I was going to say that I have something "interesting" to say, but I'll let you be the judge of that...
Six Sigma is one of these annoying corporate methodologies that doesn't pay off in a lot of cases (some specific cases it definitely does but it's not a one-size-fits all), but one of the key factors of it is Measurement Systems Analysis.
Essentially this - you've measured that out of 100 widgets you produce, 10 of them don't meet the standards required. Your first job should be to figure out if the thing that's measuring it is, in fact, accurate. Do you have the right ruler? I believe it can only be a good thing that "business" people are being forced to be skeptical of the reality they're presenting with - it it really that bad? How do we know? How can we prove that things are actually this bad? Should we really react to this, or is it a measurement error?
Tonnes of projects have been founded and invested in, just because people haven't figured out their upper and lower levels of control effectively. Check you're measuring it accurately, then work on the accuracy of the process..
Gaaah, I actually wanted to know who'd been awarded it, and I needed to RTFA to find out..
"The subcontractors to Oceaneering are Air-Lock Inc. of Milford, Conn., David Clark Co. of Worcester, Mass., Cimarron Software Services Inc. of Houston, Harris Corporation of Palm Bay, Fla., Honeywell International Inc. of Glendale, Ariz., Paragon Space Development Corp. of Tucson, Ariz., and United Space Alliance of Houston."
.., prosecuted them, and just because it's a minor law, the world is up in arms? Surely the fact that these people have been caught for doing illegal things is enough?
Otherwise, do we have to decide quite how bad something must be before we're willing to catch it on CCTV and prosecute someone?
When does littering become fly-tipping and when should you prosecute me for it? Throwing a chocolate wrapper on the floor or dumping my TV in a child's playground?
When does leaving my pet's faeces become something you'll prosecute me for? Allowing my dog to poop on the pavement or allowing my horse to shit in our local pond?
More importantly, how seriously do I have to sexually assault someone before it becomes something that becomes worthy of prosecution by CCTV? Grabbing a random girl's ass or raping her?
Bunch of people got caught for breaking the law. Bunch of people were investigated in case they were.
Big whoops. Stop breaking the law and you'll be fine.
A decent usage would be in the AJAX world - your browser based AJAX script gets a 404 from a "web service" that it's consuming, so instead of having to keep a list of all the alternative sources of that information, it goes to a directory type server that provides alternatives for it.
"I'm not saying people should know how to code, but you don't know the difference between a client and server, stay the fuck off the net until you're read your first "for dummies" book."
You're an elitist retard.
My Dad just wants to order a CD and it's cheaper on Amazon.co.uk than it is in Tesco - why the fuck should he care about client, server or anything else? All he needs to know is that Internet Explorer allows him to get to a place where he can safely buy a CD for a certain price. All the rest of it is just detail, in the same way that I don't need to understand Tesco's supply chain to be able to effectvely purchase from them. Computers are a commodity household item these days. Stop trying to make yourself feel special by pretending it's important that you know more than other people - it really isn't.
"most people will assume that "THE ALBUM" means you get something IDENTICAL to what you would get if you bought the CD"
So would you have wanted it to be downloaded in a lossless format, like WAVs? Could Radiohead really have potentially given 1.2 million 600Mb+ downloads away in a cost effective manner, purely from a bandwidth perspective? And from a consumer point of view, it's hardly fair on those with tiny broadband connections, or even dialup, which is still a large proportion in the UK. A 48Mb download is do-able overnight on dialup, but 600Mb? If I'd have found out it was 600Mb or so after paying, I would have been gutted, as I "technically" have a 4Gb a month transfer limit on my 8Mb BT line here in the UK, and that would have cut into it fairly considerably.
Oh, and those "most people" who would assume you'd get something identical? They won't even notice this. I've been a musician for over 15 years now and am a huge Radiohead fan, yet I haven't felt my enjoyment of their new product to be in any way held back by the bitrate.
I'm assuming that you were only interviewed by an HR person? That they talked to you, decided you were the right person for the job, and hired you? I imagine they liked your go-getting style. Maybe they believed you were a self-starter, with good prospects to become a valuable member of the organisation?
And when you got to your team and they asked you to get to work with your 5 years experience in PL/1, you shat yourself as you only ever learnt Java at university? HR took you away, got you cleaned up, then fired you for ruining company furniture? That's pretty much the only way I can see "HR hired me, HR fired me" working in a real sense.
HR search for people, do the personality bit, the background check and administer any tests. The team you're going to go into's manager decides whether you're a good fit and whether your CV is bullshit or at best 50% true. If HR tried to hire anyone to work for me without me having done the groundwork I'd refuse to have that person in my team. But that wouldn't happen, simple because you're talking utter nonsense.
I'm not aware of any game that's had the playing that Mario Kart had in student halls up and down the country and around the world.. My brother bought a SNES the summer before he went to university and his house played it for 3 years solid. I then went to university and kept playing it with my house for the next 3 years. Ghost Valley 1 timetrial was the ultimate check of you abilities - no-one ever beat my time..
Best racing game of all time and up there in the top 5 multi-player games.
I think that's kind of the point. I have maybe 10-15 close friends that I see and catch up with on a weekly basis, but my extended network I don't get to see as often are exactly the kind of people I keep up with via Facebook.
Am I the only one who noticed that he seems to suggest that he has no issue with YouTube containing copyrighted material, even outside of agreements? Seeing as he seems to be talking as a representative of the IFPI (and almost the RIAA by extension), surely his statement regarding YouTube would seem to be agreement that it is valid and legal:
"Consumers that enjoy music have a lot of options and enjoying it free on the radio is at least one of them, with last FM and You Tube there is near on demand service free at the point of use."
So is he stating on behalf of the IFPI that he has no issues with copyrighted content appearing on YouTube without the agreement of the copyright holder? If so, that's a pretty big statement to make. In fact, it breaks their whole model, as he seems to be suggesting that some channels are fine to break copyright law, whereas others aren't, and my understanding is that you can't have that kind of position..
I thought he dreamt it one night, then went around to see if anyone knew this song. When no-one did, he wrote it and finished it... That's the story I've heard before, anyway..
I think that just one person on the planet should buy a copy of each CD and give a copy to all of their friends! If their friends all do the same and so on, then before long we'll all have a copy and we'll have destroyed the music industry! Huzzah!
I also agree with you. When I go to McDonalds with my friends, I think it's only right that if I buy a cheeseburger, McDonalds should give all of my friends cheeseburgers for free. After all, they're my friends! They shouldn't have to buy anything if I've already bought one! After all, what are friends for? McDonald's are just so damned greedy and I disagree with them in the strongest possible way, and I think that is the strongest representation of their greed you'll find.
Your analogy doesn't hold water for several reasons:
1) Lending someone a CD is a temporary act and moves a physical item - giving someone a copy of an MP3 doesn't do that, as you're replicating it. 2) Lending a friend a CD is giving it temporarily to a specific person - putting the MP3 on a P2P site is like making 10,000 copies of your original CD and putting them in the middle of London for everyone to take one.
In general, I can see the issue here that's kicked CD Wow in the pants. It's a real shame though, as I've previously dealt with the company and they were really rather nice. I started a music and arts festival in a town (Reading) nearby to their head office and one of my co-organisers knew their Managing Director. A few of the guys involved went to see them regarding sponsorship. With a simple pitch and an agreement to link to their site from ours and put their logo on flyers (which gave us more credibility, as well as advertising) they chipped in enough to fund the whole festival for one year, with some left over and an agreement to consider further, more extensive funding the following year. We're talking thousands of pounds rather than hundreds.
Every dealing we had with them was brilliant, they sent through the money with no fuss and were responsible for allowing us to put on and effectively publicise over 100 events over the course of a week. That included music, theatre, comedy, children's workshops and public circus displays.
Conversely, when we approached HMV they refused to even allow our programmes in their store and told us to fuck off. Virgin allowed us to put flyers and posters all over their stores, but mainly because we knew the assistant manager.
Real shame that this might be the end of such a nice company...
Very true. However the way that the music "industry" works at the moment is not configured to be able to support that.
First example, a band that live locally to me that I know well are playing most of the major summer music festivals here in the UK this year, as well as doing a reasonably sized tour and also went over the play at South By South West in Texas. They are signed to a decent enough label and are getting loads of great press from the influential people in the media. However they currently live in a squat, as they don't command anywhere near enough of a gig fee to be able to afford to rent a house.
Second example, another local band who were signed to one of the main indie labels in the UK (Jeepster) recently. On signing, they were all told they had to quit their jobs as they will be on tour pretty much constantly and need to be flexible. When on tour, they each get ten pounds a day each and three meals. When not on tour, they get nothing. As such, they've had to move out of the shared house they had (where most of their music has been created, as it has a big shed for rehearsing) and move back in with family or anyone who will allow them to stay for a while.
Both are bands the bring a good crowd (75-100+), yet still can't support themselves..
True, but I think you'll find Linus is not short of a cent or two, as he is compensated via other methods for his hard work.
It may not have been his initial intention, but if you look at it as if we we're talking about the music industry rather than software, a band generally invests an awful lot of time and hard work at their own cost and distribute their work for free, with the hope of eventually being compensated. To extend the metaphor to almost breaking point, bands make most of their money on the road through touring, personal appearances and merchandise. Not far off of Linus's fees for public appearances, conferences and consultancy, where he makes most of his money, I assume.
To just take the music industry, one of the key issues with it is that the current measure of success, chart position, is based on product sales. Due to the nature of commercial radio's playlist policies, it is impossible to get on air on a mainstream show without a reasonable chart position. As such you can't reach most of your potential audience without sales, so people downloading illegally and not buying the songs does directly affect the audience you can reach. I'm not saying that this is the way it should be, I know enough people in bands signed to major labels that this approach has almost ruined, but it's the way the industry currently works to achieve a good level of success (i.e. to be able to support yourself and plan for the future via the music industry) and you have to live within it.
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Well, skepticism needs to be constructive, in the same way as criticism, praise, support or anything else.
If you're just constantly skeptical, you're not skeptical - you're a nay-sayer.
I've written the word "skeptical" too many times now. It's lost all meaning. I'm not convinced I'm even spelling it right. Bah.
I was going to say that I have something "interesting" to say, but I'll let you be the judge of that...
Six Sigma is one of these annoying corporate methodologies that doesn't pay off in a lot of cases (some specific cases it definitely does but it's not a one-size-fits all), but one of the key factors of it is Measurement Systems Analysis.
Essentially this - you've measured that out of 100 widgets you produce, 10 of them don't meet the standards required. Your first job should be to figure out if the thing that's measuring it is, in fact, accurate. Do you have the right ruler? I believe it can only be a good thing that "business" people are being forced to be skeptical of the reality they're presenting with - it it really that bad? How do we know? How can we prove that things are actually this bad? Should we really react to this, or is it a measurement error?
Tonnes of projects have been founded and invested in, just because people haven't figured out their upper and lower levels of control effectively. Check you're measuring it accurately, then work on the accuracy of the process..
(yeah, probably not interesting)
Gaaah, I actually wanted to know who'd been awarded it, and I needed to RTFA to find out..
"The subcontractors to Oceaneering are Air-Lock Inc. of Milford, Conn., David Clark Co. of Worcester, Mass., Cimarron Software Services Inc. of Houston, Harris Corporation of Palm Bay, Fla., Honeywell International Inc. of Glendale, Ariz., Paragon Space Development Corp. of Tucson, Ariz., and United Space Alliance of Houston."
"recent findings which suggest that water on Mars may have been too salty for most known forms of life"
Genuine question - if the water is too salty, wouldn't organisms have evolved over the millenia that could survive in that environment?
According to http://www.dnscoop.com it's worth $734,464,000.
.., prosecuted them, and just because it's a minor law, the world is up in arms? Surely the fact that these people have been caught for doing illegal things is enough?
Otherwise, do we have to decide quite how bad something must be before we're willing to catch it on CCTV and prosecute someone?
When does littering become fly-tipping and when should you prosecute me for it? Throwing a chocolate wrapper on the floor or dumping my TV in a child's playground?
When does leaving my pet's faeces become something you'll prosecute me for? Allowing my dog to poop on the pavement or allowing my horse to shit in our local pond?
More importantly, how seriously do I have to sexually assault someone before it becomes something that becomes worthy of prosecution by CCTV? Grabbing a random girl's ass or raping her?
Bunch of people got caught for breaking the law. Bunch of people were investigated in case they were.
Big whoops. Stop breaking the law and you'll be fine.
A decent usage would be in the AJAX world - your browser based AJAX script gets a 404 from a "web service" that it's consuming, so instead of having to keep a list of all the alternative sources of that information, it goes to a directory type server that provides alternatives for it.
"I'm not saying people should know how to code, but you don't know the difference between a client and server, stay the fuck off the net until you're read your first "for dummies" book."
You're an elitist retard.
My Dad just wants to order a CD and it's cheaper on Amazon.co.uk than it is in Tesco - why the fuck should he care about client, server or anything else? All he needs to know is that Internet Explorer allows him to get to a place where he can safely buy a CD for a certain price. All the rest of it is just detail, in the same way that I don't need to understand Tesco's supply chain to be able to effectvely purchase from them. Computers are a commodity household item these days. Stop trying to make yourself feel special by pretending it's important that you know more than other people - it really isn't.
I don't understand:
"most people will assume that "THE ALBUM" means you get something IDENTICAL to what you would get if you bought the CD"
So would you have wanted it to be downloaded in a lossless format, like WAVs? Could Radiohead really have potentially given 1.2 million 600Mb+ downloads away in a cost effective manner, purely from a bandwidth perspective? And from a consumer point of view, it's hardly fair on those with tiny broadband connections, or even dialup, which is still a large proportion in the UK. A 48Mb download is do-able overnight on dialup, but 600Mb? If I'd have found out it was 600Mb or so after paying, I would have been gutted, as I "technically" have a 4Gb a month transfer limit on my 8Mb BT line here in the UK, and that would have cut into it fairly considerably.
Oh, and those "most people" who would assume you'd get something identical? They won't even notice this. I've been a musician for over 15 years now and am a huge Radiohead fan, yet I haven't felt my enjoyment of their new product to be in any way held back by the bitrate.
It already does - in the Bill Hicks routine that it came from.
"Thinkin' of John, Jackie.. Thinkin' of John..."
Man, the Inspiral Carpets are going to be gutted to find their songs are being censored!
Really?
I'm assuming that you were only interviewed by an HR person? That they talked to you, decided you were the right person for the job, and hired you? I imagine they liked your go-getting style. Maybe they believed you were a self-starter, with good prospects to become a valuable member of the organisation?
And when you got to your team and they asked you to get to work with your 5 years experience in PL/1, you shat yourself as you only ever learnt Java at university? HR took you away, got you cleaned up, then fired you for ruining company furniture? That's pretty much the only way I can see "HR hired me, HR fired me" working in a real sense.
HR search for people, do the personality bit, the background check and administer any tests. The team you're going to go into's manager decides whether you're a good fit and whether your CV is bullshit or at best 50% true. If HR tried to hire anyone to work for me without me having done the groundwork I'd refuse to have that person in my team. But that wouldn't happen, simple because you're talking utter nonsense.
I'm not aware of any game that's had the playing that Mario Kart had in student halls up and down the country and around the world.. My brother bought a SNES the summer before he went to university and his house played it for 3 years solid. I then went to university and kept playing it with my house for the next 3 years. Ghost Valley 1 timetrial was the ultimate check of you abilities - no-one ever beat my time..
Best racing game of all time and up there in the top 5 multi-player games.
Of course, Mario Kart 64 was rubbish..
"Who has more than 5-10 close friends?"
I think that's kind of the point. I have maybe 10-15 close friends that I see and catch up with on a weekly basis, but my extended network I don't get to see as often are exactly the kind of people I keep up with via Facebook.
And it was a Korean laundry..
Am I the only one who noticed that he seems to suggest that he has no issue with YouTube containing copyrighted material, even outside of agreements? Seeing as he seems to be talking as a representative of the IFPI (and almost the RIAA by extension), surely his statement regarding YouTube would seem to be agreement that it is valid and legal:
"Consumers that enjoy music have a lot of options and enjoying it free on the radio is at least one of them, with last FM and You Tube there is near on demand service free at the point of use."
So is he stating on behalf of the IFPI that he has no issues with copyrighted content appearing on YouTube without the agreement of the copyright holder? If so, that's a pretty big statement to make. In fact, it breaks their whole model, as he seems to be suggesting that some channels are fine to break copyright law, whereas others aren't, and my understanding is that you can't have that kind of position..
Thoughts would be welcome!
I thought he dreamt it one night, then went around to see if anyone knew this song. When no-one did, he wrote it and finished it... That's the story I've heard before, anyway..
Indeed.
I think that just one person on the planet should buy a copy of each CD and give a copy to all of their friends! If their friends all do the same and so on, then before long we'll all have a copy and we'll have destroyed the music industry! Huzzah!
I also agree with you. When I go to McDonalds with my friends, I think it's only right that if I buy a cheeseburger, McDonalds should give all of my friends cheeseburgers for free. After all, they're my friends! They shouldn't have to buy anything if I've already bought one! After all, what are friends for? McDonald's are just so damned greedy and I disagree with them in the strongest possible way, and I think that is the strongest representation of their greed you'll find.
Your analogy doesn't hold water for several reasons:
1) Lending someone a CD is a temporary act and moves a physical item - giving someone a copy of an MP3 doesn't do that, as you're replicating it.
2) Lending a friend a CD is giving it temporarily to a specific person - putting the MP3 on a P2P site is like making 10,000 copies of your original CD and putting them in the middle of London for everyone to take one.
In general, I can see the issue here that's kicked CD Wow in the pants. It's a real shame though, as I've previously dealt with the company and they were really rather nice. I started a music and arts festival in a town (Reading) nearby to their head office and one of my co-organisers knew their Managing Director. A few of the guys involved went to see them regarding sponsorship. With a simple pitch and an agreement to link to their site from ours and put their logo on flyers (which gave us more credibility, as well as advertising) they chipped in enough to fund the whole festival for one year, with some left over and an agreement to consider further, more extensive funding the following year. We're talking thousands of pounds rather than hundreds.
Every dealing we had with them was brilliant, they sent through the money with no fuss and were responsible for allowing us to put on and effectively publicise over 100 events over the course of a week. That included music, theatre, comedy, children's workshops and public circus displays.
Conversely, when we approached HMV they refused to even allow our programmes in their store and told us to fuck off. Virgin allowed us to put flyers and posters all over their stores, but mainly because we knew the assistant manager.
Real shame that this might be the end of such a nice company...
The government didn't make the decision, the courts did. Yes, the government appoint judges but the decision was not made directly by them...
We have many reasons for wanting a different government - this one isn't even close to the top 10.
Their main office is in Fleet, in Hampshire, I think..
Very true. However the way that the music "industry" works at the moment is not configured to be able to support that.
First example, a band that live locally to me that I know well are playing most of the major summer music festivals here in the UK this year, as well as doing a reasonably sized tour and also went over the play at South By South West in Texas. They are signed to a decent enough label and are getting loads of great press from the influential people in the media. However they currently live in a squat, as they don't command anywhere near enough of a gig fee to be able to afford to rent a house.
Second example, another local band who were signed to one of the main indie labels in the UK (Jeepster) recently. On signing, they were all told they had to quit their jobs as they will be on tour pretty much constantly and need to be flexible. When on tour, they each get ten pounds a day each and three meals. When not on tour, they get nothing. As such, they've had to move out of the shared house they had (where most of their music has been created, as it has a big shed for rehearsing) and move back in with family or anyone who will allow them to stay for a while.
Both are bands the bring a good crowd (75-100+), yet still can't support themselves..
Probably because someone who works with children shouldn't be seen to be using the word "retard" as a description.
True, but I think you'll find Linus is not short of a cent or two, as he is compensated via other methods for his hard work.
It may not have been his initial intention, but if you look at it as if we we're talking about the music industry rather than software, a band generally invests an awful lot of time and hard work at their own cost and distribute their work for free, with the hope of eventually being compensated. To extend the metaphor to almost breaking point, bands make most of their money on the road through touring, personal appearances and merchandise. Not far off of Linus's fees for public appearances, conferences and consultancy, where he makes most of his money, I assume.
To just take the music industry, one of the key issues with it is that the current measure of success, chart position, is based on product sales. Due to the nature of commercial radio's playlist policies, it is impossible to get on air on a mainstream show without a reasonable chart position. As such you can't reach most of your potential audience without sales, so people downloading illegally and not buying the songs does directly affect the audience you can reach. I'm not saying that this is the way it should be, I know enough people in bands signed to major labels that this approach has almost ruined, but it's the way the industry currently works to achieve a good level of success (i.e. to be able to support yourself and plan for the future via the music industry) and you have to live within it.