The came now seems to be for the companies to bring one fat pipe to the door, and get us to pay for it three times -- once for telephone service, once for cable service, and once for Internet service, at about $30-$90 per month each. I used to cheer for the Cable Cos to beat out the arrogant Telcos, but they are even worse.
So, I'm determined to pay only for the Internet pipe, and use VOIP for tel service and IP TV for tube.
The VIOP services are pretty much ready for prime time. I use Skype at my business, with a Verizon FIOS Internet service to the office. Instead of Verizon's $80 per month for a business line, I pay about $25 per year, and I can answer the phone wherever I have network access. My home service will be switched soon.
For TV, the options are falling into line, although maybe not ready for prime time. I dumped cable a year ago, joined NetFlix, and in the spare minutes that I might watch tube, I occasionally look into IPTV options. There are a number of viewers out there, including the OS Democracy (www.getdemocracy.com) which manages HDTV. There are also a bunch of what I'll call channel aggregators, which sometimes advertise themselves to the masses as "Internet Satellite". They provide a feed of hundred of channels for prices that seem to range from free to $40 per year, less than a typical CableCo charges per month. The one making the most noise now seems to be Joost. There are also many feeds available direct from the content source. I haven't yet got significant experience with any of them (it would be great to hear about anyone else's experience), but I'm quite sure this is the way it will go.
I wonder if there is a possibility of a reverse Slashdotting -- would the CableCo execs even notice if every/.er dropped cable service simultaneously?
Actually, there could easily be a legal Pantone color plugin for the GIMP, once its non-RGB / CYMK support is improved. They simply have to actually license the system.
While I agree that Pantone is not useful on the web, and that there is a lot of color drift between the camera and any screen, I cannot agree that no-one uses it.
The first time I went to have our materials printed for our trade show, the FIRST printer alerted us to a potential color problem with our files, and the FIRST thing he asked is if I could provide Pantone color specs. This happened with all three printers. Once I checked and found out for sure that GIMP was not supporting it, we went off on the color-guessing game, and fortunately got it mostly right, but the biz cards were a purple disaster.
The physical swatches are not much of a problem. You can buy a set if you need them, or you can go to any printer and sit down with their kit and your materials for a few hours, and you'll be able to specify what you want.
Even in another startup 15+ years ago, we deliberately chose quite basic colors for marketing materials to be able to use simple color setups (and avoid the then-costly 4-color setups), and we're not talking about some obscure "beautiful golden brown". We still bought the Pantone swatches so we could make exact specs, and check the results. Consequently, our marketing looked professional, and we gave the impression of being much bigger than we were, and this impression definitely helped grow the business.
I do not know where you get the impression that it is not important for a customer to be able to specify precisely what she wants, or a printer to specify precisely what he can produce. Color matching and exact specification is not just some trivial concern only for nit-picking dweebs. It is a basic communication requirement critical for reliable results.
Every industry has standard methods for specifying the work to be done or the parts. In manufacturing, one looks to standard SAE or Metric charts maintained by engineering societies. The fact that the printing world most widely uses a proprietary standard does not make it less useful or legitimate -- it still serves the purpose of providing a common language to specify the work to be done.
I just hope you don't do your coding or accounting as sloppily as you seem to do your color work. I don't know where you find your clients, but if I or my designer make a proper spec, and get back a different color on my banner, biz cards and mugs, there will be some explaining to do.
But first, I need to get on a system that I can use to get our part right, and GIMP is clearly not it, as much as I'd like it to be.
So, GIMP can do one of two things if it wants to play in the professional arena. The quickest solution would be to work a deal with Pantone to include Pandone support in GIMP. The alternative method is to develop a competing, open source, color-matching scheme, and get that propagated through the market. The latter is a nice dream, but the former is the quick route to success (and could even be a bridge to an OS color-matching system). Meanwhie, I'll be purchasing some software that can produce professional results that our printers can use.
There are two reasons I don't implement the Pantone feature myself:
1) I am no longer in the software business, I am in a business which designs and manufactures carbon composite products. Software only supports the business. I barely had the time to learn a new app, much less get up to speed on the APIs, and learn techniques of coding color display systems (my software experience was primarily in higher level programming for business apps). Beyond the projects on my desk, I've got days++ of work just getting the content prepped to make our web site not suck, and I have not even a minute for the hobbies I really love. So, I'm not likely to carve out more time to implement a feature just to get a print job done right.
Paying somebody to implement it is an interesting idea, although I haven't even got the spare time to manage it, or the funds even to outsource it to India or somewhere.
2) More importantly, even if I had the time or money and did get the code written, it would do no good. My understanding is that the GIMP managers have already decided to NOT support Pantone, because Pantone requires a licensing fee (I even read one post indicating that the support was already mostly written).
So, sadly, it isn't an option. If they decide differently, I'll certainly look again.
I think a LOT of other people would also reconsider GIMP if it got Pantone support. It is a critical feature that keeps it off the list of professional-grade applications. But I still found it quite good for web site work.
...while GIMP was quite useful for resizing and retouching photos for the web site, we ran into serious limitations as soon as we tried to produce material for printing (biz cards, trade show banners, etc.).
GIMP does not support Pantone(tm) colors, so we cannot use it for accurate color matching. This means that, even when we get the color exactly the way we want it on our screen and printer, it is likely to come out way different on a professional printer, i.e., the one your printer will likely use to print biz cards, letterhead, trade show banners, etc. For example, some of the professional HP printers are notorious for rendering what you think as blue into a purple-ish color. We end up squandering everyone's time in a guess-the-actual-color game to get even close to the color we intended.
With Pantone support, the problem is solved because we'll select the EXACT colors we want using the standard color swatches from their kit, and our printer will be able to reliably print these EXACT colors.
Since the info I've found indicates that GIMP does not even plan to support Pantone, we must switch, probably to Photoshop, if for no other reason that it is the industry standard, and we'll have a greater level of exchange and collaboration with our printers.
So, I'm sorry to say that my open-source bias has again bitten me in the arse. I knew better than to have skipped past my product research, but I just went for the OS solution. Now, I've squandered valuable time in a startup biz learning the quirks of software that will now be replaced. There, I've said it, so mod me down.
No matter how much you take suggestions, plan, and over-spec, you WILL see a day in the near future where you want to have a new and different comm line than you had first installed.
So, the first thing to do is to run conduit everywhere. This will let you easily run new wire/fiber, etc. later(it will also let a future homeowner do it, so it may improve your ultimate resale value). Plastic PVC pipe works great, and it is even a bit slippery inside to make new runs easy.
As you install the conduit, install multiple pull-strings, and label them all. Whenever you pull a new wire, also pull a new pull-string, so you will always have them ready.
Two caveats: 1) check with the Fire Inspector to see if they have any regs, as they could be concerned about the conduit creating a "chimney", so you may need to install something to prevent that. 2) You may need to use plenum grade cable, which is good anyway, since it has insulation that is tougher and more slipprey. (buy all your cable in bulk)
This conduit system will need to work for telephone, computer, cable, and audio and visual systems.
Some of these will require point-to-point systems, but a number of them will also require a central distribution/hub/multi-junction/router sort of device, and so planning a central wiring closet / hub-central is good. It should be accessible, and have ventilation. While it might be most convenient at the wiring entry in the basement, the top floor or attic is probably best in your potential flood situation.
From that closet, run conduit to every room and to most walls. You might consider several parallel conduit runs while you are in there, or at least oversize the conduit a lot, because cable bundles get fat much faster than you expect.
There are two possible exceptions to the conduit-everywhere approach, a media room and a security system.
The media room because it will have known locations, so you might not run conduit, but you might just want to run some anyway between the various I/O points, since never know when you'll want fiber to your new monitor, or something.
The security system should probably just be cheaply pre-wired with a 2-pair wire to each window and entry -- WAY easier when the walls are open. These are really basic sensors and tech. Ask a security company what is best, and run the wire while the walls are open, even if you don't plan to hook up a system (might help with resale even if you never install the system).
Once you have all the conduit, you can run what you like. Probably start with a bundle of Cat6, some 3-pair tel wire, and some coax TV cable. This covers all the basics, both for you and for a potential future owner.
Remember the labels and the pull-strings, and you will be very happy one day in the future when a weekend wire-fishing project is done in a half hour....
... to build on what I liked,and some of what I knew. Also, one of the good things about IT skills is that they can still be an asset in many other situations.
I was fortunate enough to have a bit of a nest egg when I searched for something else, so I started looking for businesses I could start. I looked around at a wide variety of things that I liked, made a few false starts (be sure to keep costs low at the outset), and then found something that combined some of my other interests and skills, and actually has some market potential. Right now I'm working (ok, slacking off) on a CAD drawing of a part we'll be making in a few days. The nice part is that while I have the opportunity to learn a huge amount about a new field that has always interested me (advanced materials and mech engineering), big parts of the biz, such as technology selection and IT infrastructure, are just second-nature.
Whatever you do, do something you like, get involved in everything, and be open to chance comments. I wound up in this biz because a friend commented that he was having a hard time finding vendors that weren't overbooked, overpriced, or both. I was interested, had another friend who could help me get started, did a some research, and... I might not have thought of it myself, but I'm happy to be here. Now, I must get back to work.
... small volumes, e.g., form a specailty store, and also how does it handle Giffen Goods?
What is the critical mass of sales data required to get good results? Has there been any effort or success in aggregating data from a number of small retailers to give them the results to match the information power of the larger retailers? Obviously, there would have to be secure handling of the data so the risk of letting out your sales data would be outweighed by the rewards of the improved pricing data.
I'm also wondering about Giffen Goods, where a significant part of the value IS the higher price (e.g., due to exclusivity, snob appeal, etc.). Figuring out the price/demand curve for that could be most difficult, at least because these are specialty, low-volume items, almost by definition.
I completely agree. The ONLY thing it has going for it is ubiquity, or perhaps 'common-ness' would be a better word (to further imply its low status).
Unfortunately, common-ness is sometimes the trump feature, particularly when we are talking about ad-hoc joint editing of transient documents.
I think it sucks. I do and will work fairly hard and spend signifiant resources to implemnt and get people to use better solutions. However, I've learned that it it is best to not throw limitless resources into fighting that battle. Ultimately, at some point it is not worth the costs of the battle.
Yes, it is true that the only time docs should leave the computer on which they were created is when someone else is editing them, but it is also true that the only time you should breathe is when you need air.
Where I come from, people collaborate and jointly edit documents all the time, both within and between organnizations.
I've built several companies where the main product was to mmanage workflow (i.e., joint editing of documents) between organizations. Of course, this involves many more layers of organization and edit control at the document and sub-document level.
Even in companies that build something other than workflow, and don't even need such workflow management tools, people often collaboratively edit documents both within and between the organizations. We often join up with other vendors to make proposals and sales, which requires joint editing of documents. Just this week, I'm sending text back and forth with one of my customers in order to finalize literature for a trade show where we'll be jointly displaying our products (which my company fabricates and his company distributes).
It isn't that PDFs don't have their place. They are great for marketing documents, for position papers, and for contracts being joint-edited between organizations, where it is critical that no edit is overlooked (the PDF forces the other organization to specify all edits in a separate document).
But, to say that PDF is the only format that you need to exchange between organizations is just silly. I hope you don't write code with a lot of such "should never happen" assumptions.
You make many good points, but still are a tad short of the mark.
OO can indeed open most MSO files, it just fails to catch all of the formatting, or displays other minor but annoying and time-wasting incompatibilities.
Yes, MSO even has incompatibilities between versions (one of the many reasons it sucks). But at the business level, this is dealt with by using the most prevalant current version (i.e., the newest or just previous ver.). Even if they do show up with an incompatibility, they just tend to say "well, I sent it from Word", and everyone feels OK about it, and just blaming MS. The biz guys don't want to be perceived as the odd one out, trying to impose something that is inconvenient to their partners. Yes, I agree that technically, MS-MS incompatibilities are worse, and should be reason enough to reject them.
However, in biz and politics, it is often the case that perception is reality. In this case, even if they are sending incompatible files, or calling back about receiving incompatible files, that is OK, if they are using the standard, which in this case is MS. Sad, but true.
This same logic will work to OO's advantage if they ever get to be the standard. Do do this, they will have to be CLEARLY BETTER for several years. Being 'good enough' is not good enough.
Of course, this won't keep me from using OO as long as it works for us, and making some efforts to push it.
Lack of knowledge may sometimes be the cause, but not always.
I use the OO apps every day on my machines. They are pretty good, the price is right, and I prefer to avoid the MS tax where possible. I also think MS Word sucks because it tries to do WAY too much for me (turn off all that crap, and just let me write!), and I think Excel 3 was the best version (very nice but still lean).
Yet, in most recent software company I co-founded and served as CTO (building self-service web apps), we made a decision to use MS Office instead.
Why? Compatibility. The business-side partners, while sympathetic to the open source cause, and certainly liking the price, were emphatic that they needed to frequently exchange files with suppliers and customers. I would have liked to make the case for OO, but I could easily find files in Word, Excel and PowerPoint that OO would fail to properly display or edit. So, with these inconvenient facts, I agreed that MS Office was the way to go.
Am I disgusted with MS practices in making compatibility so difficult? Absolutely. But I still needed to make decisions based on the actual facts on the ground, not the ideal that OO will (someday) be fully compatible. We had a company to build and needed the best, most cost-effective tools to get the work done, even if we are being oppressed by a monopoly compatiility issue.
A few years later, my current startup is in development and fabrication of high-performance composite products. We are starting out with OO, and compatibility is better, and MS Office is even more bloated, but I have a suspicion that the same decision will ultimately be made again.
Either way, neither decision will have been made from ignorance, and certainly not from any kind of "nobody got fired for buying XYZ" attitude.
I completely agree with the parent post. Self-diagnosis is fraught with problems, and will generally lead to false positive diagnoses.
It turns out that this is also a common problem with first and second year medical students, as I found out from two separate friends who went through it.
Medical students spend most of their long waking hours reading about new (to them) diseases, syndromes, collections of symptoms. Naturally, their brains, being good at pattern-matching, find patterns in the quirks of their own experience, leading them to conclude that they have lived with some previously undiagnosed disease. Of course, this is not the case, but that doesn't stop it from happening to every new class of med students.
I even fell prey to the same thing when all the articles on Asperger's started flying around about 5 years ago, thinking: "OMG, I have this, and this, and this, and I score very highly on this survey, blah, blah, blah". Then, I think and observe some more, remember my med school friends, and read accounts like the parent, and realize that I'm just confused. Nevermind.
"oh come on... like NO ONE in the Boston Police has seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Remember.. these were in a few different cities and only Boston's Police department were dumb enough to confuse them for bombs."
I'm sure someone in the force probably had seen it, but the entire force didn't go out and inspect them - probably only four did. The entire force isn't in on that call, and they certinly don't have all the info at that minute.
Consider how it actually plays out. Several hours after a half-dozen people were arrested in London on a terrorist plot, they get a series of four 911 calls within an hour about devices on bridges and near a hospital. They send a few officers out to the site to see what is up. Now, the officers all call in that they see some device with LEDs, batteries, wires, and circuit boards. They don't take them down and inspect them in detail, both out of common sense (don't mess with stuff when you don't know what it is), and probably SOP to not screw up potential evidence, and to leave it for the specialists.
Now, given that situaion, as the officer on site, or the supervisor hearing all four reports confirmed, of unrecognized electronic devices placed in key strategic locations around the city, -- ARE YOU REALLY going to make the call that "nah, nevermind, it's just junk". You potentially only have minutes to react; you may already be too late. Think for a second how you'd be rightly pilloried if someting did blow up and you had called "nevermind". You do not have the luxury of time to figure out who might have put it up there and why, what product might be being marketed, verify their story, etc. -- you need to figure out NOW whether or not it is a threat.
The only thing to do is to send in an expert to find out WTF those things ACTUALLY are, even if they look like they could be innocuous. Even if one of the officers had recognized it as looking like some kind of marketing, what's to say that it isn't just a cover for a wireless relay/trigger for something further under the bridges?
Now, I'd say exactly exactly the opposite if they marketers had put ANY identifying marks on there. Just a tiny sticker with "Interference marketing / 123 main street/ anytown MA / 617-345-6789" would do.
With that, and 10 (hectic) minutes, the cops could verify that they were actually put there by a marketing firm, that it was a bona fide firm with a lease for X years, their clients were Turner, ABC, Etc., and that their clients could verify that they were who they said they were, etc. But, there was no such info to even start such an investigation, and no time to guess.
I also consider that these so-called marketers are supposed to be professionals at anticipating people's reactions to their actions. The entire purpose of the device is to generate a reaction. It seems that they could also have anticipated that security people would react to a set of *unknown* devices in key strategic locations as a threat, and done something simple to mitigate that, such as putting on a tag, or calling in a notice. But they didn't. If they had, and the cops ignored it, then, I'd be in the front of the line berating them for not doing their job, but in this case, they did the right thing.
"Gee.. those lite brites look like a character from Aqua Teen Hunger Force (someone in the department must have known that) maby we should call up cartoon network to see if they know anything about this. *ring* *ring* Cartoon Network: Hello? Boston Police: Hi, this is the Boston Police did you put up lite brites around out city? Cartoon Network: Yes we did.. its a part of our advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Boston Police: Oh ok, we were just making sure they weren't bombs. Cartoon Network: No no.. nothing explosive about them. Boston Police: Thanks a lot, we didn't want to shutdown transportation all over the city over some stupid lite brites. Cartoon Network: Yeah, that would have made you look like dumb pieces of shit. Boston Police: Yes it would have."
The scenario you describe is perfect, EXCEPT for one thing. The marketing geniuses who put it up did not bother to include on the devices ANY kind of identifyng information. If they had, I would agree with you completely.
But, as it actually happened, what were the cops on the ground supposed to to with four 911 calls within an hour and finding 3 of these devices on the most strategically located bridges (and fiber-optic conduits) in Boston and the other near a hospital? Maybe the thing itself doesn't look like a bomb, but why couldn't it just be one component of a wireless trigger system?
Perhaps report back that "it might be suspicious, or it might look a bit like some character in some show my teenaager watched once, so you better send out the marketing analysis experts before we call the bomb squad.".
Remember this was a very low-res pixel graphic with no identifying info meant to be obscure for a targeted audience. It wasn't like it flashed letters for national brands like "Coke" or even a local one like "Joe's Pizza".
While I usually find myself very much on the anti-authority side of the argument, in this case, they were doing their jobs exactly right. Call the bemb experts, clear the area, let them figure out what it is, and call the "All Clear" when it is ok.
There may be abuses, overcharges, and skewed payouts, but saying the nobody of some profession should ever earn more than $X per hour is absurd.
What you say is equivalent to some PHB saying that no programmer or system designer should ever earn more than $50 per hour.
In fact, some should earn much less, and some much more. Hourly rates are really just a shorthand in the capitalist system for how quickly you generate value.
I've got considerable experience in software and corp management, and so often had to deal with lawyers, mostly on IP and contract issues. As I worked with them, I was intrigued to find out how much the work resembled software development. In both arenas, one needs to evaluate the scope of the project, anticipate the opportunities, obstacles, and pitfalls, then design a structure that will handle all these cases. Once a overall plan and structure is selected, then the detailed modules or sections are crafted using custom code or language where necessary, and reusing pre-tested code or language where possible. SW Developers use the languages chosen for the project, and Lawyers use the English language and Terms of Art. Both professions have barely competent people at the bottom and utterly brialliant people at the top. Both have utter scumbags who should be shot on sight (spammers, spyware, or scammers), and others whose wisdom is a national treasure. Both professions have trivial problems handled mostly by cut-and-paste, and incredibly complex problems.
When given an interesting problem in their domain, the lower ones will take almost forever to come up with a bad answer, and the top ones will give a great answer almost off the top of their heads. This is what makes the good ones worth FAR more than the average, and the average ones worth more than amaterus on the street.
Assume a billable rate of $150 per hour, which is more than the average general practice firm charges, but far less than the $300+ that big city specialist firms charge for their most experienced people. At the $150 rate, it takes only 4834 billable hours to to get to $725K, and that is excluding expenses (expert witnesses, courier services, etc.).
With 2000 work hours per year, that is less than three attnys full time for a year. With a case that complicated, and testing a new law (so they REALLY want to get it right to set the good prescedent), this doesn't seem unreasonable.
Of course, I'm sure he doesn't get a discount, or get to nit-pick the bill either.
"...Today, archaeologists are doing digs to understand how people lived only 150 years ago, making guesses based on the random bits and pieces of peoples' lives that they find In the future, that won't be necessary, as archaeologists are replaced by anthropologists that mine this treasure trove for data."
Incredibly valuable resource? Yes. Excellent cross-cultrual-reference (a la Rosetta Stone)? Yes. Outstanding resource to create a partial context on other facts? Definitely. fundamentally new and useful type of resource for researchers investigating tins century not available to those investigating earlier centuries? Absolutely
Complete fact base? NO. Replacement for physical archaeology? NFW.
Just the statement in the intro that digs are being done for research into 150 years ago demonstrates the point. There were plenty of books and encyclopedias from that time that survive, and create the same kind of context and cross-cultrual-references. Yet they still have to dig.
It is a good point that Wikipedia is a new type of esource, but this sounds like the geek version of the flat earth society -- "everything revolves around where I stand".
The fact that more screen real estate leads to more productivity has been obvious to me for a very long time, and I didn't need trivializing studies like that to know it. As soon as 21" monitors got down under $1700, I insisted on 21" screens with 75Hz vertical refresh rate as a MINIMUM spec for all developers, and anyone who had to deal with big spreadsheets, graphics, or documents (to see two full pages side-by-side). Finance guys would grumble, but not for long, and noone ever complained once they had theirs.
This 30" screen is heading in the right direction, but is not there yet. Same for dual monitors. Using small monitors (and 30" or dual is still small) is like being forced to work in a vast space through a small porthole.
What we really need is an affordable single screen about 60" wide and 25" tall, preferably gently curved aound the viewer so that all points are relatively equidistant from the eyes. Somewhat like a digital drafting table (except for the curve). Easy to use, and doesn't get in the way of your work.
I can also see arguments for a full quarter-sphere or hemisphere video setup, essentially a full field of vision, like an airplane cockpit. But even if video real-estate becomes as cheap as newsprint, I'm not sure that it would be worth the floor space.
Cedit checking employees and potential hires is a tool. Like any other tool, it can be used well or abused. It is also definitely necessary as recommendations from previous employers have been *USELESS* for more than a decade.
I've personally seen, both as an employee observing co-workers and employer observing employees, that there are strong (but not 100%) correlations between working effectivelly and maintining good credit (which is not about being rich, it is about being organized).
The good employers will use this as one of many tools to evaluate employees, examining it both in context and in detail. For example, if I find errors in a resume and cover letter, that is already a strike, and if it correlated with a bad credit score, then why would I expect to get good results from this person? I would also notice that when all other indicators are good, but there is a bad credit score, that this could be a hardship circumstance that I should examine.
OTOH, many HR departments will look at only a FICO score, and just eliminate anyone under X. This is not only unfair, but also STUPID, as it wrongly eliminates many potentially excellent employees. I wouldn't want to work for such an organization.
Good point, the shareholders are indeed only one of the groups among customers, peers, etc. that any manager must consider. I completely agree that the stockholders should be taken care of in a secondary manner, e.g., the aphorism "take care of the customers and the stock price will take care of itself".
However, my point is about theft, not about who is my highest priority. Just because I don't put someone in first priority, doesn't mean that I think it is OK to steal from them. Taken in the context of a response, your post could seem to argue that it is OK to steal from the stockholders because they are of secondary importance compared to customers and peers. I certainly disagree with that.
I might hire a manager whose sole job is to increase customer satisfaction, or a Tech whose sole job is to improve our knowledge management effectiveness. But, the minute I discovereed and confirmed that they were stealing from my company, they'd be fired, and prosecuted if it was major. That doesn't mean that I'd 'piss on them' to boost the share price or dividend.
"But who is this protecting, exactly?... I don't know who the injured party is here."
The injured party is the people you work for. Remember the stockholders? They are the people who actually own the company for which you work.
When you backdated the options and failed to report it (the key part here, backdating with proper accounting is usually legal), you stole that extra value from the other stockholders.
Just because you stole it 5+ years ago, and/or you only stole a little from each other stockholder, you still stole it.
This idiot is a disgrace to the entire tech industry. There is enough money to be made to do it honestly; if you have to cheat like that, you are both incompetent as well as dishonest.
The SEC is doing exactly right thing, and should specifically investigate this CEO and his crew.
After decades building small growth companies in the software industry, I'm now building another start-up in a different high-technology area. Search based advertising would be IDEAL for our market, and our start-up company size. But the threat of click-fraud keeps us out. Here's why.
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said about click fraud is that "there is a perfect economic solution which is to let it happen.". The idea is that the price of advertising would eventually settle to an equilibirum, discounting the average rate of click fraud. E.g., if half the clicks were fraudlent, advertisers would be willing to pay half the rate, etc.
This is a good argument, but it is fatally flawed, because there is not a steady average rate of click fraud. It might be true if the only kind of click fraud was scammers trying to drive up their own ad display revenue. This type of fraud could even out to some average, which is easily accounted for by an average discount.
However, the bigger threat is targeted click fraud -- a competitor trying to drive up my costs, or a click-farmer just happening to post ad pages focusing on my market.
These targeted attacks could easily kill us overnight, by turning 10K budget into a $100K bill, or by depleting a capped budget and taking my ads 'off the air'. Either way, it is a complete waste. Worse, this waste is completely unpredictable, I might enjoy low rates and good business, or I might be shot; it is really like Russian Roulette.
This tunable targeted ad model has awsome potential for small startup companies, where the broad image/impression advertising campaigns of major brands make no sense for them. Sadly, the click-fraud seriously poisons the well. You can see it in Google's ad revenues starting to flatten last quarter .
If Google actually solves the click-fraud problem, I'll not only use AdSense, I'll also buy their stock. I expect that many others will also start using it once it can be trusted, and their revenue will grow prodigiously. Until that, I'm using other methods.
"I wouldn't consider doing heart surgery on my brother who had a heart attack"
This is not heart surgery, it is a consumer product. It performs commonly used functions in a standard way, within standard capabilities. One should not need to hire an expert for common consumer grade functions (even when there is an incredible amount of technology 'under the covers').
In the early days of automobiles, it was necessary to hire a driver because driving was complicated and dangerous -- you could break your arm if you got it wrong starting it, and you had to manage spark advance and several other long-since-automated controls in addition to the throttle, brake and clutch. Now, hardly anyone even knows what is under the hood.
In early networking, there were many protocols, and IP addresses were set by hand. It is now approaching the point where it is a plug-and-play product, and this is GOOD.
Progress is not only making the previously impossible, possible -- progress is also making the previously difficult, easy.
Technologists who understand this will have more and happier customers. Technologists who don't are almost as bad as Luddites in holding back technology.
The GP post is absolutely right -- the top-level UI should hide functions that are not commonly changed, and make clear what should be changed ("YourNetworkNameHere" is a GREAT idea). Uncommon, expert level functions should be available, but only via deeper UI levels.
Yes, but there's nothing much new with the Tesla car -- engines are generally so well muffled that most car noise is from the tires and wind. Stand near a road and listen; unless you are standing on an uphill or acceleration section, the sound isn't that different from a car coasting at speed. And, cars will continue to get quieter, regardless of the Tesla car. noise==inefficiency and efficiency is the key to engineering cars today.
Of course, it has been pointed out many times, including in the article, that speakers and selected sounds are easy (and fun) to add.
Yes, I read that too (posted elsewhere), and I think the meaning is ambiguous. Certainly, anyone can make a policy to refuse to accept unreasonably small or large denomination cash.
However, even where no State law applied, I'm not sure that you could simply refuse *ALL* US Currency. And, it looks like one needs to do so as a policy, not arbitrarily or capriciously.
E.g., if you owed me $56, and offered in person to give me a US Fifty, a US Five and a US One dollar note for the debt and I refused that payment and insisted that you pay with a MasterCard, I think you'd have a pretty good case that I'd waived any right to collect the debt.
Are ther any lawyers out there that have more detail, or access to Nexis or Westlaw to find some applicable case law for us?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree completely.
/.er dropped cable service simultaneously?
The came now seems to be for the companies to bring one fat pipe to the door, and get us to pay for it three times -- once for telephone service, once for cable service, and once for Internet service, at about $30-$90 per month each. I used to cheer for the Cable Cos to beat out the arrogant Telcos, but they are even worse.
So, I'm determined to pay only for the Internet pipe, and use VOIP for tel service and IP TV for tube.
The VIOP services are pretty much ready for prime time. I use Skype at my business, with a Verizon FIOS Internet service to the office. Instead of Verizon's $80 per month for a business line, I pay about $25 per year, and I can answer the phone wherever I have network access. My home service will be switched soon.
For TV, the options are falling into line, although maybe not ready for prime time. I dumped cable a year ago, joined NetFlix, and in the spare minutes that I might watch tube, I occasionally look into IPTV options. There are a number of viewers out there, including the OS Democracy (www.getdemocracy.com) which manages HDTV. There are also a bunch of what I'll call channel aggregators, which sometimes advertise themselves to the masses as "Internet Satellite". They provide a feed of hundred of channels for prices that seem to range from free to $40 per year, less than a typical CableCo charges per month. The one making the most noise now seems to be Joost. There are also many feeds available direct from the content source. I haven't yet got significant experience with any of them (it would be great to hear about anyone else's experience), but I'm quite sure this is the way it will go.
I wonder if there is a possibility of a reverse Slashdotting -- would the CableCo execs even notice if every
Actually, there could easily be a legal Pantone color plugin for the GIMP, once its non-RGB / CYMK support is improved. They simply have to actually license the system.
While I agree that Pantone is not useful on the web, and that there is a lot of color drift between the camera and any screen, I cannot agree that no-one uses it.
The first time I went to have our materials printed for our trade show, the FIRST printer alerted us to a potential color problem with our files, and the FIRST thing he asked is if I could provide Pantone color specs. This happened with all three printers. Once I checked and found out for sure that GIMP was not supporting it, we went off on the color-guessing game, and fortunately got it mostly right, but the biz cards were a purple disaster.
The physical swatches are not much of a problem. You can buy a set if you need them, or you can go to any printer and sit down with their kit and your materials for a few hours, and you'll be able to specify what you want.
Even in another startup 15+ years ago, we deliberately chose quite basic colors for marketing materials to be able to use simple color setups (and avoid the then-costly 4-color setups), and we're not talking about some obscure "beautiful golden brown". We still bought the Pantone swatches so we could make exact specs, and check the results. Consequently, our marketing looked professional, and we gave the impression of being much bigger than we were, and this impression definitely helped grow the business.
I do not know where you get the impression that it is not important for a customer to be able to specify precisely what she wants, or a printer to specify precisely what he can produce. Color matching and exact specification is not just some trivial concern only for nit-picking dweebs. It is a basic communication requirement critical for reliable results.
Every industry has standard methods for specifying the work to be done or the parts. In manufacturing, one looks to standard SAE or Metric charts maintained by engineering societies. The fact that the printing world most widely uses a proprietary standard does not make it less useful or legitimate -- it still serves the purpose of providing a common language to specify the work to be done.
I just hope you don't do your coding or accounting as sloppily as you seem to do your color work. I don't know where you find your clients, but if I or my designer make a proper spec, and get back a different color on my banner, biz cards and mugs, there will be some explaining to do.
But first, I need to get on a system that I can use to get our part right, and GIMP is clearly not it, as much as I'd like it to be.
So, GIMP can do one of two things if it wants to play in the professional arena. The quickest solution would be to work a deal with Pantone to include Pandone support in GIMP. The alternative method is to develop a competing, open source, color-matching scheme, and get that propagated through the market. The latter is a nice dream, but the former is the quick route to success (and could even be a bridge to an OS color-matching system). Meanwhie, I'll be purchasing some software that can produce professional results that our printers can use.
There are two reasons I don't implement the Pantone feature myself:
1) I am no longer in the software business, I am in a business which designs and manufactures carbon composite products. Software only supports the business. I barely had the time to learn a new app, much less get up to speed on the APIs, and learn techniques of coding color display systems (my software experience was primarily in higher level programming for business apps). Beyond the projects on my desk, I've got days++ of work just getting the content prepped to make our web site not suck, and I have not even a minute for the hobbies I really love. So, I'm not likely to carve out more time to implement a feature just to get a print job done right.
Paying somebody to implement it is an interesting idea, although I haven't even got the spare time to manage it, or the funds even to outsource it to India or somewhere.
2) More importantly, even if I had the time or money and did get the code written, it would do no good. My understanding is that the GIMP managers have already decided to NOT support Pantone, because Pantone requires a licensing fee (I even read one post indicating that the support was already mostly written).
So, sadly, it isn't an option. If they decide differently, I'll certainly look again.
I think a LOT of other people would also reconsider GIMP if it got Pantone support. It is a critical feature that keeps it off the list of professional-grade applications. But I still found it quite good for web site work.
...while GIMP was quite useful for resizing and retouching photos for the web site, we ran into serious limitations as soon as we tried to produce material for printing (biz cards, trade show banners, etc.).
GIMP does not support Pantone(tm) colors, so we cannot use it for accurate color matching. This means that, even when we get the color exactly the way we want it on our screen and printer, it is likely to come out way different on a professional printer, i.e., the one your printer will likely use to print biz cards, letterhead, trade show banners, etc. For example, some of the professional HP printers are notorious for rendering what you think as blue into a purple-ish color. We end up squandering everyone's time in a guess-the-actual-color game to get even close to the color we intended.
With Pantone support, the problem is solved because we'll select the EXACT colors we want using the standard color swatches from their kit, and our printer will be able to reliably print these EXACT colors.
Since the info I've found indicates that GIMP does not even plan to support Pantone, we must switch, probably to Photoshop, if for no other reason that it is the industry standard, and we'll have a greater level of exchange and collaboration with our printers.
So, I'm sorry to say that my open-source bias has again bitten me in the arse. I knew better than to have skipped past my product research, but I just went for the OS solution. Now, I've squandered valuable time in a startup biz learning the quirks of software that will now be replaced. There, I've said it, so mod me down.
CONDUIT.
Everywhere.
No matter how much you take suggestions, plan, and over-spec, you WILL see a day in the near future where you want to have a new and different comm line than you had first installed.
So, the first thing to do is to run conduit everywhere. This will let you easily run new wire/fiber, etc. later(it will also let a future homeowner do it, so it may improve your ultimate resale value). Plastic PVC pipe works great, and it is even a bit slippery inside to make new runs easy.
As you install the conduit, install multiple pull-strings, and label them all. Whenever you pull a new wire, also pull a new pull-string, so you will always have them ready.
Two caveats: 1) check with the Fire Inspector to see if they have any regs, as they could be concerned about the conduit creating a "chimney", so you may need to install something to prevent that. 2) You may need to use plenum grade cable, which is good anyway, since it has insulation that is tougher and more slipprey. (buy all your cable in bulk)
This conduit system will need to work for telephone, computer, cable, and audio and visual systems.
Some of these will require point-to-point systems, but a number of them will also require a central distribution/hub/multi-junction/router sort of device, and so planning a central wiring closet / hub-central is good. It should be accessible, and have ventilation. While it might be most convenient at the wiring entry in the basement, the top floor or attic is probably best in your potential flood situation.
From that closet, run conduit to every room and to most walls. You might consider several parallel conduit runs while you are in there, or at least oversize the conduit a lot, because cable bundles get fat much faster than you expect.
There are two possible exceptions to the conduit-everywhere approach, a media room and a security system.
The media room because it will have known locations, so you might not run conduit, but you might just want to run some anyway between the various I/O points, since never know when you'll want fiber to your new monitor, or something.
The security system should probably just be cheaply pre-wired with a 2-pair wire to each window and entry -- WAY easier when the walls are open. These are really basic sensors and tech. Ask a security company what is best, and run the wire while the walls are open, even if you don't plan to hook up a system (might help with resale even if you never install the system).
Once you have all the conduit, you can run what you like. Probably start with a bundle of Cat6, some 3-pair tel wire, and some coax TV cable. This covers all the basics, both for you and for a potential future owner.
Remember the labels and the pull-strings, and you will be very happy one day in the future when a weekend wire-fishing project is done in a half hour....
And Good Luck with your new house!
... to build on what I liked,and some of what I knew. Also, one of the good things about IT skills is that they can still be an asset in many other situations.
I was fortunate enough to have a bit of a nest egg when I searched for something else, so I started looking for businesses I could start. I looked around at a wide variety of things that I liked, made a few false starts (be sure to keep costs low at the outset), and then found something that combined some of my other interests and skills, and actually has some market potential. Right now I'm working (ok, slacking off) on a CAD drawing of a part we'll be making in a few days. The nice part is that while I have the opportunity to learn a huge amount about a new field that has always interested me (advanced materials and mech engineering), big parts of the biz, such as technology selection and IT infrastructure, are just second-nature.
Whatever you do, do something you like, get involved in everything, and be open to chance comments. I wound up in this biz because a friend commented that he was having a hard time finding vendors that weren't overbooked, overpriced, or both. I was interested, had another friend who could help me get started, did a some research, and... I might not have thought of it myself, but I'm happy to be here. Now, I must get back to work.
GOOD LUCK!!
... small volumes, e.g., form a specailty store, and also how does it handle Giffen Goods?
What is the critical mass of sales data required to get good results? Has there been any effort or success in aggregating data from a number of small retailers to give them the results to match the information power of the larger retailers? Obviously, there would have to be secure handling of the data so the risk of letting out your sales data would be outweighed by the rewards of the improved pricing data.
I'm also wondering about Giffen Goods, where a significant part of the value IS the higher price (e.g., due to exclusivity, snob appeal, etc.). Figuring out the price/demand curve for that could be most difficult, at least because these are specialty, low-volume items, almost by definition.
I completely agree. The ONLY thing it has going for it is ubiquity, or perhaps 'common-ness' would be a better word (to further imply its low status).
Unfortunately, common-ness is sometimes the trump feature, particularly when we are talking about ad-hoc joint editing of transient documents.
I think it sucks. I do and will work fairly hard and spend signifiant resources to implemnt and get people to use better solutions. However, I've learned that it it is best to not throw limitless resources into fighting that battle. Ultimately, at some point it is not worth the costs of the battle.
Yes, it is true that the only time docs should leave the computer on which they were created is when someone else is editing them, but it is also true that the only time you should breathe is when you need air.
Where I come from, people collaborate and jointly edit documents all the time, both within and between organnizations.
I've built several companies where the main product was to mmanage workflow (i.e., joint editing of documents) between organizations. Of course, this involves many more layers of organization and edit control at the document and sub-document level.
Even in companies that build something other than workflow, and don't even need such workflow management tools, people often collaboratively edit documents both within and between the organizations. We often join up with other vendors to make proposals and sales, which requires joint editing of documents. Just this week, I'm sending text back and forth with one of my customers in order to finalize literature for a trade show where we'll be jointly displaying our products (which my company fabricates and his company distributes).
It isn't that PDFs don't have their place. They are great for marketing documents, for position papers, and for contracts being joint-edited between organizations, where it is critical that no edit is overlooked (the PDF forces the other organization to specify all edits in a separate document).
But, to say that PDF is the only format that you need to exchange between organizations is just silly. I hope you don't write code with a lot of such "should never happen" assumptions.
You make many good points, but still are a tad short of the mark.
OO can indeed open most MSO files, it just fails to catch all of the formatting, or displays other minor but annoying and time-wasting incompatibilities.
Yes, MSO even has incompatibilities between versions (one of the many reasons it sucks). But at the business level, this is dealt with by using the most prevalant current version (i.e., the newest or just previous ver.). Even if they do show up with an incompatibility, they just tend to say "well, I sent it from Word", and everyone feels OK about it, and just blaming MS. The biz guys don't want to be perceived as the odd one out, trying to impose something that is inconvenient to their partners. Yes, I agree that technically, MS-MS incompatibilities are worse, and should be reason enough to reject them.
However, in biz and politics, it is often the case that perception is reality. In this case, even if they are sending incompatible files, or calling back about receiving incompatible files, that is OK, if they are using the standard, which in this case is MS. Sad, but true.
This same logic will work to OO's advantage if they ever get to be the standard. Do do this, they will have to be CLEARLY BETTER for several years. Being 'good enough' is not good enough.
Of course, this won't keep me from using OO as long as it works for us, and making some efforts to push it.
Lack of knowledge may sometimes be the cause, but not always.
I use the OO apps every day on my machines. They are pretty good, the price is right, and I prefer to avoid the MS tax where possible. I also think MS Word sucks because it tries to do WAY too much for me (turn off all that crap, and just let me write!), and I think Excel 3 was the best version (very nice but still lean).
Yet, in most recent software company I co-founded and served as CTO (building self-service web apps), we made a decision to use MS Office instead.
Why? Compatibility. The business-side partners, while sympathetic to the open source cause, and certainly liking the price, were emphatic that they needed to frequently exchange files with suppliers and customers. I would have liked to make the case for OO, but I could easily find files in Word, Excel and PowerPoint that OO would fail to properly display or edit. So, with these inconvenient facts, I agreed that MS Office was the way to go.
Am I disgusted with MS practices in making compatibility so difficult? Absolutely. But I still needed to make decisions based on the actual facts on the ground, not the ideal that OO will (someday) be fully compatible. We had a company to build and needed the best, most cost-effective tools to get the work done, even if we are being oppressed by a monopoly compatiility issue.
A few years later, my current startup is in development and fabrication of high-performance composite products. We are starting out with OO, and compatibility is better, and MS Office is even more bloated, but I have a suspicion that the same decision will ultimately be made again.
Either way, neither decision will have been made from ignorance, and certainly not from any kind of "nobody got fired for buying XYZ" attitude.
I completely agree with the parent post. Self-diagnosis is fraught with problems, and will generally lead to false positive diagnoses.
It turns out that this is also a common problem with first and second year medical students, as I found out from two separate friends who went through it.
Medical students spend most of their long waking hours reading about new (to them) diseases, syndromes, collections of symptoms. Naturally, their brains, being good at pattern-matching, find patterns in the quirks of their own experience, leading them to conclude that they have lived with some previously undiagnosed disease. Of course, this is not the case, but that doesn't stop it from happening to every new class of med students.
I even fell prey to the same thing when all the articles on Asperger's started flying around about 5 years ago, thinking: "OMG, I have this, and this, and this, and I score very highly on this survey, blah, blah, blah". Then, I think and observe some more, remember my med school friends, and read accounts like the parent, and realize that I'm just confused. Nevermind.
"oh come on... like NO ONE in the Boston Police has seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Remember.. these were in a few different cities and only Boston's Police department were dumb enough to confuse them for bombs."
I'm sure someone in the force probably had seen it, but the entire force didn't go out and inspect them - probably only four did. The entire force isn't in on that call, and they certinly don't have all the info at that minute.
Consider how it actually plays out. Several hours after a half-dozen people were arrested in London on a terrorist plot, they get a series of four 911 calls within an hour about devices on bridges and near a hospital. They send a few officers out to the site to see what is up. Now, the officers all call in that they see some device with LEDs, batteries, wires, and circuit boards. They don't take them down and inspect them in detail, both out of common sense (don't mess with stuff when you don't know what it is), and probably SOP to not screw up potential evidence, and to leave it for the specialists.
Now, given that situaion, as the officer on site, or the supervisor hearing all four reports confirmed, of unrecognized electronic devices placed in key strategic locations around the city, -- ARE YOU REALLY going to make the call that "nah, nevermind, it's just junk". You potentially only have minutes to react; you may already be too late. Think for a second how you'd be rightly pilloried if someting did blow up and you had called "nevermind". You do not have the luxury of time to figure out who might have put it up there and why, what product might be being marketed, verify their story, etc. -- you need to figure out NOW whether or not it is a threat.
The only thing to do is to send in an expert to find out WTF those things ACTUALLY are, even if they look like they could be innocuous. Even if one of the officers had recognized it as looking like some kind of marketing, what's to say that it isn't just a cover for a wireless relay/trigger for something further under the bridges?
Now, I'd say exactly exactly the opposite if they marketers had put ANY identifying marks on there. Just a tiny sticker with "Interference marketing / 123 main street/ anytown MA / 617-345-6789" would do.
With that, and 10 (hectic) minutes, the cops could verify that they were actually put there by a marketing firm, that it was a bona fide firm with a lease for X years, their clients were Turner, ABC, Etc., and that their clients could verify that they were who they said they were, etc. But, there was no such info to even start such an investigation, and no time to guess.
I also consider that these so-called marketers are supposed to be professionals at anticipating people's reactions to their actions. The entire purpose of the device is to generate a reaction. It seems that they could also have anticipated that security people would react to a set of *unknown* devices in key strategic locations as a threat, and done something simple to mitigate that, such as putting on a tag, or calling in a notice. But they didn't. If they had, and the cops ignored it, then, I'd be in the front of the line berating them for not doing their job, but in this case, they did the right thing.
"Gee.. those lite brites look like a character from Aqua Teen Hunger Force (someone in the department must have known that) maby we should call up cartoon network to see if they know anything about this. *ring* *ring* Cartoon Network: Hello? Boston Police: Hi, this is the Boston Police did you put up lite brites around out city? Cartoon Network: Yes we did.. its a part of our advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Boston Police: Oh ok, we were just making sure they weren't bombs. Cartoon Network: No no.. nothing explosive about them. Boston Police: Thanks a lot, we didn't want to shutdown transportation all over the city over some stupid lite brites. Cartoon Network: Yeah, that would have made you look like dumb pieces of shit. Boston Police: Yes it would have."
The scenario you describe is perfect, EXCEPT for one thing. The marketing geniuses who put it up did not bother to include on the devices ANY kind of identifyng information. If they had, I would agree with you completely.
But, as it actually happened, what were the cops on the ground supposed to to with four 911 calls within an hour and finding 3 of these devices on the most strategically located bridges (and fiber-optic conduits) in Boston and the other near a hospital? Maybe the thing itself doesn't look like a bomb, but why couldn't it just be one component of a wireless trigger system?
Perhaps report back that "it might be suspicious, or it might look a bit like some character in some show my teenaager watched once, so you better send out the marketing analysis experts before we call the bomb squad.".
Remember this was a very low-res pixel graphic with no identifying info meant to be obscure for a targeted audience. It wasn't like it flashed letters for national brands like "Coke" or even a local one like "Joe's Pizza".
While I usually find myself very much on the anti-authority side of the argument, in this case, they were doing their jobs exactly right. Call the bemb experts, clear the area, let them figure out what it is, and call the "All Clear" when it is ok.
There may be abuses, overcharges, and skewed payouts, but saying the nobody of some profession should ever earn more than $X per hour is absurd.
What you say is equivalent to some PHB saying that no programmer or system designer should ever earn more than $50 per hour.
In fact, some should earn much less, and some much more. Hourly rates are really just a shorthand in the capitalist system for how quickly you generate value.
I've got considerable experience in software and corp management, and so often had to deal with lawyers, mostly on IP and contract issues. As I worked with them, I was intrigued to find out how much the work resembled software development. In both arenas, one needs to evaluate the scope of the project, anticipate the opportunities, obstacles, and pitfalls, then design a structure that will handle all these cases. Once a overall plan and structure is selected, then the detailed modules or sections are crafted using custom code or language where necessary, and reusing pre-tested code or language where possible. SW Developers use the languages chosen for the project, and Lawyers use the English language and Terms of Art. Both professions have barely competent people at the bottom and utterly brialliant people at the top. Both have utter scumbags who should be shot on sight (spammers, spyware, or scammers), and others whose wisdom is a national treasure. Both professions have trivial problems handled mostly by cut-and-paste, and incredibly complex problems.
When given an interesting problem in their domain, the lower ones will take almost forever to come up with a bad answer, and the top ones will give a great answer almost off the top of their heads. This is what makes the good ones worth FAR more than the average, and the average ones worth more than amaterus on the street.
Assume a billable rate of $150 per hour, which is more than the average general practice firm charges, but far less than the $300+ that big city specialist firms charge for their most experienced people. At the $150 rate, it takes only 4834 billable hours to to get to $725K, and that is excluding expenses (expert witnesses, courier services, etc.).
With 2000 work hours per year, that is less than three attnys full time for a year. With a case that complicated, and testing a new law (so they REALLY want to get it right to set the good prescedent), this doesn't seem unreasonable.
Of course, I'm sure he doesn't get a discount, or get to nit-pick the bill either.
"...Today, archaeologists are doing digs to understand how people lived only 150 years ago, making guesses based on the random bits and pieces of peoples' lives that they find In the future, that won't be necessary, as archaeologists are replaced by anthropologists that mine this treasure trove for data."
Incredibly valuable resource? Yes. Excellent cross-cultrual-reference (a la Rosetta Stone)? Yes. Outstanding resource to create a partial context on other facts? Definitely. fundamentally new and useful type of resource for researchers investigating tins century not available to those investigating earlier centuries? Absolutely
Complete fact base? NO. Replacement for physical archaeology? NFW.
Just the statement in the intro that digs are being done for research into 150 years ago demonstrates the point. There were plenty of books and encyclopedias from that time that survive, and create the same kind of context and cross-cultrual-references. Yet they still have to dig.
It is a good point that Wikipedia is a new type of esource, but this sounds like the geek version of the flat earth society -- "everything revolves around where I stand".
The fact that more screen real estate leads to more productivity has been obvious to me for a very long time, and I didn't need trivializing studies like that to know it. As soon as 21" monitors got down under $1700, I insisted on 21" screens with 75Hz vertical refresh rate as a MINIMUM spec for all developers, and anyone who had to deal with big spreadsheets, graphics, or documents (to see two full pages side-by-side). Finance guys would grumble, but not for long, and noone ever complained once they had theirs.
This 30" screen is heading in the right direction, but is not there yet. Same for dual monitors. Using small monitors (and 30" or dual is still small) is like being forced to work in a vast space through a small porthole.
What we really need is an affordable single screen about 60" wide and 25" tall, preferably gently curved aound the viewer so that all points are relatively equidistant from the eyes. Somewhat like a digital drafting table (except for the curve). Easy to use, and doesn't get in the way of your work.
I can also see arguments for a full quarter-sphere or hemisphere video setup, essentially a full field of vision, like an airplane cockpit. But even if video real-estate becomes as cheap as newsprint, I'm not sure that it would be worth the floor space.
Cedit checking employees and potential hires is a tool. Like any other tool, it can be used well or abused. It is also definitely necessary as recommendations from previous employers have been *USELESS* for more than a decade.
I've personally seen, both as an employee observing co-workers and employer observing employees, that there are strong (but not 100%) correlations between working effectivelly and maintining good credit (which is not about being rich, it is about being organized).
The good employers will use this as one of many tools to evaluate employees, examining it both in context and in detail. For example, if I find errors in a resume and cover letter, that is already a strike, and if it correlated with a bad credit score, then why would I expect to get good results from this person? I would also notice that when all other indicators are good, but there is a bad credit score, that this could be a hardship circumstance that I should examine.
OTOH, many HR departments will look at only a FICO score, and just eliminate anyone under X. This is not only unfair, but also STUPID, as it wrongly eliminates many potentially excellent employees. I wouldn't want to work for such an organization.
Good point, the shareholders are indeed only one of the groups among customers, peers, etc. that any manager must consider. I completely agree that the stockholders should be taken care of in a secondary manner, e.g., the aphorism "take care of the customers and the stock price will take care of itself".
However, my point is about theft, not about who is my highest priority. Just because I don't put someone in first priority, doesn't mean that I think it is OK to steal from them. Taken in the context of a response, your post could seem to argue that it is OK to steal from the stockholders because they are of secondary importance compared to customers and peers. I certainly disagree with that.
I might hire a manager whose sole job is to increase customer satisfaction, or a Tech whose sole job is to improve our knowledge management effectiveness. But, the minute I discovereed and confirmed that they were stealing from my company, they'd be fired, and prosecuted if it was major. That doesn't mean that I'd 'piss on them' to boost the share price or dividend.
"But who is this protecting, exactly? ... I don't know who the injured party is here."
The injured party is the people you work for. Remember the stockholders? They are the people who actually own the company for which you work.
When you backdated the options and failed to report it (the key part here, backdating with proper accounting is usually legal), you stole that extra value from the other stockholders.
Just because you stole it 5+ years ago, and/or you only stole a little from each other stockholder, you still stole it.
This idiot is a disgrace to the entire tech industry. There is enough money to be made to do it honestly; if you have to cheat like that, you are both incompetent as well as dishonest.
The SEC is doing exactly right thing, and should specifically investigate this CEO and his crew.
After decades building small growth companies in the software industry, I'm now building another start-up in a different high-technology area. Search based advertising would be IDEAL for our market, and our start-up company size. But the threat of click-fraud keeps us out. Here's why.
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said about click fraud is that "there is a perfect economic solution which is to let it happen.". The idea is that the price of advertising would eventually settle to an equilibirum, discounting the average rate of click fraud. E.g., if half the clicks were fraudlent, advertisers would be willing to pay half the rate, etc.
This is a good argument, but it is fatally flawed, because there is not a steady average rate of click fraud. It might be true if the only kind of click fraud was scammers trying to drive up their own ad display revenue. This type of fraud could even out to some average, which is easily accounted for by an average discount.
However, the bigger threat is targeted click fraud -- a competitor trying to drive up my costs, or a click-farmer just happening to post ad pages focusing on my market.
These targeted attacks could easily kill us overnight, by turning 10K budget into a $100K bill, or by depleting a capped budget and taking my ads 'off the air'. Either way, it is a complete waste. Worse, this waste is completely unpredictable, I might enjoy low rates and good business, or I might be shot; it is really like Russian Roulette.
This tunable targeted ad model has awsome potential for small startup companies, where the broad image/impression advertising campaigns of major brands make no sense for them. Sadly, the click-fraud seriously poisons the well. You can see it in Google's ad revenues starting to flatten last quarter .
If Google actually solves the click-fraud problem, I'll not only use AdSense, I'll also buy their stock. I expect that many others will also start using it once it can be trusted, and their revenue will grow prodigiously. Until that, I'm using other methods.
"I wouldn't consider doing heart surgery on my brother who had a heart attack"
This is not heart surgery, it is a consumer product. It performs commonly used functions in a standard way, within standard capabilities. One should not need to hire an expert for common consumer grade functions (even when there is an incredible amount of technology 'under the covers').
In the early days of automobiles, it was necessary to hire a driver because driving was complicated and dangerous -- you could break your arm if you got it wrong starting it, and you had to manage spark advance and several other long-since-automated controls in addition to the throttle, brake and clutch. Now, hardly anyone even knows what is under the hood.
In early networking, there were many protocols, and IP addresses were set by hand. It is now approaching the point where it is a plug-and-play product, and this is GOOD.
Progress is not only making the previously impossible, possible -- progress is also making the previously difficult, easy.
Technologists who understand this will have more and happier customers. Technologists who don't are almost as bad as Luddites in holding back technology.
The GP post is absolutely right -- the top-level UI should hide functions that are not commonly changed, and make clear what should be changed ("YourNetworkNameHere" is a GREAT idea). Uncommon, expert level functions should be available, but only via deeper UI levels.
"I also worry, frankly, about the lack of noise."
Yes, but there's nothing much new with the Tesla car -- engines are generally so well muffled that most car noise is from the tires and wind. Stand near a road and listen; unless you are standing on an uphill or acceleration section, the sound isn't that different from a car coasting at speed. And, cars will continue to get quieter, regardless of the Tesla car. noise==inefficiency and efficiency is the key to engineering cars today.
Of course, it has been pointed out many times, including in the article, that speakers and selected sounds are easy (and fun) to add.
Yes, I read that too (posted elsewhere), and I think the meaning is ambiguous. Certainly, anyone can make a policy to refuse to accept unreasonably small or large denomination cash.
However, even where no State law applied, I'm not sure that you could simply refuse *ALL* US Currency. And, it looks like one needs to do so as a policy, not arbitrarily or capriciously.
E.g., if you owed me $56, and offered in person to give me a US Fifty, a US Five and a US One dollar note for the debt and I refused that payment and insisted that you pay with a MasterCard, I think you'd have a pretty good case that I'd waived any right to collect the debt.
Are ther any lawyers out there that have more detail, or access to Nexis or Westlaw to find some applicable case law for us?