Well, if you got hungry enough, wouldn't you buy the fries? I don't know, if fries were important enough to me, I'd probably buy them before I got too hungry. Sure, free fries later would be great. But, my stomach might not be willing to wait that long.
Now, have you ever bought a Shakespeare Book? Something from Dickens? Jules Verne? They're free fries. Why do people pay for them?
Now would McDonald's go out of business if you could clone fries for free? Or burgers (I use the term loosely)? Probably. But, cloning fries for free would have a lot of societal benefit. Chefs making new and exotic fries would certainly have a job.
There are some incentives to paying for things even when you could get them for free. I mean, I don't have to tip my waitress. I don't have to pay for my local NPR station. But, there is very good reasons to do both.
I'll chime in, since I'm currently working at a non-profit that works with non-profits. Generally speaking the people working in these organizations care a lot about what they do. They work hard for less pay than they could get at $megacorp. They often burn out quickly (3 years is the average employment length here, more in the IT dept). The ones that don't genuinely care are usually driven out by the low pay and hard work.
I'm sorry I can't offer more than anecdotal evidence.
What we're looking at here isn't about layoffs, it's about improving training and efficiency. In certain parts of the company, it's like someone using a power screwdriver to drive screws but they don't even know the thing can be turned on, they're just twisting it manually. In-house training has been done to introduce people to new systems rolled out but the retention rate of this material has been atrocious.
Amen! Let me introduce, "The Certification." One of our systems is quite well suited for the work we do. Very well suited in fact. It's got lot of bells and whistles and it supposed to keep a lot of the data we need to function. The problem is that about 2 years ago nobody knew about the bells, the whistles or even the friggin' on button. We started a process where anybody who wants access needs to pass a "Certification." When we turned the system on, we "Certified" everybody. It's been very, very effective.
The certification process is really a little bit of one on one time with somebody who has used the system for a bit. Followed by quiz of about a dozen questions. Once they get the answers to that and turn it in, we give them an official looking certificate.
It's basically a rubber stamp of approval. It's brain dead easy to get and kind of hokey. But, it's respected and it sort of fosters some education around the system. Certified people are willing to help the new ones get up to speed. And new employees really strive to learn their stuff for that extra bit of prestige.
I work at a non-profit. We've been wanting to set up some standards for positions as well. We suffer from a lot of turn over. Additionally, getting our culture to adopt something like this is pretty difficult.
We're doing a number of things to combat it. Culturally, we can't get anybody not in IT to document anything at this point. We're going to roll out a Mediawiki fairly soon.
It's intended for another process but, I hope it will be able to take on this role as well. I've been messing with them a lot documenting some of my projects and its a great tool for documentation.
Another thing that I suggest is that IT document some of what the users are responsible for. At least as far as IT goes. We're looking at setting up a database of position titles and associating all the access that those titles should have in our various systems. This really benefits us when it comes time to replace one name on the org chart with another. Secondly, it gives us a vague idea of what that person does in the organization. In the short term this could be good strategy for you.
As one Non-profit IT person to another, it would be good to have a contact out there in a similar situation. Feel free to contact me. Add @gmail.com to my user name.
Improving the process = making it more efficient = making it require less manpower = layoffs. Again, no incentive to cooperate, and every incentive to sabotage.
If this was a for profit, I'd say, you're probably right. But since it's a non-profit the rules are different. This sort of mentality just doesn't carry over.
Here's the primary reason:
Business are all about a product they can see to the most amount of people for the most amount of profit.
Non-profits are about doing the most they can towards their goal, whether that's a product or a service. They must do it with X budget.
The difference is this: When a for profit looks at improving a process the improvement better result in a better bottom line to cost ratio (Higher Profits). Otherwise, why do it?
For a non-profit improvements in process almost always result in a shifting of resources. IE, it frees up time from one employee so that he or she can focus on something else.
This is primarily because non-profits often work with a fixed budget. They have X to spend on resources, etc. They'll spend it no matter how efficient or inefficient the system is.
I've worked at a non-profit for a number of years. I've automated a lot of internal processes that used to be done by hand. I'd estimate that in a for profit I might have cost quite a few people their jobs over the years. Here, I'm held in high regard because I've eliminated grunt work.
No, it's not just you. Sega shot itself in the foot with the way it handled the Dreamcast state side. The system had a hell of a lot of promise and quite a bit of lead time on the other consoles of that generation.
I swear, what's with the slashdot obsession over video games?
It's not Slashdot's obsession. I think slashdot just picks up the articles and displays them. Video games have just become the big Boogieman Out To Corrupt and Steal Our Kids(tm).
When I was younger, it was D&D. The generation before, it was probably Rock 'n Roll. Before that, it was something else. Every generation has something. It's stupid and lame, but that doesn't change the fact that it exists. Are these articles dumb? Probably. But it's good to know the opinions and fears of the unwashed masses. If for no other reason than their opinion matters, informed or not.
I mean, if they get too freaked out, they could push back the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
I think we can safely say that Radical Islam is a more serious issue than Scientology. It probably deserves the title of religion less than Scientology.
Sure! Most people would pay quite a bit to get an advantage. Especially those that already have the money. Here's a list of services in Hollywood and some relative fees: Here. And it would be the Hollywood types that would be paying the Playwrights and song writers.
Of course the next question is: How will Hollywood get their income if they have to give movies away for free?
And the one after that is: if anything a writer writes is public domain immediately, then wouldn't all writers intentionally release less content until they land a gig? And if so, would that end up impoverishing our society?
what if I'm a songwriter but not a singer, or a playwright
Then somebody will have to pay you to write for them. Even if what you write is instantly in public domain, it does not mean that there wouldn't be demand for new work. It just changes the game some. Writing then becomes a service not a product. And if you're good, they'll pay you for it. If you're really good, they'll pay you lots for it.
This is the same principle as OSS. Sure, you get the app for free, but you may want to pay somebody for the services around it.
Wow, I didn't know what. That's damn fascinating. If this is any indication, studios and film makers could sit down and sort through the expenses and eliminate a bunch of waste. You'd think that stopping the money bleeding would be the best way to pursue higher profit margins rather than pursuing the file sharers.
Since you can't carry screwdrivers on a plane, I suspect that getting held up at airport security will be the new posh "Apple" thing.
But, I suspect they'll see the dollar sig^W^W light and make an external battery for just such an occasion. Which would of course increase the weight of things you have to lug around for the laptop.
One of my travel rules: If I have to lug it around with my laptop to keep it functional, it's part of the laptop weight.
#1 on your list has crossed my mind a lot over the last 8 years. Bush is untouchable because he's in charge of the units that would/could/should investigate him.
He's done a lot of illegal and unconstitutional things and I doubt he'll ever spend a day in prison for them. Politically speaking, the next president will probably not launch an investigation. It would set too bad of a precedent.
If I were president, I'd get some legislature in motion that added a better check and balance for this sort of situation. Congress should be able to do something about the president's illegal behaviors and it should not require a majority vote.
I'd also see if there is a better alternative to our current voting system. I mean, if I was able to get elected...
Oh, and the shrinking middle class. We need those middle class guys. I'd try to fix that too. Even if I had to stick my boot up some rich guys' asses.
Unfortunately, employers are often don't know what they want their employees to know. Take a look through some job descriptions and see how many show up with impossible requirements. (5 years experience in a language only out for say 3.)
I'd suggest to the original poster to just mess around with anything that catches their eye. The more, the better. That way, he/she learns what he/she likes to mess around with and gets exposure all over. After that, I'd suggest finding some technologies that really intrigue him/her and learning as much about them as possible.
I know that in pursuit of knowledge in my key area, I've had to learn a lot of things that are seemingly outside of it. I also believe that if you develop the passion for the work, you'll find a place to do it that will bring you the income.
there's nothing that you can't get into the country on a laptop hard disk that you couldn't just as easily bring over the internet.
That's extremely true. You can also put a lot data on an SD memory card or one of the micro cards. Those things are small enough that hiding them on your person would be a breeze.
Maybe that's the way to go. Get a laptop with an SD port, and pop the chip out at the border. Reinsert on the other side. In the meantime, it can hide in your pack of gum/cigarettes.
If the fight rules haven't been significantly streamlined, what issues were weighed and discussed in the making of the 4E rules about streamlining or not streamlining them?
Many well developed RPG's suffer from rules slowing down game play. What is WotC: D&D Division's current philosophy on balancing game play with book keeping?
Well, maybe they could have anticipated it better. It's not like Christmas just randomly showed up one day. And there were plenty of statistics on how well each of the consoles were doing pre-Christmas sales. The writing was on the wall.
Not that I'm trying to be snotty about it, but if I'm working for a small organization and have to have plans for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 3 years in the future, you'd hope that a larger company like Microsoft could.
At $200-$300 my first thought was, could this replace my TV set? I'd just need a tuner, which I could get for my computer. It sure would be nice to reduce all of my entertainment equipment to one computer, a speaker system and an iPod sized projector.
The resolution isn't what I would like, especially if I wanted to hook it up to my computer. But, I'm sure that'll improve in future versions.
How did this get modded up? Nickleback sucks is insightful? I'm not sure if I agree with whether they are a good band or not, but a guy (or gal) is entitled to their opinion.
Secondly, Nickleback is distributed under a RIAA label. The problem that I think this community has with this is not that Nickleback (or Justin T or whomever) sucks or not, but that these bands get propped up artificially. They get publicity, promotion and notoriety that they wouldn't have if they were attempting to make it on merit alone.
There's a lot of Indie Artists that register much higher on the sucks-o-meter than Nickleback. The reason that Slashdot doesn't seem to drag them out to the proverbial whipping post is because those bands tend to remain obscure for a reason. However, if somebody said that they liked one of those bands, I don't think some smart ass would be harassing him about it.
I don't know how they came up with the number. But if $8,000 is correct and I outsource a bit, it might be cheaper to use the blood of my enemies for ink.
I'm not sure that the exaflood isn't the exaspam. Just how much of the traffic on the tubes is spam, phishing or bot net activities? Does anybody know?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, let's not forget the ninja skills he picked up from the park rat.
Well, if you got hungry enough, wouldn't you buy the fries? I don't know, if fries were important enough to me, I'd probably buy them before I got too hungry. Sure, free fries later would be great. But, my stomach might not be willing to wait that long.
Now, have you ever bought a Shakespeare Book? Something from Dickens? Jules Verne? They're free fries. Why do people pay for them?
Now would McDonald's go out of business if you could clone fries for free? Or burgers (I use the term loosely)? Probably. But, cloning fries for free would have a lot of societal benefit. Chefs making new and exotic fries would certainly have a job.
There are some incentives to paying for things even when you could get them for free. I mean, I don't have to tip my waitress. I don't have to pay for my local NPR station. But, there is very good reasons to do both.
This thread is making me hungry.
I'll chime in, since I'm currently working at a non-profit that works with non-profits. Generally speaking the people working in these organizations care a lot about what they do. They work hard for less pay than they could get at $megacorp. They often burn out quickly (3 years is the average employment length here, more in the IT dept). The ones that don't genuinely care are usually driven out by the low pay and hard work.
I'm sorry I can't offer more than anecdotal evidence.
The certification process is really a little bit of one on one time with somebody who has used the system for a bit. Followed by quiz of about a dozen questions. Once they get the answers to that and turn it in, we give them an official looking certificate.
It's basically a rubber stamp of approval. It's brain dead easy to get and kind of hokey. But, it's respected and it sort of fosters some education around the system. Certified people are willing to help the new ones get up to speed. And new employees really strive to learn their stuff for that extra bit of prestige.
I work at a non-profit. We've been wanting to set up some standards for positions as well. We suffer from a lot of turn over. Additionally, getting our culture to adopt something like this is pretty difficult.
We're doing a number of things to combat it. Culturally, we can't get anybody not in IT to document anything at this point. We're going to roll out a Mediawiki fairly soon. It's intended for another process but, I hope it will be able to take on this role as well. I've been messing with them a lot documenting some of my projects and its a great tool for documentation.
Another thing that I suggest is that IT document some of what the users are responsible for. At least as far as IT goes. We're looking at setting up a database of position titles and associating all the access that those titles should have in our various systems. This really benefits us when it comes time to replace one name on the org chart with another. Secondly, it gives us a vague idea of what that person does in the organization. In the short term this could be good strategy for you.
As one Non-profit IT person to another, it would be good to have a contact out there in a similar situation. Feel free to contact me. Add @gmail.com to my user name.
Here's the primary reason:
Business are all about a product they can see to the most amount of people for the most amount of profit.
Non-profits are about doing the most they can towards their goal, whether that's a product or a service. They must do it with X budget.
The difference is this: When a for profit looks at improving a process the improvement better result in a better bottom line to cost ratio (Higher Profits). Otherwise, why do it?
For a non-profit improvements in process almost always result in a shifting of resources. IE, it frees up time from one employee so that he or she can focus on something else.
This is primarily because non-profits often work with a fixed budget. They have X to spend on resources, etc. They'll spend it no matter how efficient or inefficient the system is.
I've worked at a non-profit for a number of years. I've automated a lot of internal processes that used to be done by hand. I'd estimate that in a for profit I might have cost quite a few people their jobs over the years. Here, I'm held in high regard because I've eliminated grunt work.
No, it's not just you. Sega shot itself in the foot with the way it handled the Dreamcast state side. The system had a hell of a lot of promise and quite a bit of lead time on the other consoles of that generation.
When I was younger, it was D&D. The generation before, it was probably Rock 'n Roll. Before that, it was something else. Every generation has something. It's stupid and lame, but that doesn't change the fact that it exists. Are these articles dumb? Probably. But it's good to know the opinions and fears of the unwashed masses. If for no other reason than their opinion matters, informed or not.
I mean, if they get too freaked out, they could push back the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
I think we can safely say that Radical Islam is a more serious issue than Scientology. It probably deserves the title of religion less than Scientology.
Sure! Most people would pay quite a bit to get an advantage. Especially those that already have the money. Here's a list of services in Hollywood and some relative fees: Here. And it would be the Hollywood types that would be paying the Playwrights and song writers.
Of course the next question is: How will Hollywood get their income if they have to give movies away for free?
And the one after that is: if anything a writer writes is public domain immediately, then wouldn't all writers intentionally release less content until they land a gig? And if so, would that end up impoverishing our society?
Then somebody will have to pay you to write for them. Even if what you write is instantly in public domain, it does not mean that there wouldn't be demand for new work. It just changes the game some. Writing then becomes a service not a product. And if you're good, they'll pay you for it. If you're really good, they'll pay you lots for it.
This is the same principle as OSS. Sure, you get the app for free, but you may want to pay somebody for the services around it.
Wow, I didn't know what. That's damn fascinating. If this is any indication, studios and film makers could sit down and sort through the expenses and eliminate a bunch of waste. You'd think that stopping the money bleeding would be the best way to pursue higher profit margins rather than pursuing the file sharers.
Since you can't carry screwdrivers on a plane, I suspect that getting held up at airport security will be the new posh "Apple" thing.
But, I suspect they'll see the dollar sig^W^W light and make an external battery for just such an occasion. Which would of course increase the weight of things you have to lug around for the laptop.
One of my travel rules: If I have to lug it around with my laptop to keep it functional, it's part of the laptop weight.
Woooooooooshhhhhh!!!!!!!
#1 on your list has crossed my mind a lot over the last 8 years. Bush is untouchable because he's in charge of the units that would/could/should investigate him.
He's done a lot of illegal and unconstitutional things and I doubt he'll ever spend a day in prison for them. Politically speaking, the next president will probably not launch an investigation. It would set too bad of a precedent.
If I were president, I'd get some legislature in motion that added a better check and balance for this sort of situation. Congress should be able to do something about the president's illegal behaviors and it should not require a majority vote.
I'd also see if there is a better alternative to our current voting system. I mean, if I was able to get elected...
Oh, and the shrinking middle class. We need those middle class guys. I'd try to fix that too. Even if I had to stick my boot up some rich guys' asses.
Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our politicians learning?
Unfortunately, employers are often don't know what they want their employees to know. Take a look through some job descriptions and see how many show up with impossible requirements. (5 years experience in a language only out for say 3.)
I'd suggest to the original poster to just mess around with anything that catches their eye. The more, the better. That way, he/she learns what he/she likes to mess around with and gets exposure all over. After that, I'd suggest finding some technologies that really intrigue him/her and learning as much about them as possible.
I know that in pursuit of knowledge in my key area, I've had to learn a lot of things that are seemingly outside of it. I also believe that if you develop the passion for the work, you'll find a place to do it that will bring you the income.
That's extremely true. You can also put a lot data on an SD memory card or one of the micro cards. Those things are small enough that hiding them on your person would be a breeze.
Maybe that's the way to go. Get a laptop with an SD port, and pop the chip out at the border. Reinsert on the other side. In the meantime, it can hide in your pack of gum/cigarettes.
It'd cost you parts (box of nails and some chicken wire) and labor (1 extremely under-paid mech droid).
If you skipped lunch, you could probably pay for it.
If the fight rules haven't been significantly streamlined, what issues were weighed and discussed in the making of the 4E rules about streamlining or not streamlining them?
Many well developed RPG's suffer from rules slowing down game play. What is WotC: D&D Division's current philosophy on balancing game play with book keeping?
Well, maybe they could have anticipated it better. It's not like Christmas just randomly showed up one day. And there were plenty of statistics on how well each of the consoles were doing pre-Christmas sales. The writing was on the wall.
Not that I'm trying to be snotty about it, but if I'm working for a small organization and have to have plans for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 3 years in the future, you'd hope that a larger company like Microsoft could.
At $200-$300 my first thought was, could this replace my TV set? I'd just need a tuner, which I could get for my computer. It sure would be nice to reduce all of my entertainment equipment to one computer, a speaker system and an iPod sized projector.
The resolution isn't what I would like, especially if I wanted to hook it up to my computer. But, I'm sure that'll improve in future versions.
How did this get modded up? Nickleback sucks is insightful? I'm not sure if I agree with whether they are a good band or not, but a guy (or gal) is entitled to their opinion.
Secondly, Nickleback is distributed under a RIAA label. The problem that I think this community has with this is not that Nickleback (or Justin T or whomever) sucks or not, but that these bands get propped up artificially. They get publicity, promotion and notoriety that they wouldn't have if they were attempting to make it on merit alone.
There's a lot of Indie Artists that register much higher on the sucks-o-meter than Nickleback. The reason that Slashdot doesn't seem to drag them out to the proverbial whipping post is because those bands tend to remain obscure for a reason. However, if somebody said that they liked one of those bands, I don't think some smart ass would be harassing him about it.
I don't know how they came up with the number. But if $8,000 is correct and I outsource a bit, it might be cheaper to use the blood of my enemies for ink.
I'm not sure that the exaflood isn't the exaspam. Just how much of the traffic on the tubes is spam, phishing or bot net activities? Does anybody know?