Back to subject - didn't they have his contact list already? Didn't they have their own system where he could could manage the contacts?
In this case yes, they had the contact list and all the details on the customers. Its just that the customers didn't want to talk to them. It was never them that the customers wanted to talk to; everyone asked for the personable old sales critter every time.
Thats probably why they wanted to get rid of him and why they ended up getting rid of most of their customers as well. The old guy was focussed on the customer and on making sure that the customer got something that satisfied them. The others focussed on the technologies and on selling the latest thing to the customer.
Its not about ownership of the list of names and addresses. If it came down to that then the Germans would have everything sewn up; they have an official "*Department* of Names and Addresses".
No, its about the people who have those names and who are at those addresses; its about the personal relationships with those people which establishes trust and confidence.
You don't own that on some "intellectual property" list.
Its not "Intellectual property", it never was; its "*Social* property" and not in the sense of "Socialist" either, don't get those mixed up. Perhaps "Sociable Property" might be clearer in meaning?
Whereas in other industries, such as the beauty business, it is normal for clients to follow you when you change jobs.
Oh I have a great story about this.
I used to do business with a company that sold computer equipment. They had a old-ish sales guy, totally non-technical but a real people-person. He was great to deal with and went out of his way for me.
He was also a part-owner of the business.
Well, a few of the other business owners got together late one night and wrote him out of the company.
This sales guy soon found work elsewhere. And guess what? ALL of his customers started dealing with his new place of work. And that turned out to be MOST of the customers of the previous place. They didn't last long after that.
And, of course, if P=NP, then one has to imagine that there might be a new wave of assaults on even non-public key crypto.
And don't forget the many bonuses; busses and trains might run on time!!! Air travel might be more efficient! All manner of logistic operations could become more efficient:)
Not necessarily; I believe that if there is such a deceiver then its the same entity as has been telling Christians, Jews and Moslem's that it is the creator-god.
Buddhism is great for learning to achieve a prayerful state, but it centers that state around the self instead of God.
How would you feel about 'non-dualism' where there is no difference between God and everything else? Ie: God is everywhere and everything, literally, because all of reality is *composed* of God?
I forget where I read it, but I recently a news article that mentioned the "Streetlight Effect".
We all know the classic joke. A man is walking down the street when he sees a drunk, on his knees, looking for something under a streetlight. The man stops and asks, "What are you looking for?" and the drunk replies. "My keys." So the man gets down on his knees to help him find his keys.
After a half-hour of fruitless searching the man asks, "Well, where did you lose them?" and the drunk replies, "Over in that alley, but the light's better over here."
Actually this comes from an old Sufi (Islamic) 'teaching' story and is ascribed to the Mullah Nasrudin.
I'd recommend looking him up for a view of the brighter side of Islam:)
Spinning something as large as a ballistic missile, in the boost phase which is when these lasers are useful as well as when the rocket is full of fuel and rather heavy, might conceivably produce gyroscopic effects which could increase trajectory calculation complexity quite a bit?
Always include time spent filling in timesheets on your timesheets.
It may seem recursive but its important that its included... if the timesheeting or accounting system is so bone-headed that it takes hours to complete then this should be accounted for.
If aliens were to land in the middle of the Superbowl, either:
My limited understanding of American Football is that if aliens were to land in the middle of Superbowl, chances are very high that it would be during one of the many 'time-outs' and that the home audience would see nothing as they would be viewing adverts while the in-stadium audience would be very glad to see something *actually* happening.
Or am I way off the mark with respect to how American Football actually operates at this level?
We had a whole rack full of nice shiny Dells all with dual power supplies.
Some very bright and intelligent guy figured that it would be a great idea to hook one side of their powersupplies up to the mains and the other half to the UPS.
One day we had a power failure. The UPS immediately overloaded and failed. The whole server room went dark.
See, the load on the UPS from the Dell rack was normally distributed between mains and UPS...
Mains fails, all power gets drawn from UPS, UPS chokes and dies due to the sudden load.
In order to convince management to fund a backup airconditioning unit for our machine room I had to write up a *business case*.
Management want to replace our entire email infrastructure with something approaching MS Exchange on size and complexity? No written business case, they just go with whatever is shiniest.
It's bizarre that, with Jobs exerting such obsessive compulsive control over Apple's output, crap products like these somehow slip through the cracks. It's almost like Jobs is schizoid
I think he might be...
I use a Mac; I switched from Linux on the desktop to OSX over a year ago, for work only.
Theres a little quote I once found which explained everything to me... made me *understand* OSX.
Something like:
"OSX is like a idiot-savant; both inspired and retarded at the same time."
Slashdot Mirror
To which the government will respond "Ok, how do we generate one of these supernova explosion things?"
I believe that the standard procedure in SGC is to dial a stargate to a black hole and then drop the gate into a star.
Credit goes to Sam for this one. Destroyer of Worlds.
Back to subject - didn't they have his contact list already? Didn't they have their own system where he could could manage the contacts?
In this case yes, they had the contact list and all the details on the customers. Its just that the customers didn't want to talk to them. It was never them that the customers wanted to talk to; everyone asked for the personable old sales critter every time.
Thats probably why they wanted to get rid of him and why they ended up getting rid of most of their customers as well. The old guy was focussed on the customer and on making sure that the customer got something that satisfied them. The others focussed on the technologies and on selling the latest thing to the customer.
Its not about ownership of the list of names and addresses. If it came down to that then the Germans would have everything sewn up; they have an official "*Department* of Names and Addresses".
No, its about the people who have those names and who are at those addresses; its about the personal relationships with those people which establishes trust and confidence.
You don't own that on some "intellectual property" list.
Its not "Intellectual property", it never was; its "*Social* property" and not in the sense of "Socialist" either, don't get those mixed up. Perhaps "Sociable Property" might be clearer in meaning?
Whereas in other industries, such as the beauty business, it is normal for clients to follow you when you change jobs.
Oh I have a great story about this.
I used to do business with a company that sold computer equipment.
They had a old-ish sales guy, totally non-technical but a real people-person. He was great to deal with and went out of his way for me.
He was also a part-owner of the business.
Well, a few of the other business owners got together late one night and wrote him out of the company.
This sales guy soon found work elsewhere. And guess what? ALL of his customers started dealing with his new place of work. And that turned out to be MOST of the customers of the previous place. They didn't last long after that.
(after all, by "fixing" the computer he made it slower)
Oh come ON.
Desktop support people do this ALL the time!!!
And don't get me started on Vista... 'fix' my computer by installing Vista? And make it slower? Thats *normal* in this world!
And, of course, if P=NP, then one has to imagine that there might be a new wave of assaults on even non-public key crypto.
And don't forget the many bonuses; busses and trains might run on time!!! Air travel might be more efficient! All manner of logistic operations could become more efficient :)
Rubber-soled platform soles and tinfoil bodysuits?
So those 1970's scifi series (such as Blakes' 7 and UFO) were actually prophetic!
Its just another evil intelligence, nothing special.
It *tells* you that its the ultimate creator of everything, sure.
But its not as all powerful as it would have you believe.
Its not Descartes deceiver.
If it exists at all.
So you believe there is a deceiver and devil?
Not necessarily; I believe that if there is such a deceiver then its the same entity as has been telling Christians, Jews and Moslem's that it is the creator-god.
Buddhism is great for learning to achieve a prayerful state, but it centers that state around the self instead of God.
How would you feel about 'non-dualism' where there is no difference between God and everything else? Ie: God is everywhere and everything, literally, because all of reality is *composed* of God?
We, and everything around us *is* God?
I forget where I read it, but I recently a news article that mentioned the "Streetlight Effect".
We all know the classic joke. A man is walking down the street when he sees a drunk, on his knees, looking for something under a streetlight. The man stops and asks, "What are you looking for?" and the drunk replies. "My keys." So the man gets down on his knees to help him find his keys.
After a half-hour of fruitless searching the man asks, "Well, where did you lose them?" and the drunk replies, "Over in that alley, but the light's better over here."
Actually this comes from an old Sufi (Islamic) 'teaching' story and is ascribed to the Mullah Nasrudin.
I'd recommend looking him up for a view of the brighter side of Islam :)
14 God said to Moses, "I am who I am . [b] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "
Talk about disingenuous... I never trusted that thing before and now I trust it even less.
I *swear* that this 'god' that the monotheists worship is one and the same as the 'deceiver' which it warns everyone about. Same entity.
Christians, Jews and Moslems all, unwittingly, worship their 'devil'.
As for the "killer" moniker, I'm so tired of hearing it that I think it needs to be forcibly retired.
Agreed.
What we'll need next though is a killer "'killer moniker' killer" killer.
Ok heres a test for christian open-mindedness.
Would you say that, for example, the Amazonian rainforest Indians may have heard the word of god *before* the arrival of christian missionaries?
Does it require a chain of connection to a certain region of the Middle East in order to hear the word of god?
Or, to put it another way, if there is no connection to the document known as 'the bible' can a person still know the word of god?
I am pretty negative towards organized religion. The harm it has done over the centuries has been staggering
I think you are conflating monotheism with religion in general.
Monotheism is pretty nasty stuff, its the crack cocaine of religion.
I'm no rocket scientist but...
Spinning something as large as a ballistic missile, in the boost phase which is when these lasers are useful as well as when the rocket is full of fuel and rather heavy, might conceivably produce gyroscopic effects which could increase trajectory calculation complexity quite a bit?
Just throwing that out as a possibility.
Firing employees randomly when they violate a policy to set an example isn't exactly smart
I'm sorry but I'm having trouble making sense of your sentence.
How, exactly, is firing someone for violating a very clear, written and signed policy in the least bit 'random'?
Maybe you have a different idea of 'random' to the rest of us... just checking.
Always include time spent filling in timesheets on your timesheets.
It may seem recursive but its important that its included... if the timesheeting or accounting system is so bone-headed that it takes hours to complete then this should be accounted for.
If aliens were to land in the middle of the Superbowl, either:
My limited understanding of American Football is that if aliens were to land in the middle of Superbowl,
chances are very high that it would be during one of the many 'time-outs' and that the home audience would see nothing as they would be viewing adverts while the in-stadium audience would be very glad to see something *actually* happening.
Or am I way off the mark with respect to how American Football actually operates at this level?
Mine would be...
We had a whole rack full of nice shiny Dells all with dual power supplies.
Some very bright and intelligent guy figured that it would be a great idea to hook one side of their powersupplies up to the mains and the other half to the UPS.
One day we had a power failure. The UPS immediately overloaded and failed. The whole server room went dark.
See, the load on the UPS from the Dell rack was normally distributed between mains and UPS...
Mains fails, all power gets drawn from UPS, UPS chokes and dies due to the sudden load.
Hilarity ensues!
You are not kidding.
In order to convince management to fund a backup airconditioning unit for our machine room I had to write up a *business case*.
Management want to replace our entire email infrastructure with something approaching MS Exchange on size and complexity? No written business case, they just go with whatever is shiniest.
As a former sysadmin, I would think that any machine reliant on 'happy thoughts' would be the most crash-prone system in the history of computing.
I can verify this.
At one time I had two computers, a Linux one and one running Windows 98.
The Linux one I named "Linus"
The Windows one I named "Bill".
It wasn't until I changed its name that the Windows 98 machine started being reliable.
I've always thought that religion was a plague to society,
Its not religion itself thats the plague on society; its *monotheism*.
Monotheism encourages the kind of thinking where you and only you can possibly be correct; there is only one *truth* and that is your 'god'.
Monotheism is evil. And the so-called 'gods' worshiped by monotheists are evil beings; just read their own scripture!
It's bizarre that, with Jobs exerting such obsessive compulsive control over Apple's output, crap products like these somehow slip through the cracks. It's almost like Jobs is schizoid
I think he might be...
I use a Mac; I switched from Linux on the desktop to OSX over a year ago, for work only.
Theres a little quote I once found which explained everything to me... made me *understand* OSX.
Something like:
"OSX is like a idiot-savant; both inspired and retarded at the same time."
So...
Bruce Schneier is like the Chuck Norris of IT security...?
but I don't find anything particularly innovative about either the iPhone
Oh come *on*!
A smartphone with 3G???
Apple are the *kings* of innovation. Only Steve could have thought of that! Sheer unparalleled genius!