At two of the companies I've worked, there has been a stated policy that email was not "reliable" as a communications mechanism and that the IT department made no guarantees about the usefulness or capability of email or other IP-based data exchanges
I liken that to the sign you see at the dry cleaner that says "Not responsible for lost or damaged items"
Granted, the sign at the dry cleaner isn't true, and only meant as a deterent for lawsuits. However, wether the IT department puts up a sign that says "I told you it might not work" or not, users are very dependant on that service. And when the CEO calls and says "my e-mail didn't go through" the response is not likely to be something like the above.
As I was reading your comment, I kept thinking economics would play in, and any problems would resolve themselves. Then I read the following comment
by then, it may be too late and people will complain about how the government didn't do anything to protect the people knowing that companies providing VoIP don't have to live up to the same standards
and realized you're probably right. Although it would be nice to think "If the service isn't good, then people won't pay for it, and companies will have to own up or shut down." In reality, though, we (as US citizens) tend toward the whiny attitude of "someone should have done something about this." We want to not only have cake and eat it, but sell what's left as well.
Maybe pushing VoIP to the general public isn't a great idea... diving into a service that was already provided at a reasonable (due in part to regulation) price.
I have to agree a little. The only difference I can see is one is a service you explicitly pay for, and the other is built on a service that you already explicitly pay for.
What's the reason for regulation of regular telephony companies anyway? Rate regulation is one of them, and that wouldn't really apply to VoIP, since the service it flies on is generally already regulated by the FCC (http://www.fcc.gov/broadband/).
I can't see any reason to regulate a service that runs on a regulated service... seems like it's from the Department of Redundancy Department.
As a former performing/recording musician, I have to say I applaud your efforts. The only money I ever really made in recording was as a session musician (and really only thanks to the AFM), never as the featured artist. I have to ask, though, what do you do about the costs associated with recording? Do you expect to make the money back through live performances? That seems, to me, the model that would work best.
p.s. I'll be placing an order for a t-shirt this week... kudos to you for bucking the trend.
Ahhhhhh, spoken like a developer with some real experience. Folks can read their "1 minute manager" programming books all they want, but most seem to be from the same snake oil vendors as the self help Dr. Phil books.
The reason software development works the way it does now is that it has evolved over time. We, as developers, learned the hard way that you have to have detailed specs (which don't take a year to derive) for several reasons. Mainly, so everyone is clear what the program is supposed to do, and how. Also, however, it's a tool to help avoid scope creep, which can bring a project (and budget) to it's knees. Avoiding that step, or compressing it into "hours" can be disastrous.
California had the highest average teacher salary at $54,348
New York ($51,020)
You don't thing the two most populated states skewed the average at all? One state is almost completely run by unions, and property taxes in both are outrageous (not to mention the cost of living in general).
Take a state like Arkansas ($36,026 average) or
Texas ($39,230 average) and consider that's the average... not starting, probably not even the first 10 years. Also, did the CNN survey include administrators? Technically they're teachers, but the admins in my fiance's school district get 6 digit salaries.
So you can take your propaganda comment and bury it somewhere.
There is a fundamental problem with atheletes making higher wages and teachers making lower wages. People have disposable income, and their entertainment budget comes from that income. And unfortunately, it's not exciting to pay $50 once a week or so to watch a teacher teach, while it is exciting (to some) to watch a runningback fly through a hole at the left tackle and dance in for a touchdown.
(Public school) Teachers are paid with municipal taxes. The general outcry from the public is taxes are too high, or shouldn't be raised. Could you convince the public to spend some of their entertainment $$ on the public school system, even if you could prove the value in doing something like that?
I wasn't aware that teachers used to get decent salaries (though I should have guessed by my now deceased great aunt who retired and spent the rest of her years travelling around the world).
I suppose this is off topic a little, but I've always wanted to teach after I've retired/burned out/been forced out of software development. I can't put my brain in a jar on a shelf and become management, and I think teaching math would be giving back a bit to the community. Money won't be an issue, really, so (I think) it ought to work out nicely.
I bring that up because I think people who get a chance to retire early should consider teaching in fields they spent their careers in, if only for a few years. Am I wrong in thinking that would help the current situation a bit? Maybe even work at a reduced salary (and full medical benefits) so other teachers could make a better living.
Maybe I just live in a world where the sky is a different color than anyone elses, but it's something I plan to look into.
Just out of curiosity, how are they forced to join? I ask because I plan on "retiring" from software development before terribly long and have long though about becoming a teacher afterwards. However, I'm terribly anti-union. Are teachers locked out of jobs if they don't join? Do you have any insight into this?
I realize that, and again, I use Linux at home, and love it.
All I was saying was I have yet to see any TOC numbers that don't favor Windows. It's awfully hard to convince a COO that Linux is the way to go if I can't show him hard numbers.
I can talk until I'm blue in the face about MSBlaster and bandwidth stealing, and he'll tell me that's not my department...the security team should worry about that. COO's aren't usually tech savvy... but they sure know how to read whitepapers and balance sheets.
I think the cost of professional cds is well under that.
That wasn't assumptions, that was a former touring and recording professional talking. I have been involved in cd production at both the indie and major label level.
There might be a difference, however, in where the cd's are actually made. Malaysian labor isn't expensive at all, nor are products there. Here in the US, a blank cd costs money, so does the printing, so does the actual paper for the j-page, so does the jewel case, so does the label printing, etc... All of that, with shipping, adds up to about $4. If you find another artist getting a better deal, PLEASE let me know.
Hmmm... so much for the "I'm not trying to troll" comment. I guess folks with mod points have trouble with the first 23 characters of posts....
What's funnier is nobody has responded with empirical TCO data in favor of Linux. I still say, working with Linux, Windows, and UNIX here at my office, that in the long haul, Linux has a higher TCO, and would have an even larger margin on the desktop. Windows sucks, but it is set up for the lowest common denominator.
I would rather get an error returned that it doesn't exist. Imagine an application watching a few websites by DNS. If one returns an error, your exception handler (because you're a good programmer) catches it, and alerts whomever needs to be. Now, instead of returning an error, your code thinks everything is ok because it actually hit a valid site... sitefinder.
You're too right about the price staying where it is. And having been a recording artist, I can say that a run of a brick of CD's (1000) costs about $4 per when you want it to be nice and professional. That's just the material costs. Also, there's a $0.015 (unfairly low.. they haven't had a raise since the 50's) per song fee to songwriters, the artist generally get's close to $1 per cd sold (that's fair I think). The rest goes to the label for all their "hard work."
For expected gold-platinum cd's, $8 is probably fair, but for those that are only selling 1k-10k, that might be a stretch. Of course, you could argue that they should be selling for that, maybe breaking even, just to get their music into the hands of the public, who will pay to see them live.
Um.... $2.00 doesn't cover the hardware costs of producing a professional cd. If your requests are unresonable, don't be surprised when they're not met.
On the other side of that, $16-20 is unreasonable. $10 would be fair, I think. Considering the hours spent in the studio recording, AFM scale per musician per song being $50 (and that's for low grade musicians), the cost of a decent engineer, cost of using a decent studio (that's not cheap), mastering costs... Then you've got to either spend $$ on an expensive fast cd dup'er, or pay someone to burn 10,000 cd's in a week, artwork for the j-page, printing of the j-page, cd cases, shringwrapping, a UPC, distribution, etc....
Do you honestly think all of that can be done for $2.00 per? Get real.
I'm not trying to troll... I like Linux and love the idea of OSS. However, I have yet to see a TCO comparison between Linux and Windows that shows Linux being cheaper. Where did you get that information?
Let's not forget Merrill Lynch had Enron as a buy even after employees were seen leaving the building in the 100's with boxes in their hands.
As a former quantative analyst, I can say this about the larger brokerage houses. They have an agenda. If they can generate enough hype (up or down) about a company, true or not, they wind up right, because the uneducated/ignorant masses follow their "leads" like lemmings. It's a simple business from ML's perspective. If you build it (the hype) the will come.
(4) failure to stop and render aid or information in the event of a motor vehicle accident resulting in the death or personal injury of another.
Found in 523.005.(a) of the DRIVER'S LICENSE COMPACT OF 1993 and in Art. 6419b.Sec. 2 in Chapter 8 of the penal code.
Sec. 3. A person who violates this article commits an offense. An offense under this article is a Class C misdemeanor.
Added by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 864, 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
Not too big a deal, but still an arrestable offense here.
There are other occurences in Texas law regarding failure to stop and render aid, with other punishments like losing your drivers license.
Hit this link to find tons of stories about convictions in Texas.
To be honest, I didn't research too much other than talk to a couple of friends that have studios, and that was recommended. Do you lose any quality when you expand them? I might do that when I add cards to get to 24 track.
You mentioned HD speeds. I was also told to go with SCSI and MM drives, but just stuck with 7200's, figuring I could upgrade later if I needed to. They work great, and 2/180GB RAID 0 is a perfect solution for me. Moving from a CD burner to a DVD burner made archiving tracks simple too.
Oh, I have nothing to do with pop recordings. I'm talking about jazz, classical, even americana, where the quality of the recording is not touched too my by compressors and vocalizers.
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At two of the companies I've worked, there has been a stated policy that email was not "reliable" as a communications mechanism and that the IT department made no guarantees about the usefulness or capability of email or other IP-based data exchanges
I liken that to the sign you see at the dry cleaner that says "Not responsible for lost or damaged items"
Granted, the sign at the dry cleaner isn't true, and only meant as a deterent for lawsuits. However, wether the IT department puts up a sign that says "I told you it might not work" or not, users are very dependant on that service. And when the CEO calls and says "my e-mail didn't go through" the response is not likely to be something like the above.
As I was reading your comment, I kept thinking economics would play in, and any problems would resolve themselves. Then I read the following comment
by then, it may be too late and people will complain about how the government didn't do anything to protect the people knowing that companies providing VoIP don't have to live up to the same standards
and realized you're probably right. Although it would be nice to think "If the service isn't good, then people won't pay for it, and companies will have to own up or shut down." In reality, though, we (as US citizens) tend toward the whiny attitude of "someone should have done something about this." We want to not only have cake and eat it, but sell what's left as well.
Maybe pushing VoIP to the general public isn't a great idea... diving into a service that was already provided at a reasonable (due in part to regulation) price.
I have to agree a little. The only difference I can see is one is a service you explicitly pay for, and the other is built on a service that you already explicitly pay for.
What's the reason for regulation of regular telephony companies anyway? Rate regulation is one of them, and that wouldn't really apply to VoIP, since the service it flies on is generally already regulated by the FCC (http://www.fcc.gov/broadband/).
I can't see any reason to regulate a service that runs on a regulated service... seems like it's from the Department of Redundancy Department.
I see what you're saying, but I'd hardly say it's a trend, seeing as how only the 1% of geeks out there have heard of it.
As a former performing/recording musician, I have to say I applaud your efforts. The only money I ever really made in recording was as a session musician (and really only thanks to the AFM), never as the featured artist. I have to ask, though, what do you do about the costs associated with recording? Do you expect to make the money back through live performances? That seems, to me, the model that would work best.
p.s. I'll be placing an order for a t-shirt this week... kudos to you for bucking the trend.
Ahhhhhh, spoken like a developer with some real experience. Folks can read their "1 minute manager" programming books all they want, but most seem to be from the same snake oil vendors as the self help Dr. Phil books.
The reason software development works the way it does now is that it has evolved over time. We, as developers, learned the hard way that you have to have detailed specs (which don't take a year to derive) for several reasons. Mainly, so everyone is clear what the program is supposed to do, and how. Also, however, it's a tool to help avoid scope creep, which can bring a project (and budget) to it's knees. Avoiding that step, or compressing it into "hours" can be disastrous.
It's hardly propaganda.
California had the highest average teacher salary at $54,348
New York ($51,020)
You don't thing the two most populated states skewed the average at all? One state is almost completely run by unions, and property taxes in both are outrageous (not to mention the cost of living in general).
Take a state like Arkansas ($36,026 average) or Texas ($39,230 average) and consider that's the average... not starting, probably not even the first 10 years. Also, did the CNN survey include administrators? Technically they're teachers, but the admins in my fiance's school district get 6 digit salaries.
So you can take your propaganda comment and bury it somewhere.
There is a fundamental problem with atheletes making higher wages and teachers making lower wages. People have disposable income, and their entertainment budget comes from that income. And unfortunately, it's not exciting to pay $50 once a week or so to watch a teacher teach, while it is exciting (to some) to watch a runningback fly through a hole at the left tackle and dance in for a touchdown.
(Public school) Teachers are paid with municipal taxes. The general outcry from the public is taxes are too high, or shouldn't be raised. Could you convince the public to spend some of their entertainment $$ on the public school system, even if you could prove the value in doing something like that?
I wasn't aware that teachers used to get decent salaries (though I should have guessed by my now deceased great aunt who retired and spent the rest of her years travelling around the world).
I suppose this is off topic a little, but I've always wanted to teach after I've retired/burned out/been forced out of software development. I can't put my brain in a jar on a shelf and become management, and I think teaching math would be giving back a bit to the community. Money won't be an issue, really, so (I think) it ought to work out nicely.
I bring that up because I think people who get a chance to retire early should consider teaching in fields they spent their careers in, if only for a few years. Am I wrong in thinking that would help the current situation a bit? Maybe even work at a reduced salary (and full medical benefits) so other teachers could make a better living.
Maybe I just live in a world where the sky is a different color than anyone elses, but it's something I plan to look into.
Just out of curiosity, how are they forced to join? I ask because I plan on "retiring" from software development before terribly long and have long though about becoming a teacher afterwards. However, I'm terribly anti-union. Are teachers locked out of jobs if they don't join? Do you have any insight into this?
I realize that, and again, I use Linux at home, and love it.
.the security team should worry about that. COO's aren't usually tech savvy... but they sure know how to read whitepapers and balance sheets.
All I was saying was I have yet to see any TOC numbers that don't favor Windows. It's awfully hard to convince a COO that Linux is the way to go if I can't show him hard numbers.
I can talk until I'm blue in the face about MSBlaster and bandwidth stealing, and he'll tell me that's not my department..
I think the cost of professional cds is well under that.
That wasn't assumptions, that was a former touring and recording professional talking. I have been involved in cd production at both the indie and major label level.
There might be a difference, however, in where the cd's are actually made. Malaysian labor isn't expensive at all, nor are products there. Here in the US, a blank cd costs money, so does the printing, so does the actual paper for the j-page, so does the jewel case, so does the label printing, etc... All of that, with shipping, adds up to about $4. If you find another artist getting a better deal, PLEASE let me know.
Hmmm... so much for the "I'm not trying to troll" comment. I guess folks with mod points have trouble with the first 23 characters of posts....
What's funnier is nobody has responded with empirical TCO data in favor of Linux. I still say, working with Linux, Windows, and UNIX here at my office, that in the long haul, Linux has a higher TCO, and would have an even larger margin on the desktop. Windows sucks, but it is set up for the lowest common denominator.
That's just business jargon for "We want it ended permanently, but I still want to play golf with you on Thursday."
I would rather get an error returned that it doesn't exist. Imagine an application watching a few websites by DNS. If one returns an error, your exception handler (because you're a good programmer) catches it, and alerts whomever needs to be. Now, instead of returning an error, your code thinks everything is ok because it actually hit a valid site... sitefinder.
You're tha man. Thanks for the information, I'll dive in and check it out.
Ugh.. there's some sort of South Park episode joke there, but I'm not gonna make it.
You're too right about the price staying where it is. And having been a recording artist, I can say that a run of a brick of CD's (1000) costs about $4 per when you want it to be nice and professional. That's just the material costs. Also, there's a $0.015 (unfairly low.. they haven't had a raise since the 50's) per song fee to songwriters, the artist generally get's close to $1 per cd sold (that's fair I think). The rest goes to the label for all their "hard work."
For expected gold-platinum cd's, $8 is probably fair, but for those that are only selling 1k-10k, that might be a stretch. Of course, you could argue that they should be selling for that, maybe breaking even, just to get their music into the hands of the public, who will pay to see them live.
Um.... $2.00 doesn't cover the hardware costs of producing a professional cd. If your requests are unresonable, don't be surprised when they're not met.
On the other side of that, $16-20 is unreasonable. $10 would be fair, I think. Considering the hours spent in the studio recording, AFM scale per musician per song being $50 (and that's for low grade musicians), the cost of a decent engineer, cost of using a decent studio (that's not cheap), mastering costs... Then you've got to either spend $$ on an expensive fast cd dup'er, or pay someone to burn 10,000 cd's in a week, artwork for the j-page, printing of the j-page, cd cases, shringwrapping, a UPC, distribution, etc....
Do you honestly think all of that can be done for $2.00 per? Get real.
I'm not trying to troll... I like Linux and love the idea of OSS. However, I have yet to see a TCO comparison between Linux and Windows that shows Linux being cheaper. Where did you get that information?
Let's not forget Merrill Lynch had Enron as a buy even after employees were seen leaving the building in the 100's with boxes in their hands.
As a former quantative analyst, I can say this about the larger brokerage houses. They have an agenda. If they can generate enough hype (up or down) about a company, true or not, they wind up right, because the uneducated/ignorant masses follow their "leads" like lemmings. It's a simple business from ML's perspective. If you build it (the hype) the will come.
I'm not sure about your state, but in Texas it's
(4) failure to stop and render aid or information in the event of a motor vehicle accident resulting in the death or personal injury of another.
Found in 523.005.(a) of the DRIVER'S LICENSE COMPACT OF 1993 and in Art. 6419b.Sec. 2 in Chapter 8 of the penal code.
Sec. 3. A person who violates this article commits an offense. An offense under this article is a Class C misdemeanor.
Added by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 864, 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987. Not too big a deal, but still an arrestable offense here.
There are other occurences in Texas law regarding failure to stop and render aid, with other punishments like losing your drivers license.
Hit this link to find tons of stories about convictions in Texas.
To be honest, I didn't research too much other than talk to a couple of friends that have studios, and that was recommended. Do you lose any quality when you expand them? I might do that when I add cards to get to 24 track.
You mentioned HD speeds. I was also told to go with SCSI and MM drives, but just stuck with 7200's, figuring I could upgrade later if I needed to. They work great, and 2/180GB RAID 0 is a perfect solution for me. Moving from a CD burner to a DVD burner made archiving tracks simple too.
Thanks! I checked out the studio plans link... I like it... very helpful.
Oh, I have nothing to do with pop recordings. I'm talking about jazz, classical, even americana, where the quality of the recording is not touched too my by compressors and vocalizers.