Quick note about how credit cards are used in stores.
If you're going to be paranoid, know all the facts, first of all. If you use a credit card, many places keep your exact credit card number on file, usually through receipt. I work at RadioShack. We happen to keep them on receipts and in the computer system with each purchase. The receipts are all saved. If you're going to get out your tinfoil hat and worry about card theft, get over it. Either you're going to worry yourself sick over people stealing your card number where you make your purchases, or you're going to have to accept that people have access to your card number. This happens. It's real life. Your waiter is no more going to steal your credit card number than I am. I have a lot more access to it, if you make a purchase at my store. Did you know that some stores can actually change purchases on credit cards through computer systems? You're not supposed to do it if you're unauthorized, but it can be done.
So next time you shop at RadioShack, watch that bastard behind the counter. Where do you think he got the money for that nice tie he's wearing?
The school bus driver example is an interesting one, because I have a bit of indirect experience with the hiring of school bus drivers in particular. Seriously.
Now, first off, you're right, that position was probably filled by someone without those specific qualifications. The thing is, though, the person who filled that position is probably going to end up doing that job anyway. In Canada, at least, education budgets are getting slashed to a ridiculous degree, and school boards are less and less able to hire someone to drive the buses and someone else to cut the grass. If the bus driver has nothing else to do, s/he sits in the bus garage playing cards or sleeping. A fine, hard day's work, wouldn't you say?
Now, the thing about the child psychology and mental health nurse qualifications seems a little silly. I can understand where that would come into play, but it's hard to see that as being something advertised as being a qualification for the job, even if it wasn't a requirement.
You bring up a good point there too, it's not always the worker's fault that they're out of work. It could be that damned employer, or the guvermint. But you know.
The thing is, there's a fine line between expecting an employee to be flexible and expecting an employee to work well beyond the call of duty. It's a bonus to have an employee who can work beyond that which s/he was hired for. However, it's becoming less and less a "bonus" and more and more a "prerequisite." Doing extra has become a requirement, for one reason: people are willing to do more. If work wasn't going so cheaply nowadays, you wouldn't have to do as much.
"There're fewer jobs out there, you gotta multitask!" Hmm. Sounds to me like a good equation towards getting people to do more work for less pay.. even if there aren't fewer jobs out there. But that's just tin-foil hat thinking.
POV-Ray was really my first introduction to any sort of decent graphics program. Back in the mid 1990's I found a DOOM modification on a CD (it was a Barney mod, embarrassingly enough), and the sprites had been rendered in a pre-POV version of the program. I can't recall the name of the program off-hand, but it didn't exist anymore by the time I searched for it. However, I did find its eventual successor, the mighty POV-Ray. I remember clearly how obsessed with that program I was, and how excited I was when I was able to properly tear apart shapes.pov and render my first blue sphere.
Of course, these days, I haven't touched POV in months, and I still haven't done much of anything good with it, but I still love the program. I was half-heartedly involved in the Internet Move Project at one point, but I knew I was out of my league every time I read that mailing list.
But enough about that, back to the topic at hand. I've always been intrigued by things like this, doing the most with the least, though the person shooting for third place does seem to be souring the values of the competition a bit.
Now, at the risk of feeding the trolls, I do take exception to this sort of attitude.
There are lots of talented out of work people, be they developers, programmers, graphic designers, musicians, teachers, astrophysicists, lawyers, actors... I could go on, but, you know, I don't really want to. People don't always get hired simply for their skillsets. I've said before that some of the most talented people don't get hired because of a lack of specific skills in other areas. People lose jobs, or lose bids on jobs/contracts, because they can't handle talking to "real people." Obviously that's not the only reason, but that's a big one. My father works for a school board, and there are people who would love to work as a teacher, but are terrible in social situations. On the flip side of things, we have programmers who are less than the most competent people in their literal field that don't get hired because they can't work with other people.
I for one know I wouldn't want to hire someone, regardless of their boundless talent, if they were a flaming dickhead.
My droogs and shoots, I viddy it's raz for an appy polly loggy, I'm a bolshy great bratchny for dunging up this mesto with my oozhassny chepooka and cal. Any of you gloopy, starry baboochkas horn about this though, and I'll fist you in the yarblockos. You all better be poogly in your neezhnies now, cuz if I viddy you all by your oddy knocky, your plott is mine for a bit of the old ultra-violence, and your em for the in-and-out, I'll give her a horrorshow lubblilubbing, my pan-handle up in her keeshkas.
-5, Offtopic. *sheepish* That doesn't make complete sense when translated, but, that's keeping with this "conversation", I suppose.
Yeah, how about that asteroid, is it good or is it whack?
Oh man, I deserve to get modded down for that one. *hangs head in shame*
HitchHiker's Guide, huh? I'm reading an excerpt from the BBC's online h2g2, actually. Well, if we want to go uber-nerd (forgive the lack of umlaut), we'd need LotR, Star Wars, Star Trek, and a few others. We've already covered open source, code, and capitalism in this series of messages though, so I think we're good there.
But, you have a good point about the "broad, sweeping nature of the announcement." It's kind of like someone saying they just invented computers.
"Now, would any business like to contact us for giving us large sacks of cash in exchange for this new wonderful technology?" Cue the fine print:"You're gonna have to figure out what to do with it yourself though."
Not that I'm saying this is the magnitude of the "invention" of the computer. But. Well. I was going to say "but you know what I mean," but considering that I've kind of lost track of myself, I dunno what kind of luck you're having by this point.
Now, not to show my ignorance, but I'm not sure I caught the Simpsons reference. I've seen almost every episode, but even I couldn't decode it. Sigh.
Oh, I know what you mean, I had kind of a similar thought when I read the end of the article, but my point remains the same. For understanding the idea, it's great for "the community" to get a hold of the code, but that's ignoring the fact that this is a company, and a company that researches for a living. (Keep in mind this post isn't designed to shoot you down or anything, more of a clarification of my own points.) These people do research on stuff exactly like this, and the reason that this story was actually notable was because this is at least semi-revolutionary. It's something noteworthy, because time/money/effort was put into this project, and none of those things are free. Particularly not the middle quotient.
1: Research
2: Open Source your results 3: No profit!
Of course, profit is evil, because it represents the minimization of freedom, money is bad, etc etc.. But I would think that not making any money on things like this, or at the very least not breaking even, would kind of hamper future developments. Yes, there are research grants, etc, but are they enough?
And, the possibility that I am in fact quite wrong is very likely. So. I've just showed you!
Seriously though. I don't think this was made by someone with just a shoestring budget and a desire to help computer-kind. Not that they're doing their work for the wrong reasons, but if this project cost them a lot of money, offering it for free in an Open Source fashion is going to mean.. they're out of a lot of money.
Just a thought, thought it's probably not the most popular one on the block.
I didn't notice until I'd already posted that further down the page there was instructions/explanation as to how this happened. Still, a neat parallel to the article at hand.
I seem to recall hearing stories about hacks for the original DOOM that allowed multi-monitor viewing. It's been a long, long while since I heard these stories, of course, so this might just be one of those urban myths.
Or a fever dream.
Well, having worked in the retail field for a few years, and even having some time at Wal-Mart under my belt (a dubious distinction at best), I know the problems with inventory and receiving orders. The problem, of course, is human error. Not just on the receiving side, either, there is substantial human error in the sending side as well. If your RFID tag says that you've got 20 cases of whatever on a pallette, and you've got 19, or maybe 19 of those and a 20th of something incredibly similar but of a different variety, with a different SKU number and designation, then relying on RFID tags to receive and send orders can get a bit complicated.
For example, Phish and Dave Matthews Band have been mentioned in some articles as giving their general OK to concert recordings being available on file-share services. These recordings are copyright of the respective performers. So do they fall into the RIAA's 90%? Or the remaining 10%?
Technically speaking, don't the labels of these respective artists actually own the copyrights to the recordings of these artists? For an artist to even appear on the album of another artist on another label, permission label must be granted. So, not only are the songs not owned by the artists, but neither are the artists themselves.
In other words.. The artists have little to no say in this, when you get right down to it.
Re:This subject already covered millions of times!
on
The Trouble with RFID
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· Score: 1
Well, that's not exactly a useful solution for marketers, now is it?
The other thing is, yes, there are some reasons to take your name. First reason: credit card purchases.
Well, that's the only one I can come up with, but I'm still waking up.
I'm far from disagreeing with you, considering that I nearly failed economics because I think the same way.
The thing is, though, economics isn't applied to "real-world" situations in the way that you just described, and really, probably not how I described either. I will not get into a debate on economics, because I don't understand it well enough. But the fact is, these numbers exist to give businesses a proper understanding of opportunities lost. Opportunity cost is a very real thing, even if it doesn't seem to pop up elsewhere in the same way.
How about this?
You're working on something at your computer. The power goes out. You didn't save your work. Your work (the past hour's worth) is gone. Not only that, but the computer itself is damaged. Is the only cost here the compuer's damage?
I'm not saying your points are invalid, they just don't really apply so much to economic mathematics.
Eh. I'm stopping now, I'm digging myself a real big hole here. Heh.
Economic mathematics is not standard math by any stretch of the imagination. The $120/hour paid by the company to employ this person is completely lost because there is zero productivity, not just productivity that doesn't result in income. There is zero income, which has already been established as the negative $150, but concerning the total waste of the company's funds (the $120), that's a net real loss of $270.
It's like this.
You pay someone $20 to go buy you something that will make you $40. On the way there, that certain someone gets mugged. Realistically speaking, you're out $20, but you're also out $40 potential money. On top of that, you lost that $20 completely, because you're going to have to pay someone $20 AGAIN to do the same damned job. There's 60 bucks gone.
Companies like this don't lose money based on what it costs to make things. Oddly enough. They lose money because of investors pulling out, selling shares, reducing the value of the company as a whole.
I have two e-mail addresses which don't get much spam either. One is my university account, which only gets distributed to close friends and people in my classes. The other is, oddly enough, a Hotmail account. I get some spam, maybe one or two every month or so, and definitely none at my university account.
Unfortunately, seeing as I don't distribute either of those e-mail addresses very far, it doesn't matter much, now does it? Those e-mail addresses aren't precisely useful to me if no one actually e-mails me at them.
Slashdot Mirror
Richie Sambora? I'd go with Peter Frampton, myself.
Quick note about how credit cards are used in stores.
If you're going to be paranoid, know all the facts, first of all. If you use a credit card, many places keep your exact credit card number on file, usually through receipt. I work at RadioShack. We happen to keep them on receipts and in the computer system with each purchase. The receipts are all saved. If you're going to get out your tinfoil hat and worry about card theft, get over it. Either you're going to worry yourself sick over people stealing your card number where you make your purchases, or you're going to have to accept that people have access to your card number. This happens. It's real life. Your waiter is no more going to steal your credit card number than I am. I have a lot more access to it, if you make a purchase at my store. Did you know that some stores can actually change purchases on credit cards through computer systems? You're not supposed to do it if you're unauthorized, but it can be done.
So next time you shop at RadioShack, watch that bastard behind the counter. Where do you think he got the money for that nice tie he's wearing?
The school bus driver example is an interesting one, because I have a bit of indirect experience with the hiring of school bus drivers in particular. Seriously.
Now, first off, you're right, that position was probably filled by someone without those specific qualifications. The thing is, though, the person who filled that position is probably going to end up doing that job anyway. In Canada, at least, education budgets are getting slashed to a ridiculous degree, and school boards are less and less able to hire someone to drive the buses and someone else to cut the grass. If the bus driver has nothing else to do, s/he sits in the bus garage playing cards or sleeping. A fine, hard day's work, wouldn't you say?
Now, the thing about the child psychology and mental health nurse qualifications seems a little silly. I can understand where that would come into play, but it's hard to see that as being something advertised as being a qualification for the job, even if it wasn't a requirement.
You bring up a good point there too, it's not always the worker's fault that they're out of work. It could be that damned employer, or the guvermint. But you know.
The thing is, there's a fine line between expecting an employee to be flexible and expecting an employee to work well beyond the call of duty. It's a bonus to have an employee who can work beyond that which s/he was hired for. However, it's becoming less and less a "bonus" and more and more a "prerequisite." Doing extra has become a requirement, for one reason: people are willing to do more. If work wasn't going so cheaply nowadays, you wouldn't have to do as much.
"There're fewer jobs out there, you gotta multitask!" Hmm. Sounds to me like a good equation towards getting people to do more work for less pay.. even if there aren't fewer jobs out there. But that's just tin-foil hat thinking.
I thought I already told you: "When a position requiring your particular skillset becomes available, we will put your resume back on file."
POV-Ray was really my first introduction to any sort of decent graphics program. Back in the mid 1990's I found a DOOM modification on a CD (it was a Barney mod, embarrassingly enough), and the sprites had been rendered in a pre-POV version of the program. I can't recall the name of the program off-hand, but it didn't exist anymore by the time I searched for it. However, I did find its eventual successor, the mighty POV-Ray. I remember clearly how obsessed with that program I was, and how excited I was when I was able to properly tear apart shapes.pov and render my first blue sphere.
Of course, these days, I haven't touched POV in months, and I still haven't done much of anything good with it, but I still love the program. I was half-heartedly involved in the Internet Move Project at one point, but I knew I was out of my league every time I read that mailing list.
But enough about that, back to the topic at hand. I've always been intrigued by things like this, doing the most with the least, though the person shooting for third place does seem to be souring the values of the competition a bit.
Now, at the risk of feeding the trolls, I do take exception to this sort of attitude.
There are lots of talented out of work people, be they developers, programmers, graphic designers, musicians, teachers, astrophysicists, lawyers, actors... I could go on, but, you know, I don't really want to. People don't always get hired simply for their skillsets. I've said before that some of the most talented people don't get hired because of a lack of specific skills in other areas. People lose jobs, or lose bids on jobs/contracts, because they can't handle talking to "real people." Obviously that's not the only reason, but that's a big one. My father works for a school board, and there are people who would love to work as a teacher, but are terrible in social situations. On the flip side of things, we have programmers who are less than the most competent people in their literal field that don't get hired because they can't work with other people.
I for one know I wouldn't want to hire someone, regardless of their boundless talent, if they were a flaming dickhead.
My droogs and shoots, I viddy it's raz for an appy polly loggy, I'm a bolshy great bratchny for dunging up this mesto with my oozhassny chepooka and cal. Any of you gloopy, starry baboochkas horn about this though, and I'll fist you in the yarblockos. You all better be poogly in your neezhnies now, cuz if I viddy you all by your oddy knocky, your plott is mine for a bit of the old ultra-violence, and your em for the in-and-out, I'll give her a horrorshow lubblilubbing, my pan-handle up in her keeshkas.
-5, Offtopic. *sheepish* That doesn't make complete sense when translated, but, that's keeping with this "conversation", I suppose.
Yeah, how about that asteroid, is it good or is it whack?
Oh man, I deserve to get modded down for that one. *hangs head in shame*
HitchHiker's Guide, huh? I'm reading an excerpt from the BBC's online h2g2, actually. Well, if we want to go uber-nerd (forgive the lack of umlaut), we'd need LotR, Star Wars, Star Trek, and a few others. We've already covered open source, code, and capitalism in this series of messages though, so I think we're good there.
I was thinking it was kind of like a super-nerd Magic: the Gathering type game.
"I counter your SouthParkTiredReference with ObligatorySimpsonsQuote+1!"
"You sunk my battleship!"
Works for me, either way. Better stop now, though, before I start (keep?) going off-topic.
+/- 2 percent, I think.
("What does that even mean?" "Quiet, brain.")
I say... mad.
But, you have a good point about the "broad, sweeping nature of the announcement." It's kind of like someone saying they just invented computers.
"Now, would any business like to contact us for giving us large sacks of cash in exchange for this new wonderful technology?"
Cue the fine print:"You're gonna have to figure out what to do with it yourself though."
Not that I'm saying this is the magnitude of the "invention" of the computer. But. Well. I was going to say "but you know what I mean," but considering that I've kind of lost track of myself, I dunno what kind of luck you're having by this point.
Now, not to show my ignorance, but I'm not sure I caught the Simpsons reference. I've seen almost every episode, but even I couldn't decode it. Sigh.
Oh, I know what you mean, I had kind of a similar thought when I read the end of the article, but my point remains the same. For understanding the idea, it's great for "the community" to get a hold of the code, but that's ignoring the fact that this is a company, and a company that researches for a living. (Keep in mind this post isn't designed to shoot you down or anything, more of a clarification of my own points.) These people do research on stuff exactly like this, and the reason that this story was actually notable was because this is at least semi-revolutionary. It's something noteworthy, because time/money/effort was put into this project, and none of those things are free. Particularly not the middle quotient.
1: Research
2: Open Source your results
3: No profit!
Of course, profit is evil, because it represents the minimization of freedom, money is bad, etc etc.. But I would think that not making any money on things like this, or at the very least not breaking even, would kind of hamper future developments. Yes, there are research grants, etc, but are they enough?
And, the possibility that I am in fact quite wrong is very likely. So. I've just showed you!
... Yeah.
Q. How much did it cost to make it?
Seriously though. I don't think this was made by someone with just a shoestring budget and a desire to help computer-kind. Not that they're doing their work for the wrong reasons, but if this project cost them a lot of money, offering it for free in an Open Source fashion is going to mean.. they're out of a lot of money.
Just a thought, thought it's probably not the most popular one on the block.
I didn't notice until I'd already posted that further down the page there was instructions/explanation as to how this happened. Still, a neat parallel to the article at hand.
I seem to recall hearing stories about hacks for the original DOOM that allowed multi-monitor viewing. It's been a long, long while since I heard these stories, of course, so this might just be one of those urban myths. Or a fever dream.
Well, having worked in the retail field for a few years, and even having some time at Wal-Mart under my belt (a dubious distinction at best), I know the problems with inventory and receiving orders. The problem, of course, is human error. Not just on the receiving side, either, there is substantial human error in the sending side as well. If your RFID tag says that you've got 20 cases of whatever on a pallette, and you've got 19, or maybe 19 of those and a 20th of something incredibly similar but of a different variety, with a different SKU number and designation, then relying on RFID tags to receive and send orders can get a bit complicated.
For example, Phish and Dave Matthews Band have been mentioned in some articles as giving their general OK to concert recordings being available on file-share services. These recordings are copyright of the respective performers. So do they fall into the RIAA's 90%? Or the remaining 10%?
Technically speaking, don't the labels of these respective artists actually own the copyrights to the recordings of these artists? For an artist to even appear on the album of another artist on another label, permission label must be granted. So, not only are the songs not owned by the artists, but neither are the artists themselves.
In other words.. The artists have little to no say in this, when you get right down to it.
Well, that's not exactly a useful solution for marketers, now is it?
The other thing is, yes, there are some reasons to take your name. First reason: credit card purchases.
Well, that's the only one I can come up with, but I'm still waking up.
I'm far from disagreeing with you, considering that I nearly failed economics because I think the same way.
The thing is, though, economics isn't applied to "real-world" situations in the way that you just described, and really, probably not how I described either. I will not get into a debate on economics, because I don't understand it well enough. But the fact is, these numbers exist to give businesses a proper understanding of opportunities lost. Opportunity cost is a very real thing, even if it doesn't seem to pop up elsewhere in the same way.
How about this?
You're working on something at your computer. The power goes out. You didn't save your work. Your work (the past hour's worth) is gone. Not only that, but the computer itself is damaged. Is the only cost here the compuer's damage?
I'm not saying your points are invalid, they just don't really apply so much to economic mathematics.
Eh. I'm stopping now, I'm digging myself a real big hole here. Heh.
(Godammit, it wouldn't log me in.)
Economic mathematics is not standard math by any stretch of the imagination. The $120/hour paid by the company to employ this person is completely lost because there is zero productivity, not just productivity that doesn't result in income. There is zero income, which has already been established as the negative $150, but concerning the total waste of the company's funds (the $120), that's a net real loss of $270.
It's like this.
You pay someone $20 to go buy you something that will make you $40. On the way there, that certain someone gets mugged. Realistically speaking, you're out $20, but you're also out $40 potential money. On top of that, you lost that $20 completely, because you're going to have to pay someone $20 AGAIN to do the same damned job. There's 60 bucks gone.
Then again, I nearly failed Economics....
I have just over 15 GB worth of wma files on my PC at home. And I'm on dial-up.
Companies like this don't lose money based on what it costs to make things. Oddly enough. They lose money because of investors pulling out, selling shares, reducing the value of the company as a whole.
That's how they "lost" all that money, probably.
---
I have two e-mail addresses which don't get much spam either. One is my university account, which only gets distributed to close friends and people in my classes. The other is, oddly enough, a Hotmail account. I get some spam, maybe one or two every month or so, and definitely none at my university account.
Unfortunately, seeing as I don't distribute either of those e-mail addresses very far, it doesn't matter much, now does it? Those e-mail addresses aren't precisely useful to me if no one actually e-mails me at them.
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