I am a student in the MBA program at my school. If you want to look at the big cheaters, look at the Public Administration students. These guys are VERY brazen about cheating and their teachers don't seem to care. Most of the PA students get into trouble in the 'normal' business classes, like accounting, due to cheating. Plagerizing, collabrative work when it isn't suppost to be (like take home finals), turning in the same paper in multiple classes. Our instructors in the management classes use turn-it-in religiously, so it can get funny to see the surprised look on the PA students faces when they get told that they get to have a fun talk with the Dean.
There is a reason for the CAPS LOCK key. Some times, like in business, people need something to be in complete caps. Just be a good hacker and get everyone who abuses it's name and home address and Jay and Silent Bob it. I suggest an ergonomic axe handle, easier on the wrists.
Notice: This is a work of farce and I in no way advicate the use of violence to hurt people who abuse caps (as much as we would like too) or destroy property (for example: keyboards, cable modems, computers, houses). Anyone who seriously would use such tactics needs to be on some good medicine. (Might I suggest this, this, or even this and this. Such same approaches as someone who would wage war against the caps lock key. As I am not a physician, if you take my advice without consulting a physician, then you are jacked up crazy.)
Working in the south, we get some gems for customers. The tech bench I ran for a couple of years consisted of 4 guys above 6 feet tall and one 5' 2" woman. The woman was our best tech, but we had many customers not take her seriously. Some guys where hassling her, vulgarly. She calls for the guys out the back room, and we step out, the tallest having to duck under the door. Best deer in the headlights look ever. She then clearly asks, "Ok, one last time, what did you say to me?"
Funny side part to the story is that we went to the same Martial Arts school and our female tech could wipe the floor with the rest of the tech bench.
Never underestimate the coffee cup story. I got a customer when I worked a tech bench who began with this qoute:
'Ever heard about the CD-ROM tray being mistaken for a coffee cup holder? I thought it was a good idea until my machine autorebooted when I was working.'
He had to be using a styrofome cup. 1 cup scalding coffee poured into the case. My response was, 'please excuse me while I walk into the back room and laugh my arse off.'
I get a call from one of the field techs that I use to support. He was on his cell, hiding in a closet. He wants me to call the number of the house he is at and ask for this guy and tell him that his mother was just in a horrible accident.
Being the manager of this field tech, I had to ask why he wanted me to do this and why he was in the closet. Well... the guy my tech wanted me to call was the husband of the woman who put in the call. Most of us should be able to put 2 and 2 together to figure out why the tech was in the closet. I ask the tech why I shouldn't just call the cops there. He actually tells me that he has a 2 ounces of coke and a joint.
Being the understanding boss that I am, I called the cops.
I can't wait until they blind a few people testing this. I might want to go to concerts without my contacts or glasses.
Honestly, I know they will try to make sure that they don't accidently get someone's glasses. However, when some boffins tried to create an active cellphone jammer for planes, it coded a guy by stopping his pacemaker during the tests. Doesn't make me feel real snazzy about the idea.
Come on, if I donate a million or so to Vladimir Putin's campaign fund, I bet PharmaMaster would accidently shoot himself in the back of the head. Probably a couple thousand if I just donate to a Colonel's retirement fund.
I do not condone Executions or Murder of persons, just some people I wouldn't mind. OBL included.
PharmaMaster is in Russia, right? We create a pay-pal account for donations to the Russian mob to correct the problem. Better yet, the Russian Goverment.
I don't know about the 'Geek Squad', but I ran the most profitable tech bench in the company in 98. I worked for the company from 94 to 98. We acquired our 'Vast Collection' of setup CDs from the vendors, not from stealing out of customers' computers for setups. We had a massive collection and held on to them like gold, especially the Compaq CDs, since the PCs were awful. Piracy was strictly against the rules. I would fire any tech under me that did that. In addition, if a manager told me to do it, I would just call the Regional Tech Manager and that manager would be gone with in a couple of days. Lead Techs had no fear of the Store Management Staff, since we, like the LPs, reported to external management.
The 14.99 (I think it is 19.99 now) system setup was an absolute godsend to us, since some of the manufactures stunk. (CTX and Compaq) Many times, we would wave the 14.99 fee, just so we could verify the PC. (On a side note, we could often charge the vendor more.) Our bread and butter though was vendor warranty work though. Those first year Compaqs were worth Gold, if you did the paperwork, because they came in usually a dozen a week.
Yes, on slow days (usually tuesdays) I would help the PC drones make some sales. In addition, I would push the extended warranty, even though I think it is crap. I had to watch out for some tech being a loose cannon, but I didn't have to many problems. I spent most of my time checking paperwork and doing upgrades for users. Most of the complaints that I have read are just crap.
Ok, first off, I reduced my individual emissions. I did this by buying a more efficient air conditioner and improving the insulating quality of my house. In addition, I replaced all of my light bulbs with low wattage, long life bulbs. Why? To save money. I reduced my electrical and natural gas costs by 30% per year. That is the financial incentive Americans need.
Second, the Kyoto Accords are a socialist mandate to hurt highly industrial countries. Have anyone here seen the amount of pollution in Mexico City? How about mandating a reduction in emissions from third world countries' cars? If the US had decided to follow the Kyoto Protocol, we would be one of the few, because the other countries don't care. What about the pollution causes by burning rainforests for planting crops? And we need to cut back on the emissions from Volcanoes. Those things are worse then coal-fired plants.
Lastly, what about this computer simulation? Is it available to the public? Is it open-sourced? We need to review every line of code to see if the researchers are just trying to grab headlines and research dollars. (Research dollars are smarter then the regular dollars) How about someone researching the researchers and the programmers? What did they base the data on? What is the error-ratio? Does their model predict the past knowns accurately? What has been the error ratio since this model has been created? Where did the input come from?
Question everything you hear and all that you read. -- Besides me.;-)
I go to business school at night and I use a laptop in class. What I use it for is not to take notes. I use a notepad for that and a plethora of pencils. I use it to have the Powerpoint that the instructor is using, so I can see it. I also keep a copy of the chapter outline and glossary up, even if I had to make them myself. I also keep copernic agent, google and wikipedia up, so I can look up stuff in class.
I am also famous for loading up WoW when the professor goes far off subject, like a legal professor discussing his bird watch hobby for 2 hours. Going to a night course and spending 4 hours a night, three nights a week leave me little patience for a professor who wants to discuss the birds he saw last week when we need to go over agency law. I am paying really good money to go back to school, not the goverment nor my parents.
In our area, bench technicians feel lucky to make $8/hr. We have kids coming out of High School that can do the job and have no problem working for that rate. How does it make the PC guys in my division feel, probally really nervous. These guys have 15 - 20 years of experiance and cost about $26/hr, with no capability of moving beyond their position because of a lack of education. They were top dogs, because no one else could do their jobs, but now their skill set is pretty common. They are watching people with better educations then them come in to work at a lower rate, because the job is now an entry level possition. It is called progress.
Working in a corporation of 3,300 employees, I will need to have people to touch the PCs and answer the phones at the Helpdesk, but it isn't that hard to find people who can do that. We buy applications off the shelf and use consulting services for the 'heavy lifting' of customization. What I need is people who can implement a project on time and under budget. I need problem solvers that have good people skills. Just give me management majors with minors in computer science and I will be happy.
I have use for network engineers and server maintainance persons, but that is still a limited selection of staff. We have a server farm of over 300 servers being maintained by 4 guys. We manage quite a few database servers (Oracle, Microsoft, MySQL, and Sybase), with 2 guys and 2 girls as DBAs. Our network is managed by 2 guys and we contract all the 'heavy lifting'. Need a new segment ran, call the contractors. We contract out every bit of the menial project tasks, like running cables because it is cheeper to do and we get better quality, because our contractors do it a heck of a lot more then we do. It is called effective cost management.
When one of our server guys or network engineers leave, we replace them from the PC Group with one of the sharp computer science majors who used the PC Group as a entry level into such a role. It is the nature of the beast.
A wise man once said: Whatever you don't understand, must be easy.
What I would suggest is to look at your IT Strategy. SLAs are useful for IT Management as a measure of how things are operating, just as is downtime, percentage usage, and costs of operations. Don't listen to anyone who suggest decentralization. We had some of that at my job. It is a nightmare. Incompatable "Best of Breed" systems and finger-pointing results. Costs rise quickly with decentralization too.
Sit down with your IT management. List out facts. Don't fingerpoint. Just say: we are lossing x amount of cash due to issues with our systems. Have use studies on how you do business. Have predicted growth forecasting on systems load. Have your internal controls (audit) department monitor the disaster recovery plans and get an outside consultant to look at those plans. Get your IT Management to see your issues. Get a data retention policy and remove that data once it is too old.
That said, realise that you might be the cause of the issues. How many years of journal entries do you really need? How much customization do you insist upon to make the systems work with your archaic business processes when you should be changing your business processes to work with the systems? How many times does your senior management hamstring IT's budget and capital improvements? Listen to what your IT Management says and if they have a compelling reason for something; then by God, give it to them.
Really high end AV equipment overheats all of the time. Add in Windows Media Center and DVRs (why do you think that the tivo has temp sensor) which are both heat sensitive. A good highend amp can fry an egg. I have an audiophile friend that proved it. As our kit gets more complex, we will need to worry about heat, internet connection, emi, and a plethora of issues. Welcome to the information age. I have a 360, Tivo, VCR (because my wife is a ludite), HD Digital Cable Box, A wireless router (needed a switch so I added an AP while I was at it to my network), Windows Media Center, and a decent audio setup right under my plasma tv. I had to have all sorts of cabling and wiring installed. I also had to worry about power pull, since my house has a wiring plan from the 70s. So, to setup my dream system, I had to get an electriction to sort out my house's wiring (Thank god for my Father in Law), run Cat 5 under the house (I can do this, including great ends), check for heat build-up in the av cabinet, and still had to add a fan to help with air-flow. AV has become complex again.
Several people I know have gotten their 360s that I know. The major issue that I have seen is the insuffecient grey matter heap size issue. You know, PEBKAC.
Three friends and a brother all have had the heat issue. They kept their consoles in nice av cabinets, one with a glass front. No air flow. A-B user interaction error. We had this problem with high performance gaming PCs and enclosed areas. Local user issue.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
Requim aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Ok, the prayers have been said IN LATIN, so lets stop beating this dead horse and let it die.
On hindsight, pulling all the control rods out of the reactor wasn't the brightest idea.
I am in complete agreement on that point. Considering that we are dealing with the Peter Principle here with their management in a massive totalitarian bureaucracy and that there was no way in hell the operators would turn to their manager and say, 'Kiss my wathusits', no wonder they blew the roof off of the reactor building. Add in the fact that the Firemen who responded bravely (abet dumb) fought the fire without any protective equipment, it is further proof that management had no clue what they were doing.
We had a similar example locally of this level of operations management when some workers died when they opened something under pressure when the gauge said it wasn't. When the operations managers are psychotically concerned with safety, people die.
Usually it is just the sign of the management style of your manager. The recommendations I could make is to first have an upto date resume. Second, every time you send recommendations and analysis to your manager, do it via email. Third, every time your manager talks to you, send him or her an email with a synopsis of what was discussed and thanking them for their time. Fourth, ask yourself if it is worth it. Finally, read Winning, every person who works in a corporate enterprize needs to read this.
Depends on how good operational control and maintainance is. Make the operations manager criminally liable for any negligent activities. Considering that I live near a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb plant, I am pretty froggy on the concept. The big part would be making sure that the plants are run effectively, efficently (not the same thing as effective, btw), and safely.
Three Mile Island [TMI] happened due to poor operations control layout and bad UI. There was poor disaster planning and insuffecent communications ability in and out of the plant. Better planning and an effective use study could of taking care of that. I do use studies on how people read reports on supply usuage in their departments. They can do that with how people operate a nuclear reactor. In addition, mandated training on disaster scenarios in a functional trainer mock-up mandated every year would also be advisable.
On the Chernobal accident, it came down to a bureaucracy forging ahead because an incompedent manager made a decision to go ahead with a test because he didn't want to tell his bosses he couldn't due to worry excessively over what could happened. He should of worried more.
Also, we forget that the XBOX 360 is using a new api methology for talking to the video card. The architecture that:
Microsoft owns
PCs will be using
Performance using the new api is significant because it cuts down the amount of data crossing the bus. Considering that a large percentage of reported XBOX 360 issues were user-head-space issues and Sony's stellar record of production issues (DVD switch anyone), I put my money that Sony has hard competion.
Now, I have a XBOX 360 and a XBOX. I bought a PS2, but had to return it, because it refused to play games due to the switch issue. I have a PSP, which decided it didn't like keeping disks in it. I see poor production control, which has been the mainstay of Sony across the last few years.
As for Xbox 360 games, I own several:
Perfect Dark Zero:Fun campaign, but no Halo3
Quake IV:Fun campaign, crappy online
CoD2:Decent on both and I am addicted on finishing the achievements
DOA IV:I must get all the Items
XBOX Live Arcade:Ok, I have bought a few of these. My wife plays Zuma and Hexic obsessively, I play Hexic, Crystal Quest, and Geomatry Wars obsessively. I also play the space station simulator a lot and friends love to come over and play pool-very successful
The problem that the RIAA faces is proving damages. A good lawyer would point out that each instance costs about 2 bucks off (less, if you consider iTunes cut) of iTunes. So to it to be 'thousands', the person being sued would have to be proven to have downloaded 1000 or more songs.
Now, if the RIAA says that the user is also liable for everyone who downloaded from them, that would be Shared-Liability. So we go to a buck per song, since we are talking about actual damages. They would have to prove that people downloaded a portion of the song from the person. On distributed P2P networks, they would have to share liability across everyone that someone downloaded from.
If the RIAA said that because of the person, 5k people downloaded the song, which would of been 5k purchases of said song, then they could not go after the 5k people since for the full amount of each instance of the song, since the RIAA would sued for the full amount from the first person.
I support the RIAA's right to sue someone who illegally downloaded a song, for justifiable liabilities, which would be the current market value of 1 song, as paid to them via iTunes, per unique MP3 downloaded. Add to that legal fees and punitive damages. Lets say it is 50c per song, that would make 500 songs worth $250 + legal fees + punitive damages. Subtract the costs generated by non-reimbursable legal fees, costs from trying to find the P2Pers in the first place, costs from negative market image, etc... It takes a lot of songs to pay for one law-suit. They cannot sue for COGS to cover CD production, they could sue for CDs that were not (and never will be sold), if they could prove that a. the CDs will never be sold and b. that the person was responsible for the cds not to be sold. Personally, I think the RIAA has a piss poor business plan to resolve this issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a student in the MBA program at my school. If you want to look at the big cheaters, look at the Public Administration students. These guys are VERY brazen about cheating and their teachers don't seem to care. Most of the PA students get into trouble in the 'normal' business classes, like accounting, due to cheating. Plagerizing, collabrative work when it isn't suppost to be (like take home finals), turning in the same paper in multiple classes. Our instructors in the management classes use turn-it-in religiously, so it can get funny to see the surprised look on the PA students faces when they get told that they get to have a fun talk with the Dean.
There is a reason for the CAPS LOCK key. Some times, like in business, people need something to be in complete caps. Just be a good hacker and get everyone who abuses it's name and home address and Jay and Silent Bob it. I suggest an ergonomic axe handle, easier on the wrists.
Notice: This is a work of farce and I in no way advicate the use of violence to hurt people who abuse caps (as much as we would like too) or destroy property (for example: keyboards, cable modems, computers, houses). Anyone who seriously would use such tactics needs to be on some good medicine. (Might I suggest this, this, or even this and this. Such same approaches as someone who would wage war against the caps lock key. As I am not a physician, if you take my advice without consulting a physician, then you are jacked up crazy.)
Let's all thank Max Weber for the concept of the modern Bureaucracy
Working in the south, we get some gems for customers. The tech bench I ran for a couple of years consisted of 4 guys above 6 feet tall and one 5' 2" woman. The woman was our best tech, but we had many customers not take her seriously. Some guys where hassling her, vulgarly. She calls for the guys out the back room, and we step out, the tallest having to duck under the door. Best deer in the headlights look ever. She then clearly asks, "Ok, one last time, what did you say to me?"
Funny side part to the story is that we went to the same Martial Arts school and our female tech could wipe the floor with the rest of the tech bench.
Never underestimate the coffee cup story. I got a customer when I worked a tech bench who began with this qoute:
'Ever heard about the CD-ROM tray being mistaken for a coffee cup holder? I thought it was a good idea until my machine autorebooted when I was working.'
He had to be using a styrofome cup. 1 cup scalding coffee poured into the case. My response was, 'please excuse me while I walk into the back room and laugh my arse off.'
Today, one of my fellow System Analysts put in a Helpless call because his computer would not boot. It got assigned to him to resolve.
Was almost fired for this:
User deadlocked herself and got into a deadly embrace situation that Sybase did not automaticly resolve, so we killed her.
I get a call from one of the field techs that I use to support. He was on his cell, hiding in a closet. He wants me to call the number of the house he is at and ask for this guy and tell him that his mother was just in a horrible accident.
Being the manager of this field tech, I had to ask why he wanted me to do this and why he was in the closet. Well... the guy my tech wanted me to call was the husband of the woman who put in the call. Most of us should be able to put 2 and 2 together to figure out why the tech was in the closet. I ask the tech why I shouldn't just call the cops there. He actually tells me that he has a 2 ounces of coke and a joint.
Being the understanding boss that I am, I called the cops.
I can't wait until they blind a few people testing this. I might want to go to concerts without my contacts or glasses.
Honestly, I know they will try to make sure that they don't accidently get someone's glasses. However, when some boffins tried to create an active cellphone jammer for planes, it coded a guy by stopping his pacemaker during the tests. Doesn't make me feel real snazzy about the idea.
Come on, if I donate a million or so to Vladimir Putin's campaign fund, I bet PharmaMaster would accidently shoot himself in the back of the head. Probably a couple thousand if I just donate to a Colonel's retirement fund.
I do not condone Executions or Murder of persons, just some people I wouldn't mind. OBL included.
PharmaMaster is in Russia, right? We create a pay-pal account for donations to the Russian mob to correct the problem. Better yet, the Russian Goverment.
I don't know about the 'Geek Squad', but I ran the most profitable tech bench in the company in 98. I worked for the company from 94 to 98. We acquired our 'Vast Collection' of setup CDs from the vendors, not from stealing out of customers' computers for setups. We had a massive collection and held on to them like gold, especially the Compaq CDs, since the PCs were awful. Piracy was strictly against the rules. I would fire any tech under me that did that. In addition, if a manager told me to do it, I would just call the Regional Tech Manager and that manager would be gone with in a couple of days. Lead Techs had no fear of the Store Management Staff, since we, like the LPs, reported to external management.
The 14.99 (I think it is 19.99 now) system setup was an absolute godsend to us, since some of the manufactures stunk. (CTX and Compaq) Many times, we would wave the 14.99 fee, just so we could verify the PC. (On a side note, we could often charge the vendor more.) Our bread and butter though was vendor warranty work though. Those first year Compaqs were worth Gold, if you did the paperwork, because they came in usually a dozen a week.
Yes, on slow days (usually tuesdays) I would help the PC drones make some sales. In addition, I would push the extended warranty, even though I think it is crap. I had to watch out for some tech being a loose cannon, but I didn't have to many problems. I spent most of my time checking paperwork and doing upgrades for users. Most of the complaints that I have read are just crap.
Ok, first off, I reduced my individual emissions. I did this by buying a more efficient air conditioner and improving the insulating quality of my house. In addition, I replaced all of my light bulbs with low wattage, long life bulbs. Why? To save money. I reduced my electrical and natural gas costs by 30% per year. That is the financial incentive Americans need.
Second, the Kyoto Accords are a socialist mandate to hurt highly industrial countries. Have anyone here seen the amount of pollution in Mexico City? How about mandating a reduction in emissions from third world countries' cars? If the US had decided to follow the Kyoto Protocol, we would be one of the few, because the other countries don't care. What about the pollution causes by burning rainforests for planting crops? And we need to cut back on the emissions from Volcanoes. Those things are worse then coal-fired plants.
Lastly, what about this computer simulation? Is it available to the public? Is it open-sourced? We need to review every line of code to see if the researchers are just trying to grab headlines and research dollars. (Research dollars are smarter then the regular dollars) How about someone researching the researchers and the programmers? What did they base the data on? What is the error-ratio? Does their model predict the past knowns accurately? What has been the error ratio since this model has been created? Where did the input come from?
Question everything you hear and all that you read. -- Besides me. ;-)
I go to business school at night and I use a laptop in class. What I use it for is not to take notes. I use a notepad for that and a plethora of pencils. I use it to have the Powerpoint that the instructor is using, so I can see it. I also keep a copy of the chapter outline and glossary up, even if I had to make them myself. I also keep copernic agent, google and wikipedia up, so I can look up stuff in class.
I am also famous for loading up WoW when the professor goes far off subject, like a legal professor discussing his bird watch hobby for 2 hours. Going to a night course and spending 4 hours a night, three nights a week leave me little patience for a professor who wants to discuss the birds he saw last week when we need to go over agency law. I am paying really good money to go back to school, not the goverment nor my parents.
In our area, bench technicians feel lucky to make $8/hr. We have kids coming out of High School that can do the job and have no problem working for that rate. How does it make the PC guys in my division feel, probally really nervous. These guys have 15 - 20 years of experiance and cost about $26/hr, with no capability of moving beyond their position because of a lack of education. They were top dogs, because no one else could do their jobs, but now their skill set is pretty common. They are watching people with better educations then them come in to work at a lower rate, because the job is now an entry level possition. It is called progress.
Working in a corporation of 3,300 employees, I will need to have people to touch the PCs and answer the phones at the Helpdesk, but it isn't that hard to find people who can do that. We buy applications off the shelf and use consulting services for the 'heavy lifting' of customization. What I need is people who can implement a project on time and under budget. I need problem solvers that have good people skills. Just give me management majors with minors in computer science and I will be happy.
I have use for network engineers and server maintainance persons, but that is still a limited selection of staff. We have a server farm of over 300 servers being maintained by 4 guys. We manage quite a few database servers (Oracle, Microsoft, MySQL, and Sybase), with 2 guys and 2 girls as DBAs. Our network is managed by 2 guys and we contract all the 'heavy lifting'. Need a new segment ran, call the contractors. We contract out every bit of the menial project tasks, like running cables because it is cheeper to do and we get better quality, because our contractors do it a heck of a lot more then we do. It is called effective cost management.
When one of our server guys or network engineers leave, we replace them from the PC Group with one of the sharp computer science majors who used the PC Group as a entry level into such a role. It is the nature of the beast.
A wise man once said: Whatever you don't understand, must be easy.
What I would suggest is to look at your IT Strategy. SLAs are useful for IT Management as a measure of how things are operating, just as is downtime, percentage usage, and costs of operations. Don't listen to anyone who suggest decentralization. We had some of that at my job. It is a nightmare. Incompatable "Best of Breed" systems and finger-pointing results. Costs rise quickly with decentralization too.
Sit down with your IT management. List out facts. Don't fingerpoint. Just say: we are lossing x amount of cash due to issues with our systems. Have use studies on how you do business. Have predicted growth forecasting on systems load. Have your internal controls (audit) department monitor the disaster recovery plans and get an outside consultant to look at those plans. Get your IT Management to see your issues. Get a data retention policy and remove that data once it is too old.
That said, realise that you might be the cause of the issues. How many years of journal entries do you really need? How much customization do you insist upon to make the systems work with your archaic business processes when you should be changing your business processes to work with the systems? How many times does your senior management hamstring IT's budget and capital improvements? Listen to what your IT Management says and if they have a compelling reason for something; then by God, give it to them.
Really high end AV equipment overheats all of the time. Add in Windows Media Center and DVRs (why do you think that the tivo has temp sensor) which are both heat sensitive. A good highend amp can fry an egg. I have an audiophile friend that proved it. As our kit gets more complex, we will need to worry about heat, internet connection, emi, and a plethora of issues. Welcome to the information age. I have a 360, Tivo, VCR (because my wife is a ludite), HD Digital Cable Box, A wireless router (needed a switch so I added an AP while I was at it to my network), Windows Media Center, and a decent audio setup right under my plasma tv. I had to have all sorts of cabling and wiring installed. I also had to worry about power pull, since my house has a wiring plan from the 70s. So, to setup my dream system, I had to get an electriction to sort out my house's wiring (Thank god for my Father in Law), run Cat 5 under the house (I can do this, including great ends), check for heat build-up in the av cabinet, and still had to add a fan to help with air-flow. AV has become complex again.
Several people I know have gotten their 360s that I know. The major issue that I have seen is the insuffecient grey matter heap size issue. You know, PEBKAC.
Three friends and a brother all have had the heat issue. They kept their consoles in nice av cabinets, one with a glass front. No air flow. A-B user interaction error. We had this problem with high performance gaming PCs and enclosed areas. Local user issue.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Requim aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Ok, the prayers have been said IN LATIN, so lets stop beating this dead horse and let it die.
You seem like a smart person, so I'm sorry that I'm so bored this morning that I feel the urge to be the English police:
Sorry that IE spell does not come with a grammar checker. :p
On hindsight, pulling all the control rods out of the reactor wasn't the brightest idea.
I am in complete agreement on that point. Considering that we are dealing with the Peter Principle here with their management in a massive totalitarian bureaucracy and that there was no way in hell the operators would turn to their manager and say, 'Kiss my wathusits', no wonder they blew the roof off of the reactor building. Add in the fact that the Firemen who responded bravely (abet dumb) fought the fire without any protective equipment, it is further proof that management had no clue what they were doing.
We had a similar example locally of this level of operations management when some workers died when they opened something under pressure when the gauge said it wasn't. When the operations managers are psychotically concerned with safety, people die.
Usually it is just the sign of the management style of your manager. The recommendations I could make is to first have an upto date resume. Second, every time you send recommendations and analysis to your manager, do it via email. Third, every time your manager talks to you, send him or her an email with a synopsis of what was discussed and thanking them for their time. Fourth, ask yourself if it is worth it. Finally, read Winning, every person who works in a corporate enterprize needs to read this.
Depends on how good operational control and maintainance is. Make the operations manager criminally liable for any negligent activities. Considering that I live near a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb plant, I am pretty froggy on the concept. The big part would be making sure that the plants are run effectively, efficently (not the same thing as effective, btw), and safely.
Three Mile Island [TMI] happened due to poor operations control layout and bad UI. There was poor disaster planning and insuffecent communications ability in and out of the plant. Better planning and an effective use study could of taking care of that. I do use studies on how people read reports on supply usuage in their departments. They can do that with how people operate a nuclear reactor. In addition, mandated training on disaster scenarios in a functional trainer mock-up mandated every year would also be advisable.
On the Chernobal accident, it came down to a bureaucracy forging ahead because an incompedent manager made a decision to go ahead with a test because he didn't want to tell his bosses he couldn't due to worry excessively over what could happened. He should of worried more.
Also, we forget that the XBOX 360 is using a new api methology for talking to the video card. The architecture that:
Performance using the new api is significant because it cuts down the amount of data crossing the bus. Considering that a large percentage of reported XBOX 360 issues were user-head-space issues and Sony's stellar record of production issues (DVD switch anyone), I put my money that Sony has hard competion.
Now, I have a XBOX 360 and a XBOX. I bought a PS2, but had to return it, because it refused to play games due to the switch issue. I have a PSP, which decided it didn't like keeping disks in it. I see poor production control, which has been the mainstay of Sony across the last few years.
As for Xbox 360 games, I own several:
The problem that the RIAA faces is proving damages. A good lawyer would point out that each instance costs about 2 bucks off (less, if you consider iTunes cut) of iTunes. So to it to be 'thousands', the person being sued would have to be proven to have downloaded 1000 or more songs.
Now, if the RIAA says that the user is also liable for everyone who downloaded from them, that would be Shared-Liability. So we go to a buck per song, since we are talking about actual damages. They would have to prove that people downloaded a portion of the song from the person. On distributed P2P networks, they would have to share liability across everyone that someone downloaded from.
If the RIAA said that because of the person, 5k people downloaded the song, which would of been 5k purchases of said song, then they could not go after the 5k people since for the full amount of each instance of the song, since the RIAA would sued for the full amount from the first person.
I support the RIAA's right to sue someone who illegally downloaded a song, for justifiable liabilities, which would be the current market value of 1 song, as paid to them via iTunes, per unique MP3 downloaded. Add to that legal fees and punitive damages. Lets say it is 50c per song, that would make 500 songs worth $250 + legal fees + punitive damages. Subtract the costs generated by non-reimbursable legal fees, costs from trying to find the P2Pers in the first place, costs from negative market image, etc... It takes a lot of songs to pay for one law-suit. They cannot sue for COGS to cover CD production, they could sue for CDs that were not (and never will be sold), if they could prove that a. the CDs will never be sold and b. that the person was responsible for the cds not to be sold. Personally, I think the RIAA has a piss poor business plan to resolve this issue.