I think in some ways, though, all this hype and speculation is good at least in the kind of market feedback they get. Hey, we get psyched about swinging a sword, and someone will figure out a way to sell us the product.
This law sweeps across with a broad stroke and that's bad legislation.
One problem is a matter of 'annoying' people. What is annoying varies from person to person.
On the one hand, this means that spammers face yet another law against them. So, spamming while in the U.S. is a really bad idea. I'm sorry, if your name is really Ivan Charles Wiener, then, ok, I guess you can continue to send me erectile dysfunction ads as I.C. Wiener. But Heywood Jablowmie had better look out!
My question then is a matter of whether or not posting anonymously on a blog is a problem. If you allow real anonymity and you aren't prepared to handle the system, well, you're a fool. But most blogging software takes care of that. And if you force people to register, problem solved.
The big problem is that 'recipient of communication' is undefined. So, if I have a blog, and I allow people to post anonymously and they don't annoy me, is it a problem if some politician visits my blog and sees that? The original author is anonymous. Granted, as the owner and effective publisher who is not anonymous, well, I would argue that it's now my problem, and too bad, and so on. But sites, like Slashdot, that allow anonymous and disavow ownership of any kind of the post, well, that could be a big problem, as then Slashdot is not committing a crime directly, but can be considered an accessory.
Hopefully, this thing will be given a reasonable smackdown, but I doubt it.
Google would not be interested in the studios concept. It puts them into competition instead of controlling the interest. It also makes them have to engage in risk in an area for which they are not experts. They know how to analyse ads and determine relevance, etc. They do not create media, though, and the cost to compete is very high.
Were they to engage in that, the stock price would take a serious hit.
Well, my family celebrates Christmas, and while I like playing Santa Claus, I've moved well away from the whole religious impact myself. I'm actually investigated conversion to Judaism, so that perhaps colours my vision a bit.
From my experience, most of the issue comes down to expectations of happiness. I have relatives who like to play the 'big happy family' game. They expect everyone to grin and be happy and pretend we all get along on everything. And that, my friends, is really hard when you keep hearing people say stupid things. I have some relatives who will constantly say dumb things and drive me nuts.
The other part that creates stress is the social requirement to spend time with people you would otherwise avoid. Some of them I would have no problem seeing on a short limited basis individually, but not all together in a group (it pushes the meter WAY beyond tolerance levels).
My solutions?
If you're up north, it's dark. I lived in Finland for five years. Remember to get lights and enjoy light. Burn candles, or put a fire in the fireplace. Living light cheers you up a lot more than you'd believe
Make sure your body is comfortable. Be sure to keep warm, but not be overly warm. Dress in layers, because if you have to go to a big family event, it'll be cold when you arrive, and get warmer as the hot air of them all blabbing gets around. If you're physically uncomfortable, your stress will skyrocket.
Try to keep your events smaller. Meet with friends, meet with family, but try to do so in smaller groups instead of all at once. Yes, you think it sounds exhausting making the rounds, but people are more receptive and more genuine in small numbers, instead of fake grins all the time.
Avoid mandatory gift-giving. It just makes everyone unhappy. Don't do it, and don't go anywhere it's required. If your family all has to get together and do group gifts, avoid the group. Meet with them individually and give gifts where appropriate. Chances are, the people you don't want to buy gifts will be relieved and not having to get you anything either.
Goof off! Take time for yourself, too. I have to remind myself of this all time when I have other obligations. You need 'me time' no matter what. My house is a wreck, my kitchen is a mess, and I still remember that a little fun (usually as Civ IV) is important to keep from exploding.
Lastly, if you have to travel lots to visit family, take a holiday off once in a while. A quiet holiday, whether Christmas, Thanksgiving, or whatever, is sometimes really good, especially if you really have a home where you are. Take time to enjoy your home. Invite some of your friends or co-workers over who maybe don't have the chance to visit family. It'll be good and make you feel great.
I concur with the XHTML and CSS. If you don't know these, you don't know the full extent of what you CAN do in the browser. While I don't think every site has to be in XHTML, it makes it much easier to transition over to working with XML docs if you already tag in an XML format.
PHP is a great language for coding the dynamic side. While there are lots of places that use ASP, I found that ASP is awkward and really isn't built well. So stick with PHP. Learn to write SQL queries too, and integration with MySQL won't be so tough.
While I promote hand-coding, look into getting a good IDE of some kind, like TextPad. That way you can validate your code and make sure you don't screw up every five minutes. XMLSpy Home Edition is also pretty good for such things.
CSS is great stuff, and while you'll be frustrated when browser X, Y, or Z doesn't support something, there are ways to make the page degrade gracefully. Start looking for CSS Hacks and you'll find plenty of workarounds. Always write for a good CSS-compliant browser and then fix for the broken (like IE).
Honestly, I find CS to be ridiculously boring, which is why I wasn't intrigued by it, why my wife wasn't intrigued by it, or frankly anybody I know. (Even those I know with CS degrees didn't find it too fascinating.)
It's a good point there are a lot more things than simply being a code monkey. (Which is what most CS majors I've met end up doing.) Most people I've met with degrees in information science have been women. Engineering seems to be male heavy, and the most successful UI designers I've known were women.
Why not look at other incredibly boring number-crunching degrees? Economics, accounting, etc.? I would even expect them to have higher percentages of women graduates, since those jobs actually can have some real interaction with people, even as interns.
The sad fact is that most CS students who aren't double-majoring tend to be antisocial, which real difficulties dealing with people. Given that women tend to be more social, and that they tend to be more women at colleges these days, it really points out how awful the career field is presented in the long run.
(Were I ever to take a pure coding job, I think I'd have to kill myself.)
Given that military members from various branches already work at NSA, having the Air Force expand its role to meet the obligations it already has isn't ridiculous.
One of the big reasons to do this for the Air Force is because they are also generally given aerospace command, including satellites.
This is not to say that other branches don't also have this, as the Navy just recently renamed its cryptology officers as information warfare officers, and has retasked and renamed the Naval Security Group. Many of the information systems locations are moving towards joint tasking anyway. With the vast experience in telecommunications, if the Air Force becomes the main branch for running these various ops, it won't change the fact that the Navy, Marines, and Army also have trained units for these tasks, too.
I'd like to add, as well, that treaties hold the same weight as Constitutional Law in the U.S., unless they violate the Constitution. So, unless a treaty is broken, no simple law can be passed that violates those treaties, either, without it being effectively unconstitutional.
As for schools overreacting to non-issues, I agree. But this is the same kind of backlash we saw regarding airplanes following the hijackings of September 11, 2001. I've argued since then that we could take naked people on the plane, and there's enough equipment already onboard to hijack the plane.
And I'll agree that it varies from place to place. Most of my understanding regard high schools comes from my wife (who just recently left teaching) as well as seeing my brother and his friends (my brother is one of those violent shits).
I believe you have hit the nail on the head regarding the reason everyone is so paranoid. I wouldn't say it's a women's liberation thing, but the two income household has become the norm, even in situations where it makes no sense. This churning of money flowing around creates an illusion of an improved economy, where none really exists. All those people employed with daycare, restaurants, and other services simply because more people are working an unable to do these things themselves does not constitute an improved economy, only a wider-spread economy.
These frazzled people are unable to adequately parent and thus are more panicked and more paranoid. You can't let kids play in the neighbourhood unsupervised not because of there being more kidnappers, but because there are fewer parents at home in a stable community.
As much as I love having a career, my wife and I have determined that her career is more important than mine (she's military), and I have more experience with children, so I will stay home with kids for however long we feel is necessary.
At any rate, I love playing video games, so at least my kids won't be being babysat by the equipment, but will use it in a social setting.
Just because violent crime has gone down, doesn't mean that there isn't more widespread violence and problems.
I can't speak to a large range of studies, but I can point to what I've noticed amongst high school students recently. The threshold of violence tolerance is significantly higher than when I was in school. Some groups, of which I know the members have seen violent everything since a young age, will hit each other constantly, as well as degrade each other. Their acts are the kind that would have landed me a suspension or possible explusion years ago, and now basically result in nothing.
I don't approve of censoring video games by any measure as far as publication. I think it's rather crass of people to get massively upset at an article that addresses active parenting with technology. The violence they see is only one aspect of the problem. The other is that many of these kids were raised by the technology and not by any kind of real parenting. That further desensitises them. Whether or not they commit violent crime, the amount of abusive language and sheer lack of empathy towards others I have witnessed makes the corporate raiders of the 1980s look humane.
It wouldn't be a bad idea, if Adobe licensed them in such a way as to allow open-source development, but also allow to reintegrate development back into their commercial product, without forcing the new commercial product to release source.
Not sure what the licence would be, but if someone knows, that wouldn't be an unreasonable idea from a corporate standpoint.
I have my own personal bets about what will be going, but of course, that's from my own perspective. From what the majority of analysts say, yes, Freehand will likely go, as will GoLive.
Much speculation exists regarding Fireworks vs. Photoshop. Photoshop will, of course, stay. What I wonder about is whether or not ImageReady will go. If they could merge some of the features of Fireworks into Photoshop, it would be a fabulous product. I've never liked ImageReady to export photos for the web, and I've not liked using Photoshop for creating simple graphic elements for online either. With enough support, Fireworks may stick around by itself, even.
While I've consistently used products from both companies, and many an employer will likely reap an initial cost-savings from the merger, I am sad to see that competition in this industry has faded. I don't think even a company with as much cash to burn as Microsoft can break in any time soon. However, the tools themselves are pretty well set, so I think the next cool thing will be modifying the user interfaces to be even MORE user-friendly and intutitive. Go GIMP and bring on some competition!
I highly doubt that moving to this á la carte scenario will result in them dropping packages. Chances are that they will price point it to where if you get say two channels in a suite (like Discovery), buying the whole package will cost about the same, pennies more, or possibly less.
What would be nice about this is that I wouldn't have to pay for stuff I never watch at all. There are stations I watch on rare occasion that are worthwhile, like TNT and Spike, but others, particularly MTV and MTV2, that I never watch. I'm not interested in having Disney on my TV (I have no kids).
Depending on how they price it all out, I could end up saving money. Or perhaps buying the whole big package will save me money. For me, buying a whole bundle of services through Comcast makes no sense right now, but for my mom, who always has kids in her house, it makes a lot of sense, with her 5+ TVs, and her four computers online.
If I could drop myself down to basically the networks, CNN, History, History International, TNT, Spike, Sci-Fi, BBC America, Comedy Central, Discovery, TLC, Cartoon Network, TBS, and a premium lineup like HBO, I'd be pretty well set. I'd have around 30 channels, and I'd have about as much to watch as I do with 150+.
We celebrate winners in our schools all the time. At least in sports. Fame, celebrity, and wealth seem to be all that counts in this society.
Some of us consider the longer-term importance of putting money towards things that will build up the next generation, not just leave them in a mindless stupor.
If you're successful, great. If you waste money, well, you're dumb.
I don't disagree with your view of American companies as short-sighted. Most of them are. We have many investors out there who think only quarter-to-quarter. And a backlash is coming.
The IT industry hasn't felt it as much simply because they haven't been as entrenched. But look at the auto industry. Look at the airlines. How many times in corporate America have we seen psychopaths gut companies to raise share prices temporarily, only to have them disappear altogether. I remember when they were slashing jobs at AT&T. Aren't they now being acquired by SBC (which will rename itself AT&T)?
If you earn a low enough income in a non-exempt position, yes, IT people do qualify for overtime. (I've gotten paid overtime wages, as in 1 1/2 times my wage, as an IT employee.) Of course, it requires being somewhere that the cost of living isn't so ridiculously high to begin with.
Companies that continue to insist on outsourcing core competencies and locating their central operations in high-cost areas will continue to die. That's the truth of it.
Get some decent sales people where your clients are, and move everyone else where the living is cheap. From what I hear, aside from the tourists in the summer, Rapid City, SD is nice.
Unless, of course, communication issues have created massive distrust amongst callers. If customer service is your competitive edge, then you need to make sure that you don't lose ground in that area.
After being burned by outsourced tech support that told my mother that she must have her own address wrong, and that she should go and talk to her husband to get the right address, my mother dumped HP so fast. For the same midrange computers, she went with Gateway, which has domestic call centres, which understand what she's talking about.
Gateway made a smart move, as they are winning home purchasers with good customer support.
I will grant you that cost motivated this kind of move - the cost of losing customers.
Oh, I recognise that the RIAA wants to have a monopoly. However, they're failing to really engage in that.
The evidence of this is Sony/BMG going off half-cocked and implementing DRM without everyone doing it. Granted, if they all went and violated 'fair use' then we'd easily be able to bring them up on RICO charges.
When I talk about choices for the average user, if it's between crap artist A and crap artist B, they'll choose crap artist B if it doesn't have DRM that's been covered by the news. Most people won't know for most DRM, but this is a big publicity stunt that really blew up.
At any rate, a monopoly like Microsoft's tends to only get you slapped with Sherman... What the RIAA is trying to do, should they succeed, can get them slapped with RICO.
I think the MPAA and RIAA should really make it clear to everyone and get together to form the Music And Film Industry Association - MAFIA.
Just because the RIAA comes out and makes the argument that they have been more responsible than some others in handling this, doesn't mean I'm suddenly all warm and fuzzy about Sony.
I have railed and fussed about Microsoft for year, but this mishandling of DRM, going against codified law in the US regarding 'fair use', their foot-dragging on Blu-Ray, and their desire to totally dominate my home entertainment, makes them far worse than Microsoft in my eyes, and I'm not a big fan of the MS lifestyle.
What the RIAA and the record companies don't get is that the more CHOICE we have, the less we're likely put up with the bull from anyone. Most people put up with software errors because they don't know they have options. They are not willing to put up with music creating software errors, because they can always buy music elsewhere.
As for me, I have a great Sony Discman I bought years ago. That's probably the last Sony product I will buy unless they really learn to change their minds. Sony has become a dishonourable company.
Granted, of course, if the RIAA came out supporting Linux, I'd be tempted to switch to BSD, too.
I don't mind regulating the sale of various products to those underage. But to state that we need to get rid video games because parents are too stupid to even read, well, I'm floored.
If parents are too dumb, then obviously they shouldn't be raising the children, or you need to improve education.
Deciding to impose restrictions on a particular medium is ridiculous. Violent movies are allowed, subject to a rating system. If the violent video games are on that rating system, then they should be allowed, too.
Maybe they should start censoring the violent bits out of the Bible, too.... Oh wait, the CSU wouldn't do that, right?
Fix the problem, instead of pandering. Politicians who pander to frantic moral agendas easily become the puppets of fascist rulers.
Sometimes I begin to think all we do is practice writing code. We seem to not follow standards and we tend to repeat a lot of the same functionality over and over again with different code.
Of course, we don't practice writing documentation ever, so that might be the problem.
Except for me.... the non-programmer who's supposed to somehow reverse-engineer documentation out of this code. Yeah.
Many of those issues would work just fine for OpenOffice.org on a Windows platform. Minor accessibility issues seem to be fairly easily resolved during a simple swap-out of MS Office for OpenOffice.org, as they are managed well by the OS.
Unfortunately, on the major issues, those aspects are NOT handled by the OS in Windows, and so massively customised software has been implemented for use with MS Office on the Windows platform. The accessibility issues are a problem for OpenOffice.org on Windows. However, in a Gnome-based environment, there seem to be workarounds.
Discussing the switch to a specific document format requires looking at the whole picture. It will not be a simple switch with no consideration of the OS platform at all when there are needs to be met for those with disabilities. I don't know how well JAWS will work with Office 12, but I also know that JAWS sometime defeats a lot of the ideas of accessibility that could be implemented in a wider fashion. Sometimes they corrupt things as IE has done for web standards itself.
I think the suggestion of moving those with disabilities onto a platform that will not require as much customised intermediary software will be more beneficial in the long-run. However, the cost of the hybrid OS enivronment will need to be considered in the cost-savings.
OSS makes a lot of sense when you think about reuse of underlying code. If you only think about the pure visual design, yeah, ripping off a template is a really dumb idea.
When it comes to working out the underlying functionality, or finding the latest workaround for some IE broken aspect, or basically ANYTHING code-wise there are only a few legitimate ways to go about it.
Work on it for hours and come upon it by yourself.
Read a published article on it and follow the advice.
Grab a template for which you have permission to use it, and go wild on figuring out how to modify that for yourself.
Do I think the GPL is the way to go for templates? Probably not. Creative Commons Licensing is probably a MUCH better way to go.
If people still think they should be able to make money by simply putting together something pretty for their client, then they're not really helping. A lot of what goes into good web design is a combination of marketing skills and information architecture. If you aren't providing those skills to your client, then they are honestly just as well off using pre-fab templates in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh well.
I think in some ways, though, all this hype and speculation is good at least in the kind of market feedback they get. Hey, we get psyched about swinging a sword, and someone will figure out a way to sell us the product.
This law sweeps across with a broad stroke and that's bad legislation.
One problem is a matter of 'annoying' people. What is annoying varies from person to person.
On the one hand, this means that spammers face yet another law against them. So, spamming while in the U.S. is a really bad idea. I'm sorry, if your name is really Ivan Charles Wiener, then, ok, I guess you can continue to send me erectile dysfunction ads as I.C. Wiener. But Heywood Jablowmie had better look out!
My question then is a matter of whether or not posting anonymously on a blog is a problem. If you allow real anonymity and you aren't prepared to handle the system, well, you're a fool. But most blogging software takes care of that. And if you force people to register, problem solved.
The big problem is that 'recipient of communication' is undefined. So, if I have a blog, and I allow people to post anonymously and they don't annoy me, is it a problem if some politician visits my blog and sees that? The original author is anonymous. Granted, as the owner and effective publisher who is not anonymous, well, I would argue that it's now my problem, and too bad, and so on. But sites, like Slashdot, that allow anonymous and disavow ownership of any kind of the post, well, that could be a big problem, as then Slashdot is not committing a crime directly, but can be considered an accessory.
Hopefully, this thing will be given a reasonable smackdown, but I doubt it.
Google would not be interested in the studios concept. It puts them into competition instead of controlling the interest. It also makes them have to engage in risk in an area for which they are not experts. They know how to analyse ads and determine relevance, etc. They do not create media, though, and the cost to compete is very high.
Were they to engage in that, the stock price would take a serious hit.
Aren't upgrades supposed to be automagic now with 1.5?
If you open the .wmf file at all on Windows XP, you will be infected.
Well, my family celebrates Christmas, and while I like playing Santa Claus, I've moved well away from the whole religious impact myself. I'm actually investigated conversion to Judaism, so that perhaps colours my vision a bit.
From my experience, most of the issue comes down to expectations of happiness. I have relatives who like to play the 'big happy family' game. They expect everyone to grin and be happy and pretend we all get along on everything. And that, my friends, is really hard when you keep hearing people say stupid things. I have some relatives who will constantly say dumb things and drive me nuts.
The other part that creates stress is the social requirement to spend time with people you would otherwise avoid. Some of them I would have no problem seeing on a short limited basis individually, but not all together in a group (it pushes the meter WAY beyond tolerance levels).
My solutions?
I concur with the XHTML and CSS. If you don't know these, you don't know the full extent of what you CAN do in the browser. While I don't think every site has to be in XHTML, it makes it much easier to transition over to working with XML docs if you already tag in an XML format.
PHP is a great language for coding the dynamic side. While there are lots of places that use ASP, I found that ASP is awkward and really isn't built well. So stick with PHP. Learn to write SQL queries too, and integration with MySQL won't be so tough.
While I promote hand-coding, look into getting a good IDE of some kind, like TextPad. That way you can validate your code and make sure you don't screw up every five minutes. XMLSpy Home Edition is also pretty good for such things.
CSS is great stuff, and while you'll be frustrated when browser X, Y, or Z doesn't support something, there are ways to make the page degrade gracefully. Start looking for CSS Hacks and you'll find plenty of workarounds. Always write for a good CSS-compliant browser and then fix for the broken (like IE).
So basically, you acted like somebody with no self-confidence and think that it's awful having her around?
Never mind that your avoidance screams gender discrimination.
Let's have a pity party!
Honestly, I find CS to be ridiculously boring, which is why I wasn't intrigued by it, why my wife wasn't intrigued by it, or frankly anybody I know. (Even those I know with CS degrees didn't find it too fascinating.)
It's a good point there are a lot more things than simply being a code monkey. (Which is what most CS majors I've met end up doing.) Most people I've met with degrees in information science have been women. Engineering seems to be male heavy, and the most successful UI designers I've known were women.
Why not look at other incredibly boring number-crunching degrees? Economics, accounting, etc.? I would even expect them to have higher percentages of women graduates, since those jobs actually can have some real interaction with people, even as interns.
The sad fact is that most CS students who aren't double-majoring tend to be antisocial, which real difficulties dealing with people. Given that women tend to be more social, and that they tend to be more women at colleges these days, it really points out how awful the career field is presented in the long run.
(Were I ever to take a pure coding job, I think I'd have to kill myself.)
Given that military members from various branches already work at NSA, having the Air Force expand its role to meet the obligations it already has isn't ridiculous.
One of the big reasons to do this for the Air Force is because they are also generally given aerospace command, including satellites.
This is not to say that other branches don't also have this, as the Navy just recently renamed its cryptology officers as information warfare officers, and has retasked and renamed the Naval Security Group. Many of the information systems locations are moving towards joint tasking anyway. With the vast experience in telecommunications, if the Air Force becomes the main branch for running these various ops, it won't change the fact that the Navy, Marines, and Army also have trained units for these tasks, too.
I'd like to add, as well, that treaties hold the same weight as Constitutional Law in the U.S., unless they violate the Constitution. So, unless a treaty is broken, no simple law can be passed that violates those treaties, either, without it being effectively unconstitutional.
As for schools overreacting to non-issues, I agree. But this is the same kind of backlash we saw regarding airplanes following the hijackings of September 11, 2001. I've argued since then that we could take naked people on the plane, and there's enough equipment already onboard to hijack the plane.
And I'll agree that it varies from place to place. Most of my understanding regard high schools comes from my wife (who just recently left teaching) as well as seeing my brother and his friends (my brother is one of those violent shits).
I believe you have hit the nail on the head regarding the reason everyone is so paranoid. I wouldn't say it's a women's liberation thing, but the two income household has become the norm, even in situations where it makes no sense. This churning of money flowing around creates an illusion of an improved economy, where none really exists. All those people employed with daycare, restaurants, and other services simply because more people are working an unable to do these things themselves does not constitute an improved economy, only a wider-spread economy.
These frazzled people are unable to adequately parent and thus are more panicked and more paranoid. You can't let kids play in the neighbourhood unsupervised not because of there being more kidnappers, but because there are fewer parents at home in a stable community.
As much as I love having a career, my wife and I have determined that her career is more important than mine (she's military), and I have more experience with children, so I will stay home with kids for however long we feel is necessary.
At any rate, I love playing video games, so at least my kids won't be being babysat by the equipment, but will use it in a social setting.
Just because violent crime has gone down, doesn't mean that there isn't more widespread violence and problems.
I can't speak to a large range of studies, but I can point to what I've noticed amongst high school students recently. The threshold of violence tolerance is significantly higher than when I was in school. Some groups, of which I know the members have seen violent everything since a young age, will hit each other constantly, as well as degrade each other. Their acts are the kind that would have landed me a suspension or possible explusion years ago, and now basically result in nothing.
I don't approve of censoring video games by any measure as far as publication. I think it's rather crass of people to get massively upset at an article that addresses active parenting with technology. The violence they see is only one aspect of the problem. The other is that many of these kids were raised by the technology and not by any kind of real parenting. That further desensitises them. Whether or not they commit violent crime, the amount of abusive language and sheer lack of empathy towards others I have witnessed makes the corporate raiders of the 1980s look humane.
It wouldn't be a bad idea, if Adobe licensed them in such a way as to allow open-source development, but also allow to reintegrate development back into their commercial product, without forcing the new commercial product to release source.
Not sure what the licence would be, but if someone knows, that wouldn't be an unreasonable idea from a corporate standpoint.
I have my own personal bets about what will be going, but of course, that's from my own perspective. From what the majority of analysts say, yes, Freehand will likely go, as will GoLive.
Much speculation exists regarding Fireworks vs. Photoshop. Photoshop will, of course, stay. What I wonder about is whether or not ImageReady will go. If they could merge some of the features of Fireworks into Photoshop, it would be a fabulous product. I've never liked ImageReady to export photos for the web, and I've not liked using Photoshop for creating simple graphic elements for online either. With enough support, Fireworks may stick around by itself, even.
While I've consistently used products from both companies, and many an employer will likely reap an initial cost-savings from the merger, I am sad to see that competition in this industry has faded. I don't think even a company with as much cash to burn as Microsoft can break in any time soon. However, the tools themselves are pretty well set, so I think the next cool thing will be modifying the user interfaces to be even MORE user-friendly and intutitive. Go GIMP and bring on some competition!
I highly doubt that moving to this á la carte scenario will result in them dropping packages. Chances are that they will price point it to where if you get say two channels in a suite (like Discovery), buying the whole package will cost about the same, pennies more, or possibly less.
What would be nice about this is that I wouldn't have to pay for stuff I never watch at all. There are stations I watch on rare occasion that are worthwhile, like TNT and Spike, but others, particularly MTV and MTV2, that I never watch. I'm not interested in having Disney on my TV (I have no kids).
Depending on how they price it all out, I could end up saving money. Or perhaps buying the whole big package will save me money. For me, buying a whole bundle of services through Comcast makes no sense right now, but for my mom, who always has kids in her house, it makes a lot of sense, with her 5+ TVs, and her four computers online.
If I could drop myself down to basically the networks, CNN, History, History International, TNT, Spike, Sci-Fi, BBC America, Comedy Central, Discovery, TLC, Cartoon Network, TBS, and a premium lineup like HBO, I'd be pretty well set. I'd have around 30 channels, and I'd have about as much to watch as I do with 150+.
We celebrate winners in our schools all the time. At least in sports. Fame, celebrity, and wealth seem to be all that counts in this society.
Some of us consider the longer-term importance of putting money towards things that will build up the next generation, not just leave them in a mindless stupor.
If you're successful, great. If you waste money, well, you're dumb.
I don't disagree with your view of American companies as short-sighted. Most of them are. We have many investors out there who think only quarter-to-quarter. And a backlash is coming.
The IT industry hasn't felt it as much simply because they haven't been as entrenched. But look at the auto industry. Look at the airlines. How many times in corporate America have we seen psychopaths gut companies to raise share prices temporarily, only to have them disappear altogether. I remember when they were slashing jobs at AT&T. Aren't they now being acquired by SBC (which will rename itself AT&T)?
If you earn a low enough income in a non-exempt position, yes, IT people do qualify for overtime. (I've gotten paid overtime wages, as in 1 1/2 times my wage, as an IT employee.) Of course, it requires being somewhere that the cost of living isn't so ridiculously high to begin with.
Companies that continue to insist on outsourcing core competencies and locating their central operations in high-cost areas will continue to die. That's the truth of it.
Get some decent sales people where your clients are, and move everyone else where the living is cheap. From what I hear, aside from the tourists in the summer, Rapid City, SD is nice.
Unless, of course, communication issues have created massive distrust amongst callers. If customer service is your competitive edge, then you need to make sure that you don't lose ground in that area.
After being burned by outsourced tech support that told my mother that she must have her own address wrong, and that she should go and talk to her husband to get the right address, my mother dumped HP so fast. For the same midrange computers, she went with Gateway, which has domestic call centres, which understand what she's talking about.
Gateway made a smart move, as they are winning home purchasers with good customer support.
I will grant you that cost motivated this kind of move - the cost of losing customers.
Oh, I recognise that the RIAA wants to have a monopoly. However, they're failing to really engage in that.
The evidence of this is Sony/BMG going off half-cocked and implementing DRM without everyone doing it. Granted, if they all went and violated 'fair use' then we'd easily be able to bring them up on RICO charges.
When I talk about choices for the average user, if it's between crap artist A and crap artist B, they'll choose crap artist B if it doesn't have DRM that's been covered by the news. Most people won't know for most DRM, but this is a big publicity stunt that really blew up.
At any rate, a monopoly like Microsoft's tends to only get you slapped with Sherman... What the RIAA is trying to do, should they succeed, can get them slapped with RICO.
I think the MPAA and RIAA should really make it clear to everyone and get together to form the Music And Film Industry Association - MAFIA.
Just because the RIAA comes out and makes the argument that they have been more responsible than some others in handling this, doesn't mean I'm suddenly all warm and fuzzy about Sony.
I have railed and fussed about Microsoft for year, but this mishandling of DRM, going against codified law in the US regarding 'fair use', their foot-dragging on Blu-Ray, and their desire to totally dominate my home entertainment, makes them far worse than Microsoft in my eyes, and I'm not a big fan of the MS lifestyle.
What the RIAA and the record companies don't get is that the more CHOICE we have, the less we're likely put up with the bull from anyone. Most people put up with software errors because they don't know they have options. They are not willing to put up with music creating software errors, because they can always buy music elsewhere.
As for me, I have a great Sony Discman I bought years ago. That's probably the last Sony product I will buy unless they really learn to change their minds. Sony has become a dishonourable company.
Granted, of course, if the RIAA came out supporting Linux, I'd be tempted to switch to BSD, too.
I don't mind regulating the sale of various products to those underage. But to state that we need to get rid video games because parents are too stupid to even read, well, I'm floored.
If parents are too dumb, then obviously they shouldn't be raising the children, or you need to improve education.
Deciding to impose restrictions on a particular medium is ridiculous. Violent movies are allowed, subject to a rating system. If the violent video games are on that rating system, then they should be allowed, too.
Maybe they should start censoring the violent bits out of the Bible, too.... Oh wait, the CSU wouldn't do that, right?
Fix the problem, instead of pandering. Politicians who pander to frantic moral agendas easily become the puppets of fascist rulers.
Sometimes I begin to think all we do is practice writing code. We seem to not follow standards and we tend to repeat a lot of the same functionality over and over again with different code.
Of course, we don't practice writing documentation ever, so that might be the problem.
Except for me.... the non-programmer who's supposed to somehow reverse-engineer documentation out of this code. Yeah.
So did you intentionally NOT get the point?
Many of those issues would work just fine for OpenOffice.org on a Windows platform. Minor accessibility issues seem to be fairly easily resolved during a simple swap-out of MS Office for OpenOffice.org, as they are managed well by the OS.
Unfortunately, on the major issues, those aspects are NOT handled by the OS in Windows, and so massively customised software has been implemented for use with MS Office on the Windows platform. The accessibility issues are a problem for OpenOffice.org on Windows. However, in a Gnome-based environment, there seem to be workarounds.
Discussing the switch to a specific document format requires looking at the whole picture. It will not be a simple switch with no consideration of the OS platform at all when there are needs to be met for those with disabilities. I don't know how well JAWS will work with Office 12, but I also know that JAWS sometime defeats a lot of the ideas of accessibility that could be implemented in a wider fashion. Sometimes they corrupt things as IE has done for web standards itself.
I think the suggestion of moving those with disabilities onto a platform that will not require as much customised intermediary software will be more beneficial in the long-run. However, the cost of the hybrid OS enivronment will need to be considered in the cost-savings.
OSS makes a lot of sense when you think about reuse of underlying code. If you only think about the pure visual design, yeah, ripping off a template is a really dumb idea.
When it comes to working out the underlying functionality, or finding the latest workaround for some IE broken aspect, or basically ANYTHING code-wise there are only a few legitimate ways to go about it.
Do I think the GPL is the way to go for templates? Probably not. Creative Commons Licensing is probably a MUCH better way to go.
If people still think they should be able to make money by simply putting together something pretty for their client, then they're not really helping. A lot of what goes into good web design is a combination of marketing skills and information architecture. If you aren't providing those skills to your client, then they are honestly just as well off using pre-fab templates in the end.