It seems particularly ironic that you are using a phrase condemning people who refused to stand up against genocide to condemn people who stand up against terrorism.
What you do is take the position so you have the title. Then you take your resume, beef it up and THEN look for solid offers for positions elsewhere.
Agreed. Lots of good comments on this page but I think this is one of the most insightful.
I'd take it a step further, however. I saw another comment that said you should be getting at least a 10% increase, with which I agree. You also commented you are being told the earning potential is greater if you go for a supervisor position. Run with that. Sit down with the powers that be and say, okay, earning potential is greater, let's put some metrics around that. Give me some measurable KPIs which I have to meet. If I meet those figures within six months, I get a 10% pay increase. Don't get too hung up on the exact figure; if they agree with this idea but make it eight percent, you're still good. Point is, are they willing to play ball with some good measurable performance definitions? If they do go for this, make sure you understand the criteria you have to meet to get your pay increase, and have at least one mid-point review with your direct manager to assess how well you're doing at accomplishing those specific goals or metrics that will get you your pay increase.
The bit about "you're worth more to us in your current position" sounds pretty suspect. If they won't go with the suggestion in my previous paragraph about putting some hard metrics around "if I achieve A, B, and C, you give me more money", then do what silentbozo says and get prepared to look for another position. But take the supervisor position anyway; it's going to improve your resume, regardless.
By the way, I've also seen some comments about "project management" does not equate to "good leader of people". Very true. Which leads to my final point.
You might want to consider some kind of safety net. I've known people who have moved to a very different position within the same company and nobody's been too sure how they'll do. So they have a mutual agreement - revisit in six months, and if either you or your new manager is unhappy, you get to go back to your old position. If you're really that valuable to them, they should at least be willing to contemplate the idea.
You're lucky. Most projects - around 60% or 70%, according to various studies - fail in some regard.
"Fail" can mean they went over budget, took too long, or dropped scope. Lots of projects you work on may come in under budget, but have a very reduced set of features from what was originally described.
Projects may fail for a variety of reasons. The number one reason for failure is usually cited as being poor requirements gathering. Scope creep is also a big problem.
There are ways to disguise this. One easy way is to start charging project labor to internal cost centers, rather than to the project. Despite the prevailing cynical attitude on/., working for government departments tends to make that harder than in a standard IT shop.
I don't know what smart phone you have, but Google Maps on the iPhone is dreadful. Deviate off the route? Tough luck, it doesn't update. Its maps are out of date. But at least it works (poorly) until you're in an area with bad reception.
In-car navigation units are much nicer, but to get them installed in your vehicle you're paying several hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.
A portable GPS can be had for less than $100. The battery in my wife's (several years out of date) Garmin is far longer lived than my iPhone's battery. To update the maps I plug it into my PC; from what I understand, you have to take your car to the dealer to get the built-in nav unit maps updated. Oh, and I can stick it in my laptop bag and take it on a flight with me and have a GPS when I'm in another state. Try doing that with your built-in unit.
It's easy to get a little stand and pop it on the dashboard. I've yet to find one that works well for my iPhone. And the screen is much bigger than my iPhone. When I'm driving in a new city, that counts.
That said, I don't know how much longer stand-alone units can last, because even though a smart phone app is inferior it's much more convenient and much cheaper. I personally use MapQuest, which is fantastic.
For a while I tried an open community generated app, Waze. It couldn't even navigate me through two streets by my house correctly, instead always taking me the long way around. Nope, I'm not going to rely on that when I'm 2000 miles away from home.
Yes, very good bait and it'll be well received thanks to all the anti-MS sentiment here, but, umm, care to back that up with some evidence? I've also worked for some Fortune 500 companies. More to the point I've worked at smaller companies that nonetheless had enormous pull with Microsoft due to what they did (critical infrastructure). At one of those companies I was responsible for a couple of years for working with Microsoft on the licensing true-ups.
I can't even think of a company of that kind of size that wouldn't use a competitor's product in some way. They'd laugh if Microsoft said get rid of Linux or Oracle or whatever, because they couldn't continue doing business. Volume discounts, of course, nothing wrong with that. But banning a company of the size of a Fortune 500 company from using someone else's software?
I once was working with our MS reps on our support contract details and they described what happened in the case of certain types of "system down" calls. At some point it starts copying the status e-mails into Steve Ballmer's inbox. No-one is naive enough to think he's going to pick up the phone, but it sure as hell impresses upon the execs that Microsoft understands how crucial their business really is.
If I had a system down and I escalated it to a high enough severity, even before it got to Ballmer's inbox I'd get a phone call from my technical account manager after a set number of hours asking me if I wanted an emergency response engineer on site. If I said yes, they would go to a pool of the absolute top talent and get whoever was available to my site as quickly as possible. Several hours away? Next flight. Not quick enough? Microsoft would charter a helicopter just to get their expert to me so my system could get up and running. Remember, this was for a very definitely NON-Fortune 500 company.
Their support escalation procedure is world class. They have a rigorous workflow, with extremely well defined escalation times, conditions, and requirements for the Microsoft TAM to fulfill. I've seen it in action. It's surgical. What I've described above doesn't cost millions. It cost that companymore to get support for their RedHat licenses, and that didn't include specialist engineers being flown in by private helicopter if necessary.
That kind of dedication wins out. I've seen Oracle gurus be absolutely stunned by the response to a SQL Server emergency ticket. They have wished out loud they could get that response for an Oracle problem. So has upper management. The company I have in mind runs all their really heavy stuff on Oracle/AIX. They won't consider SQL Server for the truly critical databases. But I have heard them tell Oracle they need to get their act together and be more like Microsoft when there's a top line problem.
That's why Microsoft. Because even the people who complain their stuff is flaky still wish all the other companies had emergency response technical teams that were half as good as Microsoft at getting systems back up and running.
Computers nowadays don't come with a Windows CD. So if a virus messes up my computer, what am I to do?
1. All major manufacturers provide a way to burn "recovery disks". 2. If you don't create recovery disks, you call the OEM and they'll ship you the appropriate disks. More details here. 3. P.S. - you should've installed MSE/not clicked on that unknown attachment, then, shouldn't you (snark off).
I have always downloaded a Windows ISO off the Pirate Bay, which I do with an entirely clean conscience, since I own a valid Windows Key, which Microsoft also checks when I actually install windows.
4. You can call Microsoft direct if you have a key. On their web site, they provide this contact information:
United States: (800) 360-7561, Monday through Friday, 5:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. Pacific Time.
Canada: (800) 933-4750, Monday through Friday, 5:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. Pacific Time.
You know, I typed out a response, but then I checked your history of comments. You make a habit of throwing nasty personal insults at people and making unsustainable claims.
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your nonsense. You've got an agenda, you won't listen, and I have better things to do with my time. Hopefully you learn to communicate in a somewhat more grownup fashion when you have to stand behind your comments and are not on an anonymous message board.
How can you be that knowledgeable about computers and exploits and still use the word "where" four times in two paragraphs when you should've used "were"? This is why they think they can get away with it, people - an enormous lack of linguistic awareness!
Did you even read the article? Why am I asking - the answer is a resounding "obviously not". The author quite handily refutes every single item in your comment.
How about reading the part where he talks about the cost/income of doing concerts, based on a lot of work he's done and his wife's career as an agent? Read the parts where he says a four piece band in a ratty van might be getting $250 each for the performance, and a larger group with a tour bus had better sell out or they're losing money.
No, going live for concerts is really expensive (been there, done that). It's not a good way to make a living.
Point one - it wasn't hacking; they posted counter-propaganda messages on a comment forum. Earlier versions of the story called it hacking, but that was updated within minutes.
Point two - Anonymous releases plenty of triumphant press releases themselves. Anonymous releases their "hounds" (i.e. DDOS attacks) in response to just about any random provocation. What's your point?
And...
Point three - are you seriously equating a counter-propaganda operation against Al Quaeda with DDOS attacks designed to disrupt web sites against somewhat random corporations?
Al Quaeda deliberately attempts to kill innocent people. Your kids. Your local school teacher. Your sister. That old lady in some small town who never did a bad thing in her life and just wants to pay a visit to New York to see the Big Apple, now that she's getting on in years. Al Quaeda looks at them and says, great, the more harmless and innocent, the better, that'll really get our point across.
RIAA, MPAA, MasterCard, etc., do not deliberately attempt to kill innocent people.
I know some of these corporations are poorly regarded by geeks, but please try and keep some fashion of perspective. If you can't legitimately see the difference (as opposed to engaging in hyperbole for deliberate effect), then you have a problem.
Point four - I'd think the second story (which seems to be overlooked so far) is more interesting. A media release from Al Quaeda encouraging cyber attacks, attacks against the power grid, etc. But that's not as flamebait friendly, is it.
For much of its operation, the Mega Conspiracy has offered an 'Uploader Rewards' Program, which promised premium subscribers transfers of cash and other financial incentives to upload popular works, including copyrighted works, to computer servers under the Mega Conspiracy's direct control and for the Conspiracy's ultimate financial benefit
The claim is he 'sold' advertising space based upon allowing others to copy and distribute copyrighted content, not theft involved, no armed smugglers, no gang of armed criminals and, no pirates on the high seas. A straight up civil matter that was totally abused
From what's actually been desribed in the post to which you replied, this is just flat out wrong and should be modded down as such. This was covered pretty well in the original stories.
It also has child pornography, terrorism propaganda, and many other neat things.
Well, yeah. And...? It doesn't link any of that to Dotcom. It just says bad stuff like this was uploaded to the site.
It has many many assumptions. Assumptions that Megaupload was a 'personal cyberlocker service', then 2 paragraphs later DoJ complains that Megaupload did not have a search function - therefore, they were up to something.
Who's taking things out of context now? It goes on to say that the lack of a site wide search function pemitted them to conceal the extent of their activities. Again, this is not actually news - it was covered really well in the original stories. As for the "assumptions that Megaupload was a personal cyberlocker service" - that's how they billed themselves, so I don't see that as a particularly breathtaking assumption. (It's also the argument that was used ad infinitum by their defenders here on Slashdot.)
Microsoft is actually known for being a black hole of research. Researchers go in and almost nothing comes out. They hire people just so their competitors can't hire them.
Sure, not as sexy as self-driving cars. But serious, hard research usually isn't that sexy or appealing to the general public. I thought this was a geek web site...?
Over-react much there, mate? Heck, why stop at people who work at SAP. If your company uses SAP software, it reflects upon you as well, and you should be demanding a full accounting of your management team for deciding to purchase SAP.
The analogy may be getting extended unreasonably here. Firstly, shutting down a power plant is not the same as storing power. Electricity has to be consumed when it's generated. Large scale economically feasible storage technologies simply don't exist. Pumped storage, sure, subject to topological constraints. Batteries? Improving, but expensive. It's not there yet. You get the picture.
Secondly, you can't just shut down a power plant. If it's something with a really slow ramp rate, that takes hours and hours, or even days. You also can't just start it up - it needs to be synchronized with the grid (black start an obvious exception).
And I'm not sure I follow your example of power line infrastructure maintenance. This doesn't make sense in the real world. Generators are not transmission owners, if that's what you're suggesting (or is it? I don't get it).
Like I say, I think the analogy is just a poor one here.
Really? How do you store power economically? If you know a way to store power on a large scale, and do it in an economically feasible way, you will make a fortune, because no-one else in the industry can figure it out at the moment.
That's one of the magic bullets for Smart Grid. If you have that, intermittent resources such as wind suddenly become much, much, much more useful.
Something important that is missing from the summary, and which I can't see in any of the comments so far (169 as I'm writing this) is that this will be a trial in a small number of markets (yet to be selected). In other markets, Comcast will simply not be enforcing the data cap.
So it's not a done deal; it's a pilot. That means they want to see how it works out. From the figures being thrown around, this will only impact a tiny percentage of people. Yes, I realize those people are disproportionately represented on Slashdot.
From the angry comments, it seems like almost no-one read the article and got this salient point. I know, this is/. What can you expect?
By December 2010, Instagram had one million registered users. In June 2011 Instagram announced it had five million users and it passed ten million in September of the same year. In April 2012, it was announced that over 30 million accounts were set up on Instagram.
Instagram announced that 100 million photos had been uploaded to its service as of July 2011. This total reached 150 million in August 2011.
If that's a poor company in your view, how do you define a good company? It's pretty brazen to claim Facebook did this just to test reactions, when you consider what Facebook does and how neatly Instagram slots in to that user work flow.
And "no one really knows what their books look like"? Did you look at the SEC filing? Or their published balance sheets on their web site?
What do you want to see in terms of financial disclosures that's not out there and which is typical for a company to provide? Be specific.
5) Facebook is just an ugly background away from being Myspace.
That's why Facebook succeeded and MySpace has become irrelevant.
It sounds like a paradox, but MySpace lost because of the freedom they gave people to customize their pages. People went wild, in exactly the way you'd expect from 15 year old kids - as tacky and in your face as possible with bling, animations, flashy gaudy banners, music playing. Pages were unusable.
Facebook exercised tight control over what you could do with your page, making it far more scalable. People lost interest in the struggle to merely load a page on MySpace to see what was going on.
This next comment will blow minds here on Slashdot, but consider - Facebook succeeded for the same reason Google did. Their predecessors had become overwhelming with excess. Both Facebook and Google appeared as a breath of fresh air - clean, simple, usable.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems particularly ironic that you are using a phrase condemning people who refused to stand up against genocide to condemn people who stand up against terrorism.
Anything remotely related to MAFIAA is obviously too unethical.
Hope you never harbor dreams about your favorite sci-fi book/series/graphic novel making it to the big screen.
What you do is take the position so you have the title. Then you take your resume, beef it up and THEN look for solid offers for positions elsewhere.
Agreed. Lots of good comments on this page but I think this is one of the most insightful.
I'd take it a step further, however. I saw another comment that said you should be getting at least a 10% increase, with which I agree. You also commented you are being told the earning potential is greater if you go for a supervisor position. Run with that. Sit down with the powers that be and say, okay, earning potential is greater, let's put some metrics around that. Give me some measurable KPIs which I have to meet. If I meet those figures within six months, I get a 10% pay increase. Don't get too hung up on the exact figure; if they agree with this idea but make it eight percent, you're still good. Point is, are they willing to play ball with some good measurable performance definitions? If they do go for this, make sure you understand the criteria you have to meet to get your pay increase, and have at least one mid-point review with your direct manager to assess how well you're doing at accomplishing those specific goals or metrics that will get you your pay increase.
The bit about "you're worth more to us in your current position" sounds pretty suspect. If they won't go with the suggestion in my previous paragraph about putting some hard metrics around "if I achieve A, B, and C, you give me more money", then do what silentbozo says and get prepared to look for another position. But take the supervisor position anyway; it's going to improve your resume, regardless.
By the way, I've also seen some comments about "project management" does not equate to "good leader of people". Very true. Which leads to my final point.
You might want to consider some kind of safety net. I've known people who have moved to a very different position within the same company and nobody's been too sure how they'll do. So they have a mutual agreement - revisit in six months, and if either you or your new manager is unhappy, you get to go back to your old position. If you're really that valuable to them, they should at least be willing to contemplate the idea.
You're lucky. Most projects - around 60% or 70%, according to various studies - fail in some regard.
"Fail" can mean they went over budget, took too long, or dropped scope. Lots of projects you work on may come in under budget, but have a very reduced set of features from what was originally described.
Projects may fail for a variety of reasons. The number one reason for failure is usually cited as being poor requirements gathering. Scope creep is also a big problem.
There are ways to disguise this. One easy way is to start charging project labor to internal cost centers, rather than to the project. Despite the prevailing cynical attitude on /., working for government departments tends to make that harder than in a standard IT shop.
I get it.
Copyright is good if it means I get source code or something else I want for free.
Copyright is bad if it means I can't get music that I want for free but instead have to pay for it.
It is the very first sentence of the linked BBC article:
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost his UK Supreme Court fight against extradition to Sweden to face accusations of sex offences.
I realize you asked about being charged with a crime and this mentions facing accusations. But that at least gives you the broad rationale.
I don't know what smart phone you have, but Google Maps on the iPhone is dreadful. Deviate off the route? Tough luck, it doesn't update. Its maps are out of date. But at least it works (poorly) until you're in an area with bad reception.
In-car navigation units are much nicer, but to get them installed in your vehicle you're paying several hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.
A portable GPS can be had for less than $100. The battery in my wife's (several years out of date) Garmin is far longer lived than my iPhone's battery. To update the maps I plug it into my PC; from what I understand, you have to take your car to the dealer to get the built-in nav unit maps updated. Oh, and I can stick it in my laptop bag and take it on a flight with me and have a GPS when I'm in another state. Try doing that with your built-in unit.
It's easy to get a little stand and pop it on the dashboard. I've yet to find one that works well for my iPhone. And the screen is much bigger than my iPhone. When I'm driving in a new city, that counts.
That said, I don't know how much longer stand-alone units can last, because even though a smart phone app is inferior it's much more convenient and much cheaper. I personally use MapQuest, which is fantastic.
For a while I tried an open community generated app, Waze. It couldn't even navigate me through two streets by my house correctly, instead always taking me the long way around. Nope, I'm not going to rely on that when I'm 2000 miles away from home.
You may want to look up the definition of the word. It probably has many more meanings than you suspect.
P.S. - why are some people never happy unless they're ripping down someone else?
Yes, very good bait and it'll be well received thanks to all the anti-MS sentiment here, but, umm, care to back that up with some evidence? I've also worked for some Fortune 500 companies. More to the point I've worked at smaller companies that nonetheless had enormous pull with Microsoft due to what they did (critical infrastructure). At one of those companies I was responsible for a couple of years for working with Microsoft on the licensing true-ups.
I can't even think of a company of that kind of size that wouldn't use a competitor's product in some way. They'd laugh if Microsoft said get rid of Linux or Oracle or whatever, because they couldn't continue doing business. Volume discounts, of course, nothing wrong with that. But banning a company of the size of a Fortune 500 company from using someone else's software?
I once was working with our MS reps on our support contract details and they described what happened in the case of certain types of "system down" calls. At some point it starts copying the status e-mails into Steve Ballmer's inbox. No-one is naive enough to think he's going to pick up the phone, but it sure as hell impresses upon the execs that Microsoft understands how crucial their business really is.
If I had a system down and I escalated it to a high enough severity, even before it got to Ballmer's inbox I'd get a phone call from my technical account manager after a set number of hours asking me if I wanted an emergency response engineer on site. If I said yes, they would go to a pool of the absolute top talent and get whoever was available to my site as quickly as possible. Several hours away? Next flight. Not quick enough? Microsoft would charter a helicopter just to get their expert to me so my system could get up and running. Remember, this was for a very definitely NON-Fortune 500 company.
Their support escalation procedure is world class. They have a rigorous workflow, with extremely well defined escalation times, conditions, and requirements for the Microsoft TAM to fulfill. I've seen it in action. It's surgical. What I've described above doesn't cost millions. It cost that companymore to get support for their RedHat licenses, and that didn't include specialist engineers being flown in by private helicopter if necessary.
That kind of dedication wins out. I've seen Oracle gurus be absolutely stunned by the response to a SQL Server emergency ticket. They have wished out loud they could get that response for an Oracle problem. So has upper management. The company I have in mind runs all their really heavy stuff on Oracle/AIX. They won't consider SQL Server for the truly critical databases. But I have heard them tell Oracle they need to get their act together and be more like Microsoft when there's a top line problem.
That's why Microsoft. Because even the people who complain their stuff is flaky still wish all the other companies had emergency response technical teams that were half as good as Microsoft at getting systems back up and running.
If you're genuinely interested.
Computers nowadays don't come with a Windows CD. So if a virus messes up my computer, what am I to do?
1. All major manufacturers provide a way to burn "recovery disks".
2. If you don't create recovery disks, you call the OEM and they'll ship you the appropriate disks. More details here.
3. P.S. - you should've installed MSE/not clicked on that unknown attachment, then, shouldn't you (snark off).
I have always downloaded a Windows ISO off the Pirate Bay, which I do with an entirely clean conscience, since I own a valid Windows Key, which Microsoft also checks when I actually install windows.
4. You can call Microsoft direct if you have a key. On their web site, they provide this contact information:
You know, I typed out a response, but then I checked your history of comments. You make a habit of throwing nasty personal insults at people and making unsustainable claims.
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your nonsense. You've got an agenda, you won't listen, and I have better things to do with my time. Hopefully you learn to communicate in a somewhat more grownup fashion when you have to stand behind your comments and are not on an anonymous message board.
How can you be that knowledgeable about computers and exploits and still use the word "where" four times in two paragraphs when you should've used "were"? This is why they think they can get away with it, people - an enormous lack of linguistic awareness!
Most musicians made their living from live performance for all but 60 years or so of human history
No they didn't, they made it from patronage; a wealthy aristocrat or lord indulging themselves by hiring Mozart to whip up a new fugue.
Did you even read the article? Why am I asking - the answer is a resounding "obviously not". The author quite handily refutes every single item in your comment.
How about reading the part where he talks about the cost/income of doing concerts, based on a lot of work he's done and his wife's career as an agent? Read the parts where he says a four piece band in a ratty van might be getting $250 each for the performance, and a larger group with a tour bus had better sell out or they're losing money.
No, going live for concerts is really expensive (been there, done that). It's not a good way to make a living.
Point one - it wasn't hacking; they posted counter-propaganda messages on a comment forum. Earlier versions of the story called it hacking, but that was updated within minutes.
Point two - Anonymous releases plenty of triumphant press releases themselves. Anonymous releases their "hounds" (i.e. DDOS attacks) in response to just about any random provocation. What's your point?
And...
Point three - are you seriously equating a counter-propaganda operation against Al Quaeda with DDOS attacks designed to disrupt web sites against somewhat random corporations?
Al Quaeda deliberately attempts to kill innocent people. Your kids. Your local school teacher. Your sister. That old lady in some small town who never did a bad thing in her life and just wants to pay a visit to New York to see the Big Apple, now that she's getting on in years. Al Quaeda looks at them and says, great, the more harmless and innocent, the better, that'll really get our point across.
RIAA, MPAA, MasterCard, etc., do not deliberately attempt to kill innocent people.
I know some of these corporations are poorly regarded by geeks, but please try and keep some fashion of perspective. If you can't legitimately see the difference (as opposed to engaging in hyperbole for deliberate effect), then you have a problem.
Point four - I'd think the second story (which seems to be overlooked so far) is more interesting. A media release from Al Quaeda encouraging cyber attacks, attacks against the power grid, etc. But that's not as flamebait friendly, is it.
According to the indictment:
For much of its operation, the Mega Conspiracy has offered an 'Uploader Rewards' Program, which promised premium subscribers transfers of cash and other financial incentives to upload popular works, including copyrighted works, to computer servers under the Mega Conspiracy's direct control and for the Conspiracy's ultimate financial benefit
Okay, firstly:
The claim is he 'sold' advertising space based upon allowing others to copy and distribute copyrighted content, not theft involved, no armed smugglers, no gang of armed criminals and, no pirates on the high seas. A straight up civil matter that was totally abused
From what's actually been desribed in the post to which you replied, this is just flat out wrong and should be modded down as such. This was covered pretty well in the original stories.
It also has child pornography, terrorism propaganda, and many other neat things.
Well, yeah. And...? It doesn't link any of that to Dotcom. It just says bad stuff like this was uploaded to the site.
It has many many assumptions. Assumptions that Megaupload was a 'personal cyberlocker service', then 2 paragraphs later DoJ complains that Megaupload did not have a search function - therefore, they were up to something.
Who's taking things out of context now? It goes on to say that the lack of a site wide search function pemitted them to conceal the extent of their activities. Again, this is not actually news - it was covered really well in the original stories. As for the "assumptions that Megaupload was a personal cyberlocker service" - that's how they billed themselves, so I don't see that as a particularly breathtaking assumption. (It's also the argument that was used ad infinitum by their defenders here on Slashdot.)
Microsoft is actually known for being a black hole of research. Researchers go in and almost nothing comes out. They hire people just so their competitors can't hire them.
Citation?
As for nothing coming out, you're apparently not including published papers (lots published by respectable bodies like IEEE, ACM, Oxford Publishing, etc.), or downloads such as Excel plug-ins to simplify working with genomic sequences, Differentially Private Network-Trace-Analysis Tools, an e-mail loss detection add-in, etc., etc.
Sure, not as sexy as self-driving cars. But serious, hard research usually isn't that sexy or appealing to the general public. I thought this was a geek web site...?
Modded insightful and not flamebait? Come on...
Over-react much there, mate? Heck, why stop at people who work at SAP. If your company uses SAP software, it reflects upon you as well, and you should be demanding a full accounting of your management team for deciding to purchase SAP.
Or...maybe not.
The analogy may be getting extended unreasonably here. Firstly, shutting down a power plant is not the same as storing power. Electricity has to be consumed when it's generated. Large scale economically feasible storage technologies simply don't exist. Pumped storage, sure, subject to topological constraints. Batteries? Improving, but expensive. It's not there yet. You get the picture.
Secondly, you can't just shut down a power plant. If it's something with a really slow ramp rate, that takes hours and hours, or even days. You also can't just start it up - it needs to be synchronized with the grid (black start an obvious exception).
And I'm not sure I follow your example of power line infrastructure maintenance. This doesn't make sense in the real world. Generators are not transmission owners, if that's what you're suggesting (or is it? I don't get it).
Like I say, I think the analogy is just a poor one here.
Really? How do you store power economically? If you know a way to store power on a large scale, and do it in an economically feasible way, you will make a fortune, because no-one else in the industry can figure it out at the moment.
That's one of the magic bullets for Smart Grid. If you have that, intermittent resources such as wind suddenly become much, much, much more useful.
Something important that is missing from the summary, and which I can't see in any of the comments so far (169 as I'm writing this) is that this will be a trial in a small number of markets (yet to be selected). In other markets, Comcast will simply not be enforcing the data cap.
So it's not a done deal; it's a pilot. That means they want to see how it works out. From the figures being thrown around, this will only impact a tiny percentage of people. Yes, I realize those people are disproportionately represented on Slashdot.
From the angry comments, it seems like almost no-one read the article and got this salient point. I know, this is /. What can you expect?
By December 2010, Instagram had one million registered users. In June 2011 Instagram announced it had five million users and it passed ten million in September of the same year. In April 2012, it was announced that over 30 million accounts were set up on Instagram.
Instagram announced that 100 million photos had been uploaded to its service as of July 2011. This total reached 150 million in August 2011.
If that's a poor company in your view, how do you define a good company? It's pretty brazen to claim Facebook did this just to test reactions, when you consider what Facebook does and how neatly Instagram slots in to that user work flow.
And "no one really knows what their books look like"? Did you look at the SEC filing? Or their published balance sheets on their web site?
What do you want to see in terms of financial disclosures that's not out there and which is typical for a company to provide? Be specific.
Otherwise your whole post is just flamebait.
5) Facebook is just an ugly background away from being Myspace.
That's why Facebook succeeded and MySpace has become irrelevant.
It sounds like a paradox, but MySpace lost because of the freedom they gave people to customize their pages. People went wild, in exactly the way you'd expect from 15 year old kids - as tacky and in your face as possible with bling, animations, flashy gaudy banners, music playing. Pages were unusable.
Facebook exercised tight control over what you could do with your page, making it far more scalable. People lost interest in the struggle to merely load a page on MySpace to see what was going on.
This next comment will blow minds here on Slashdot, but consider - Facebook succeeded for the same reason Google did. Their predecessors had become overwhelming with excess. Both Facebook and Google appeared as a breath of fresh air - clean, simple, usable.