When I was in the army, I was in a unit where we didn't run as much as I was used to and I was gaining weight. So I started drinking diet sodas instead of regular sodas. About that time, I started getting horrendous headaches.
One day in the chow hall, the TV showed an article from Duke University (nearby, I was in North Carolina) that covered Aspertame triggering migraines. So, I conducted my own little experiment. Some days I would drink normal fattening soda. No headaches. Then I would drink diet soda - and terrible headaches.
I started noticing other things - if I got bad headeaches, I would track back to see what I ate/drank. Sometimes, it was something like a gum (so many have aspartame to be safe for the teeth).
So for many years, I did what I could to avoid Aspartame. In the last 6 months, I took it a step further and have eliminated MSG and High Fructose Corn Syrup. I occasionally crave a soda but that's rare now. The cool part is that I FEEL so much better. Not just headaches, but now that fuzziness and "hot flash" feeling I'd get in the afternoons is gone.
And I've eliminated all fast food except the local Burgerville. I can't stand to touch McDonalds, Taco Bell, or Wendy's now. When I've succumbed to a craving, I felt like crap.
I either eat organic/natural, at local places that prepare such food, and my addiction of choice now is tea with a bit of organic sugar for sweetener.
I might not live any longer for it, but I FEEL much better for the time I am alive.
Unless you researched everything yourself, then there is belief. Who do you trust?
Creationism and Evolution have one thing in common - a big stack of paper that tells what each is. But that's where it ends.
Creationism says "This stack of papers states the absolute proof and if you challenge it you are a heretic who will burn in hell."
Evolution(ism) says "These papers say the way we think things are based on the information we've found so far. If you can refute the evidence and findings in them, please do so, and add your evidence and findings to the stack of papers."
One requires blind belief in "information" that cannot be examined or refuted. The other requires no belief and encourages examination and refutation.
Another use I had when coordinating picking a friend up from work. There was a no-parking, no-loitering policy there.
So, before I would leave, I would type in a message like "Off Freeway", or "almost there". And when I got to a certain point, I could just hit the button. That gave her just enough time to clock out and show up at the pick up point.
Don't forget the inbound messages. My guess is she receives more than she transmits. Suppose she has 8 friend and they're having an 8-way chat.... all the time.
Frankly if I had a kid sending text messages that often, Our parents were afraid of/bothered by rock and roll/Madonna. We're afraid of/bothered by texting.
It's just the way kids like to communicate today. We've created a very connected society (SMS, IM, etc) and that's what kids are used to... constant communication with all of their friends. It's a new social order, really.
Ahh, good to know that there's somebody else here:) .
While I understand the whole cellphone-revolution thingy, I just don't need all that crap that's currently being merged into cells. Why would I need a camera, an mp3 player, worse, the Internet on my phone? I'm not a multimedia borg (yet),
I'm kind of the same way. My phone is very basic.
BUT... a friend of mine has a crack-berry (work-provided). And I have to admit, it was very handy recently when we were trying to find a place downtown and we could just pull up google-maps to get directions... and then check out their website to find out they'll be closed until August.... then to citysearch to find somewhere else to get some jazz and drinks.
I still don't want one. The admin in our office was trying to push me and my boss to get one. I definitely don't want that burden.
Though, I was the same way about cellphones several years ago - when I got switched to a phone from a pager. But, all I have now IS a cellphone... a very simple cellphone... with a cheap, no-contract plan. (Virgin Mobile). I'd try cricket, but I'm happy with my $20 phone (which is now free on their website - well, still $20, but comes with $20 of airtime).
I have been happy with Virgin Mobile for quite some time. They were my original service and I only switched to Verizon when I moved to the Oregon coast where only AT&T and Verizon worked. As soon as my contract ended, I switched back to VM.
No contracts, Pay-as-you-go, but also with monthly plans. I pay less than Verizon because there are no extra fees, charges, "FCC mandated", etc (rather it's built in to the advertised price, not tacked on after the fact).
The phones are inexpensive too. The one I'm using now was $20 and works great. If it breaks or I lose it, I can just go get another one. Fortunately, they finally started making phones that don't look like kids' phones.
Coverage is great. They use sprint's network, so everywhere you can use sprint, it works just fine.
Texts are 5 cents each unless you buy one of the bundles. One has 1000 SMSs for $9.99.
My only complaint about VM is that, at least with the cheap phones, there is no way to download/upload your phonebook.
The MAX in Portland is very slow. There are many stops (which is generally good) but all routes must go through the same choke points (a single bridge) and through downtown (lots of traffic and lights). Plus it generally goes slow and there are no express/bypasses.
When I get in better shape I'll try riding my bike to work. Unfortunately, there's a huge ridge in the way (large elevation change in the "West Hills") and none of the roads going over have a good bike path - in fact most are narrow and dangerous for bikes (you should see the rants on Craigslist about bikers vs cars here - there are a lot of hostile drivers).
I may start by taking the max to the top of the ridge and ride downhill to work from there...
Plus the 12 miles a is a pretty direct ride on interstates. Surface roads are quite bit longer distance. (though, the max, for the most part, follows the interstate).
In the USA, many Americans refuse to use public transportation due to class snobbery.
While there may be some class snobbery the bigger factor is that most American public transit simply sucks.
I live one block from our light-rail system (MAX) and I use it when it's practical, like going downtown for a night out (I just saw the president of Liberia last night and took the light-trail there). My favorite pub is just 3 stops away, etc.
But for most of my commuting it's not practical. While my work is only 12 miles from my house (and also very close to the light-rail), it takes between 90 and 120 minutes to get to work. Unless I drive during a peak time, I can get to and from work in about 20 minutes - and that's what I do; I go in later in the morning and leave later in the evening. Driving at a peak time pushes it to about 40 minutes.
If it were strictly economics, I'd rid the MAX because my employer subsidizes annual passes for only $20 (which I have). But I'm pretty busy with work and college and at the current price of gas (and for quite a bit higher), it's worth more to me to have the extra time in my life than the extra money.
I'm also lucky that I can telecommute at least one day a week.
But mass transit? It's just not very practical in most American cities - and Portland is one of the more "enlightened" cities.
I'm sure you're wondering why I just don't move closer to work. Part of that is that I really like where I live. There are lots of great things around here that I like - restaurants, pubs, close to downtown, etc. My work, as great as the location is (we have a beautiful "campus") is in the middle of suburbia and there's very little other than business parks, cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and strip malls.
He talks about a court case that determined only 4 notes had to be in common to violate copyright. With that logic, he determined that there are only 46,656 distinct melodies.
Assume that all songs use a Western musical scale and that such a scale contains twelve distinct intervals. Assume that a judge (not a musician but a judge) will distinguish three distinct note durations (which roughly correspond to eighth, quarter, and half notes, or through a trivial change in time signature, to quarter, half, and whole notes, or to sixteenth, eighth, and quarter notes). Thus, there are 36 possible distance vectors from one note to the next, and 36^(n - 1) melodies of n notes.
And not all of those would be worth listening to... so pretty much any 4-notes you play probably violate someone's copyright.
If you read the comments from IBMers in response to Cringley's columns, you'll see that that's exactly what they've done. It has nothing to do with LEAN as you understand it.
I think we're agreeing. Whatever IBM calls what they are doing, it is not, indeed, LEAN.
But, Cringley doesn't seem to get this and is blaming LEAN for what they are doing - when he should be blaming IBM for misusing the name LEAN to cover for their layoffs. LEAN is a great methodology for improving processes and in most cases would not result in outsourcing as that adds waste and variability to the processes.
It's strange because the IBM folks in one paragraph talk about laying off people. Then in the last paragraph they talk about their LEAN efforts. They're either two different things, or the IBM team doesn't know what LEAN is.
Let's See. Toyota did LEAN. Toyota doesn't treat their employees like crap. Therefore, IBM doesn't treat their employees like crap.
No, I don't think that logic works.
I don't think you get what I'm saying. I'm not making that connection at all. And I'm not defending IBM.
LEAN (when fully capitalized) is a very proper noun that represents a discipline, philosophy, methodology, and a way of working towards process improvement. While many believe it was "perfected" by the Japanese (and specifically at Toyota) the irony is that the movement actually appears to have started under Henry Ford. LEAN focuses on what is going on from the customer's perspective and then finding the most efficient (measured in terms of wastes) way of delivering that.
It appears in this case that IBM has probably hired some "LEAN" consultants who have told them that laying off American workers and outsourcing will save money and improve margins. The irony of that is that a LEAN implementation would most likely not suggest this because it would add variability and add waste in the form of transportation waste and delays in communication.
So, if IBM execs are doing "LEAN" and using it as a justification to lay lots of people off, they clearly don't "get it" and are not doing LEAN. It's like saying you're doing ballet dancing when in fact you're standing on the stage playing the saxophone. You can call it ballet all you want, but that's not what it is.
The other irony is that American businesses often have this fascination with labor and seem to have the point of view that all their troubles come from having labor. But more often it's the way they structure their operations and their processes. A very interesting read on this topic is "The Toyota Way". It shows a large contrast between Toyota's processes and GM's. For example, in a GM plant they may have a huge inventory of "Assembly A" that was manufactured months ago at a remote facility. If they start finding problems with their "Assembly A's" they're stuck with either trying to make the broken ones work, do expensive re-work, or expedite production of new ones. In a comparable Toyota plant, Assembly A is made in the room next to the main assembly line and they're made hours before they are needed. If there's a problem with Assembly A, any worker on the line can hit the button to stop the line and they figure out what's wrong with the process and then start the whole thing back up again.
The funny thing is that it's not like Americans can't do this. As I mentioned, the Japanese, as they rebuilt their industry after WWII, actually looked to Henry Ford's work for inspiration. The Toyota plant in the US has performed very well for many years (there was actually a movie about this). And while that might appear to outsourcing, what they've done is put production close to the market to reduce transportation waste - it takes more than 30 days to move product by ship from Asia to the US. That means it takes you 30 days longer to get to market and you're paying inventory costs 30 days longer than you have to.
IBM may be trying to implement LEAN but doing lots of layoffs and outsourcing would not be the results of doing LEAN well. It's playing sax on the ballet stage.
He wrote: It has to be since the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring.
LEAN http://www.lean.org/ has nothing to do with foreign hiring. It's a philosophy for process improvement that focuses on eliminating wastes in that process. Such wastes include: excess inventory, re-work, moving things around more than needed. It's about redesigning the process so that there is as little wasted effort and material as possible.
LEAN is well-executed when the culture of a company is changed to empower workers to have more control over the way they do their work - and those employees are encouraged to find better ways to do what they do. For example, Toyota is often held up as a prime example of LEAN. There, an employee who finds a better way to improve a process is rewarded with cash bonuses.
Now it may be that a company has hired a consultant to tell them do do layoffs and they call it LEAN, but that's not what it is.
But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
My "second generation" nano produces a high-pitched noise whenever it's on- it's noticeable if you have it within 2 feet or so of your head. I'm pretty sure it is the inverter that generates the AC current, but if it's 120kHz, that shouldn't be possible, unless there's a resonant frequency in the audible range.
That's a known problem and you can get a warranty replacement. I bought one and as soon as I turned it on I notice the sound. Googled and found many people complained about it. I called the mac store and they said bring it back and they gave me a replacement with no hassles.
I agree. This technological memory will be painful at first as only a few are hit hard by the judgment society imposes against them for their recorded actions.
When a majority of peoples lives are recorded and available for review, the bar for what is truly scandalous will be set much higher. Soon it will be: "Pictures of me in a pirate hat drinking a beer at a party? Who doesn't have a picture like that on the internet? You should see the one of my with the kangaroo and that giant bucket of peanut butter..."
That's not to say that massive amounts of surveillance and data retention are good. But I think that society's expectations of people will adjust when we're all forced to remember that we all have times when we were silly, immature, or not the person we are today.
No, just no. There is really no good reason to preemptively freeze the checks. It can damage your ability to get a new job as well as a new loan. Of the records breached, there is a low number of records that end up being abused. And even then it tends to take quite a bit of time for the stealing to begin.
I'm one of the millions of veterans affected when the VA lost all that personal information recently. I got a nice PDF file saying there was nothing to worry about.
What I really want is the ability to freeze my credit. Alas, that is not allowed because I live in Oregon.
I have all the credit I need for the next couple of years and I have a pretty secure job. There is no need for my credit file to be available to anyone right now.
The credit agencies will put a 90 day hold on them, but not a permanent freeze. But like you said, it takes time before the abuse happens..In most cases it is limited to $50 or so if it is reported in a timely manner. That's if you're lucky and they just open some credit cards in your name. You can be royally screwed if they open a checking account in your name and write bad checks. One day, you get pulled over for a bad tail-light and the next thing you know, you're hauled off to jail because there are warrants in 3 states for writing bad checks. Do you think the cop cares if you say it wasn't you?
You can revoke permission for companies to check your credit reports and preapprove you for loans, and that is a good idea, but preemptively locking down your report without having a reason to do so is just inefficient at best. Inefficient for who? The credit reporting agencies? I don't have much sympathy for them. If they want to make money selling my information they can just as well handle the costs of that.
It's no use being well educated if you're dead. Yeah yeah I know - the left will scream back, "YOU ARE JUST TRYING TO SCARE PEOPLE! YOU FEAR MONGER!" Facing reality != trying to scare people. There are people out there that hate us for no better reason than we are a wealthy, free society.
Actually, war monger is a better word for it. The name of the department was far more accurate when it was the "war department" and not the "defense department". The US has been waging war on people all over the world ever since WWII. The people in these screwed up 3rd world countries don't hate us because we are free... they hate us because we exploit their countries and resources at the point of a gun while making deals to prop up dictators and "take out" democratically elected leaders.
We don't have to make everyone like us. But we could certainly try to stop making an effort to make them hate us. Then maybe we wouldn't have to spend so much on "defense".
I would say that in general open source doesn't have any special appeal for K-12. Most teachers are more concerned with getting their students to pass the next state/national test, writing lesson plans, wrangling parents and students, and generally doing education to worry about the software behind it all.
Even worse, while most teachers wouldn't know the difference between USB and an ERP even if you put them on an IEP for it, they're not the ones making the software buying decisions.
You see, when teachers get tired of teaching, they take classes to become administrators. Unfortunately, there are only so many administrator positions to go around. The ones who don't become administrators leave the school districts to work for consulting companies who sell software and other crap to schools.
They, having large budgets, throw all kinds of nice parties (conferences) getaways at coastal locations to which they invite their former (now administrator) colleagues. This is where they tell them how great their new xyz software will be so great and it only costs twice as much as their current solution, while doing less (and thus requiring less maintenance).
It's these former school-district-personnel-turned-consultant that are the real problem here. And they have no incentive to peddle open source software and in fact will do everything they can to discredit it. And when that doesn't work, they throw bigger parties...
Imagine: a database of genuine e-mail addresses belonging to minors.
Yeah, I'll bet pedophiles and the fundamentalist Mormons (the ones who like to force 14 year old girls into marriage with their relatives) would love such a database.
That's my thought exactly. Who really uses faxes any more anyway? It's about as relevant as an 8-track...
In fact, I'm highly annoyed anytime I have to actually send a fax. My company's tuition reimbursement vendor requires faxes.. but get this... you have to go on the website to fill out and create a PDF form that you then download, print and fax back to them. And of course, when I go to use the stupid machine, its out-tray is filled with junk faxes.
Who needs this crappy technology from the 70s anyway? Especially when it costs so much. Like you said, email, mail, or call.
If it weren't the only way to get my tuition forms, I would never fax. It's the only thing I've faxed in years.
having a sterile environment for a birth sounds prohibitive
I agree that babies in space would be a bad idea on a Mars mission. But I'm not sure a sterile environment is necessary for giving birth. We, as a species, have been having births in non-sterile environments for millions of years.
They do, however, probably need to come up with ways to do basic medical procedures. If someone's appendix goes bad, they're going to have to be able to go after it somehow.
Maybe the best solution is to send a bunch of older people up. Who says the astronauts have to be so young and virile? Older people seem much better at putting up with misery and boredom. Look at all the old people who do crosswords for practically days at a time. How many young athletically fit people could do that? I'm not saying older people don't want to have sex but maybe it's going to be less of an imperative for them.
ONLY if you have the cursor in the data containing cells of A and B. If you put the cursor in the data containing cells of D, it highlights the data in D. If you put the cursor in column C between the data in B and D, it will select the data in A through D. Anywhere else and it selects all.
And that's a huge change in behavior. Using Excel 2000 to do my work for years, I expected a certain behavior... that even if I had 200 columns of data that when I hit ctrl-A that it selects ALL.
Pressing CTRL-A twice, regardless of where the cursor's at selects all. Yeah, I learned that after losing a day of work. Until that day, ctrl-A meant select ALL. If they're going to change such a fundamental behavior it should have popped up a window to say, "we've chanced Ctrl-A to 'intelligently' select what we think you want. Hitting ctrl-A twice will give you the behavior you're expecting. [ ] to never see this message again."
It's not too difficult to figure out and all your problems could have been prevented if you had paid attention to what was happening instead of blindly making changes. I'm sorry.. for years, while using excel 2000, ctrl-A selected all, even the stuff that was 200* columns over from what was visible on my screen. Since ctrl-A has almost always meant select ALL, even in other MS Applications, I figured I was safe in using that standard shortcut. The whole point of shortcuts is to make work faster so you don't have to scroll all over your sheet to accomplish something.
It's so terrible that they changed the default behavior, but that they did it in a way that made it easy to ruin data and not even tell you about the change.
* And before you give me crap for using excel as a database, I didn't have much of a choice. Our "real" database only allowed me to get the data in a big dump which I then had to manipulate.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in the army, I was in a unit where we didn't run as much as I was used to and I was gaining weight. So I started drinking diet sodas instead of regular sodas. About that time, I started getting horrendous headaches.
One day in the chow hall, the TV showed an article from Duke University (nearby, I was in North Carolina) that covered Aspertame triggering migraines. So, I conducted my own little experiment. Some days I would drink normal fattening soda. No headaches. Then I would drink diet soda - and terrible headaches.
I started noticing other things - if I got bad headeaches, I would track back to see what I ate/drank. Sometimes, it was something like a gum (so many have aspartame to be safe for the teeth).
So for many years, I did what I could to avoid Aspartame. In the last 6 months, I took it a step further and have eliminated MSG and High Fructose Corn Syrup. I occasionally crave a soda but that's rare now. The cool part is that I FEEL so much better. Not just headaches, but now that fuzziness and "hot flash" feeling I'd get in the afternoons is gone.
And I've eliminated all fast food except the local Burgerville. I can't stand to touch McDonalds, Taco Bell, or Wendy's now. When I've succumbed to a craving, I felt like crap.
I either eat organic/natural, at local places that prepare such food, and my addiction of choice now is tea with a bit of organic sugar for sweetener.
I might not live any longer for it, but I FEEL much better for the time I am alive.
Unless you researched everything yourself, then there is belief. Who do you trust?
Creationism and Evolution have one thing in common - a big stack of paper that tells what each is. But that's where it ends.
Creationism says "This stack of papers states the absolute proof and if you challenge it you are a heretic who will burn in hell."
Evolution(ism) says "These papers say the way we think things are based on the information we've found so far. If you can refute the evidence and findings in them, please do so, and add your evidence and findings to the stack of papers."
One requires blind belief in "information" that cannot be examined or refuted. The other requires no belief and encourages examination and refutation.
The whole trend of using publicly available online data to snoop on people is a two way street.
Having just read Asimov's Foundation series, I'm reminded of one of the characters who said:
"It's a poor atom blaster that won't point both ways."
Another use I had when coordinating picking a friend up from work. There was a no-parking, no-loitering policy there.
So, before I would leave, I would type in a message like "Off Freeway", or "almost there". And when I got to a certain point, I could just hit the button. That gave her just enough time to clock out and show up at the pick up point.
Don't forget the inbound messages. My guess is she receives more than she transmits. Suppose she has 8 friend and they're having an 8-way chat.... all the time.
Frankly if I had a kid sending text messages that often,
Our parents were afraid of/bothered by rock and roll/Madonna. We're afraid of/bothered by texting.
It's just the way kids like to communicate today. We've created a very connected society (SMS, IM, etc) and that's what kids are used to... constant communication with all of their friends. It's a new social order, really.
Ahh, good to know that there's somebody else here :) .
While I understand the whole cellphone-revolution thingy, I just don't need all that crap that's currently being merged into cells. Why would I need a camera, an mp3 player, worse, the Internet on my phone? I'm not a multimedia borg (yet),
I'm kind of the same way. My phone is very basic.
BUT... a friend of mine has a crack-berry (work-provided). And I have to admit, it was very handy recently when we were trying to find a place downtown and we could just pull up google-maps to get directions... and then check out their website to find out they'll be closed until August.... then to citysearch to find somewhere else to get some jazz and drinks.
I still don't want one. The admin in our office was trying to push me and my boss to get one. I definitely don't want that burden.
Though, I was the same way about cellphones several years ago - when I got switched to a phone from a pager. But, all I have now IS a cellphone... a very simple cellphone... with a cheap, no-contract plan. (Virgin Mobile). I'd try cricket, but I'm happy with my $20 phone (which is now free on their website - well, still $20, but comes with $20 of airtime).
They don't all suck.
I have been happy with Virgin Mobile for quite some time. They were my original service and I only switched to Verizon when I moved to the Oregon coast where only AT&T and Verizon worked. As soon as my contract ended, I switched back to VM.
No contracts, Pay-as-you-go, but also with monthly plans. I pay less than Verizon because there are no extra fees, charges, "FCC mandated", etc (rather it's built in to the advertised price, not tacked on after the fact).
The phones are inexpensive too. The one I'm using now was $20 and works great. If it breaks or I lose it, I can just go get another one. Fortunately, they finally started making phones that don't look like kids' phones.
Coverage is great. They use sprint's network, so everywhere you can use sprint, it works just fine.
Texts are 5 cents each unless you buy one of the bundles. One has 1000 SMSs for $9.99.
My only complaint about VM is that, at least with the cheap phones, there is no way to download/upload your phonebook.
The MAX in Portland is very slow. There are many stops (which is generally good) but all routes must go through the same choke points (a single bridge) and through downtown (lots of traffic and lights). Plus it generally goes slow and there are no express/bypasses.
When I get in better shape I'll try riding my bike to work. Unfortunately, there's a huge ridge in the way (large elevation change in the "West Hills") and none of the roads going over have a good bike path - in fact most are narrow and dangerous for bikes (you should see the rants on Craigslist about bikers vs cars here - there are a lot of hostile drivers).
I may start by taking the max to the top of the ridge and ride downhill to work from there...
Plus the 12 miles a is a pretty direct ride on interstates. Surface roads are quite bit longer distance. (though, the max, for the most part, follows the interstate).
In the USA, many Americans refuse to use public transportation due to class snobbery.
While there may be some class snobbery the bigger factor is that most American public transit simply sucks.
I live one block from our light-rail system (MAX) and I use it when it's practical, like going downtown for a night out (I just saw the president of Liberia last night and took the light-trail there). My favorite pub is just 3 stops away, etc.
But for most of my commuting it's not practical. While my work is only 12 miles from my house (and also very close to the light-rail), it takes between 90 and 120 minutes to get to work. Unless I drive during a peak time, I can get to and from work in about 20 minutes - and that's what I do; I go in later in the morning and leave later in the evening. Driving at a peak time pushes it to about 40 minutes.
If it were strictly economics, I'd rid the MAX because my employer subsidizes annual passes for only $20 (which I have). But I'm pretty busy with work and college and at the current price of gas (and for quite a bit higher), it's worth more to me to have the extra time in my life than the extra money.
I'm also lucky that I can telecommute at least one day a week.
But mass transit? It's just not very practical in most American cities - and Portland is one of the more "enlightened" cities.
I'm sure you're wondering why I just don't move closer to work. Part of that is that I really like where I live. There are lots of great things around here that I like - restaurants, pubs, close to downtown, etc. My work, as great as the location is (we have a beautiful "campus") is in the middle of suburbia and there's very little other than business parks, cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and strip malls.
That reminds me of this site: http://everything2.com/?node_id=1029506
He talks about a court case that determined only 4 notes had to be in common to violate copyright. With that logic, he determined that there are only 46,656 distinct melodies.
Assume that all songs use a Western musical scale and that such a scale contains twelve distinct intervals. Assume that a judge (not a musician but a judge) will distinguish three distinct note durations (which roughly correspond to eighth, quarter, and half notes, or through a trivial change in time signature, to quarter, half, and whole notes, or to sixteenth, eighth, and quarter notes). Thus, there are 36 possible distance vectors from one note to the next, and 36^(n - 1) melodies of n notes.
And not all of those would be worth listening to... so pretty much any 4-notes you play probably violate someone's copyright.
If you read the comments from IBMers in response to Cringley's columns, you'll see that that's exactly what they've done. It has nothing to do with LEAN as you understand it.
I think we're agreeing. Whatever IBM calls what they are doing, it is not, indeed, LEAN.
But, Cringley doesn't seem to get this and is blaming LEAN for what they are doing - when he should be blaming IBM for misusing the name LEAN to cover for their layoffs. LEAN is a great methodology for improving processes and in most cases would not result in outsourcing as that adds waste and variability to the processes.
It's strange because the IBM folks in one paragraph talk about laying off people. Then in the last paragraph they talk about their LEAN efforts. They're either two different things, or the IBM team doesn't know what LEAN is.
Let's See. Toyota did LEAN. Toyota doesn't treat their employees like crap. Therefore, IBM doesn't treat their employees like crap.
No, I don't think that logic works.
I don't think you get what I'm saying. I'm not making that connection at all. And I'm not defending IBM.
LEAN (when fully capitalized) is a very proper noun that represents a discipline, philosophy, methodology, and a way of working towards process improvement. While many believe it was "perfected" by the Japanese (and specifically at Toyota) the irony is that the movement actually appears to have started under Henry Ford. LEAN focuses on what is going on from the customer's perspective and then finding the most efficient (measured in terms of wastes) way of delivering that.
It appears in this case that IBM has probably hired some "LEAN" consultants who have told them that laying off American workers and outsourcing will save money and improve margins. The irony of that is that a LEAN implementation would most likely not suggest this because it would add variability and add waste in the form of transportation waste and delays in communication.
So, if IBM execs are doing "LEAN" and using it as a justification to lay lots of people off, they clearly don't "get it" and are not doing LEAN. It's like saying you're doing ballet dancing when in fact you're standing on the stage playing the saxophone. You can call it ballet all you want, but that's not what it is.
The other irony is that American businesses often have this fascination with labor and seem to have the point of view that all their troubles come from having labor. But more often it's the way they structure their operations and their processes. A very interesting read on this topic is "The Toyota Way". It shows a large contrast between Toyota's processes and GM's. For example, in a GM plant they may have a huge inventory of "Assembly A" that was manufactured months ago at a remote facility. If they start finding problems with their "Assembly A's" they're stuck with either trying to make the broken ones work, do expensive re-work, or expedite production of new ones. In a comparable Toyota plant, Assembly A is made in the room next to the main assembly line and they're made hours before they are needed. If there's a problem with Assembly A, any worker on the line can hit the button to stop the line and they figure out what's wrong with the process and then start the whole thing back up again.
The funny thing is that it's not like Americans can't do this. As I mentioned, the Japanese, as they rebuilt their industry after WWII, actually looked to Henry Ford's work for inspiration. The Toyota plant in the US has performed very well for many years (there was actually a movie about this). And while that might appear to outsourcing, what they've done is put production close to the market to reduce transportation waste - it takes more than 30 days to move product by ship from Asia to the US. That means it takes you 30 days longer to get to market and you're paying inventory costs 30 days longer than you have to.
IBM may be trying to implement LEAN but doing lots of layoffs and outsourcing would not be the results of doing LEAN well. It's playing sax on the ballet stage.
But has no idea what it's about.
He wrote: It has to be since the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring.
LEAN http://www.lean.org/ has nothing to do with foreign hiring. It's a philosophy for process improvement that focuses on eliminating wastes in that process. Such wastes include: excess inventory, re-work, moving things around more than needed. It's about redesigning the process so that there is as little wasted effort and material as possible.
LEAN is well-executed when the culture of a company is changed to empower workers to have more control over the way they do their work - and those employees are encouraged to find better ways to do what they do. For example, Toyota is often held up as a prime example of LEAN. There, an employee who finds a better way to improve a process is rewarded with cash bonuses.
Now it may be that a company has hired a consultant to tell them do do layoffs and they call it LEAN, but that's not what it is.
But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
My "second generation" nano produces a high-pitched noise whenever it's on- it's noticeable if you have it within 2 feet or so of your head. I'm pretty sure it is the inverter that generates the AC current, but if it's 120kHz, that shouldn't be possible, unless there's a resonant frequency in the audible range.
That's a known problem and you can get a warranty replacement. I bought one and as soon as I turned it on I notice the sound. Googled and found many people complained about it. I called the mac store and they said bring it back and they gave me a replacement with no hassles.
I agree. This technological memory will be painful at first as only a few are hit hard by the judgment society imposes against them for their recorded actions.
When a majority of peoples lives are recorded and available for review, the bar for what is truly scandalous will be set much higher. Soon it will be: "Pictures of me in a pirate hat drinking a beer at a party? Who doesn't have a picture like that on the internet? You should see the one of my with the kangaroo and that giant bucket of peanut butter..."
That's not to say that massive amounts of surveillance and data retention are good. But I think that society's expectations of people will adjust when we're all forced to remember that we all have times when we were silly, immature, or not the person we are today.
No, just no. There is really no good reason to preemptively freeze the checks. It can damage your ability to get a new job as well as a new loan. Of the records breached, there is a low number of records that end up being abused. And even then it tends to take quite a bit of time for the stealing to begin.
.In most cases it is limited to $50 or so if it is reported in a timely manner.
I'm one of the millions of veterans affected when the VA lost all that personal information recently. I got a nice PDF file saying there was nothing to worry about.
What I really want is the ability to freeze my credit. Alas, that is not allowed because I live in Oregon.
I have all the credit I need for the next couple of years and I have a pretty secure job. There is no need for my credit file to be available to anyone right now.
The credit agencies will put a 90 day hold on them, but not a permanent freeze. But like you said, it takes time before the abuse happens.
That's if you're lucky and they just open some credit cards in your name. You can be royally screwed if they open a checking account in your name and write bad checks. One day, you get pulled over for a bad tail-light and the next thing you know, you're hauled off to jail because there are warrants in 3 states for writing bad checks. Do you think the cop cares if you say it wasn't you?
You can revoke permission for companies to check your credit reports and preapprove you for loans, and that is a good idea, but preemptively locking down your report without having a reason to do so is just inefficient at best.
Inefficient for who? The credit reporting agencies? I don't have much sympathy for them. If they want to make money selling my information they can just as well handle the costs of that.
It's no use being well educated if you're dead. Yeah yeah I know - the left will scream back, "YOU ARE JUST TRYING TO SCARE PEOPLE! YOU FEAR MONGER!" Facing reality != trying to scare people. There are people out there that hate us for no better reason than we are a wealthy, free society.
Actually, war monger is a better word for it. The name of the department was far more accurate when it was the "war department" and not the "defense department". The US has been waging war on people all over the world ever since WWII. The people in these screwed up 3rd world countries don't hate us because we are free... they hate us because we exploit their countries and resources at the point of a gun while making deals to prop up dictators and "take out" democratically elected leaders.
We don't have to make everyone like us. But we could certainly try to stop making an effort to make them hate us. Then maybe we wouldn't have to spend so much on "defense".
It's not like the kids actually read the books.
The schools pretend to offer useful books and the kids pretend to use them.
And besides, the best teaching I received from middle and high school was from teachers who made their own materials, foregoing the books.
I would say that in general open source doesn't have any special appeal for K-12. Most teachers are more concerned with getting their students to pass the next state/national test, writing lesson plans, wrangling parents and students, and generally doing education to worry about the software behind it all.
Even worse, while most teachers wouldn't know the difference between USB and an ERP even if you put them on an IEP for it, they're not the ones making the software buying decisions.
You see, when teachers get tired of teaching, they take classes to become administrators. Unfortunately, there are only so many administrator positions to go around. The ones who don't become administrators leave the school districts to work for consulting companies who sell software and other crap to schools.
They, having large budgets, throw all kinds of nice parties (conferences) getaways at coastal locations to which they invite their former (now administrator) colleagues. This is where they tell them how great their new xyz software will be so great and it only costs twice as much as their current solution, while doing less (and thus requiring less maintenance).
It's these former school-district-personnel-turned-consultant that are the real problem here. And they have no incentive to peddle open source software and in fact will do everything they can to discredit it. And when that doesn't work, they throw bigger parties...
Imagine: a database of genuine e-mail addresses belonging to minors.
Yeah, I'll bet pedophiles and the fundamentalist Mormons (the ones who like to force 14 year old girls into marriage with their relatives) would love such a database.
That's easy. If the OCR fails, just junk the fax as it's probably not readable anyway. If the sender really wants to you get it, they'll call.
You don't support customers who want to send messages on an 8-track. Why support them on outdated and pointless technology like faxes?
That's my thought exactly. Who really uses faxes any more anyway? It's about as relevant as an 8-track...
In fact, I'm highly annoyed anytime I have to actually send a fax. My company's tuition reimbursement vendor requires faxes.. but get this... you have to go on the website to fill out and create a PDF form that you then download, print and fax back to them. And of course, when I go to use the stupid machine, its out-tray is filled with junk faxes.
Who needs this crappy technology from the 70s anyway? Especially when it costs so much. Like you said, email, mail, or call.
If it weren't the only way to get my tuition forms, I would never fax. It's the only thing I've faxed in years.
having a sterile environment for a birth sounds prohibitive
I agree that babies in space would be a bad idea on a Mars mission. But I'm not sure a sterile environment is necessary for giving birth. We, as a species, have been having births in non-sterile environments for millions of years.
They do, however, probably need to come up with ways to do basic medical procedures. If someone's appendix goes bad, they're going to have to be able to go after it somehow.
Maybe the best solution is to send a bunch of older people up. Who says the astronauts have to be so young and virile? Older people seem much better at putting up with misery and boredom. Look at all the old people who do crosswords for practically days at a time. How many young athletically fit people could do that? I'm not saying older people don't want to have sex but maybe it's going to be less of an imperative for them.
ONLY if you have the cursor in the data containing cells of A and B. If you put the cursor in the data containing cells of D, it highlights the data in D. If you put the cursor in column C between the data in B and D, it will select the data in A through D. Anywhere else and it selects all.
And that's a huge change in behavior. Using Excel 2000 to do my work for years, I expected a certain behavior... that even if I had 200 columns of data that when I hit ctrl-A that it selects ALL.
Pressing CTRL-A twice, regardless of where the cursor's at selects all.
Yeah, I learned that after losing a day of work. Until that day, ctrl-A meant select ALL. If they're going to change such a fundamental behavior it should have popped up a window to say, "we've chanced Ctrl-A to 'intelligently' select what we think you want. Hitting ctrl-A twice will give you the behavior you're expecting. [ ] to never see this message again."
It's not too difficult to figure out and all your problems could have been prevented if you had paid attention to what was happening instead of blindly making changes.
I'm sorry.. for years, while using excel 2000, ctrl-A selected all, even the stuff that was 200* columns over from what was visible on my screen. Since ctrl-A has almost always meant select ALL, even in other MS Applications, I figured I was safe in using that standard shortcut. The whole point of shortcuts is to make work faster so you don't have to scroll all over your sheet to accomplish something.
It's so terrible that they changed the default behavior, but that they did it in a way that made it easy to ruin data and not even tell you about the change.
* And before you give me crap for using excel as a database, I didn't have much of a choice. Our "real" database only allowed me to get the data in a big dump which I then had to manipulate.
In Excel, does Ctrl-A actually select ALL like it did in 2000? or just "some" like it does in 2003?