The problem is the total cost of ownership isn't often all that different, once you factor in support and other costs. Even if the software is pretty much the same their still is a learning curve that results in lost productivity
That same learning curve applies when you upgrade MS Office to the latest completely-different-UI version every few years. So the next time you have to upgrade, it'd cost the same in lost productivity if you switched to something not-MS-Office.
That assumes you always upgrade, something many companies do not do every time a new version comes out.
dealing with customers who can't open a file
If you're sending Word documents to customers you've got bigger problems. There have been far too many embarrassing information leaks stemming from that - everywhere I've worked has had a policy of PDFing everything before it goes to the customer.
That's fine, except when your customer needs to edit a document; or they send you a Word doc that you wind up editing.
It's a bit of work because of the nature of their model (lots of small projects around the US); but you could fund a number of science / math / technology needs for classrooms across the US.
... and all the attendant ASW ships, subs, and aircraft call those OPFOR subs "meat."
Heh. We called the carrier screen the "door to the target" since we simply slipped under them and then proceeded to fire green flares at COMEX. Kinda funny to watch them go nuts when the found out we were trailing the carrier all along without them noticing us, and then all the noise they made let us slip back out of the screen and prep for our next attack. Our CO was a nice guy about it - he gave the carrier CO a nice framed picture of his ship with its name clearly in our cross hairs.
Carriers are great force projection tools. Nothing says up yours like a carrier battle group crossing your line of death. However, they also fall into that second category of vessels when submariners refer to "submarines and targets." As ship killer missiles get better, submarines will be an even greater threat since they can fire from stand off distances. Sadly, it will take all the fun out of it as you no longer will get to due an approach and take a quick peek at your target right before it disappears.
... with a bad economy, with money tight, most businesses are looking for a way to trim a buck. Just because your particular firm isn't willing to spend the (minimal, in most cases) effort on a migration that will literally save your company tons of money, don't think that all of us think that way. We certainly don't.
The problem is the total cost of ownership isn't often all that different, once you factor in support and other costs. Even if the software is pretty much the same their still is a learning curve that results in lost productivity; costs to translate and verify documents translated properly; dealing with customers who can't open a file, ensuring tech support can actually support teh product, etc. FOSS is great and i use some, but it also costs money even if the actual software is free.
"Or, force PayPal to not do currency conversions. In the end, they will either have to give up, massively devalue the Peso or make it a non-convertablke currency."
Or -- far simpler -- just do as they did in the EU and make PayPal register as an actual bank.
Fair enough; although PayPal may decide the hassle is not worth it and simply leave the country.
Governments used to be able to easily control currency flows because banks were needed to move money and for most people it was not easy to move small amounts. Now, with PayPa, for example, it's a lot easier to move a few hundred dollars across borders. How long is it before Argentineans with friends and relatives abroad "buy" things - effectively converting pesos into dollars and then have that person bring back dollars or keep them safely out of reach of the authorities? The authorities will have to setup ways to monitor online "sales" and collect taxes at the time of sale or tax PayPal transactions at the time of money transfer. Or, force PayPal to not do currency conversions.
In the end, they will either have to give up, massively devalue the Peso or make it a non-convertablke currency.
I think he was talking about service providers like MediaFire here.
Service providers can be sued for ignoring the DMCA complaint, they cannot be sued for ignoring a counterclaim. They can't be sued in the resultant court case either, but they can expect to run into lots of expenses.
Therefore the cheapest and safest way to deal with DMCA for a service provider is to simply honor the DMCA complaint and do nothing else.
I agree - the only reason I pointed out that the person who was claimed to have posted infringing material can sue someone who "makes a patently false claim..."
The problem is that the DMCA is horribly unbalanced. Fail to honor a claim and you become a contributory infringer. Fail to honor a counterclaim and... nothing. Make a patently false claim and... nothing.
Not true. A false claim can result in a lawsuit; as per Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. IANAL, but she may have a case against the company that files the claim.
That's what I don't get. Somewhere along the way the "help everyone achieve anything," free-love, equality and peace messages turned into "Fuck you. I made my money and now that I have to pay in, we need to remove the social safety nets. OH, and not just that, but I'm going to make it that much harder for you to make as much money as I did."
I understand that it's cliche and all-too circular to blame the generation before you for the world's problems, but the baby-boomers really fucked us. Raw.
It was all downhill after Jerry sold out to the Man...
IAs we went through jury selection, it quickly became clear that the attorneys wanted to state their case in their own way without anyone on the jury attempting to re-explain or translate for the others.
More specifically, a lawyer wants to build a story around 1 idea or point they believe will win for their client. They want the jury to focus on that point when rendering their verdict. hence "If it doesn't fit you must acquit!"
All of the jurors can see things differently, but they must all use the same set of facts...
That's rather confusing. If everybody sees the same facts differently, what purpose do the facts serve?
The facts decide what you can consider during deliberations. For example, even if you know X occurred or that the person had done Y before; unless it was brought up during trial you can't consider it during deliberation. OTOH, you can use the facts and your knowledge to render a verdict. For example, I was on a jury where the defense attorney kept bring up that the sobriety tests had a 25% false positive rate; I used my knowledge of probability to deduce that the chance that the same person failed four different tests, at least twice each, was pretty damn small. The attorney wanted use to remember 25% percent of those tested will fail w/o being intoxicated and disn't consider that we might actually calculate the probability of failing 8 x in a row and those not have reasonable doubt of guilt.
Catholicism officially recognizes evolution to be correct. They're still having trouble with realizing there isn't a god, but you can see why that one is a bit harder for them.
Which of course, ends the argument since God himself established the Church through Jesus and carried on by the Popes. So arguing against evolution is to argue against God, as I like to point out to my fundamentalist friends. They do seem to get a bit upset over that, but hey, who am I to argue with God?
Finding only secured Wi-Fi signals, investigators could argue it was being used by the person paying the bill or those with permission.
Gee Mr. Persecutor, I know the router is locked down now, but it was insecure before my brother-in-law pointed it out to me.
That's probably an argument you'd make to a judge to invalidate the search; though I think you'd have a hard time arguing they didn't have probable cause for a search since the router was secured when they checked. That would provide, IMH-nonlawyerO, reasonable justification for a warrant.
Roger that. Most people don't realize the challenges of operating in a 3D enviroment where your senses may be fooling you. Couple that with some of the junkers that haven't seen maintenance since the Nixon era and you have. Are wipe for disaster.
One thing you want to b sure of is that whatever files your package produces can be used by your bookkeeper. I'd see what other restaurants use and what your bookkeeper recommends; the last thing you want or need is to unravel a years worth of journal entries while starting up a restaurant. Use OSS to design menus and flyers, where the penalty for a mistake is small,to start is my humble addition to the discussion.
As always the value of higher education isn't teaching you practical things that you can use today, it's teaching you how things work so you can use them in new ways tomorrow. I can understand frustration on this, we've all been there, and I do wish universities would spend a little more time on "practical" to augment the abstract and toss the liberal arts stuff which is useless for the intentions of 99% of people attending school.
Interestingly enough, most people make the same arguement for basic math and science if they aren't in a technical major. The same arguement applies in botIh cases - those courses provide insights and knowledge about the greater world around you and help prepare you to function in it. Despite being an engineer stuff taught in liberal arts accounts for 80% of my income and my engineering background enables me to use it effectively.
I regularly buy HumbleBundle games even if I don't play them just to support developers who treat customers right.
If you don't like to play them, then you are at the same time giving the message that you can release any uninteresting games if they just are not wrapped in DRM or other bullshit.
Not playing and not liking to play them are two different things. I spend very little time playing games on my pc, but that does not mean I think they are uninteresting or not worthwhile.
I also have changed my game buying habits. I regularly buy HumbleBundle games even if I don't play them just to support developers who treat customers right. Steam? Only when they have one of their $9.95 sales on a game I really want, such as Civ 5. So I guess there is a price point where I put up with DRM but not at the price developers want to charge.
Technically a good cop with good instincts is applying statistics. The human brain is built to recognize patterns and to use those patterns to make predictions. Some of this is done at a subconscious level. So its not that we are necessarily introducing statistics, its seems more that we are using a much larger data set to mine patterns from. Still, as you say, a high tech version of what we already do.
Very true. I cop friend of mine often gets asked "how did you know it was me?" and his answer is "because you always commit crime x by doing y."Ashe puts it, most criminals are stupid, or at least we only catch the stupid ones. This analysis just builds on what people's brain does naturally, with a more robust data set as you point out. Plus, it never forgets a crime.
Actually, it is not stagnation but reaching a general level of aptitude that is sufficient for their needs and does not require further skill development. As a result, future products are aimed at that level orf aptitude.
This can be true to pop and mom, but to everybody else that needs computers to work, that level of aptitude is clearly insufficient.
Using your analogy, people are buying racing cars and demanding using them as bicycles - to then complain that racing cars does no works.
As you point out, don't buy a Ferrari when a 2 year old Kia will do the job. In my experience, most office environments can get by just fine with older boxes running XP or Leopard with a browser and an office suite. The problem is IT upgrades them to the latest and greatest, which does some things differently and breaks the user's understanding of how things work, and problems ensue. They were doing just fine until they were given the Ferrari, and now are being asked to reach a new level of skill just to do what they were doing before. I've seen this happen with every level of talent, from basic data entry clerks to MDs and PhDs; all of whom just want "the damn thing to work again!"
Sure, there are specialized cases where more power is useful; but as you said people are being given race cars to replace bicycles when the bicycle was just what they needed and were adept at using. Putting obstacles in people's paths that weren't there before and then lamenting their lack of skill in overcoming them misses the point - don't put them there in the first place.
The big issue with many modern desktops including Gnome and Win8 is they are hell bent on chasing the "dumb it down! dumb it all down! moaarrr dumber!!" crowd. Ripping out power user functionality, removing configurability, and generally making it about as annoying to use for proficient users as possible.
For some reason stagnation is expected in computing, even when this is rare elsewhere. I call them "permanant noobs".
When you got your first bicycle and used it with training wheels, no one expected that you would still use those training wheels years later. When you got your learner's permit, it was expected that this was a stepping stone you would use to ultimatley gain enough skill to get your own proper driver's license. No one actually expected that these early learning stages would or should be permanent.
The "dumb it down" mentality with computing is the assumption that the early learning stages should be sanctified and made permanent, that they are some kind of perfect ideal, that it's not reasonable to ever expect a user's skill to grow with time.
Actually, it is not stagnation but reaching a general level of aptitude that is sufficient for their needs and does not require further skill development. As a result, future products are aimed at that level orf aptitude. Your examples actually illustrate that quite well. Once you lose your traing wheels, you can ride. Alike; which meets your needs. You can't ride a unicycle or motorcycle without more training, but since you don't need to you don't bother to learn; and bike manufactures make nicer bikes, not unicycles or motorcycles. The same applies to cars. You have no need to develop the skill needed to drive a race car, since it adds nothing to what you need from a car. Hence, cars are built for the average driver's needs; and race cars remain an enthusiast market for those willing to develop their skills further.
When references are checked, it is trivial to say, "oh, you mean the guy we had to get a TRO against?", and buh-bye future.
While I agree tab saying anything other than nice platitudes at an exit interview is a mistake; most companies will only verify dates of employment (if that) when someone calls for a reference. Legal is concerned about getting sued if someone says something bad so it's easier to pass the request to HR and let them deal with it. At least that's how it's been where I've worked.
The castle is in Austria. And the period is the 15th century, not the 16th. Although the clothes have been carbon dated I can't find a reference to the exact date, but for most of the 15th century the language would have been Middle English.
In Austria??? A dialect of Early New High German, surely? If you're going to be a pedant it's important to get it right.
Naw, they'd probably be speaking Early New High English with an Aussie accent, mate. Though I am surprised someone sent to a penal colony could afford a castle.
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The problem is the total cost of ownership isn't often all that different, once you factor in support and other costs. Even if the software is pretty much the same their still is a learning curve that results in lost productivity
That same learning curve applies when you upgrade MS Office to the latest completely-different-UI version every few years. So the next time you have to upgrade, it'd cost the same in lost productivity if you switched to something not-MS-Office.
That assumes you always upgrade, something many companies do not do every time a new version comes out.
dealing with customers who can't open a file
If you're sending Word documents to customers you've got bigger problems. There have been far too many embarrassing information leaks stemming from that - everywhere I've worked has had a policy of PDFing everything before it goes to the customer.
That's fine, except when your customer needs to edit a document; or they send you a Word doc that you wind up editing.
It's a bit of work because of the nature of their model (lots of small projects around the US); but you could fund a number of science / math / technology needs for classrooms across the US.
... and all the attendant ASW ships, subs, and aircraft call those OPFOR subs "meat."
Heh. We called the carrier screen the "door to the target" since we simply slipped under them and then proceeded to fire green flares at COMEX. Kinda funny to watch them go nuts when the found out we were trailing the carrier all along without them noticing us, and then all the noise they made let us slip back out of the screen and prep for our next attack. Our CO was a nice guy about it - he gave the carrier CO a nice framed picture of his ship with its name clearly in our cross hairs.
Carriers are great force projection tools. Nothing says up yours like a carrier battle group crossing your line of death. However, they also fall into that second category of vessels when submariners refer to "submarines and targets." As ship killer missiles get better, submarines will be an even greater threat since they can fire from stand off distances. Sadly, it will take all the fun out of it as you no longer will get to due an approach and take a quick peek at your target right before it disappears.
> In the real world
The problem is the total cost of ownership isn't often all that different, once you factor in support and other costs. Even if the software is pretty much the same their still is a learning curve that results in lost productivity; costs to translate and verify documents translated properly; dealing with customers who can't open a file, ensuring tech support can actually support teh product, etc. FOSS is great and i use some, but it also costs money even if the actual software is free.
"Or, force PayPal to not do currency conversions. In the end, they will either have to give up, massively devalue the Peso or make it a non-convertablke currency."
Or -- far simpler -- just do as they did in the EU and make PayPal register as an actual bank.
Fair enough; although PayPal may decide the hassle is not worth it and simply leave the country.
Governments used to be able to easily control currency flows because banks were needed to move money and for most people it was not easy to move small amounts. Now, with PayPa, for example, it's a lot easier to move a few hundred dollars across borders. How long is it before Argentineans with friends and relatives abroad "buy" things - effectively converting pesos into dollars and then have that person bring back dollars or keep them safely out of reach of the authorities? The authorities will have to setup ways to monitor online "sales" and collect taxes at the time of sale or tax PayPal transactions at the time of money transfer. Or, force PayPal to not do currency conversions. In the end, they will either have to give up, massively devalue the Peso or make it a non-convertablke currency.
I think he was talking about service providers like MediaFire here. Service providers can be sued for ignoring the DMCA complaint, they cannot be sued for ignoring a counterclaim. They can't be sued in the resultant court case either, but they can expect to run into lots of expenses. Therefore the cheapest and safest way to deal with DMCA for a service provider is to simply honor the DMCA complaint and do nothing else.
I agree - the only reason I pointed out that the person who was claimed to have posted infringing material can sue someone who "makes a patently false claim..."
The problem is that the DMCA is horribly unbalanced. Fail to honor a claim and you become a contributory infringer. Fail to honor a counterclaim and ... nothing. Make a patently false claim and ... nothing.
Not true. A false claim can result in a lawsuit; as per Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. IANAL, but she may have a case against the company that files the claim.
That's what I don't get. Somewhere along the way the "help everyone achieve anything," free-love, equality and peace messages turned into "Fuck you. I made my money and now that I have to pay in, we need to remove the social safety nets. OH, and not just that, but I'm going to make it that much harder for you to make as much money as I did."
I understand that it's cliche and all-too circular to blame the generation before you for the world's problems, but the baby-boomers really fucked us. Raw.
It was all downhill after Jerry sold out to the Man...
IAs we went through jury selection, it quickly became clear that the attorneys wanted to state their case in their own way without anyone on the jury attempting to re-explain or translate for the others.
More specifically, a lawyer wants to build a story around 1 idea or point they believe will win for their client. They want the jury to focus on that point when rendering their verdict. hence "If it doesn't fit you must acquit!"
All of the jurors can see things differently, but they must all use the same set of facts...
That's rather confusing. If everybody sees the same facts differently, what purpose do the facts serve?
The facts decide what you can consider during deliberations. For example, even if you know X occurred or that the person had done Y before; unless it was brought up during trial you can't consider it during deliberation. OTOH, you can use the facts and your knowledge to render a verdict. For example, I was on a jury where the defense attorney kept bring up that the sobriety tests had a 25% false positive rate; I used my knowledge of probability to deduce that the chance that the same person failed four different tests, at least twice each, was pretty damn small. The attorney wanted use to remember 25% percent of those tested will fail w/o being intoxicated and disn't consider that we might actually calculate the probability of failing 8 x in a row and those not have reasonable doubt of guilt.
Catholicism officially recognizes evolution to be correct. They're still having trouble with realizing there isn't a god, but you can see why that one is a bit harder for them.
Which of course, ends the argument since God himself established the Church through Jesus and carried on by the Popes. So arguing against evolution is to argue against God, as I like to point out to my fundamentalist friends. They do seem to get a bit upset over that, but hey, who am I to argue with God?
Obviously, the education system is the work of the devil. Those degrees are only signs of how high you are in the devil's rankings.
BS - Beginning Satan MS - Minor Satan PhD - Pretty high Devil
(I feel like I'm gonna pay for that comment somehow...)
Yes. A DCMA notice is on the way for use of my copyrighted and patented concept.
Finding only secured Wi-Fi signals, investigators could argue it was being used by the person paying the bill or those with permission.
Gee Mr. Persecutor, I know the router is locked down now, but it was insecure before my brother-in-law pointed it out to me.
That's probably an argument you'd make to a judge to invalidate the search; though I think you'd have a hard time arguing they didn't have probable cause for a search since the router was secured when they checked. That would provide, IMH-nonlawyerO, reasonable justification for a warrant.
Roger that. Most people don't realize the challenges of operating in a 3D enviroment where your senses may be fooling you. Couple that with some of the junkers that haven't seen maintenance since the Nixon era and you have. Are wipe for disaster.
One thing you want to b sure of is that whatever files your package produces can be used by your bookkeeper. I'd see what other restaurants use and what your bookkeeper recommends; the last thing you want or need is to unravel a years worth of journal entries while starting up a restaurant. Use OSS to design menus and flyers, where the penalty for a mistake is small,to start is my humble addition to the discussion.
As always the value of higher education isn't teaching you practical things that you can use today, it's teaching you how things work so you can use them in new ways tomorrow. I can understand frustration on this, we've all been there, and I do wish universities would spend a little more time on "practical" to augment the abstract and toss the liberal arts stuff which is useless for the intentions of 99% of people attending school.
Interestingly enough, most people make the same arguement for basic math and science if they aren't in a technical major. The same arguement applies in botIh cases - those courses provide insights and knowledge about the greater world around you and help prepare you to function in it. Despite being an engineer stuff taught in liberal arts accounts for 80% of my income and my engineering background enables me to use it effectively.
I regularly buy HumbleBundle games even if I don't play them just to support developers who treat customers right.
If you don't like to play them, then you are at the same time giving the message that you can release any uninteresting games if they just are not wrapped in DRM or other bullshit.
Not playing and not liking to play them are two different things. I spend very little time playing games on my pc, but that does not mean I think they are uninteresting or not worthwhile.
I also have changed my game buying habits. I regularly buy HumbleBundle games even if I don't play them just to support developers who treat customers right. Steam? Only when they have one of their $9.95 sales on a game I really want, such as Civ 5. So I guess there is a price point where I put up with DRM but not at the price developers want to charge.
Technically a good cop with good instincts is applying statistics. The human brain is built to recognize patterns and to use those patterns to make predictions. Some of this is done at a subconscious level. So its not that we are necessarily introducing statistics, its seems more that we are using a much larger data set to mine patterns from. Still, as you say, a high tech version of what we already do.
Very true. I cop friend of mine often gets asked "how did you know it was me?" and his answer is "because you always commit crime x by doing y."Ashe puts it, most criminals are stupid, or at least we only catch the stupid ones. This analysis just builds on what people's brain does naturally, with a more robust data set as you point out. Plus, it never forgets a crime.
Actually, it is not stagnation but reaching a general level of aptitude that is sufficient for their needs and does not require further skill development. As a result, future products are aimed at that level orf aptitude.
This can be true to pop and mom, but to everybody else that needs computers to work, that level of aptitude is clearly insufficient.
Using your analogy, people are buying racing cars and demanding using them as bicycles - to then complain that racing cars does no works.
As you point out, don't buy a Ferrari when a 2 year old Kia will do the job. In my experience, most office environments can get by just fine with older boxes running XP or Leopard with a browser and an office suite. The problem is IT upgrades them to the latest and greatest, which does some things differently and breaks the user's understanding of how things work, and problems ensue. They were doing just fine until they were given the Ferrari, and now are being asked to reach a new level of skill just to do what they were doing before. I've seen this happen with every level of talent, from basic data entry clerks to MDs and PhDs; all of whom just want "the damn thing to work again!"
Sure, there are specialized cases where more power is useful; but as you said people are being given race cars to replace bicycles when the bicycle was just what they needed and were adept at using. Putting obstacles in people's paths that weren't there before and then lamenting their lack of skill in overcoming them misses the point - don't put them there in the first place.
The big issue with many modern desktops including Gnome and Win8 is they are hell bent on chasing the "dumb it down! dumb it all down! moaarrr dumber!!" crowd. Ripping out power user functionality, removing configurability, and generally making it about as annoying to use for proficient users as possible.
For some reason stagnation is expected in computing, even when this is rare elsewhere. I call them "permanant noobs". When you got your first bicycle and used it with training wheels, no one expected that you would still use those training wheels years later. When you got your learner's permit, it was expected that this was a stepping stone you would use to ultimatley gain enough skill to get your own proper driver's license. No one actually expected that these early learning stages would or should be permanent. The "dumb it down" mentality with computing is the assumption that the early learning stages should be sanctified and made permanent, that they are some kind of perfect ideal, that it's not reasonable to ever expect a user's skill to grow with time.
Actually, it is not stagnation but reaching a general level of aptitude that is sufficient for their needs and does not require further skill development. As a result, future products are aimed at that level orf aptitude. Your examples actually illustrate that quite well. Once you lose your traing wheels, you can ride. Alike; which meets your needs. You can't ride a unicycle or motorcycle without more training, but since you don't need to you don't bother to learn; and bike manufactures make nicer bikes, not unicycles or motorcycles. The same applies to cars. You have no need to develop the skill needed to drive a race car, since it adds nothing to what you need from a car. Hence, cars are built for the average driver's needs; and race cars remain an enthusiast market for those willing to develop their skills further.
When references are checked, it is trivial to say, "oh, you mean the guy we had to get a TRO against?", and buh-bye future.
While I agree tab saying anything other than nice platitudes at an exit interview is a mistake; most companies will only verify dates of employment (if that) when someone calls for a reference. Legal is concerned about getting sued if someone says something bad so it's easier to pass the request to HR and let them deal with it. At least that's how it's been where I've worked.
The castle is in Austria. And the period is the 15th century, not the 16th. Although the clothes have been carbon dated I can't find a reference to the exact date, but for most of the 15th century the language would have been Middle English.
In Austria??? A dialect of Early New High German, surely? If you're going to be a pedant it's important to get it right.
Naw, they'd probably be speaking Early New High English with an Aussie accent, mate. Though I am surprised someone sent to a penal colony could afford a castle.