaming online.
Hell, one of my co-workers is Indian, and he was busy catching Cricket games all day, streamed live to his desk *shrug*.
So, how many of you saw HD 1080i
Sorry, my telescope only does 720p.
I'll have enough saved to upgrade in a month or two, though.
One small nitpick:
I don't think there is a credible and overwhelming demand from the users for an early release, as much as there is a credible and overwhelming demand from the beancounters and Board of Directors to release as early as practical (without screwing it up too badly... obviously they time that metric wrong on occasion).
I mean, it doesn't have to have the timeline of DNF (oh, Lordy...) but the primary rule should be that, like the old wine commercial, no game is released before its time.
Get the thing right and reasonably polished, then release it. And tell the board and beancounters to go fuck themselves if they demand otherwise. If you don't, it'll be an endless parade of variants on Daikatana, over and over and over... (and really, nobody wants that, I promise).
I think you and GP have a bad assumption - that each channel will cost a higher amount by default.
The problem with that assumption is that I could actually choose in many niches. For example, do I choose History International, or do I get NatGeo? Telemundo or Univision? NatGeo Wild or Animal Planet? Does the missus want OWN, Oxygen, or Lifetime?
Price (and competition to provide the lowest) will of course figure into this greatly. Why? Because many channels know they have competition, and you can bet your ass that the popular niche channels which do not will begin to see some pretty quickly.
Also, a LOT of channels will begin dropping prices on their own (and demanding the lower price be passed on to the end-users) as they take a good hard look at their shrinking balance sheets and try to make it up in volume. The shopping channels will likely pay the cablecos just to be put in the lineup for free.
Long story short, it's not as cut-and-dried as you and GP think.
Damn - spent all the mod points yesterday. :)
I would add to that the prediction that most of the flagship Discovery Network channels would likely still rake in the monies (Discovery, Science, Travel, History, TLC, etc). TBS would hold out okay as well, but mostly because they're smart enough to capture and re-run the good sitcoms and dramas). Comedy Channel? It would probably do okay. Cartoon Network? Adult Swim (usually) makes it worth keeping. NatGeo? Likely would do okay, but that's only semi-certain.
I think channels like Univision and Telemundo would do pretty well also, but channels that cater to other ethnicities (Vietnamese, Korean, Persian, Russian, etc) would likely wither pretty quickly. Lifetime, Oxygen, and all the estrogen-laced channels? The channels in that niche would go all Highlander on each other (as in: there can be only one!). Others that would also see some hard intra-niche fighting would be Animal Planet vs. NatGeo Wild.
SyFy would die a well-deserved death, as would MTV (no, seriously - fuck 'em. Aside from Jackass, IMHO they've contributed little-to-nothing since 1995 or so that would justify its continued existence). Golf channel? Yeah, it'll die, but slowly (at the same rate its fan base does). The Weather Channel? Sadly, but yeah it'll die, or at least its TV component likely would.
The *really* niche stuff? Likely dead on arrival: Tennis channel, NASA channel, SOAP Network, etc.
All said though, I really don't mind a lot, with one caveat: The survivors would concentrate on either the lowest common denominator (booo!) or on producing the best damned content available. OTOH, from a parenting perspective, it returns power to Mom and Dad ("Dear teenage kid: if you want to watch that channel here, it'll cost you $n per month, so I suggest you go get a job.")
You expected any other reason for ex-Microsoftie Stephen Elop to suddenly show up as CEO of Nokia?
Not sure what Microsoft would do with it beyond the patent portfolio, though. the brand is a perishable item, and by the time the company well and truly dies, it may well have about the same reputation as the AOL or Tandy brand. :/
As for the patents, I'm not really sure what they expect to get from those, other than income off the Android OEMs.
Why not?
Seriously... the skills and knowledge can come in handy someday.
Maybe someone desperately needs to retrofit modern code to crappy old equipment? Maybe the ultra low power requirements of an extreme low-end machine makes this a fit somewhere?
Most importantly though, he did it because he could. Doing it puts his skill set far above that of most people, and having that on the resume would get him in good with nearly any semiconductor corp on the planet that needs a software or firmware developer.
3 years ago was 2009, two years after the iPhone came out, and when iOS and Android combined began to surpass RIM's marketshare. This was (IIRC) the same year the Storm crashed so hard that seismographs could register it.
No idea where you got the "exponential growth" bit from, since RIM was bleeding marketshare madly, even as early as 3 years back.
There is a point lurking in there.
Most of RIM's employees are likely (until today) unaware that things were that bad, or dimly aware at best. They don't read the tech news, much less keep up with the industry. Hell, I bet RIM is *still* hiring right now.
It's not that they're forced to stay, it's that they don't know any better, and won't until a month or two from now. That'll be when the PR-spun "re-org" didn't fix anything, and the layoffs really begin.
I figure by now, if you're still working for RIM, you're boned.
The time to leave was 3 years ago, and not when the big boys are lined up at the hatches with golden parachutes strapped to their backs.
(All I can say is, I'm damned glad I turned down an offer from RIM two years back as an email admin... a part of me always regretted that a little. Not anymore. Now if only I can get my employer to dump this crappy little BB Curve and get me a real phone...)
Motivation isn't the issue here, only the environment and results. ;)
Publish or perish is good. As a scientist you MUST communicate your ideas or you're a failure. What's wrong is the use of simple metrics like paper count or journal "quality." As usual, if you want to properly evaluate someone's worth you need to use your brain, not your calculator.
I agree with the latter, but as for the first sentence? Not so much. The reason why? We need look no further than a gent by the name of Jan Hendrik Schön
and don't live in a town called Dorking.
Could be worse...
Yes and no. Yes, someone with kids would be more likely to go to a diaper store or something.
Forget diapers... The real money comes from selling those parents toys, clothing, extra life insurance, sugar-frosted{quasi-food name}, and a mountain of stuff that they didn't really need until you convinced them that they did.
All that said, it's easier to sell parents your kid-oriented stuff by directly manipulating the kid, which means that Facebook is likely not going to charge you as much in advertising rates.
He created a sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility.
Oh, c'mon! Where the frig in the Periodic Table does one find "Unobtanium"? Seriously? I heard that, and gave up on the flick from that point on.
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders
Entity, meet biological warfare (easily possible, given the ease with which the DNA was replicated) and a gaggle of large asteroids being flung at the surface just for good measure (also possible, given the massive energy require to go FTL (or was it near-light?) speeds in the first place). There's at least half a dozen ways, given that story's tech, in which to destroy the inhabitants without harming the material, endangering a single human being, and basically turning the place into an airless rock that can be strip-mined.
Seriously... good visual effects (easily give it that), but the story had more holes in it than a sieve.
I just love the fact he took a famous chick-flick and turned it 3D so he could force a ton of guys out there to take women to see that movie all over again, at prices greater than the original ticket price. Although, in that situation there could be a silver lining.
Silver lining indeed! If that dude who bounces off the propeller in the original gets a little special treatment in the 3D version (including the curiously satisfying distant "PONGG!" sound when he hits it), it might just be worth the (inflated) ticket price.
I see no reason why they would particularly care about turnover.
Plenty of reasons, actually:
* Training You don't have to waste days/weeks (therefore money and time) orienting/training the new guy if the existing guy didn't leave.
* Familiarity/Rhythm The existing employee can slip right into the daily routine without having to spend weeks (or even months) figuring out where everything is and how things really happen in his area. In manufacturing, this can account for a huge chunk of productivity.
* Trade Secrets/Competition When the guy you spent all that time training leaves, he takes everything he knows about your company and everything in it with him... usually straight to your competition.
* Quality Degradation If your more experienced and higher-qualified people are the bulk of those leaving, you trade known quality for unknowns.
You do realize that we're talking about manufacturing jobs here, and not disposable jobs such as retail or fast-food, right?
"The fact that rural Chinese villagers are in such dire straits..."
Do you have anything to back this portion of your post up, or are you just constructing (or working from) a false premise here?
No, it is "Meat Popsicle".
Geez - am I the only one who knows the correct terminology around here?
The big difference is that with local control of data, you (the biz owner) will make sure the backups are done, tested, and sent off for storage at a remote site, knowing full well that if anything goes wrong, it's up to you to fix it. There's also the fact that if anything does go wrong, and you were diligent about backups, you know where they are, and can get them quickly.
Contrast this with the cloud... not even known about by the company IT department in too many cases, you get instances where IT gets to eat the big one but can't do anything about it. Example? Joe Dumbass in Accounting whips up a cloud solution for payroll, and doesn't back up a damned thing (or worse, has some halfassed (and rarely updated) spreadsheet stored on his network file share and calls that his "backup"). Worse, he doesn't even say anything to IT about it beyond "oh, we're taking care of it now". Soon, the company is doing all of its payroll on it because it's cheaper than what the IT department 'charges' (inter-departmentally).
When (not if, "when") something goes heinously wrong cloud-side (or even with a local client/workstation app), company payroll blows up, and nobody has sufficient backups on the client side. The cloud provider might have something backed up (well, likely does), but won't be able to 'prioritize' any restoration for days, or perhaps a week or more. Only problem is, your pay period ends tomorrow morning, and there's a lot of complex overtime involved, it's tax season, etc.
Are they going to jump Joe Dumbass for it? Of course not... even if they did (rightfully) sack him for it, you and I both know that the frazzled CFO is going to mosey on over to the IT department and hotly demand that someone pull a rabbit out of their ass to save his (and given that a llot of CIOs report to the CFO, well...) That, or given company politics, the CIO or IT head is going to get demands to perform some sort of magic trick to restore the missing data sooner, and "no" is not among the options.
Now certainly a slack IT department could not test backups, not have redundancy, etc... but the blame for failure lies in the same place as the responsibility for execution in that case - and not in some far-off cloud with a half-assed SLA that may or may not be honored.