Out of the frying pan, into the fire
on
MPAA vs. Television
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
After all, how many people voted for any of the members of the FCC?
All hope may not be lost, but we're damn close. Our last hope is the official FCC public comment period when they propose making new rules.
Yes, it would've been more democratic to debate it and vote in the congress on something of this nature, but we have two choices:
1) Sit around crying and watch it happen. or 2) Accept the opportunity to defend the consumer and take advantage of the comment period!
I don't know about you, but option two sounds better than grabbing the kleenex and crying to till I puke, thanks.
You can bet that TiVo and ReplayTV will write comments, but the general public has to care or this will be a cakewalk for the bad guys. If you're wealthy, consider hiring a DC communications lawyer to write your stuff for you. They're expensive, but you're rich, what do you care. Or of course, donate to EFF.
Don't forget that the FCC is mandated to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest." You're the public, tell them what your interest is.
Once the FCC issues a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) you should be able to submit comments online at fcc.gov. Or you could always print a hard copy, sign it in ink, and send certified mail to the address on the site. (Which would be much better.)
The "paying for features I don't want" excuse is getting old. If what you have is working well for you, then you have no need to upgrade. I for one still have several Red Hat 6.2 boxes running here because Red Hat 7.2 has features I don't need. It's a free upgrade if I want it, but I don't.
For one thing, Red Hat 6 was a mature OS when released (for free) as release code. OS X 10.0, on the other hand was beta code that cost $129.
I wouldn't say I'd be paying for features I "don't need", I'd say I'm paying for features I ALREADY paid for... Aqua was supposed to be high-performance all along, not as a $129 upgrade. Carbon was supposed to work all along, not as a $129 upgrade.
I use OS X.1.5 exclusively on my mac, (mandrake supporting samba on my music server) and I can tell you there are many aspects of this OS that need work, that some parts of OS X are production-ready, some are not. Carbon libraries, for example, have several flaws...The first that comes to mind is the one that makes Mozilla OS X crash and burn if you launch it from a UFS partition.
Yes, it is a good OS concept. Yes, it "looks" good. Yes, some of the functionality is there, BUT, a lot of basic stuff simply isn't.
Printing, for a second example, is a disaster for OS X users... Better carefully test a printer before you deploy it in production with OS X. Variably, the new drivers: Don't exist; Do but have flaws that make output inconsistent or; (occasionally, in Candyland) Work perfectly when released. And there's no hard and fast rules, either. Your $1000 printer is as likely to print reliably in OS X as your $50 one.
I have one of each, and neither one prints worth a shit from OS X. I guess you could say that I personally have a 0% chance of printing reliably from OS X as it stands today.
What if someone roots your system, and then hacks into some bank, then gets caught? Should you be held responsible, or the bank? Gee, how about the person who knowingly did something illegal? That is a novel idea.
What if you have an unsecured firearm, loaded, sitting on your front porch. Somebody comes by, steals it, and kills somebody with it.
As the owner of the gun, are you at all responsible? After all, you knew that a gun could be used to harm someone. You also knew that leaving a loaded weapon unattended in public view could lead to it being stolen, yet you left it on the porch for the world to see and be tempted by anyway.
Having somebody die as a result of your actions is a "forseeable consequence" of your action.
Now lets go back to traffic lights...
Knowing that drivers go on green and stop on red, somebody who engineers a traffic light system that can be easily re-programmed by "the wrong crowd" to leave all lights green should be able to reasonably forsee this sort of security breach leading to deaths.
Why is leaving your life/death technology unsecured any different than leaving your Smith & Wesson.45 unsecured?
Or, to go "class warfare" on your ass...
Why is the white collar engineer NOT responsible for deaths he should be able to reasonably forsee? We've put ghetto youths to death/life imprisonment for starting a robbery where the clerk shoots a customer while shoorting at him [the thief], so why aren't the wealthy engineers responsible for the "forseeable consequences" of their actions?
What's next? By using your computer while you have a cold you could hose your hard drive? But, for only $9.95 McAffee makes these plastic covers to keep YOU from infecting your computer...
In all seriousness, does anybody dispute that at least some percentage of our remaining "tech" economy is held up by victimzing the ooh-aah/Joe Sixpack crowd into paying $2500 for an $800 box, and other such silly "what the market will bear" injustices?
I predict another shakeout in a few years when the kids who are becoming experts in grade school become the consumers and not their tech-phobic baby boomer parents who think high price == high quality and service. Guess what? The next generation doesn't think that way.
Even my 11 year old cousin knows that inexpensive Dell gear blows, and he figured it out without an indoctrination from me...
Unfortunately, due to a bug in one of Apple's libraries (not sure which, IANADH -- I am not a darwin hacker) Mozilla (any version since.8.x) crashes instantly if launched from a UFS partition in Mac OS X.
Really sucks, because when I got rid of OS 9 on my tiBook, I reformatted it all UFS, thinking I'd never have need for HFS+ again. Oops...
At least Chimera doesn't have that problem (although there are a slew of others...)
MTV stopped being relevant to people with any kind of good taste 10-15 years ago. You could also call MTV's Movie Awards a "Who's Cutest Contest" and still be pretty accurate.
Part of the story here is that Clear Channel is also in the "Concert Promotion" business. I put the term in quotes because it's more like legalized racketeering. Their standard procedure, regardless of what specific business they're working in, is to make as much for them regardless of the damage it does to their customers, business partners, and the public. Their theory is, what's good for us is good for us, fuck all others. (I can already see the knee-jerk "the market will decide" Rush Limbaugh clones racing for the reply button about how this is a good thing...Read-on first, please.)
So CC will do things like leverage all their businesses... So, if you want to play a concert at the desirable venues (ie. Not a shitty dive bar) in XXX City, you'll have to have a "music promotion" contract with WXYZ to get your tunes played, a concert prmotion contract with CC Entertainment which also includes a budget for ads on WXYZ, agree to do these other CC shows in other cities, AND do it all for what CC is offering.
In other words, CC is victimizing the RIAA membership the same way the RIAA members victimize their customers. (Ie. Accept our lowball offer to do a conecert, or get no airplay the month you play at a competing venue vs. Pay $19 for a CD we paid $2 to create.)
What we're getting ready for is a battle royale of influence and political contributions, as the two big behemoths who both think they own Congress and have a constitutional right to their obsolete business models go toe to toe, trying to see who can spend the most to get their way.
If I didn't know that this battle will only result in the consumer being screwed even further, I'd say get some popcorn and enjoy the show. As it is, I'd say go pirate some music on Kazaa and start your own pirate radio station.
Or just jam CC properties, if you don't feel like you'd make a good air personality... Tuning your 50 watt transmitter to +-.05 mhz of their frequency and driving circles around their transmitter should give their engineer a nice Excedrin headache...
And the home user who recieves MS Office for "free" with their computer? Why pay $75 extra to do what you already can? Again, if it were a twenty-five bucks less, it sounds a lot more reasonable to test it out.
I agree, a volume price break to around $50 would make this a totally reasonable choice for businesses of 10+.... Offer a 10-pack for $500, and you'll get a lot of attention. That's about $20 more than the off the shelf price for Office XP pro for just one person. To be fair, though, I don't know how much MS discounts Office to its biggest customers/victims.
Great hint for Sun (if they're reading) is to setup a promotion where the user gets a coupon on the box for a $25 instant rebate. Instead of $75, it's 50, and that's a very reasonable price indeed for software that can accomplish what 85-90% of the $400+ suite use their software for: Document generation and word processing.
I would like to point out that users who get Office with an OEM machine are paying extra for it somewhere--it's never free.
I also encourage Macintosh users who are interested in non MS word processors to check out either Appleworks or the AbiWord beta for OS X (which requires XDarwin.) Obviously, those wanting support from an "established vendor" will pick Appleworks. Those wanting to participate in an open source project should get AbiWord...
What a rip off. Where I work everything except some insignificant stuff is on at least RAID 1. Why would I go the Apple route when I can get a server form Dell or Compaq with SCSI RAID for less? My company is Win2000, but Dell and Compaq also support Linux on servers. Another Apple rip off.
First, RTFA.... It does support RAID, just software RAID. As I recall, Windows 2000 also supports software arrays.
Second, XServe will (if it doesn't already) run MAndrake PPC, YDL, etc... Those certainly qualify as "linux"...
I haven't driven one, but one pulled up behind me on the expressway this afternoon. Black. Like a spaceship. I thought Hotblack Desiato was trying to overtake and pass...
Perhaps RedHat or Mandrake should offer a bounty... For each system converted to Linux, receive $x off a support contract. Yes, this would cost them some money (unless they found a wacky sponsor!) but would ultimately payoff if the companies then provide good service through those contracts--The customers will renew for a second year and they will pay the full price knowing it is well worth it.
I'm glad I was an adult when Mostly Harmless came along... I would've been devastated to have Fenchurch disappear into nothingness for no apparent reason if I was like 12.
There were, however, a few passages that weren't utterly worthless. The crotch-biting beasts cracked me up... That was about it. Well, and the pun about "Stavromula Beta"...
Also, the business with the Bistromath and the Krikkit (planet, ships, robots, people,) were good. But I think they probably could've just had all that in SLATFATF, and saved readers $4.95...
I have the complete Hitchhicker's hardback edition, and have considered hacking out MH with a machete...
1. We need to trim the budget. Let's fire some people. 2. One of the people we're going to fire is a broke single-mom. Oh well, not our problem. 3. Cut staff. 4. Hmm, people are quitting and citing "overwork, lack of stability, and lack of loyalty to veterans and moms" as reasons. 5. We'll have to hire some more people to replace them... We wanted to keep these people... 6. Gee, good people from outside sure cost tons more than we were paying our laid off veterans. 7. We're over budget again, have to fire some people...
Exec 1: We're not doing well this year. At this rate, we won't make profit projections. Exec 2: We're not doing so hot this year? Exec 3: We just spent $5 billion on our new toaster strudel division, how could we be doing badly? Exec 2: What are we going to do? Exec 1: Well, this will sound crazy, but, we could not take exhorbitant bonuses this year for the good of the company... (Execs 2 & 3 tie noose and immediately execute Exec 1) Exec 2: Phwew, that was close... Without a $1 million bonus, how will I pay for my vacation home and vacation Mercedes? Exec 3: Well, we still have to save money somewhere... Exec 2: Don't employee salaries cost us a lot? Let's just cut those... Hey, I wonder if I can get us a tee-time for later today... (Wanders off.) Exec 3: Ok then, so, we cut the employees salaries? Exec 2: (On phone) Yes Mr. Fong, two at four o'clock--Hold on-- (Covers mouthpiece) What? Oh, yeah, do whatever... It's not like those people can quit, look at the job market. Exec 3: Great, want another Cuban cigar? I'll light it with a 20...
Wrong answer. I am not obsoleting my entire system because a user adds a new incompatible box. I insist the new stuff is compatible with my LAN. I have the incompatible new box user find and install the drivers needed to access the system. If it can't do SMB and TCP/IP, it's incompatible.
...And when the corporate director of IT says everybody must support Windows 2004 then what?
You'll either let them on the network or polish up your resume...
Our manager there was probably the best one I've ever had...and she didn't know computers hardly at ALL. The thing that set her apart from every other manager I've worked with was that she KNEW this and was fully willing to admit it.
As with all generalizations, there are people who don't fit the mold...Your old boss sounds pretty cool to me.
I personally have never met a non-technical manager that could even remotely cope with being the least knowledgeable person in the room by a long shot. But I'm happy to hear that SOMEBODY has... Gives me hope that maybe there are more like her out there!
I've worked in various support organizations, and feel compelled to share my recipe for a good support team, and some of the factors that I know first hand can contribute to a bad one.
1. Managers must EITHER know the product being supported, OR at least have the mental capacity to understand what the product is used for and slowly learn the product itself. (The best tech manager I ever had started off as an analyst, and knew the software inside and out. She knew what could and couldn't be done, and kept up as new modules were written. It was a dream to work for her.) If you're hiring a manager of techies and they can't do the job of the people they're managing, they aren't qualified.
2. Hire intelligence not flash. If a guy is a moron but speaks well on the phone, there's no way he's going to be a good analyst. There are classes at community college to teach public speaking and diction to your "nerdy quiet types" (not to mention clubs like Toastmasters), but nobody can make you smarter than you really are. In these situations, I would refer the flashy not-smart guy's resume to the SALES department.
3. Pay a good salary. Not a "competitive" salary, a good salary. Just because Joe Blow is paying $27k in a slow economy doesn't make people happy to be offered $27,500. In six months when the economy is all the way back, the $27k (and $27.5k) people will simply quit for more money elsewhere.
4. Train your people. Yes, you should be hiring people with experience and brains, but that doesn't neccessarily tranlsate to instant productivity on what your company is selling and supporting. (ESPECIALLY if you're talking about specialized proprietary software.) Effective training is the difference between success and failure for software support folks.
5. Tell the truth. Don't layoff 30% of the staff due to "economic hardships", then anounce record-breaking profits the next week. Besides being ethically questionable, it's in poor taste, and kills your team's morale faster than a 44 magnum.
6. Recognize achievements. This seems trivial, but I worked for a guy for about 7 months who didn't say ANYTHING positive to me, ever. Not once. People are VANE. When they feel like they've done something special, they need recognition for it. It's a simple fact of human existence.
Oh, and last but not least:
7. MORALE, your greatest friend or worst enemy. If your team is feeling low, they're going to do shitty work. (Or, rather, perform at just high enough level not to get fired.) Don't let them get low! If you live by rules 1-6, you'll always be maintaining high morale, not "turning around" low morale. (Three guesses which is easier, the first two don't count.)
One measely judge in the most backwards big city in America, that's who...
Having political campaigns use interactive software (e.g. video games) to spread the word only helps the cause that video games and software are protected speech! Over the years the Supremes have protected peaceful political speech in many many situations where non-political speech could've been constitutionally prohibited.
A worker that signs an employment contract that says "I agree to work 80 hours a week and forego any and all protection from labor laws" can understand exactly what he's signing and a court still will not enforce it. He has a legal right to the protection of labor laws and he cannot sign that right away, even if he understands what he's doing.
Shelley vs. Kramer, unlawful covenants cannot be enforced.
Came from a case where a bunch of lilly white folks didn't want homes in their neighborhood sold to blacks and jews. So the neighborhood association got everybody to sign contracts saying they wouldn't sell their homes to blacks or jews, lest it "lower propery values" for the whole neighborhood.
Somebody did it, got sued, and won hands down because the government doesn't enforce contracts that require illegal conduct. (FYI: It's agin the law to discriminate against people because of ethnicity in this country.)
Recently, I'd been having some performance issues with Mac OS X on my titanium Powerbook 500. (256 meg of ram on 10.1.4)
The problem was that EVERYTHING gave me spinning beach ball. File operations, minimizing Finder windows, you name it...Even scrolling in MOzilla and IE were affected. Then I read on MacAddict that OS X needs to be left running all night so that various "cleanup" tasks can run.
Anybody who has OS X should consider leaving there machine up all night so these run... It will resolve a great many problems that you're having, and allow us to go back to bashing MS and Oracle instead of Apple...
Unix people familiar with cron should have no problem with editing the cleanups to run at a more reasonable hour than 3am, 4am, and 5am (like one when your machine will be running)... (I think the file to edit is/var/run/cron.pid, but don't quote me...)
Alternately, if you're a regular mac user and don't feel like mucking about with the terminal, hit Version Tracker and pick up MacJanitor. It's a friendly GUI that lets to schedule your daily, weekly, and monthly jobs, or trip them manually on demand.
Since I'd used the machine, it had never been awake all night (I close the lid when I go to bed, usually before 3am...) so cron had never done anything to optimize my machine.
Now? All better. Faster than I remember 10.1.1 being...
A real budget vehicle is $17K. and vehicles that should be bought by most (honda Insight and the other super green cars) cost insane prices ($32K for the insight and more for the GM offering)
Insight is $32,000? Somebody should tell Honda that! According to Honda's web-page the MSRP on an Insight is $20,000 for the manual transmission and 21500 for the automatic. You can get one for less if you're willing to live without air conditioning.
I tried building a Civic Hybrid on their "Build Your Own!" page and the manual transmission model started at $19,550. (With fabric seats...)
So are you just ignorant of the true cost of these vehicles or is there some other axe you're grinding that I haven't picked up on?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it would've been more democratic to debate it and vote in the congress on something of this nature, but we have two choices:
1) Sit around crying and watch it happen.
or
2) Accept the opportunity to defend the consumer and take advantage of the comment period!
I don't know about you, but option two sounds better than grabbing the kleenex and crying to till I puke, thanks.
You can bet that TiVo and ReplayTV will write comments, but the general public has to care or this will be a cakewalk for the bad guys. If you're wealthy, consider hiring a DC communications lawyer to write your stuff for you. They're expensive, but you're rich, what do you care. Or of course, donate to EFF.
Don't forget that the FCC is mandated to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest." You're the public, tell them what your interest is.
Once the FCC issues a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) you should be able to submit comments online at fcc.gov. Or you could always print a hard copy, sign it in ink, and send certified mail to the address on the site. (Which would be much better.)
For one thing, Red Hat 6 was a mature OS when released (for free) as release code. OS X 10.0, on the other hand was beta code that cost $129.
I wouldn't say I'd be paying for features I "don't need", I'd say I'm paying for features I ALREADY paid for... Aqua was supposed to be high-performance all along, not as a $129 upgrade. Carbon was supposed to work all along, not as a $129 upgrade.
I use OS X.1.5 exclusively on my mac, (mandrake supporting samba on my music server) and I can tell you there are many aspects of this OS that need work, that some parts of OS X are production-ready, some are not. Carbon libraries, for example, have several flaws...The first that comes to mind is the one that makes Mozilla OS X crash and burn if you launch it from a UFS partition.
Yes, it is a good OS concept. Yes, it "looks" good. Yes, some of the functionality is there, BUT, a lot of basic stuff simply isn't.
Printing, for a second example, is a disaster for OS X users... Better carefully test a printer before you deploy it in production with OS X. Variably, the new drivers: Don't exist; Do but have flaws that make output inconsistent or; (occasionally, in Candyland) Work perfectly when released. And there's no hard and fast rules, either. Your $1000 printer is as likely to print reliably in OS X as your $50 one.
I have one of each, and neither one prints worth a shit from OS X. I guess you could say that I personally have a 0% chance of printing reliably from OS X as it stands today.
...I'll finally be able to surf for pr0n and read slashdot in traffic? Now all I need are tinted windows....
As the owner of the gun, are you at all responsible? After all, you knew that a gun could be used to harm someone. You also knew that leaving a loaded weapon unattended in public view could lead to it being stolen, yet you left it on the porch for the world to see and be tempted by anyway.
Having somebody die as a result of your actions is a "forseeable consequence" of your action.
Now lets go back to traffic lights...
Knowing that drivers go on green and stop on red, somebody who engineers a traffic light system that can be easily re-programmed by "the wrong crowd" to leave all lights green should be able to reasonably forsee this sort of security breach leading to deaths.
Why is leaving your life/death technology unsecured any different than leaving your Smith & Wesson
Or, to go "class warfare" on your ass...
Why is the white collar engineer NOT responsible for deaths he should be able to reasonably forsee? We've put ghetto youths to death/life imprisonment for starting a robbery where the clerk shoots a customer while shoorting at him [the thief], so why aren't the wealthy engineers responsible for the "forseeable consequences" of their actions?
What's next? By using your computer while you have a cold you could hose your hard drive? But, for only $9.95 McAffee makes these plastic covers to keep YOU from infecting your computer...
In all seriousness, does anybody dispute that at least some percentage of our remaining "tech" economy is held up by victimzing the ooh-aah/Joe Sixpack crowd into paying $2500 for an $800 box, and other such silly "what the market will bear" injustices?
I predict another shakeout in a few years when the kids who are becoming experts in grade school become the consumers and not their tech-phobic baby boomer parents who think high price == high quality and service. Guess what? The next generation doesn't think that way.
Even my 11 year old cousin knows that inexpensive Dell gear blows, and he figured it out without an indoctrination from me...
Unfortunately, due to a bug in one of Apple's libraries (not sure which, IANADH -- I am not a darwin hacker) Mozilla (any version since .8.x) crashes instantly if launched from a UFS partition in Mac OS X.
Really sucks, because when I got rid of OS 9 on my tiBook, I reformatted it all UFS, thinking I'd never have need for HFS+ again. Oops...
At least Chimera doesn't have that problem (although there are a slew of others...)
...I should care?
MTV stopped being relevant to people with any kind of good taste 10-15 years ago. You could also call MTV's Movie Awards a "Who's Cutest Contest" and still be pretty accurate.
This really isn't a troll--it's a true statement.
...And it ain't payola.
.05 mhz of their frequency and driving circles around their transmitter should give their engineer a nice Excedrin headache...
Part of the story here is that Clear Channel is also in the "Concert Promotion" business. I put the term in quotes because it's more like legalized racketeering. Their standard procedure, regardless of what specific business they're working in, is to make as much for them regardless of the damage it does to their customers, business partners, and the public. Their theory is, what's good for us is good for us, fuck all others. (I can already see the knee-jerk "the market will decide" Rush Limbaugh clones racing for the reply button about how this is a good thing...Read-on first, please.)
So CC will do things like leverage all their businesses... So, if you want to play a concert at the desirable venues (ie. Not a shitty dive bar) in XXX City, you'll have to have a "music promotion" contract with WXYZ to get your tunes played, a concert prmotion contract with CC Entertainment which also includes a budget for ads on WXYZ, agree to do these other CC shows in other cities, AND do it all for what CC is offering.
In other words, CC is victimizing the RIAA membership the same way the RIAA members victimize their customers. (Ie. Accept our lowball offer to do a conecert, or get no airplay the month you play at a competing venue vs. Pay $19 for a CD we paid $2 to create.)
What we're getting ready for is a battle royale of influence and political contributions, as the two big behemoths who both think they own Congress and have a constitutional right to their obsolete business models go toe to toe, trying to see who can spend the most to get their way.
If I didn't know that this battle will only result in the consumer being screwed even further, I'd say get some popcorn and enjoy the show. As it is, I'd say go pirate some music on Kazaa and start your own pirate radio station.
Or just jam CC properties, if you don't feel like you'd make a good air personality... Tuning your 50 watt transmitter to +-
I agree, a volume price break to around $50 would make this a totally reasonable choice for businesses of 10+.... Offer a 10-pack for $500, and you'll get a lot of attention. That's about $20 more than the off the shelf price for Office XP pro for just one person. To be fair, though, I don't know how much MS discounts Office to its biggest customers/victims.
Great hint for Sun (if they're reading) is to setup a promotion where the user gets a coupon on the box for a $25 instant rebate. Instead of $75, it's 50, and that's a very reasonable price indeed for software that can accomplish what 85-90% of the $400+ suite use their software for: Document generation and word processing.
I would like to point out that users who get Office with an OEM machine are paying extra for it somewhere--it's never free.
I also encourage Macintosh users who are interested in non MS word processors to check out either Appleworks or the AbiWord beta for OS X (which requires XDarwin.) Obviously, those wanting support from an "established vendor" will pick Appleworks. Those wanting to participate in an open source project should get AbiWord...
First, RTFA.... It does support RAID, just software RAID. As I recall, Windows 2000 also supports software arrays.
Second, XServe will (if it doesn't already) run MAndrake PPC, YDL, etc... Those certainly qualify as "linux"...
Only for tax purposes...
I haven't driven one, but one pulled up behind me on the expressway this afternoon. Black. Like a spaceship. I thought Hotblack Desiato was trying to overtake and pass...
Perhaps RedHat or Mandrake should offer a bounty... For each system converted to Linux, receive $x off a support contract. Yes, this would cost them some money (unless they found a wacky sponsor!) but would ultimately payoff if the companies then provide good service through those contracts--The customers will renew for a second year and they will pay the full price knowing it is well worth it.
That's a freebie.
Instead of making a case of their own, the "content-industry" has conveniently gotten the judge to order the other party to make their case for them.
Sheer genius, but also very depressing. Our legal system is more screwed up than people think. Way more...
I'm glad I was an adult when Mostly Harmless came along... I would've been devastated to have Fenchurch disappear into nothingness for no apparent reason if I was like 12.
There were, however, a few passages that weren't utterly worthless. The crotch-biting beasts cracked me up... That was about it. Well, and the pun about "Stavromula Beta"...
Also, the business with the Bistromath and the Krikkit (planet, ships, robots, people,) were good. But I think they probably could've just had all that in SLATFATF, and saved readers $4.95...
I have the complete Hitchhicker's hardback edition, and have considered hacking out MH with a machete...
1. We need to trim the budget. Let's fire some people.
2. One of the people we're going to fire is a broke single-mom. Oh well, not our problem.
3. Cut staff.
4. Hmm, people are quitting and citing "overwork, lack of stability, and lack of loyalty to veterans and moms" as reasons.
5. We'll have to hire some more people to replace them... We wanted to keep these people...
6. Gee, good people from outside sure cost tons more than we were paying our laid off veterans.
7. We're over budget again, have to fire some people...
And the cycle goes on and on...
Exec 1: We're not doing well this year. At this rate, we won't make profit projections.
Exec 2: We're not doing so hot this year?
Exec 3: We just spent $5 billion on our new toaster strudel division, how could we be doing badly?
Exec 2: What are we going to do?
Exec 1: Well, this will sound crazy, but, we could not take exhorbitant bonuses this year for the good of the company...
(Execs 2 & 3 tie noose and immediately execute Exec 1)
Exec 2: Phwew, that was close... Without a $1 million bonus, how will I pay for my vacation home and vacation Mercedes?
Exec 3: Well, we still have to save money somewhere...
Exec 2: Don't employee salaries cost us a lot? Let's just cut those... Hey, I wonder if I can get us a tee-time for later today... (Wanders off.)
Exec 3: Ok then, so, we cut the employees salaries?
Exec 2: (On phone) Yes Mr. Fong, two at four o'clock--Hold on-- (Covers mouthpiece) What? Oh, yeah, do whatever... It's not like those people can quit, look at the job market.
Exec 3: Great, want another Cuban cigar? I'll light it with a 20...
...And when the corporate director of IT says everybody must support Windows 2004 then what?
You'll either let them on the network or polish up your resume...
As with all generalizations, there are people who don't fit the mold...Your old boss sounds pretty cool to me.
I personally have never met a non-technical manager that could even remotely cope with being the least knowledgeable person in the room by a long shot. But I'm happy to hear that SOMEBODY has... Gives me hope that maybe there are more like her out there!
I've worked in various support organizations, and feel compelled to share my recipe for a good support team, and some of the factors that I know first hand can contribute to a bad one.
1. Managers must EITHER know the product being supported, OR at least have the mental capacity to understand what the product is used for and slowly learn the product itself. (The best tech manager I ever had started off as an analyst, and knew the software inside and out. She knew what could and couldn't be done, and kept up as new modules were written. It was a dream to work for her.) If you're hiring a manager of techies and they can't do the job of the people they're managing, they aren't qualified.
2. Hire intelligence not flash. If a guy is a moron but speaks well on the phone, there's no way he's going to be a good analyst. There are classes at community college to teach public speaking and diction to your "nerdy quiet types" (not to mention clubs like Toastmasters), but nobody can make you smarter than you really are. In these situations, I would refer the flashy not-smart guy's resume to the SALES department.
3. Pay a good salary. Not a "competitive" salary, a good salary. Just because Joe Blow is paying $27k in a slow economy doesn't make people happy to be offered $27,500. In six months when the economy is all the way back, the $27k (and $27.5k) people will simply quit for more money elsewhere.
4. Train your people. Yes, you should be hiring people with experience and brains, but that doesn't neccessarily tranlsate to instant productivity on what your company is selling and supporting. (ESPECIALLY if you're talking about specialized proprietary software.) Effective training is the difference between success and failure for software support folks.
5. Tell the truth. Don't layoff 30% of the staff due to "economic hardships", then anounce record-breaking profits the next week. Besides being ethically questionable, it's in poor taste, and kills your team's morale faster than a 44 magnum.
6. Recognize achievements. This seems trivial, but I worked for a guy for about 7 months who didn't say ANYTHING positive to me, ever. Not once. People are VANE. When they feel like they've done something special, they need recognition for it. It's a simple fact of human existence.
Oh, and last but not least:
7. MORALE, your greatest friend or worst enemy. If your team is feeling low, they're going to do shitty work. (Or, rather, perform at just high enough level not to get fired.) Don't let them get low! If you live by rules 1-6, you'll always be maintaining high morale, not "turning around" low morale. (Three guesses which is easier, the first two don't count.)
One measely judge in the most backwards big city in America, that's who...
Having political campaigns use interactive software (e.g. video games) to spread the word only helps the cause that video games and software are protected speech! Over the years the Supremes have protected peaceful political speech in many many situations where non-political speech could've been constitutionally prohibited.
Shelley vs. Kramer, unlawful covenants cannot be enforced.
Came from a case where a bunch of lilly white folks didn't want homes in their neighborhood sold to blacks and jews. So the neighborhood association got everybody to sign contracts saying they wouldn't sell their homes to blacks or jews, lest it "lower propery values" for the whole neighborhood.
Somebody did it, got sued, and won hands down because the government doesn't enforce contracts that require illegal conduct. (FYI: It's agin the law to discriminate against people because of ethnicity in this country.)
Thank goodness for Politcal Science 130...
Recently, I'd been having some performance issues with Mac OS X on my titanium Powerbook 500. (256 meg of ram on 10.1.4)
/var/run/cron.pid, but don't quote me...)
The problem was that EVERYTHING gave me spinning beach ball. File operations, minimizing Finder windows, you name it...Even scrolling in MOzilla and IE were affected. Then I read on MacAddict that OS X needs to be left running all night so that various "cleanup" tasks can run.
Anybody who has OS X should consider leaving there machine up all night so these run... It will resolve a great many problems that you're having, and allow us to go back to bashing MS and Oracle instead of Apple...
Unix people familiar with cron should have no problem with editing the cleanups to run at a more reasonable hour than 3am, 4am, and 5am (like one when your machine will be running)... (I think the file to edit is
Alternately, if you're a regular mac user and don't feel like mucking about with the terminal, hit Version Tracker and pick up MacJanitor. It's a friendly GUI that lets to schedule your daily, weekly, and monthly jobs, or trip them manually on demand.
Since I'd used the machine, it had never been awake all night (I close the lid when I go to bed, usually before 3am...) so cron had never done anything to optimize my machine.
Now? All better. Faster than I remember 10.1.1 being...
Insight is $32,000? Somebody should tell Honda that! According to Honda's web-page the MSRP on an Insight is $20,000 for the manual transmission and 21500 for the automatic. You can get one for less if you're willing to live without air conditioning.
I tried building a Civic Hybrid on their "Build Your Own!" page and the manual transmission model started at $19,550. (With fabric seats...)
So are you just ignorant of the true cost of these vehicles or is there some other axe you're grinding that I haven't picked up on?