Back in the 80's Kodak had it hooks into a ton of different industries: medical, chemical, government, printing. Then someone 'smart' decided that some of those divisions weren't as profitable as the film production (which has RIDICULOUS profit margins). So, rather than continuing to expand, they decided to consolidation to squeeze out more profits.
Over time some of those divisions did die (copier divisions), but others thrived (Eastman Chemical). Kodak gambled their future on the continued sucess of film, and it was a very bad bet.
This concept will only work in an 'enlightened' company, ie one that IS IT. In a company that sells things or services, it's all based on how many beans you can count. If you have this completely integrated IT organization, how does the company keep the IT budget under control? Unless you segregate the work into it's own silo, and then yell it like those Burger King "Angry Whopper Onions", how will costs go down.
No one sees IT as a partner. We're not even a business unit in a company. We're a collection of desklamps and staplers. I've seen management boggled by the fact that a Windows SA doesn't know anything about tuning an Oracle database. "But you're IT!" I've seen very skilled people moved over into jobs they are not trained or qualified for, and then eventually let go because they didn't have the skills for the job.
I haven't seen many companies that don't down right object to the fact they have to pay for IT. They don't blink at ordering 1000 new business cards for all the sales people, but ask for a $50 piece of software and you might as well be Oliver asking for more pourage.
Outsourcing has just made it easier for them to do this. How are you going to have a strategic partner doing IT, when the IT person you are dealing with is loyal only to the contract you've signed with them and really could care less if the company is growing or not, as long as they get paid.
Yes, I'm bitter. I'd love to see the fantasy land where IT is cherished. Especially outside of an IT company. I haven't seen it.
I bought an EEE a couple of months ago. My job gives me a full size laptop for support, and I still prefer the EEE. I loaded XP on it (instructions come with the laptop), and I can use all of my remote access tools, and access my work machines remotely. I find that I am even taking this think into meetings with me for notes. It boots up in a few seconds, and the battery is good enough for a two hour+ meeting. Interestingly, management is now showing interest in this little device. Combine it with Citrix, and you have a full size laptop killer. Give someone a cheaper desktop machine for the heavy lifting, and use this thing to bridge between a Crackberry and mega-laptop.
Honestly, how often do you need a DVD burner? What PCMCIA (or PCCard) device can you NOT get in a USB flavor now? Do you really need a dual core CPU to catch up on email or browse the web? If you can get used to the 2/3rd size keyboard, and the mini screen, this thing rocks!
I have to agree here. I've been using SAP for almost 10 years now from the technical support side, and I can only imagine what "improvements" MS would make. They only company I can see benefitting from this merger is Oracle and their ERP solution.
Oh, and I can promise you this, if one day in the future I open my SAPGui and that damn paperclip pops up to ask "I see you are trying to heirarchy to organize your material management, can I help?", I will drive to Redwood and burn it to the ground. Not just MS, the whole city.
It took me until the end to figure out what the hell 'Cloverfield' was. That 'hammerhead' scenario they played out was basically carpet bombing the hell out of the whole city. If you look at a real field of clover from above, it looks like tiny overlapping explosions.
Oh, and I did not see the 100 story helicopter swipe coming. The stuff in central park did seem a little tacked on. I hope everyone noticed that time 6:42am was the start and finish of the film. They seemed to make a point of having clocks in various scenes.
The shaky cam did make me want to vomit a couple of times, but I loved the movie. I read somewhere (ie don't know if it's official), but they can now spin this exact same movie off with different people at the same event. Here's something else to chew on, did they ever actually say there was just one giant sized monster? Maybe there was more than one in the city.
First their using the password 'pencil' to change their biology degree from an F to an A, then next thing you know we are at DEFCON 1 and W.O.P.R. has the launch codes. Have we learned nothing people?
The first thing I do is come up with an action plan to provide a best of breed solution that will benefit both our customers and our stockholders. After I take a wag at my daily task list, I begin working on new strategies to augment and improve the current paradigm. Once I have liaised with my support staff to determine the readiness of our infrastructure, I take off my jacket and put my briefcase away. Sir.
Start taking boxes of staples and pencils until the amounts even out. If that's not fast enough, look for other ways to waste money anonymously. Egg the building, driving up maintenance fees. Begin to send enormous amounts of unsolicited internal company mailings. Not emails, but those inter company envelopes. Fill them with viagra adds, or photocopies of your butt, and send them to various departments.
Some times Karma needs a little help, just ask Earl.
That is what I am still trying to figure out. First they say it's for promotion. Bullshit! Beyond a TRL spot, what advertising is there, unless there is alot more payola going on now.
Next, they say production and distribution. Bullshit! The number of record stores is dramatically smaller now (see the closing of Tower Records). People buy most albums in big box stores, or on line. Both have very streamlined ordering processes. There can press much closer to the actual amount.
Next, physical media is expensive. Bullshit! Seriously, if I can get 100 blank cds for $10, the cost can't be more for them.
What is needed is an INDEPENDENT accounting of the industry. Talk about an industry that could use the Sarbanes-Oxley act for review. If the music industry is going to continue to force the government to act on their behalf, we as citizen should demand a formal accounting.
Finally, how come an album can come out and the first week it's $11, and then two weeks later it's marked up to $18? What causes a 60% markup like that?
We need to get a Pirate Badge ASAP. Given the choice is some kid going to want to "perform a market study of the impact of copyright infringement on the entertainment industry", or learn how to keelhaul properly?
I was taken to a conference room, given a hardcopy chunk of code, and told to figure out what it did. On the way out one guy said, "Oh there might be an error in there too". So I did my 'Russell Nash' thing and ran the program step by step in my head and figured the program out. I ran a few more calculations, and I determined there was a problem given a certain numeric precision. The guys came back in about 30 minutes after they left. First they asked to see any scrap paper I used determining the solution. I told them I didn't have any, except for a couple of numbers I wrote on the code pages. They were stunned, but I explained exactly what the program did, which one of them confirmed. Then I explained the error I found. At this point they got very defensive. It seems this piece of code was pulled from their production systems, and "didn't have any errors". I explained what I found to them, and one of them wandered off.
Oddly I didn't get the job. They said I lacked the ability to document. Funny since I graduated with a degree in technical writing. Maybe they just wanted people to come in an debug for them in interviews.
I just read this little insight about TV a few days ago (maybe here on/.) that completely changed how I look at TV. Programs are made for the advertisers, and we the viewers are just the product. When it comes right down to it, the sucess or failure of a program is determined by the advertising revenue, not really viewership. It's the amount of viewers that draw the advertisers which pays the bills. Bascially only DVD sales and 'webisodes', which are marketed directly to the viewers, are the only place the advertisers are out fo the process.
I noticed on Friday that his comic "Clothes make the Peep", was an homage to his original "Clothes make the Spam". Please, say it ain't so. I started reading this comic it's first week. I even kept checking when he took a hiatus a few years ago for several months.
Funny, but I am in the process of trying to figure out how to schedule the work I need to get done this summer around my european counterparts 8 weeks of vacation. Eight weeks, not including holidays! Funny, they never get labeled as lazy.
Are you kidding? There's a river in Africa that comes to mind: De-Nile. Who are the public going to believe? A poor company like the RIAA just trying to save it's business, or a maniacle, evil, kitten-drowning pirate?
Since it was all done over the phone, unless it was recorded they will deny everything. And if it was recorded, they will probably sue her for that.
All this despite the fact that almost 2.5 million students graduate in India each year.
This leads me to one thing I've been very curious about. How are companies checking the credentials of people overseas? I know there are quite a few people (some I've had to deal with), that I can't beleive they got any more than a 'boot camp' type training. With all the movement between companies over there, I can see how people would get lost in the shuffle and keep working.
It's not quantity of IT workers I see as the problem over there, but quality.
Yes, you don't seem to be thinking about who this really hurts. Now Lucas can only afford the gold plated toilet seats for his mansion, not the platnum ones. As as anyone can tell you, those gold seats can be a little chilly in the morning.
I see this all the time at work as well. Unfortunately it goes the other way. Our company keeps the older crowd around and gets rid of the younger people. Instead of pouring your money into these legacy apps, UPGRADE THEM TO SOMETHING FROM THIS CENTURY!!! It's hard for me to beleive that something HAS to run on big iron. Yes it will cost money to covert it, but in the long run you save.
As the price of reproduction drops, the price of the item should drop correspondingly. At least that's how the economic theory goes. Profit margins drop but profits are made through bulk sales, much like today's commodity ethernet cards and memory chips. It allows for many companies (or artists) to create a product, spurring competition, providing choice. All of this is good for the consumer.
Now that many of the record stores are owned by the labels (directly or indirectly), they are coming to realize that the extra zillion copies of the American Idol CDs aren't going to sell, and they will take a loss on them. This is a more premptive move to stop producing physical media for low volume CDs, and force people to go download them. Then they can scale back their facilities and store media online for virtually nothing. Then whenever someone buys Van Halen's 5140, they don't have to go make another one, and it becomes pure profit.
I can forsee a day when getting a physical CD is considered the 'special edition', and the e-copy is the actual release. The only benefit I could see would be letting users customize their own CD's. So if I only want one or two tracks, that's all I pay for. I even think that will make the record companies 'force' people to pay for all of the tracks even if they only want one.
Slashdot Mirror
I promise you they will have it working in a week.
Back in the 80's Kodak had it hooks into a ton of different industries: medical, chemical, government, printing. Then someone 'smart' decided that some of those divisions weren't as profitable as the film production (which has RIDICULOUS profit margins). So, rather than continuing to expand, they decided to consolidation to squeeze out more profits.
Over time some of those divisions did die (copier divisions), but others thrived (Eastman Chemical). Kodak gambled their future on the continued sucess of film, and it was a very bad bet.
Harry Hamlin gotta eat!
And I'm not waiting for 6PM. I've already stormed my neighbors house and picked up some nice power tools.
This concept will only work in an 'enlightened' company, ie one that IS IT. In a company that sells things or services, it's all based on how many beans you can count. If you have this completely integrated IT organization, how does the company keep the IT budget under control? Unless you segregate the work into it's own silo, and then yell it like those Burger King "Angry Whopper Onions", how will costs go down.
No one sees IT as a partner. We're not even a business unit in a company. We're a collection of desklamps and staplers. I've seen management boggled by the fact that a Windows SA doesn't know anything about tuning an Oracle database. "But you're IT!" I've seen very skilled people moved over into jobs they are not trained or qualified for, and then eventually let go because they didn't have the skills for the job.
I haven't seen many companies that don't down right object to the fact they have to pay for IT. They don't blink at ordering 1000 new business cards for all the sales people, but ask for a $50 piece of software and you might as well be Oliver asking for more pourage.
Outsourcing has just made it easier for them to do this. How are you going to have a strategic partner doing IT, when the IT person you are dealing with is loyal only to the contract you've signed with them and really could care less if the company is growing or not, as long as they get paid.
Yes, I'm bitter. I'd love to see the fantasy land where IT is cherished. Especially outside of an IT company. I haven't seen it.
I knew one day they would come around.
I bought an EEE a couple of months ago. My job gives me a full size laptop for support, and I still prefer the EEE. I loaded XP on it (instructions come with the laptop), and I can use all of my remote access tools, and access my work machines remotely. I find that I am even taking this think into meetings with me for notes. It boots up in a few seconds, and the battery is good enough for a two hour+ meeting. Interestingly, management is now showing interest in this little device. Combine it with Citrix, and you have a full size laptop killer. Give someone a cheaper desktop machine for the heavy lifting, and use this thing to bridge between a Crackberry and mega-laptop.
Honestly, how often do you need a DVD burner? What PCMCIA (or PCCard) device can you NOT get in a USB flavor now? Do you really need a dual core CPU to catch up on email or browse the web? If you can get used to the 2/3rd size keyboard, and the mini screen, this thing rocks!
I have to agree here. I've been using SAP for almost 10 years now from the technical support side, and I can only imagine what "improvements" MS would make. They only company I can see benefitting from this merger is Oracle and their ERP solution.
Oh, and I can promise you this, if one day in the future I open my SAPGui and that damn paperclip pops up to ask "I see you are trying to heirarchy to organize your material management, can I help?", I will drive to Redwood and burn it to the ground. Not just MS, the whole city.
It took me until the end to figure out what the hell 'Cloverfield' was. That 'hammerhead' scenario they played out was basically carpet bombing the hell out of the whole city. If you look at a real field of clover from above, it looks like tiny overlapping explosions.
Oh, and I did not see the 100 story helicopter swipe coming. The stuff in central park did seem a little tacked on. I hope everyone noticed that time 6:42am was the start and finish of the film. They seemed to make a point of having clocks in various scenes.
The shaky cam did make me want to vomit a couple of times, but I loved the movie. I read somewhere (ie don't know if it's official), but they can now spin this exact same movie off with different people at the same event. Here's something else to chew on, did they ever actually say there was just one giant sized monster? Maybe there was more than one in the city.
Goatse!
First their using the password 'pencil' to change their biology degree from an F to an A, then next thing you know we are at DEFCON 1 and W.O.P.R. has the launch codes. Have we learned nothing people?
The first thing I do is come up with an action plan to provide a best of breed solution that will benefit both our customers and our stockholders. After I take a wag at my daily task list, I begin working on new strategies to augment and improve the current paradigm. Once I have liaised with my support staff to determine the readiness of our infrastructure, I take off my jacket and put my briefcase away. Sir.
Start taking boxes of staples and pencils until the amounts even out. If that's not fast enough, look for other ways to waste money anonymously. Egg the building, driving up maintenance fees. Begin to send enormous amounts of unsolicited internal company mailings. Not emails, but those inter company envelopes. Fill them with viagra adds, or photocopies of your butt, and send them to various departments.
Some times Karma needs a little help, just ask Earl.
That is what I am still trying to figure out. First they say it's for promotion. Bullshit! Beyond a TRL spot, what advertising is there, unless there is alot more payola going on now.
Next, they say production and distribution. Bullshit! The number of record stores is dramatically smaller now (see the closing of Tower Records). People buy most albums in big box stores, or on line. Both have very streamlined ordering processes. There can press much closer to the actual amount.
Next, physical media is expensive. Bullshit! Seriously, if I can get 100 blank cds for $10, the cost can't be more for them.
What is needed is an INDEPENDENT accounting of the industry. Talk about an industry that could use the Sarbanes-Oxley act for review. If the music industry is going to continue to force the government to act on their behalf, we as citizen should demand a formal accounting.
Finally, how come an album can come out and the first week it's $11, and then two weeks later it's marked up to $18? What causes a 60% markup like that?
We need to get a Pirate Badge ASAP. Given the choice is some kid going to want to "perform a market study of the impact of copyright infringement on the entertainment industry", or learn how to keelhaul properly?
Avast!
I was taken to a conference room, given a hardcopy chunk of code, and told to figure out what it did. On the way out one guy said, "Oh there might be an error in there too". So I did my 'Russell Nash' thing and ran the program step by step in my head and figured the program out. I ran a few more calculations, and I determined there was a problem given a certain numeric precision. The guys came back in about 30 minutes after they left. First they asked to see any scrap paper I used determining the solution. I told them I didn't have any, except for a couple of numbers I wrote on the code pages. They were stunned, but I explained exactly what the program did, which one of them confirmed. Then I explained the error I found. At this point they got very defensive. It seems this piece of code was pulled from their production systems, and "didn't have any errors". I explained what I found to them, and one of them wandered off.
Oddly I didn't get the job. They said I lacked the ability to document. Funny since I graduated with a degree in technical writing. Maybe they just wanted people to come in an debug for them in interviews.
I just read this little insight about TV a few days ago (maybe here on /.) that completely changed how I look at TV. Programs are made for the advertisers, and we the viewers are just the product. When it comes right down to it, the sucess or failure of a program is determined by the advertising revenue, not really viewership. It's the amount of viewers that draw the advertisers which pays the bills. Bascially only DVD sales and 'webisodes', which are marketed directly to the viewers, are the only place the advertisers are out fo the process.
I noticed on Friday that his comic "Clothes make the Peep", was an homage to his original "Clothes make the Spam". Please, say it ain't so. I started reading this comic it's first week. I even kept checking when he took a hiatus a few years ago for several months.
Thank you Dave.
Funny, but I am in the process of trying to figure out how to schedule the work I need to get done this summer around my european counterparts 8 weeks of vacation. Eight weeks, not including holidays! Funny, they never get labeled as lazy.
Don't give the suits yet another reason why offshoring is a better alternative.
Are you kidding? There's a river in Africa that comes to mind: De-Nile. Who are the public going to believe? A poor company like the RIAA just trying to save it's business, or a maniacle, evil, kitten-drowning pirate?
Since it was all done over the phone, unless it was recorded they will deny everything. And if it was recorded, they will probably sue her for that.
All this despite the fact that almost 2.5 million students graduate in India each year.
This leads me to one thing I've been very curious about. How are companies checking the credentials of people overseas? I know there are quite a few people (some I've had to deal with), that I can't beleive they got any more than a 'boot camp' type training. With all the movement between companies over there, I can see how people would get lost in the shuffle and keep working.
It's not quantity of IT workers I see as the problem over there, but quality.
Yes, you don't seem to be thinking about who this really hurts. Now Lucas can only afford the gold plated toilet seats for his mansion, not the platnum ones. As as anyone can tell you, those gold seats can be a little chilly in the morning.
Perhaps we can hold a telethon for him.
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this sig is in lower case to save space
I see this all the time at work as well. Unfortunately it goes the other way. Our company keeps the older crowd around and gets rid of the younger people. Instead of pouring your money into these legacy apps, UPGRADE THEM TO SOMETHING FROM THIS CENTURY!!! It's hard for me to beleive that something HAS to run on big iron. Yes it will cost money to covert it, but in the long run you save.
Now that many of the record stores are owned by the labels (directly or indirectly), they are coming to realize that the extra zillion copies of the American Idol CDs aren't going to sell, and they will take a loss on them. This is a more premptive move to stop producing physical media for low volume CDs, and force people to go download them. Then they can scale back their facilities and store media online for virtually nothing. Then whenever someone buys Van Halen's 5140, they don't have to go make another one, and it becomes pure profit.
I can forsee a day when getting a physical CD is considered the 'special edition', and the e-copy is the actual release. The only benefit I could see would be letting users customize their own CD's. So if I only want one or two tracks, that's all I pay for. I even think that will make the record companies 'force' people to pay for all of the tracks even if they only want one.
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this sig in lower case to save space