As my mother's health declined, the falls began to happen. It's one thing when you hear about it happening to someone else, but when it is happening in your own household and right in front of you and you can't move fast enough to catch that person, it is mortifying. And it isn't just one fall. It is over and over again. There is nothing more horrifying than hearing that terrible "THUD!" in the middle of the night.
It became so bad, we didn't dare leave her alone in the house. In the end, she spent her final days in a nursing facility.
A family friend suffered a stroke and spent over 18 hours on the floor of his kitchen before someone discovered him. When he didn't show up for a scheduled meeting—something that is out of character for him—and didn't respond to phone calls, someone went to check on him and found him on the floor, partially paralyzed, unable to reach the telephone that was just out of arm's reach.
For my father, the fall detection means a lot. It means he can maintain his independence and mobility, but knows someone will be able to come to his aid should he begin to suffer falls. He has health issues that are creeping up on him and could start interfering with his ability to balance.
As an author, I've always taken the stance that if you buy one of my books as an ebook, you should be able to read that book on any device you own that can display books. Be it an iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Galaxy #, etc. This is why I do not allow DRM on my books when published. Copyright fair use allows that you should be able to read that file on any device that you own. What copyright does not allow is you to make copies of that file and sell it to other people.
If your son has the ebook on his iPad, it is most likely in EPUB format. (If it is an enhanced book in Apple's iBook format, then this won't work.) Just make a copy of the EPUB file to the desktop. You can then run software that will convert the file to the Kindle MOBI format that he can then side load onto his Kindle.
Amazon has software that will convert EPUB files to Kindle files so you can read them on your Kindle. The program Calibre can also convert between formats.
I certainly appreciate your son's concern and respect for the copyright. But in this case, he can go ahead and make the copy so he can read it on another device.
I'm getting tired with all the leaks. It's like looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree and knowing what is in each wrapped box. It takes all the fun out of it. Let me be surprised!
As such, there are times when I really need to get away from everyone and everything so I can totally immerse myself in just writing. Doing this while camping is wonderful. Or, sometimes just jumping on the bike with the computer in a daypack so I can park my butt in some shady spot in a park forest is good enough.
While writing and programming share the same mental processes, they have different demands on a computer. Programming is going to be much more demanding on a computer than writing prose. The MacBook Air is certainly at the top of the heap when it comes to low power consumption, but if you are programming some pretty heavy stuff that could drain the battery faster than the work I am doing now. That could greatly reduce your working time if you are completely off grid in the woods. That could be enough to impair your productivity and nix your project.
Power comes first. Without power, nothing else will work. As mentioned above, those big, portable solar panels are a very good idea. Free energy when there is enough sunlight. On any mostly sunny day, one panel should easily be enough to keep a MacBook Air chugging away all day. Even on a mostly cloudy day, the larger panels might be able to provide enough juice to keep you going. But this will also dictate your location. You need clear access to the sun. If you are in deep forest, it won't work. This means camping in a meadow or on the shore of a lake. A plus side here is when the sun goes down, you will have a wonderful view of the starry sky above. (Great for recharging your batteries!) If you are on a lake and are inclined to fishing, there you go.
Connectivity is important to you. It is for me, too, as a writer because often I need to jump online to reference various subjects. This means, you won't really be doing any "deep forest" camping, where you are truly away from all aspects of civilization. A lot of family and national forest campgrounds now supply power to campsites. That solves the power issue. One extension cord and surge protector power strip and you are ready to get everything done while you sit by the fire. Some of these campgrounds really suck. They are overrun and poorly maintained. But there are others that are truly gems! Sure there are other people around, but I find that kind of adds to the ambience. I do enjoy hearing the soft voices echoing in the trees. The sound of distant laughter. The smell of campfire smoke wafting on the wind. The campsites in the older campgrounds are well surrounded by trees and shrubs, so you really can't see one site from the next. This guarantees your privacy and isolation if you need it. You have to hunt for these gems. When you find them, you may find them quite enjoyable. The added services do make life a lot more pleasant while camping, and you can maintain your full technical capacity without hinderance.
You can set up your smart phone briefly as a hotspot for your online sessions. If you are only on for short periods during the day, this shouldn't press your data plan limits. For those who have very heavy data needs, it would probably be cheaper to buy a cellular modem and connect to that than it would to tether to your phone.
Another mention above was to use an RV. You can use a small trailer, too. Much more economical. With a larger trailer called a "Toy Box", you could also pack a motorcycle in along to use as your get around vehicle when you want to get away from the campsite for a change of scenery. A trailer or RV offers protection from the elements. I'm convinced I am the incarnation of a rain god, as the moment I pitch a tent, the rain starts falling. It also allows for better security for your equipment. Sure, a crowbar could get past a locked camper door, but most of the losers who skulk around campsites to steal things are looking for easy pickings and don't want to work for their booty.
You'll notice that my suggestions start with deep woods camping and move closer to civilization. But how you implement things depends on how yo
One thing I should mention about SSDs is that I have a couple of thumb drives that have been sitting around untouched for years that are still usable and the files are still readable. The only one that doesn't work is one that was sacrificed to a very powerful magnet in a demonstration of how vulnerable flash drives are to magnetic fields. So, perhaps an SSD drive will be more stable than I suspected.
Get a large-capacity, multi-disk drive housing and set it up as a mirrored RAID. Over time, as each drive fails, all you have to do is swap out the failed disk and the RAID will re-mirror the data to the new disk. This is the most robust perpetual storage option. It is possible that the magnetic fields on the disks can fade over time if left in an unpowered state. The biggest downside is that the RAID is onsite, and if there is a catastrophic event such as a fire or a flood, the drive could be destroyed. A RAID is what I am currently using for my longterm, permanent storage needs. I've lost a couple of files to bit rot, nonetheless.
Optical media storage is decent for long-term storage, but there is evidence to suggest that these disks break down over twenty to thirty years and become unreadable. So, bit rot is still an issue with optical media. However, they offer the advantage of being able to store the data in a stable medium without any power required and are easily portable to safe locations. Also, newer disk technology developed in recent years is more stable than older disks.
At the moment, I don't consider SSDs as a reliable long-term storage. All it takes is one cosmic ray to flip a critical memory cell and your drive becomes unreadable. Also, when disconnected from power the charges fade over time and in as little as a few years the drives could just erase themselves. The advantage they offer is being small, lightweight and easily portable.
The important thing to remember is that technology is changing all the time, and there are newer and better alternatives on the horizon that answer the shortcomings of each of the above solutions. The biggest problem with any long term storage is bit rot, where random bits get flipped or erased over time. Storage technology companies are striving to improve all the time, so the choices available to you will also continue to improve.
"Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read.
There is so much wrong with that backhanded insult that there is no "content you want to read" among self-published books.
Currently, the top bestsellers lists contain more self-published authors than authors represented by publishing houses. Self-publishing authors are outselling traditionally published authors and are.
The OP's comment comes from the misnomer that self-publishing is the last bastion of a writer whose writing was so bad, he couldn't get it accepted. The reality is the cartel of the Big-5 publishing companies have been artificially keeping the number of authors on the market artificially small so they could better control the markets in terms of product availability and price controls.
The advent of digital publishing has given authors a way to get around the market controls of big-industry publishing. Even traditionally published authors such as Barry Eisler and H.M. Ward have walked away from the publishing houses and turned to self-publishing. The work coming out of self-published authors is incredible. Hugh Howey's dystopian science fiction Wool would probably have never seen the light of day if not for self-publishing and his books have sold millions of copies. There are other yet-to-be discovered authors such as William D. Richards Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody or Michael Patrick Hicks Convergence who are turning out real page turners with gripping stories and excellent writing.
Yeah, there is some crap out there (published as a joke; read the description; the author, Phronk, is a satirist and pretty damned funny). If you are unsure about a book by a self-published author, just download the free sample of their work and see how it reads before you buy. Many authors with a series of books offer the first book free—if you don't like it, you aren't out any money. If you do, then you've got a whole series to buy.
Many independent writers take their craft very seriously. They employ a team of editors, proof readers, and a cover artist or two to ensure that the reader is going to get the best reading experience possible. If they weren't putting so much work into assuring the quality of their work was there, the self-publishing movement would have collapsed years ago. Instead, because of the commitment to quality by the authors, the self-publishing movement has been growing in strength, variety, and quality. Self-published authors gain no support from advance payments, no corporate backing, and no financial assistance. They are not subsidized by monies from other authors (as is a practice in traditional publishing). Instead, they make 100% of their incomes from direct sales to readers. If they weren't doing the proper Q.A. on their books, their livelihoods would be unsustainable.
So, don't go listening to big-publishing shills trying to shoot down the first real competition they've ever faced. There is plenty of excellent reading to be found among self-publising writers, contrary to what the O.P. alludes. And as far as public libraries are concerned, independent writers are huge supporters of libraries, unlike big-industry publishers who try to milk money from municipalities by over-charging libraries for books and ebooks.
Thanks, I hope it helps. This will not be easy to get through.
Advise her to try and find the humor in things. Being able to laugh takes the weight off. It also lets the people around her feel more relaxed about her condition. Relaxed people make better company, better company makes life better. And feeling better about life makes recovery more probable and come quicker. In many ways, laughter really is the best medicine.
I had a cerebral hemorrhage near my brainstem. While I wasn't completely cut off from my body, it really messed up the interface for a while. The good news is that function can come back. Contrary to popular belief, the human brain does grow new nerve cells and can repair the damage done. The bad news is, it is going to take a long time. It's going to take years, not months, to get back to functional, much less normal.
Frustration and Humiliation
First off, everything is working normally inside. She is still who she is. She is still thinking, working, trying to communicate, listen, getting bored, wanting to do things. She is fully aware of what is going on around her. She can hear and see you just fine. You speak, she can hear and understand what you are saying. She is not an invalid! Don't treat her like one!
One of the most frustrating things I had to deal with outside the disturbance in motor functions was the difficulty I had in communicating. My thinking worked just fine, I could think up my answer to any question instantly. The problem was getting my body to actually produce the sound and form the words. I had to think of the answer, consider how each word would sound, think out how my mouth needed to move, and then send the speech command to my body. As a result, I was always five minutes behind the flow of the conversation. It's like having an ultra-powerful supercomputer, and you go from having a high-speed, fiber-optic, giga-net broadband connection down to something less than a 300-baud acoustic modem. I reached a point where I just stopped trying to talk. My family just didn't understand or comprehend what was going on inside me. When you ask her a question, give her time to respond. YOU must learn to be patient. She has no choice in the matter at this point.
She's suffered a complete loss of bodily function. It isn't that she can't move, it's that she now can no longer do anything for herself. She can't feed herself. She can't clean herself. She can't amuse herself when bored. She can't control her bodily waste functions. She cannot clean herself after she expels something from her body. Someone else has to do it for her.
This is humiliating! The humiliation is the worst feeling of all. It gnaws at you. It erodes your desire to try. It corrodes your soul. It removes your will to live. You lay there in your hospital bed in a muddy puddle of your bodily waste, wishing you could reach the control for the pain meds and have it dump everything all at once into your IV line and just end the humiliation forever.
People talk to you like you are a child, an idiot. And always in a loud voice. They talk at you. They talk about you. But never to you. They talk about you in the third person as though you aren't there, in the room, laying in the bed right in front of them.
Do what you can to maintain her dignity as a person. Don't treat her like she's a doll laying in the bed. Remember there is a person in there. Treat her like one. And I'll warn you, that will take a LOT of patience on your part.
Breaking Out
When my hemorrhage hit, it felt like someone buried a pickaxe into the back of my head. It hurt. I knew something was horribly wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was. It never occurred to me I had a burst aneurism in my head. I did't just drop to the ground paralyzed. I managed to get up the stairs and say I needed help before things started going bad in a hurry. An ambulance ride later, I was in the hospital. Initially, I stabilized and they sent me home. But a few hours later, I realized I was getting worse and got taken back to the hospital. Over the next few days, issues would come and go, and when they would go, they took things with them. I ended up in a hospital in Boston for the next several weeks.
Brain injuries are awful things on more levels than people consider. It is absolutely the worst injury you can endure. It is at the very core of your interface with the Universe. It can and does effe
Sure. A bond trader trying to tell a real businessman how to run his company and tell him what a better product line would be.
Every company I worked for that put an MBA at the helm, failed. Those MBAs didn't understand what it took to create a product. They didn't understand production. One CEO got put in place didn't even know what products the company made (that company only lasted six months after he took over). And here we have a financial moron trying to tell an engineer how to run his company and what products to make. That's laughable. That would be like me trying to tell Einstein that the formula should be E=mc^3.
Hugh Howey's Silo Series, starting with Wool. Granted, it is a dystopian story, but it shows a strongly human side to the collapse of civilization. A lot of dystopian stories tend to focus on the inhumanity and shock value of distorted societies. Howey's collection of novellas makes it much more personal to the reader. I believe it is the uniquely intimate approach to such a story that caused Howey's stories to catch on.
You print something the owner of your publication or one of their major advertisers doesn't like, you get fired. Pure and simple. Just look at Fox (e.g. "Faux") News to see that. They outright distort the facts and lie to push their employer's agenda. Murkdock pays them well to look like fools and idiots--but there are greater fools and idiots who fall for that crap.
On the other hand, publications have soared to extraordinary heights in public opinion when reporters break earthshaking, investigative reports, even at the cost of the owner's friends and contacts in high places. Credibility brings in readers and more readers brings more money from advertisers. When publishers see the new bottom line attached to credibility, they usually loosen the reins and let the reporters do real work instead of writing fiction. For this, the problem is often self-correcting. The problem with gaining credibility is it can take years to have an effect, yet one misstep can blow it all away. Often, a major publication doesn't regain public trust until it is sold to a new publisher with an untainted reputation. The opposite can happen, too, when a reputable publication is bought out by a publisher of questionable reputation. Once the publisher starts pushing their questionable agenda into print, the publication's reputation slides rapidly and the target readership drops off. It is very difficult for even a top publication to recover from that situation.
The first place you will find out about the reputation of a given publication? From those on the front line: the reporters themselves. Contrary to public opinion, the majority of journalists take great pride in their work ethic and feel strongly that they are performing a vital public service factually reporting the news. So they take great offense to publications that don't do fact checking—called "Rags" in the industry. Reputable reporters almost all have a list of publications with which they would not want their names associated. Early in my career as a stringer (freelance writer), I commented to a colleague that I had applied to The XXXXX Post for a staff position. Nearly all the journalists around us stopped what they were doing, looked at me, and in one voice said, "Oh, God no! Not there!" Instead of covering the event (a boring political meeting going nowhere), the next forty minutes were spent with them giving me a lot of career guidance and networking. So, you want to know where you should be getting your news? Ask the reporters.
I'm not sure what medications some of the above posters are on, or perhaps their glasses are a tad too rose-colored to understand reality, but I've got some news for those people: I'm an author and I make a living selling the stories I write. I love telling stories. I love writing. But if I wasn't making an income selling books to people who enjoy reading, I would not be able to afford to write. The only way I was able to truly get a start in writing is in thanks to my very understanding and supporting family when I decided to go all in, stop working regular employment, and start devoting myself 100% to writing. It took over three years with no income to write that first book. Do you think I could continue writing the books that many of you have read if I wasn't earning income from the sales of those books? My colleagues and friends, John Scalzi, Spider Robinson, David Brin, Walter Hunt, and Kristine Rusch--do you think any of them magically get their income from somewhere else?
If you showed up at work one day and your boss announced that they were no longer going to pay you for working at the company, that you would be doing your job for the love of doing your job, would you stay with that company? No, you'd go right to your desk, clear out your personal items and walk right out the door! Otherwise, how would you pay your rent and buy food, software, clothing, transportation, etc.? You can only leach off friends and family for so long before they are going to throw you out and tell you to get a job.
Get a benefactor such as Count von Moneybags to support you for life as an artist? That practice disappeared sometime back in the 18th century. You'd better go relearn your damn history. Back in the 1600's an artist had to produce for their benefactor or they would get cut. Even Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the greatest geniuses in history, was dropped by his benefactors at one point or another. Mozart had to beg for commissions. By the 18th century, benefactors had pretty much disappeared. We live in the 21st century. People with enough wealth today to be a potential benefactor are more interested in increasing their wealth than they are in supporting the arts. A writer, on average, produces one book every two years. Do you really know anyone who is willing to sign over a $50,000 check each year to support someone who walks around, relaxes and daydreams all day? I'd get fired from any job doing that.
Anyone can be an artist, as a hobby. But if you want to devote yourself to that art as a living, how are you going to put food on the table? Paint a picture of food and it magically appears. No. You have to create something that is good enough that people are willing to exchange money in exchange to own a copy of that work for their own enjoyment. I like to write programs, some of which I have shared with others for use or education. But does that make me a professional programmer? No, I'm just a hobbyist. I make my income by writing entertaining stories that people want to buy because they enjoy reading them. When you hear someone say "they live only for their art," behind that person is either a very hard working spouse or partner or they've somehow managed to land a sizable grant that supplies them with enough money to pay for housing, food, art supplies, electricity, heat, water, and other necessary things.
Those people I've known over the years who said they lived for their art, not money, are no longer artists. None of them made it much farther than their late 20's before they gave up on their art and became professional laborers. As a professional artist who makes his living selling his art, I am not foolish enough to forget that there is a very serious business side to what I do. And if I do not manage that properly, I can really screw myself over.
Back on the main topic: DRM? I hate it! It has nothing to do with protecting my copyrighted material. I have never seen DRM to anything to save me from having a copy of my work stolen from me
Personally, I rather liked their idea as it allows you to better create and optimize various kinds of neighborhoods. I believe it stems from their intent to make the game as customizable as possible. There are a lot of people who wanted to use SimCity to create models of their own towns or cities, but were unable. One of the goals of Civitas is to allow the user to do just that: create models of a given city and see how they could run (or ruin) it. By using the permits, the user can better force a given neighborhood to more closely resemble a neighborhood in their actual municipality.
Because the vast majority of people are honest and will pay for their copy.
And the vast majority of people are intelligent enough to understand that if you want more of a good product, you pay for it so the creators can continue making that product and making better products.
I'm inclined to agree with your opinion. Among the myriad of articles I read about this snafu, a couple mentioned beta-testers saying they felt they were being ignored. When you read how shocked and surprised EA's executives at the demand for SC5, it becomes clear that the beta-testers interviewed were being ignored. It begs the question, who were they listening to?
I saw a headline touting yet another "reality" TV series was going to be in the making soon, featuring some minor "major celebrity" I had never heard of before. I groaned, wondering when will it occur to TV executives that people cannot stand this kind of drivel? Well, in order to keep pushing this kind of crap, there must be some demand for it. I began to consider the surprising number of people I know who no longer subscribe to TV cable service, preferring to watch any TV shows they like via Netflix or Hula. What was most interesting about these people is that they are NOT techies, nerds or geeks. They are ordinary people, many of whom don't like using computers all that much! Yet, they now get their TV program fix via the internet. Well, if 70% of the people who watch TV have stopped watching TV, then perhaps it is a majority of the remaining 30% who are watching the stupidity of reality TV shows. Maybe the TV executives haven't realized the fact that they just lost 70% of their audience? And that the choice of programming for the remaining minority is keeping a much larger market away?
In light of that thought, I'm pretty sure EA was looking at social gaming on social networking sites, and not paying attention to the fact that companies selling social gaming have pretty much collapsed in their values. I knew a lot of people who got into the social games about a year or two ago, now they can't stand them. Why wasn't EA paying attention to the market? Why didn't they take a look at the people who bought SimCity in the first place ten years ago and ask their opinion? The people who like to play SimCity are NOT the social type of person. They are the people who like to tinker and build their models.
This is probably the best thing that could have happened to SimCity 5 in order to save the SimCity franchise.
It's a pity how corporate greed can ruin an otherwise excellent product. Management at EA/Maxis was obviously incredibly detached from the product. Comments such as how surprised and unprepared they were for the massive response they got to the new product speaks volumes to the fact that the people in charge had absolutely no clue about the products they make, nor what it takes to make them successful.
The good news? At least there is one team out there that gets it!
Programs will come and go, whether commercial or not. What was more important to me was that the data I created was easily accessible by other programs should the need arise to replace what I was using. I've been burned a few times by using a word processor that was discontinued, and being stuck for trying to get my writings out of the files in which my work contained. Going from Wordperfect to Word to other word processors has been a pain. Whenever many programs are updated, their proprietary file formats also undergo a change that often means no backwards compatibility. This, too, can be a pain. Image processing programs (e.g. Photoshop, GIMP, Painter, etc.) have the same issues.
I finally learned to focus on programs that save in a format that is openly accessible to other programs. Or even better, store that data in a "human readable" format such as XML. When XML-based, it is a simple matter to write a script in PHP or Python to strip my data from the file and save it in another format that another program can use.
Learn to save backup files in formats that are open for other programs to access. Focus on programs that save to open formats that can either be used by other programs or in the event of an emergency, you can extract your work from the file manually. A good example of this in a word processor is Redler's Mellel. Their "native" format is a zip-compressed XML file, similar in concept to an EPUB file. Microsoft's DOCX file is also an XML file that can have the data extracted by a shell script if needed.
I'm reading a lot of comments above where people are saying that the average consumer's opinion isn't worth shit. I beg to differ. When I wrote my book, I didn't write it for the critics, the reviewers, the professionals--I wrote it for people to read and enjoy the story I made up. When someone has read my book and liked it enough that they wanted to say to the world, "Hey! I really enjoyed reading this book!" That means a lot to me! It tells me that the effort I put into writing that story was worth it.
The occasional negative review is going to happen. Often these are self-important people that feel the need to let everyone else know how important they are, and they are going to snipe at any flaw they can find: "The author used 'palatable' instead of 'palpable' in the fourth chapter. Clearly he doesn't know how to write! Don't buy this book!" Such comments are so ridiculously petty, they can be ignored. Now, if someone made the comment, "I felt that Character-A wasn't very well thought through and his development was kind of weak," and then went on to explain their position, you can be sure that I will pay attention to something like that and look into it. Good constructive criticism is good to act upon. It might be too late for one book, but you can be assured I'll try not to make a similar mistake on the next book. There are also going to be those who don't like a book because it just isn't to their taste. To that, I can only say, "Thank you for your patronage. You'll probably not want to buy the next book, but thanks for at least giving me a try." As an author, I do consider what a negative reviewer has to say. It doesn't feel as nice as when I get a great review, but it may help me improve what I'm doing.
As far as peer reviews are concerned, if Walter Hunt, Spider Robinson, Neal Stephenson or Ursula LeGuin read my story and said they liked it, I would be absolutely thrilled to receive such an endorsement from such established authors! On another level, If Oprah Winfrey piped up and said she liked my book, I would probably be doing handsprings in my front yard. What? You think Winfrey's opinion is worthless? Consider this: When Oprah says she likes a particular book, she has over 30 million fans that will immediately go out and buy that book to read it for themselves. To an author, that is the equivalent of getting a $1 million dollar check in the mail--because that is exactly what happens! You wake up the next morning to discover that you went from 2,000 copies sold to 750,000 copies sold. With my book at $4.99 and me getting 70%, that means in 60 days Amazon would be dropping a cool $2.6 million into my bank account.
What is at issue with Amazon is that people were gaming the system. Of note, the author R.J. Ellory admitted to writing false reviews over the past several years. He's not the only one. There have been many others over the past several years. The opinion of a peer author in a given genre carries huge weight with readers. And that opinion can make or break another author, especially if that author is new and struggling to gain readership. To have someone purposefully sabotaging another author for their own gain is reprehensible. Sadly, there are unscrupulous people and they are going to pull every dirty trick they can to get ahead.
Things like this do weigh heavily on me. I told family and friends not to post a review because they know me, but because they read my story and actually liked it. If they want to blog, tweet, or post about my story, go ahead and tell people that they know me and want to promote my book to help me. I also told my friends not to buy my book because they are my friend; buy it because they want to read the story. I realize that my story will not be to everyone's taste, and I don't want them buying it because they feel obligated to do so out of loyalty.
I once worked for a small manufacturing company with some big clients. Flu shots for employees were mandatory, unless their doctor said otherwise, and were provided FREE by the company. It was the first time I ever saw a company with this policy. It has since become a regular policy in other companies where I have worked.
The year before I worked there, the attitude of management was very antagonistic towards employees who called in sick. Management had the stance that employees were using sick time to avoid work and were lazy, unproductive workers. One employee called in sick with the flu over several days and his manager didn't believe him. So the manager made him report to work the next day. So, the employee, still sick, reported for work.
As can be expected, a few days later, workers in the company began dropping like flies as the flu spread through the ranks. By the end of the week, every employee except three became ill and could not report to work. Including the CEO. The company's production, management, and business was completely shut down for three weeks. The three who were still on were low-level employees who had neither the authority or skill to do anything in the company to keep production going or even send out what product was ready to be packaged and shipped.
The three employees who did not become ill were the only three in the company who had gotten flu shots.
The damage didn't end there. This small company produced a key component for a seasonal product sold by a major company in the US. Without this component, the client could not produce their own product. This mini-epidemic occurred just as the small company needed to ramp up their production in order for their client to ramp up their production to meet the coming seasonal demand. (This is an event that shows the serious flaw in Just-In-Time manufacturing.) So, not only could this small company not produce the item their client needed, it seriously jeopardized their client's critical production period. Their client, in a panic, had to turn to another company to produce this part.
Not only did this company have production shutdown for all their clients for three weeks, they lost a huge account with a very important client. They had to fight to get this client to give them another chance the next year and had to accept unfavorable terms in the new contract. There was similar damage to some contracts with their smaller clients. All this resulted in extended business losses for the company, not just three weeks of production! This damage continied on in a few rounds of layoffs over the next couple of years, one of which got me cut from the company.
The new policy at the company when I started was all employees will have flu shots, provided for free by the company, and anyone who even thought they were sick was to call in and stay away until they were over whatever bug hit them. They were still trying to regain lost business and repair damage to their reputation when I came into the company. When I learned the story behind the company's "progressive" sick policy, it was estimated that the company had permanently lost a third of its clientele and they were fighting to retain another third.
Fifteen years after all this happened, this company is still around, but I estimate they are less than half the size what they were when I worked for them. A combination of the flu shutdown and the flow of manufacturing jobs being sent to China was nearly the death-blow for this company. They sold off buildings and facilities in order to stay afloat. A lot of very hard lessons are all wrapped up in this story.
All this damage because of just one manager ordering one sick employee to report to work.
The same system is being installed around Boston, MA and other localities. I love seeing the sign and knowing how long it is going to take me to reach a certain point. It takes a lot of stress out of being stuck in traffic. Less stressed drivers means traffic loosens up and moves more freely, instead of people bunching up on each other's cars and causing a traffic jam.
Additionally, the data will be publicly available, so mapping applications on GPS devices and smart phones can show traffic congestion in realtime, giving people the opportunity to plan alternate routes more easily to avoid congestion, and thereby reducing congestion.
One VP for whom I used to work referred to employees that left right at closing time as "Fred Flintstones." He made sure his derisive attitude towards these employees was well displayed in front of the CEO of the company at the end of the day as the line of cars left the parking lot. Most of the employees who stayed after the 5PM quitting time were there because they started their shifts later than the other employees.
This VP's attitude blinded him to the fact that those be labeled "Fred Flintstones" were on the job first thing in the morning, well before he arrived to sit in his office for the day doing nothing engaged with production of product in the company. Never mind that these very employees were the engineers that developed and made the technology of the company's primary product. Ironically, the one engineer he praised for staying late each day was staying late for a very special reason: it was the only time he could switch out the sabotaged firmware he created into shipping machines and put non-sabotaged firmware into machines that were being returned for "repairs". He was sabotaging the firmware in order to ensure that his job of hunting down bugs in the programming would be too important to get laid off.
This sabotage was discovered when the engineer was out of vacation and forgot to remove his secret code from his computer. The senior engineer on the project needed to double check the programming, logged into the saboteur's computer and discovered the two sets of code. Sadly, it was long too late for the many employees that had to be laid off because the company was struggling due to the problems the device was having. Most of the employees let go were the ones the VP had labeled Fred Flintstones. With the truly productive employees gone, it was pretty much game over for the company. They were able to float a little longer, but the lack of improvement and productivity stopped any possibility of growth in the company. When the sabotage was discovered, the laid off employees were no longer available. Eventually, the company pretty much closed their doors, being bought out by a competitor.
The attitude that the people who left at the end of the day and didn't put in extra hours were substandard employees was dead wrong. They were the people who made things happen in the company. Once let go, no longer were there any doers in the company and everything ground to a halt
Slashdot Mirror
The fall detection is a must for us.
As my mother's health declined, the falls began to happen. It's one thing when you hear about it happening to someone else, but when it is happening in your own household and right in front of you and you can't move fast enough to catch that person, it is mortifying. And it isn't just one fall. It is over and over again. There is nothing more horrifying than hearing that terrible "THUD!" in the middle of the night.
It became so bad, we didn't dare leave her alone in the house. In the end, she spent her final days in a nursing facility.
A family friend suffered a stroke and spent over 18 hours on the floor of his kitchen before someone discovered him. When he didn't show up for a scheduled meeting—something that is out of character for him—and didn't respond to phone calls, someone went to check on him and found him on the floor, partially paralyzed, unable to reach the telephone that was just out of arm's reach.
For my father, the fall detection means a lot. It means he can maintain his independence and mobility, but knows someone will be able to come to his aid should he begin to suffer falls. He has health issues that are creeping up on him and could start interfering with his ability to balance.
As an author, I've always taken the stance that if you buy one of my books as an ebook, you should be able to read that book on any device you own that can display books. Be it an iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Galaxy #, etc. This is why I do not allow DRM on my books when published. Copyright fair use allows that you should be able to read that file on any device that you own. What copyright does not allow is you to make copies of that file and sell it to other people.
If your son has the ebook on his iPad, it is most likely in EPUB format. (If it is an enhanced book in Apple's iBook format, then this won't work.) Just make a copy of the EPUB file to the desktop. You can then run software that will convert the file to the Kindle MOBI format that he can then side load onto his Kindle.
Amazon has software that will convert EPUB files to Kindle files so you can read them on your Kindle. The program Calibre can also convert between formats.
I certainly appreciate your son's concern and respect for the copyright. But in this case, he can go ahead and make the copy so he can read it on another device.
I'm getting tired with all the leaks. It's like looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree and knowing what is in each wrapped box. It takes all the fun out of it. Let me be surprised!
...Strike Virginia off my list of potential places to live. :/
[p]...And now it desperately wants cake.[/p] [p]A great cake! So delicious and moist![/p]
I'm a writer.
As such, there are times when I really need to get away from everyone and everything so I can totally immerse myself in just writing. Doing this while camping is wonderful. Or, sometimes just jumping on the bike with the computer in a daypack so I can park my butt in some shady spot in a park forest is good enough.
While writing and programming share the same mental processes, they have different demands on a computer. Programming is going to be much more demanding on a computer than writing prose. The MacBook Air is certainly at the top of the heap when it comes to low power consumption, but if you are programming some pretty heavy stuff that could drain the battery faster than the work I am doing now. That could greatly reduce your working time if you are completely off grid in the woods. That could be enough to impair your productivity and nix your project.
Power comes first. Without power, nothing else will work. As mentioned above, those big, portable solar panels are a very good idea. Free energy when there is enough sunlight. On any mostly sunny day, one panel should easily be enough to keep a MacBook Air chugging away all day. Even on a mostly cloudy day, the larger panels might be able to provide enough juice to keep you going. But this will also dictate your location. You need clear access to the sun. If you are in deep forest, it won't work. This means camping in a meadow or on the shore of a lake. A plus side here is when the sun goes down, you will have a wonderful view of the starry sky above. (Great for recharging your batteries!) If you are on a lake and are inclined to fishing, there you go.
Connectivity is important to you. It is for me, too, as a writer because often I need to jump online to reference various subjects. This means, you won't really be doing any "deep forest" camping, where you are truly away from all aspects of civilization. A lot of family and national forest campgrounds now supply power to campsites. That solves the power issue. One extension cord and surge protector power strip and you are ready to get everything done while you sit by the fire. Some of these campgrounds really suck. They are overrun and poorly maintained. But there are others that are truly gems! Sure there are other people around, but I find that kind of adds to the ambience. I do enjoy hearing the soft voices echoing in the trees. The sound of distant laughter. The smell of campfire smoke wafting on the wind. The campsites in the older campgrounds are well surrounded by trees and shrubs, so you really can't see one site from the next. This guarantees your privacy and isolation if you need it. You have to hunt for these gems. When you find them, you may find them quite enjoyable. The added services do make life a lot more pleasant while camping, and you can maintain your full technical capacity without hinderance.
You can set up your smart phone briefly as a hotspot for your online sessions. If you are only on for short periods during the day, this shouldn't press your data plan limits. For those who have very heavy data needs, it would probably be cheaper to buy a cellular modem and connect to that than it would to tether to your phone.
Another mention above was to use an RV. You can use a small trailer, too. Much more economical. With a larger trailer called a "Toy Box", you could also pack a motorcycle in along to use as your get around vehicle when you want to get away from the campsite for a change of scenery. A trailer or RV offers protection from the elements. I'm convinced I am the incarnation of a rain god, as the moment I pitch a tent, the rain starts falling. It also allows for better security for your equipment. Sure, a crowbar could get past a locked camper door, but most of the losers who skulk around campsites to steal things are looking for easy pickings and don't want to work for their booty.
You'll notice that my suggestions start with deep woods camping and move closer to civilization. But how you implement things depends on how yo
One thing I should mention about SSDs is that I have a couple of thumb drives that have been sitting around untouched for years that are still usable and the files are still readable. The only one that doesn't work is one that was sacrificed to a very powerful magnet in a demonstration of how vulnerable flash drives are to magnetic fields. So, perhaps an SSD drive will be more stable than I suspected.
Get a large-capacity, multi-disk drive housing and set it up as a mirrored RAID. Over time, as each drive fails, all you have to do is swap out the failed disk and the RAID will re-mirror the data to the new disk. This is the most robust perpetual storage option. It is possible that the magnetic fields on the disks can fade over time if left in an unpowered state. The biggest downside is that the RAID is onsite, and if there is a catastrophic event such as a fire or a flood, the drive could be destroyed. A RAID is what I am currently using for my longterm, permanent storage needs. I've lost a couple of files to bit rot, nonetheless.
Optical media storage is decent for long-term storage, but there is evidence to suggest that these disks break down over twenty to thirty years and become unreadable. So, bit rot is still an issue with optical media. However, they offer the advantage of being able to store the data in a stable medium without any power required and are easily portable to safe locations. Also, newer disk technology developed in recent years is more stable than older disks.
At the moment, I don't consider SSDs as a reliable long-term storage. All it takes is one cosmic ray to flip a critical memory cell and your drive becomes unreadable. Also, when disconnected from power the charges fade over time and in as little as a few years the drives could just erase themselves. The advantage they offer is being small, lightweight and easily portable.
The important thing to remember is that technology is changing all the time, and there are newer and better alternatives on the horizon that answer the shortcomings of each of the above solutions. The biggest problem with any long term storage is bit rot, where random bits get flipped or erased over time. Storage technology companies are striving to improve all the time, so the choices available to you will also continue to improve.
"Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read.
There is so much wrong with that backhanded insult that there is no "content you want to read" among self-published books.
Currently, the top bestsellers lists contain more self-published authors than authors represented by publishing houses. Self-publishing authors are outselling traditionally published authors and are .
The OP's comment comes from the misnomer that self-publishing is the last bastion of a writer whose writing was so bad, he couldn't get it accepted. The reality is the cartel of the Big-5 publishing companies have been artificially keeping the number of authors on the market artificially small so they could better control the markets in terms of product availability and price controls.
The advent of digital publishing has given authors a way to get around the market controls of big-industry publishing. Even traditionally published authors such as Barry Eisler and H.M. Ward have walked away from the publishing houses and turned to self-publishing. The work coming out of self-published authors is incredible. Hugh Howey's dystopian science fiction Wool would probably have never seen the light of day if not for self-publishing and his books have sold millions of copies. There are other yet-to-be discovered authors such as William D. Richards Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody or Michael Patrick Hicks Convergence who are turning out real page turners with gripping stories and excellent writing.
Yeah, there is some crap out there (published as a joke; read the description; the author, Phronk, is a satirist and pretty damned funny). If you are unsure about a book by a self-published author, just download the free sample of their work and see how it reads before you buy. Many authors with a series of books offer the first book free—if you don't like it, you aren't out any money. If you do, then you've got a whole series to buy.
Many independent writers take their craft very seriously. They employ a team of editors, proof readers, and a cover artist or two to ensure that the reader is going to get the best reading experience possible. If they weren't putting so much work into assuring the quality of their work was there, the self-publishing movement would have collapsed years ago. Instead, because of the commitment to quality by the authors, the self-publishing movement has been growing in strength, variety, and quality. Self-published authors gain no support from advance payments, no corporate backing, and no financial assistance. They are not subsidized by monies from other authors (as is a practice in traditional publishing). Instead, they make 100% of their incomes from direct sales to readers. If they weren't doing the proper Q.A. on their books, their livelihoods would be unsustainable.
So, don't go listening to big-publishing shills trying to shoot down the first real competition they've ever faced. There is plenty of excellent reading to be found among self-publising writers, contrary to what the O.P. alludes. And as far as public libraries are concerned, independent writers are huge supporters of libraries, unlike big-industry publishers who try to milk money from municipalities by over-charging libraries for books and ebooks.
Thanks, I hope it helps. This will not be easy to get through. Advise her to try and find the humor in things. Being able to laugh takes the weight off. It also lets the people around her feel more relaxed about her condition. Relaxed people make better company, better company makes life better. And feeling better about life makes recovery more probable and come quicker. In many ways, laughter really is the best medicine.
I had a cerebral hemorrhage near my brainstem. While I wasn't completely cut off from my body, it really messed up the interface for a while. The good news is that function can come back. Contrary to popular belief, the human brain does grow new nerve cells and can repair the damage done. The bad news is, it is going to take a long time. It's going to take years, not months, to get back to functional, much less normal.
Frustration and Humiliation
First off, everything is working normally inside. She is still who she is. She is still thinking, working, trying to communicate, listen, getting bored, wanting to do things. She is fully aware of what is going on around her. She can hear and see you just fine. You speak, she can hear and understand what you are saying. She is not an invalid! Don't treat her like one!
One of the most frustrating things I had to deal with outside the disturbance in motor functions was the difficulty I had in communicating. My thinking worked just fine, I could think up my answer to any question instantly. The problem was getting my body to actually produce the sound and form the words. I had to think of the answer, consider how each word would sound, think out how my mouth needed to move, and then send the speech command to my body. As a result, I was always five minutes behind the flow of the conversation. It's like having an ultra-powerful supercomputer, and you go from having a high-speed, fiber-optic, giga-net broadband connection down to something less than a 300-baud acoustic modem. I reached a point where I just stopped trying to talk. My family just didn't understand or comprehend what was going on inside me. When you ask her a question, give her time to respond. YOU must learn to be patient. She has no choice in the matter at this point.
She's suffered a complete loss of bodily function. It isn't that she can't move, it's that she now can no longer do anything for herself. She can't feed herself. She can't clean herself. She can't amuse herself when bored. She can't control her bodily waste functions. She cannot clean herself after she expels something from her body. Someone else has to do it for her.
This is humiliating! The humiliation is the worst feeling of all. It gnaws at you. It erodes your desire to try. It corrodes your soul. It removes your will to live. You lay there in your hospital bed in a muddy puddle of your bodily waste, wishing you could reach the control for the pain meds and have it dump everything all at once into your IV line and just end the humiliation forever.
People talk to you like you are a child, an idiot. And always in a loud voice. They talk at you. They talk about you. But never to you. They talk about you in the third person as though you aren't there, in the room, laying in the bed right in front of them.
Do what you can to maintain her dignity as a person. Don't treat her like she's a doll laying in the bed. Remember there is a person in there. Treat her like one. And I'll warn you, that will take a LOT of patience on your part.
Breaking Out
When my hemorrhage hit, it felt like someone buried a pickaxe into the back of my head. It hurt. I knew something was horribly wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was. It never occurred to me I had a burst aneurism in my head. I did't just drop to the ground paralyzed. I managed to get up the stairs and say I needed help before things started going bad in a hurry. An ambulance ride later, I was in the hospital. Initially, I stabilized and they sent me home. But a few hours later, I realized I was getting worse and got taken back to the hospital. Over the next few days, issues would come and go, and when they would go, they took things with them. I ended up in a hospital in Boston for the next several weeks.
Brain injuries are awful things on more levels than people consider. It is absolutely the worst injury you can endure. It is at the very core of your interface with the Universe. It can and does effe
Sure. A bond trader trying to tell a real businessman how to run his company and tell him what a better product line would be.
Every company I worked for that put an MBA at the helm, failed. Those MBAs didn't understand what it took to create a product. They didn't understand production. One CEO got put in place didn't even know what products the company made (that company only lasted six months after he took over). And here we have a financial moron trying to tell an engineer how to run his company and what products to make. That's laughable. That would be like me trying to tell Einstein that the formula should be E=mc^3.
Hugh Howey's Silo Series, starting with Wool. Granted, it is a dystopian story, but it shows a strongly human side to the collapse of civilization. A lot of dystopian stories tend to focus on the inhumanity and shock value of distorted societies. Howey's collection of novellas makes it much more personal to the reader. I believe it is the uniquely intimate approach to such a story that caused Howey's stories to catch on.
You print something the owner of your publication or one of their major advertisers doesn't like, you get fired. Pure and simple. Just look at Fox (e.g. "Faux") News to see that. They outright distort the facts and lie to push their employer's agenda. Murkdock pays them well to look like fools and idiots--but there are greater fools and idiots who fall for that crap.
On the other hand, publications have soared to extraordinary heights in public opinion when reporters break earthshaking, investigative reports, even at the cost of the owner's friends and contacts in high places. Credibility brings in readers and more readers brings more money from advertisers. When publishers see the new bottom line attached to credibility, they usually loosen the reins and let the reporters do real work instead of writing fiction. For this, the problem is often self-correcting. The problem with gaining credibility is it can take years to have an effect, yet one misstep can blow it all away. Often, a major publication doesn't regain public trust until it is sold to a new publisher with an untainted reputation. The opposite can happen, too, when a reputable publication is bought out by a publisher of questionable reputation. Once the publisher starts pushing their questionable agenda into print, the publication's reputation slides rapidly and the target readership drops off. It is very difficult for even a top publication to recover from that situation.
The first place you will find out about the reputation of a given publication? From those on the front line: the reporters themselves. Contrary to public opinion, the majority of journalists take great pride in their work ethic and feel strongly that they are performing a vital public service factually reporting the news. So they take great offense to publications that don't do fact checking—called "Rags" in the industry. Reputable reporters almost all have a list of publications with which they would not want their names associated. Early in my career as a stringer (freelance writer), I commented to a colleague that I had applied to The XXXXX Post for a staff position. Nearly all the journalists around us stopped what they were doing, looked at me, and in one voice said, "Oh, God no! Not there!" Instead of covering the event (a boring political meeting going nowhere), the next forty minutes were spent with them giving me a lot of career guidance and networking. So, you want to know where you should be getting your news? Ask the reporters.
Living for just the art? Please!
I'm not sure what medications some of the above posters are on, or perhaps their glasses are a tad too rose-colored to understand reality, but I've got some news for those people: I'm an author and I make a living selling the stories I write. I love telling stories. I love writing. But if I wasn't making an income selling books to people who enjoy reading, I would not be able to afford to write. The only way I was able to truly get a start in writing is in thanks to my very understanding and supporting family when I decided to go all in, stop working regular employment, and start devoting myself 100% to writing. It took over three years with no income to write that first book. Do you think I could continue writing the books that many of you have read if I wasn't earning income from the sales of those books? My colleagues and friends, John Scalzi, Spider Robinson, David Brin, Walter Hunt, and Kristine Rusch--do you think any of them magically get their income from somewhere else?
If you showed up at work one day and your boss announced that they were no longer going to pay you for working at the company, that you would be doing your job for the love of doing your job, would you stay with that company? No, you'd go right to your desk, clear out your personal items and walk right out the door! Otherwise, how would you pay your rent and buy food, software, clothing, transportation, etc.? You can only leach off friends and family for so long before they are going to throw you out and tell you to get a job.
Get a benefactor such as Count von Moneybags to support you for life as an artist? That practice disappeared sometime back in the 18th century. You'd better go relearn your damn history. Back in the 1600's an artist had to produce for their benefactor or they would get cut. Even Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the greatest geniuses in history, was dropped by his benefactors at one point or another. Mozart had to beg for commissions. By the 18th century, benefactors had pretty much disappeared. We live in the 21st century. People with enough wealth today to be a potential benefactor are more interested in increasing their wealth than they are in supporting the arts. A writer, on average, produces one book every two years. Do you really know anyone who is willing to sign over a $50,000 check each year to support someone who walks around, relaxes and daydreams all day? I'd get fired from any job doing that.
Anyone can be an artist, as a hobby. But if you want to devote yourself to that art as a living, how are you going to put food on the table? Paint a picture of food and it magically appears. No. You have to create something that is good enough that people are willing to exchange money in exchange to own a copy of that work for their own enjoyment. I like to write programs, some of which I have shared with others for use or education. But does that make me a professional programmer? No, I'm just a hobbyist. I make my income by writing entertaining stories that people want to buy because they enjoy reading them. When you hear someone say "they live only for their art," behind that person is either a very hard working spouse or partner or they've somehow managed to land a sizable grant that supplies them with enough money to pay for housing, food, art supplies, electricity, heat, water, and other necessary things.
Those people I've known over the years who said they lived for their art, not money, are no longer artists. None of them made it much farther than their late 20's before they gave up on their art and became professional laborers. As a professional artist who makes his living selling his art, I am not foolish enough to forget that there is a very serious business side to what I do. And if I do not manage that properly, I can really screw myself over.
Back on the main topic: DRM? I hate it! It has nothing to do with protecting my copyrighted material. I have never seen DRM to anything to save me from having a copy of my work stolen from me
*cough* Two.
I stand corrected!
Just what you need in a game: building permits.
LOL! I feel your pain.
Personally, I rather liked their idea as it allows you to better create and optimize various kinds of neighborhoods. I believe it stems from their intent to make the game as customizable as possible. There are a lot of people who wanted to use SimCity to create models of their own towns or cities, but were unable. One of the goals of Civitas is to allow the user to do just that: create models of a given city and see how they could run (or ruin) it. By using the permits, the user can better force a given neighborhood to more closely resemble a neighborhood in their actual municipality.
Because the vast majority of people are honest and will pay for their copy.
And the vast majority of people are intelligent enough to understand that if you want more of a good product, you pay for it so the creators can continue making that product and making better products.
I'm inclined to agree with your opinion. Among the myriad of articles I read about this snafu, a couple mentioned beta-testers saying they felt they were being ignored. When you read how shocked and surprised EA's executives at the demand for SC5, it becomes clear that the beta-testers interviewed were being ignored. It begs the question, who were they listening to?
I saw a headline touting yet another "reality" TV series was going to be in the making soon, featuring some minor "major celebrity" I had never heard of before. I groaned, wondering when will it occur to TV executives that people cannot stand this kind of drivel? Well, in order to keep pushing this kind of crap, there must be some demand for it. I began to consider the surprising number of people I know who no longer subscribe to TV cable service, preferring to watch any TV shows they like via Netflix or Hula. What was most interesting about these people is that they are NOT techies, nerds or geeks. They are ordinary people, many of whom don't like using computers all that much! Yet, they now get their TV program fix via the internet. Well, if 70% of the people who watch TV have stopped watching TV, then perhaps it is a majority of the remaining 30% who are watching the stupidity of reality TV shows. Maybe the TV executives haven't realized the fact that they just lost 70% of their audience? And that the choice of programming for the remaining minority is keeping a much larger market away?
In light of that thought, I'm pretty sure EA was looking at social gaming on social networking sites, and not paying attention to the fact that companies selling social gaming have pretty much collapsed in their values. I knew a lot of people who got into the social games about a year or two ago, now they can't stand them. Why wasn't EA paying attention to the market? Why didn't they take a look at the people who bought SimCity in the first place ten years ago and ask their opinion? The people who like to play SimCity are NOT the social type of person. They are the people who like to tinker and build their models.
This is probably the best thing that could have happened to SimCity 5 in order to save the SimCity franchise.
It's a pity how corporate greed can ruin an otherwise excellent product. Management at EA/Maxis was obviously incredibly detached from the product. Comments such as how surprised and unprepared they were for the massive response they got to the new product speaks volumes to the fact that the people in charge had absolutely no clue about the products they make, nor what it takes to make them successful.
The good news? At least there is one team out there that gets it!
Programs will come and go, whether commercial or not. What was more important to me was that the data I created was easily accessible by other programs should the need arise to replace what I was using. I've been burned a few times by using a word processor that was discontinued, and being stuck for trying to get my writings out of the files in which my work contained. Going from Wordperfect to Word to other word processors has been a pain. Whenever many programs are updated, their proprietary file formats also undergo a change that often means no backwards compatibility. This, too, can be a pain. Image processing programs (e.g. Photoshop, GIMP, Painter, etc.) have the same issues.
I finally learned to focus on programs that save in a format that is openly accessible to other programs. Or even better, store that data in a "human readable" format such as XML. When XML-based, it is a simple matter to write a script in PHP or Python to strip my data from the file and save it in another format that another program can use.
Learn to save backup files in formats that are open for other programs to access. Focus on programs that save to open formats that can either be used by other programs or in the event of an emergency, you can extract your work from the file manually. A good example of this in a word processor is Redler's Mellel. Their "native" format is a zip-compressed XML file, similar in concept to an EPUB file. Microsoft's DOCX file is also an XML file that can have the data extracted by a shell script if needed.
I'm reading a lot of comments above where people are saying that the average consumer's opinion isn't worth shit. I beg to differ. When I wrote my book, I didn't write it for the critics, the reviewers, the professionals--I wrote it for people to read and enjoy the story I made up. When someone has read my book and liked it enough that they wanted to say to the world, "Hey! I really enjoyed reading this book!" That means a lot to me! It tells me that the effort I put into writing that story was worth it.
The occasional negative review is going to happen. Often these are self-important people that feel the need to let everyone else know how important they are, and they are going to snipe at any flaw they can find: "The author used 'palatable' instead of 'palpable' in the fourth chapter. Clearly he doesn't know how to write! Don't buy this book!" Such comments are so ridiculously petty, they can be ignored. Now, if someone made the comment, "I felt that Character-A wasn't very well thought through and his development was kind of weak," and then went on to explain their position, you can be sure that I will pay attention to something like that and look into it. Good constructive criticism is good to act upon. It might be too late for one book, but you can be assured I'll try not to make a similar mistake on the next book. There are also going to be those who don't like a book because it just isn't to their taste. To that, I can only say, "Thank you for your patronage. You'll probably not want to buy the next book, but thanks for at least giving me a try." As an author, I do consider what a negative reviewer has to say. It doesn't feel as nice as when I get a great review, but it may help me improve what I'm doing.
As far as peer reviews are concerned, if Walter Hunt, Spider Robinson, Neal Stephenson or Ursula LeGuin read my story and said they liked it, I would be absolutely thrilled to receive such an endorsement from such established authors! On another level, If Oprah Winfrey piped up and said she liked my book, I would probably be doing handsprings in my front yard. What? You think Winfrey's opinion is worthless? Consider this: When Oprah says she likes a particular book, she has over 30 million fans that will immediately go out and buy that book to read it for themselves. To an author, that is the equivalent of getting a $1 million dollar check in the mail--because that is exactly what happens! You wake up the next morning to discover that you went from 2,000 copies sold to 750,000 copies sold. With my book at $4.99 and me getting 70%, that means in 60 days Amazon would be dropping a cool $2.6 million into my bank account.
What is at issue with Amazon is that people were gaming the system. Of note, the author R.J. Ellory admitted to writing false reviews over the past several years. He's not the only one. There have been many others over the past several years. The opinion of a peer author in a given genre carries huge weight with readers. And that opinion can make or break another author, especially if that author is new and struggling to gain readership. To have someone purposefully sabotaging another author for their own gain is reprehensible. Sadly, there are unscrupulous people and they are going to pull every dirty trick they can to get ahead.
Things like this do weigh heavily on me. I told family and friends not to post a review because they know me, but because they read my story and actually liked it. If they want to blog, tweet, or post about my story, go ahead and tell people that they know me and want to promote my book to help me. I also told my friends not to buy my book because they are my friend; buy it because they want to read the story. I realize that my story will not be to everyone's taste, and I don't want them buying it because they feel obligated to do so out of loyalty.
Is Amazon correct in their move? T
I once worked for a small manufacturing company with some big clients. Flu shots for employees were mandatory, unless their doctor said otherwise, and were provided FREE by the company. It was the first time I ever saw a company with this policy. It has since become a regular policy in other companies where I have worked.
The year before I worked there, the attitude of management was very antagonistic towards employees who called in sick. Management had the stance that employees were using sick time to avoid work and were lazy, unproductive workers. One employee called in sick with the flu over several days and his manager didn't believe him. So the manager made him report to work the next day. So, the employee, still sick, reported for work.
As can be expected, a few days later, workers in the company began dropping like flies as the flu spread through the ranks. By the end of the week, every employee except three became ill and could not report to work. Including the CEO. The company's production, management, and business was completely shut down for three weeks. The three who were still on were low-level employees who had neither the authority or skill to do anything in the company to keep production going or even send out what product was ready to be packaged and shipped.
The three employees who did not become ill were the only three in the company who had gotten flu shots.
The damage didn't end there. This small company produced a key component for a seasonal product sold by a major company in the US. Without this component, the client could not produce their own product. This mini-epidemic occurred just as the small company needed to ramp up their production in order for their client to ramp up their production to meet the coming seasonal demand. (This is an event that shows the serious flaw in Just-In-Time manufacturing.) So, not only could this small company not produce the item their client needed, it seriously jeopardized their client's critical production period. Their client, in a panic, had to turn to another company to produce this part.
Not only did this company have production shutdown for all their clients for three weeks, they lost a huge account with a very important client. They had to fight to get this client to give them another chance the next year and had to accept unfavorable terms in the new contract. There was similar damage to some contracts with their smaller clients. All this resulted in extended business losses for the company, not just three weeks of production! This damage continied on in a few rounds of layoffs over the next couple of years, one of which got me cut from the company.
The new policy at the company when I started was all employees will have flu shots, provided for free by the company, and anyone who even thought they were sick was to call in and stay away until they were over whatever bug hit them. They were still trying to regain lost business and repair damage to their reputation when I came into the company. When I learned the story behind the company's "progressive" sick policy, it was estimated that the company had permanently lost a third of its clientele and they were fighting to retain another third.
Fifteen years after all this happened, this company is still around, but I estimate they are less than half the size what they were when I worked for them. A combination of the flu shutdown and the flow of manufacturing jobs being sent to China was nearly the death-blow for this company. They sold off buildings and facilities in order to stay afloat. A lot of very hard lessons are all wrapped up in this story.
All this damage because of just one manager ordering one sick employee to report to work.
The same system is being installed around Boston, MA and other localities. I love seeing the sign and knowing how long it is going to take me to reach a certain point. It takes a lot of stress out of being stuck in traffic. Less stressed drivers means traffic loosens up and moves more freely, instead of people bunching up on each other's cars and causing a traffic jam.
Additionally, the data will be publicly available, so mapping applications on GPS devices and smart phones can show traffic congestion in realtime, giving people the opportunity to plan alternate routes more easily to avoid congestion, and thereby reducing congestion.
One VP for whom I used to work referred to employees that left right at closing time as "Fred Flintstones." He made sure his derisive attitude towards these employees was well displayed in front of the CEO of the company at the end of the day as the line of cars left the parking lot. Most of the employees who stayed after the 5PM quitting time were there because they started their shifts later than the other employees.
This VP's attitude blinded him to the fact that those be labeled "Fred Flintstones" were on the job first thing in the morning, well before he arrived to sit in his office for the day doing nothing engaged with production of product in the company. Never mind that these very employees were the engineers that developed and made the technology of the company's primary product. Ironically, the one engineer he praised for staying late each day was staying late for a very special reason: it was the only time he could switch out the sabotaged firmware he created into shipping machines and put non-sabotaged firmware into machines that were being returned for "repairs". He was sabotaging the firmware in order to ensure that his job of hunting down bugs in the programming would be too important to get laid off.
This sabotage was discovered when the engineer was out of vacation and forgot to remove his secret code from his computer. The senior engineer on the project needed to double check the programming, logged into the saboteur's computer and discovered the two sets of code. Sadly, it was long too late for the many employees that had to be laid off because the company was struggling due to the problems the device was having. Most of the employees let go were the ones the VP had labeled Fred Flintstones. With the truly productive employees gone, it was pretty much game over for the company. They were able to float a little longer, but the lack of improvement and productivity stopped any possibility of growth in the company. When the sabotage was discovered, the laid off employees were no longer available. Eventually, the company pretty much closed their doors, being bought out by a competitor.
The attitude that the people who left at the end of the day and didn't put in extra hours were substandard employees was dead wrong. They were the people who made things happen in the company. Once let go, no longer were there any doers in the company and everything ground to a halt