Real world quarterly figures are compared to the year-ago quarter, not the previous quarter. If they say "up 3% this quarter, while last quarter was up 6%", they mean up 3% from this quarter last year.
If the patent fails the 'skilled in the art' test to the point of 'a 5 year old could figure it out' or 'patent was created via the Super Sekrit "...with a computer!" fortune-cookie patent creation system', then it's morally questionable to even have applied for the patent in the first place, and reprehensible to attempt to use it. Thus, they are a patent troll.
Depends on severity of problem/risk assessment of change. Problem is, once you start factoring in risk assessment of change, you can be sure that whoever does the risk assessment will assess it as low/minimal risk to get it approved quickly. Then whoever has the problem will assign it critical severity to get it done quickly. So you need to do a real sanity check review and accept that you can't fully trust your inputs.
If you're going to be updating a few million desktops around the world, take a month to get a right. But even Microsoft has a much faster process (hotfix) for limited-scope fixes that aren't goinog onto millions of desktops for important enough stuff. So yes, being completely unable to hit 2 days on an expedite/important change is pretty bad. But, you never said how important the change really was. If you are just doing something that isn't truly earth-shattering if it isn't perfect, if the cost of downtime isn't measured in $$$ per second, then you should seriously be able to trim down your timeline and process a bit here.
I've worked at a place with a normal-three-months-but-emergencies-as-fast-as-a-day-but-usually-two-days procedure, and in a place with a normal-one-week-but-emergencies-in-minutes procedure, and both seemed reasonable given the scale. I've never worked in a not-possible-at-all-in-2-days shop, but the normal-three-months place certainly would routinely refuse a 2 day request unless it was a critical impact (security, billing, or commission tracking problem, or current outage - nothing is more important than fixing your customer's bills or your salesmen's commissions, and if the system is already broken then the parts of your beuracracy that are in place to keep it from breaking no longer apply.)
This sort of thing is extremely rare in the US, we're almost entirely "Employment at will" - you can not come in tomorrow, and they can tell you to not come in tomorrow, neither side needs notice or a reason (although certain bad reasons are expressly illegal, so companies tend to be paranoid about documenting their reasons anyway). You're free to enter into other contractual terms, but very rarely does any normal salaried worker do so.
That's funny, I got the impression that refusing to stock what I want to buy and insisting that I make reservations and wait/come back later was the perfect formula for driving me to online stores and putting their bricks and mortar store out of business. Why should I pre-order with Gamestop when Amazon will have it delivered right to me?
Not nearly as simple as you say it. They were busted because they actively advertised and supported and encouraged the infringing use. For Napster for example, undermining copyright was literally written into their business plan.
No way your CC company will let you charge back more than 60 days unless maybe if you lie and claim your card was stolen, but difficult to pursue the moral high ground on that route. And then, what if they mess with one game, but not your others? You charge back that one, you lose your others too. Planning on your recourse being taking your money back after the fact is not a good plan. The best approach is to avoid DRM.
Plane crashes are scary because we feel out of control. We overestimate our own competence, so if it feels like we have some control over a situation, we assume we can handle it.
What exactly is wrong with different communities choosing to have different rules? "If you don't like it, move" is a key concept that our nation was founded on and with.
This is actually done as a BS check to try to determine that the person being interviewed really is a programmer and really does have the resume being shown. It sucks, but it's not there for age related reasons, it's because it's the quickest way they can determine that you haven't simply been coached by whoever gave you the resume.
It's not just rent and 'stuff'. Part of the problem in America is trying to deal with medical insurance during the periods of unemployment. Insurance is tied to jobs to a truly frightening degree. It is much more expensive if purchased individually, and did not used to be tax deductible if purchased individually (although it has always been tax deductible if the employer purchases it.) The tax deductibility was addressed a bit in 2004, but only for "high deductible" insurance. Choosing not to worry about it is an option, but it's a gamble, and a somewhat irresponsible one.
But I find it fascinating that they will happily provide an answer to any question, no matter how wrong it might be. It's almost like they got sales training instead of programming training.
Pay is roughly 1/2 to 2/3rds of what it would be in an easier 'corporate' job with shorter hours. Game degree won't help you get another type of job, while the converse isn't true for a regular degree - regular degree is just more flexible, you can do either if at some point in the future you change your mind about your life priorities (often happens, marriage, children, or just plain age...).
Not saying it's a deal breaker, just saying it's a real consideration.
Legally, of course they're required to honor their promises. In practice, it never reaches the government level, because if you complain they will pay you so no need to go to government. They generally rely on people not complaining to them, they will either not send in the rebate form in the first place or else send it in and then forget about it.
They are trying to make a bazillion dollars on a search engine. Search engines live or die on fair use, because they need to cache and quote other people's copyrighted work in order to get their job done and make $$$.
I don't think that quality management skills are all about dodging the tough questions. Sounds like fire her or resign were indeed the only two correct choices, everything else didn't address the root problem.
Read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, take a course on personality types (Myers Briggs) to hammer home the point that 'projecting' your own reactions won't work well because different people think differently, then resign and use your new 'Architect' resume to get a high paying job somewhere that will let you code. Seriously. Coding skills don't translate into the management sphere, so promotion = Peter Principle (or Dilbert Principle, choose your favorite) = welcome to your level of incompetence. Why stay there?
The problem is, first you say that there is no good way to tell who the better programmers are, then you say you should pay these people who you just admitted you can't readily identify more. All that ends up happening if you try it is that the bad programmers make more money too. Paying more simply doesn't ensure quality. If you had a good reliable way to measure it and tell, sure, you could pay those people more. But nothing like that exists.
PVP with clear cut goals and accomplishments? The description sounds _exactly_ like Dark Age Of Camelot. How will this game be different? Does it remove the insane grind as the chief gameplay mechanic? The fedex quest as the great innovation in improved gameplay? The constant repetition? The unbalanced-rock-paper-scissors design/constant nerf/constant whining cycle? The pick-a-"shard" dice roll that will have a huge impact on your game experience that you have to make up front with nearly zero info to base it on and can't really change later, so you better do homework before signing up to play?
Lose Europe? I thought this was their scheme to lose *everywhere*. How can I make an informed buying decision if they seem intent on lying to me constantly? The price is dropping. No it isn't. Yes it is. Not! Never. No way. Maybe. Not at all, definitely not. Hey, it just dropped. Except it is only existing stock. No it isn't...
So if Microsoft's defective product scratches a game I have paid $60+ for, I can pay another $20 to replace the game? Which their defective product will then scratch again? And you think this is a reasoanble solution?
If the disk exchange was free, maybe you would have a point.
Slashdot Mirror
Real world quarterly figures are compared to the year-ago quarter, not the previous quarter. If they say "up 3% this quarter, while last quarter was up 6%", they mean up 3% from this quarter last year.
If the patent fails the 'skilled in the art' test to the point of 'a 5 year old could figure it out' or 'patent was created via the Super Sekrit "...with a computer!" fortune-cookie patent creation system', then it's morally questionable to even have applied for the patent in the first place, and reprehensible to attempt to use it. Thus, they are a patent troll.
Depends on severity of problem/risk assessment of change. Problem is, once you start factoring in risk assessment of change, you can be sure that whoever does the risk assessment will assess it as low/minimal risk to get it approved quickly. Then whoever has the problem will assign it critical severity to get it done quickly. So you need to do a real sanity check review and accept that you can't fully trust your inputs.
If you're going to be updating a few million desktops around the world, take a month to get a right. But even Microsoft has a much faster process (hotfix) for limited-scope fixes that aren't goinog onto millions of desktops for important enough stuff. So yes, being completely unable to hit 2 days on an expedite/important change is pretty bad. But, you never said how important the change really was.
If you are just doing something that isn't truly earth-shattering if it isn't perfect, if the cost of downtime isn't measured in $$$ per second, then you should seriously be able to trim down your timeline and process a bit here.
I've worked at a place with a normal-three-months-but-emergencies-as-fast-as-a-day-but-usually-two-days procedure, and in a place with a normal-one-week-but-emergencies-in-minutes procedure, and both seemed reasonable given the scale. I've never worked in a not-possible-at-all-in-2-days shop, but the normal-three-months place certainly would routinely refuse a 2 day request unless it was a critical impact (security, billing, or commission tracking problem, or current outage - nothing is more important than fixing your customer's bills or your salesmen's commissions, and if the system is already broken then the parts of your beuracracy that are in place to keep it from breaking no longer apply.)
This sort of thing is extremely rare in the US, we're almost entirely "Employment at will" - you can not come in tomorrow, and they can tell you to not come in tomorrow, neither side needs notice or a reason (although certain bad reasons are expressly illegal, so companies tend to be paranoid about documenting their reasons anyway). You're free to enter into other contractual terms, but very rarely does any normal salaried worker do so.
That's funny, I got the impression that refusing to stock what I want to buy and insisting that I make reservations and wait/come back later was the perfect formula for driving me to online stores and putting their bricks and mortar store out of business. Why should I pre-order with Gamestop when Amazon will have it delivered right to me?
Not nearly as simple as you say it. They were busted because they actively advertised and supported and encouraged the infringing use. For Napster for example, undermining copyright was literally written into their business plan.
Magazines occasionally try this. They proceed to go out of business. Turns out, people want scores to make quicker initial judgements by.
I have to do this about once a month. It's just par for the course on Comcast. The good news is, you can do it without bothering to call support.
Really good point about taxis, I hadn't thought about those. Thanks.
No way your CC company will let you charge back more than 60 days unless maybe if you lie and claim your card was stolen, but difficult to pursue the moral high ground on that route.
And then, what if they mess with one game, but not your others? You charge back that one, you lose your others too.
Planning on your recourse being taking your money back after the fact is not a good plan. The best approach is to avoid DRM.
Plane crashes are scary because we feel out of control. We overestimate our own competence, so if it feels like we have some control over a situation, we assume we can handle it.
What exactly is wrong with different communities choosing to have different rules? "If you don't like it, move" is a key concept that our nation was founded on and with.
This is actually done as a BS check to try to determine that the person being interviewed really is a programmer and really does have the resume being shown. It sucks, but it's not there for age related reasons, it's because it's the quickest way they can determine that you haven't simply been coached by whoever gave you the resume.
It's not just rent and 'stuff'. Part of the problem in America is trying to deal with medical insurance during the periods of unemployment. Insurance is tied to jobs to a truly frightening degree. It is much more expensive if purchased individually, and did not used to be tax deductible if purchased individually (although it has always been tax deductible if the employer purchases it.) The tax deductibility was addressed a bit in 2004, but only for "high deductible" insurance.
Choosing not to worry about it is an option, but it's a gamble, and a somewhat irresponsible one.
But I find it fascinating that they will happily provide an answer to any question, no matter how wrong it might be. It's almost like they got sales training instead of programming training.
Pay is roughly 1/2 to 2/3rds of what it would be in an easier 'corporate' job with shorter hours.
Game degree won't help you get another type of job, while the converse isn't true for a regular degree - regular degree is just more flexible, you can do either if at some point in the future you change your mind about your life priorities (often happens, marriage, children, or just plain age...).
Not saying it's a deal breaker, just saying it's a real consideration.
Legally, of course they're required to honor their promises.
In practice, it never reaches the government level, because if you complain they will pay you so no need to go to government. They generally rely on people not complaining to them, they will either not send in the rebate form in the first place or else send it in and then forget about it.
They are trying to make a bazillion dollars on a search engine. Search engines live or die on fair use, because they need to cache and quote other people's copyrighted work in order to get their job done and make $$$.
I don't think that quality management skills are all about dodging the tough questions. Sounds like fire her or resign were indeed the only two correct choices, everything else didn't address the root problem.
Read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, take a course on personality types (Myers Briggs) to hammer home the point that 'projecting' your own reactions won't work well because different people think differently, then resign and use your new 'Architect' resume to get a high paying job somewhere that will let you code.
Seriously. Coding skills don't translate into the management sphere, so promotion = Peter Principle (or Dilbert Principle, choose your favorite) = welcome to your level of incompetence. Why stay there?
The problem is, first you say that there is no good way to tell who the better programmers are, then you say you should pay these people who you just admitted you can't readily identify more.
All that ends up happening if you try it is that the bad programmers make more money too. Paying more simply doesn't ensure quality. If you had a good reliable way to measure it and tell, sure, you could pay those people more. But nothing like that exists.
PVP with clear cut goals and accomplishments? The description sounds _exactly_ like Dark Age Of Camelot. How will this game be different? Does it remove the insane grind as the chief gameplay mechanic? The fedex quest as the great innovation in improved gameplay? The constant repetition? The unbalanced-rock-paper-scissors design/constant nerf/constant whining cycle? The pick-a-"shard" dice roll that will have a huge impact on your game experience that you have to make up front with nearly zero info to base it on and can't really change later, so you better do homework before signing up to play?
No such luck. Unfortunately, all the other companies missed the boat too. It seems only Nintendo believed the platform would do well.
Lose Europe? I thought this was their scheme to lose *everywhere*.
How can I make an informed buying decision if they seem intent on lying to me constantly? The price is dropping. No it isn't. Yes it is. Not! Never. No way. Maybe. Not at all, definitely not. Hey, it just dropped. Except it is only existing stock. No it isn't...
So if Microsoft's defective product scratches a game I have paid $60+ for, I can pay another $20 to replace the game? Which their defective product will then scratch again?
And you think this is a reasoanble solution?
If the disk exchange was free, maybe you would have a point.