You could have typed less and pointed out companies are outsourcing US labor too.
Our FMLA is nice to have, but hard to use effectively. Most of us have 2-3 weeks of paid vacation, depending. No strikes since most of us are not unionized. We have plenty of bureacracy. I don't think any culture ought to put work ahead of family, those that do are doing so temporarily. Our form of "capitalism" is now much more big business friendly, and less real capitalism. Anyhow by his argument the US is better, but jobs aren't flooding here, the opposite is true.
The message is clear, companies want the most for the least. What's new, governments exist to protect us from that but are slow and corrupt.
Probably someone told them that certain pieces of open source software critical to unix servers. Apache comes way at the front of that list. Without it, I don't think any *nix would be under much scrutiny now, least of all anything SCO offers.
I do work in development. If you're in a company that puts a schedule ahead of quality:
- You're small and the product needs to be released to get more funding, it's probably better to release it at expense to quality (you're looking for a big name buyer most likely anyhow, or you're releasing something new with no market expectations).
- You're big and you're looking for a lawsuit, lots of warranty repairs, customer dissatisfaction or are making a product so cheap no one looks too close.
In the past two companies I've worked at, both in the top 20 from Fortune, quality came first. It comes from lots of reviews, examination against databases of past mistakes, process standards etc. The managers who make these schedules, which are in many cases insane will not allow a product out that hasn't been through the full process and received sign off. Believe it or not, most of us here think lovingly of our start-up days when we had to pull all-nighters to get a product out (and when we COULD, since it didn't require 100 sign-offs to get a product out).
It depends on your industry, I make hardware, poor quality costs us in terms of warranty repairs and phone calls. In another company I worked at, poor quality came out of our (very lucrative) support contract. In all cases it cost money, reduced profit and our VPs have learned to keep close track of these as part of the bottom line.
I can't tell you how many times we've had to send some "overseas" designed stuff back for rework because it didn't meet our standards. It had become such a problem that we won't work with any 3rd party overseas without subjecting them to our own process. The resulting savings in labor is far less since an american engineer has to oversee those overseas.
The thing about quality, without sounding too much like a PHB, is that it's a process. You start with a few smart people who remember the important points, then you develop ways of ensuring no problems, continuously building up solutions to issues that arise. Technology changes too fast for even your geekiest super-geek to get perfection. Similarly our overseas "friends" are using this time to learn from us how to build better stuff. In a few more years we won't even be able to accuse them of making low quality crap.
AOL was a useful service once upon a time, like compuserve and prodigy. Technology has obsoleted it, and now they're struggling to find a place in the world.
Unfortunately corporations reach a point where they feel like they must be immortal. Sometimes you make something people like for a while, then they don't need it and you need to find something else to do. It's no ones fault, it just happens. Time to move on, do it gracefully, help your employees move on and then close up shop.
AOL however seems to envision itself as an eternal net parasite, preying on people who don't know any better. At least they could make nicer coasters.
A rule I've learned is don't argue politics here (or anywhere?). Stay away from YRO in general. There's no point in arguing politics, the one truth is that there is no truth, so what's the point? There are lies, damn lies, politics and statistics.
On most other subjects moderation seems to be pretty reasonable. The more tech related the subject matter is, the better the moderation is. Of course, it's also easier to detect trolls, dimwits and other degenerates, which helps.
There's no perfect system, on/. or anywhere. Even in a newspaper we let reporters, people with $$$, hollywood stars (WTF?!?) and politicians shape our news. Not exactly a guarantee for intelligent or even semi-comprehensible insight. Good ideas start small, and people just adopt them. Sometimes no one gets credit.
Their people will work happily for peanuts so we can have manufactured goods for less than the price of air. Their government contrasts our own governments slow but deliberate transition to facism, making us think we're still "free".
That's not really true, if these people are not as good and you have a standard for quality such that you will not release a product until it is met, then they will cost you in redevelopment. This is not an academic consideration, it comes up with any company who does overseas development but is large enough to care about quality.
They just don't have to be nearly as good to be cheaper.
Why the hell would anyone want to move to India?! There's a reason they can get away with paying pennies overthere yet still be making the native programmers rich....
I guess I don't know why we care. Yes/. hates MS, but I would hope we hate monopolies more. If MS dies tomorrow and Apple replaces it, we've gained nothing at all, except perhaps a slight loss in open HW.
Let's not forget when Apple was in charge they were as evil as Microsoft, but more powerful.
I liked/. better when it was full of hopeless linux zealots, at least I could agree on the ideal.
You have no idea what you're talking about. I know exactly how Dell and HP build and test their PCs. None of what you say is true, any component in those machines has been stress tested for months. From month to month different hardware may be present...maybe WD hard drives one week, maxtor another. Both have been thoroughly tested in that system and just plain work. Stuff happens from time to time, but if you did any research in the matter you'd see how wrong you are.
What you mean to say is some components you care a lot about are not the specific brand you want. The problem is most people do not care, hence you do not get the card you want. That's not quality, that's feature. PC mfg's are not good at that aspect which is why people like myself still build our own and suffer the bugs.
Apple does not suffer from this problem, not because their engineers are any better, but because they have a system spec defining how the system fits together. If Dell or HP were put in the position of having to deliver products to meet this spec, you'd get a cheaper mac, with the same features and maybe even better quality. Both are quite capable and would actually prefer this. You have no idea how much money all PC mfg's spend in phone support because of this defecit.
Dell currently has the highest quality statistics of any PC manufacturer, HP is close. It's flat out wrong to state they can't make quality PCs. It's flat out wrong to say they have the cheapest crap, in fact they design a good portion of it themselves, and if you look you'll see there's a number of places they could have cut cost at the expense of quality.
The only part that may accidentally be true is surplus. Holding inventory is bad, companies with surplus tend to try to sell at a lower price. Any pc mfg will buy the lowest price component (that is qualified for their system). Neither Dell nor HP will buy components that are not qualified for their systems however, regardless of the price. Getting qualified takes quite a bit of time, and I know for a fact these two companies make their vendors suffer until everything exceeds spec by a certain margin.
No I think Dell would like to keep its options open. Dell could make the same quality Mac's you guys enjoy now, for less. I know there's a segment of/. that doesn't believe it, until I worked at a company like that I wouldn't have either. However I'm convinced it's true. Volume requests from a single source in particular do amazing things to costs.
The question is a) does apple want to use other HW vendors and b) which one will make the sweetest offer, they probably won't want too many. I really see no business reason for Apple to build its own hardware.
Dell in particular could benefit from such a relationship. Some may believe that MS is in trouble it can't easily escape from, and if Apple fixes its cost problem, it will once again dominate. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it's possible.
Maybe I misunderstood but I was actually in agreement with what I thought the premise of your original comment. I have seen effects of ACLU trying to "protect us from" religion in corporate offices which are afraid to put Christmas trees up for fear of litigation. I need protection from discrimination based on religion, not from religion itself. I have lived in heavily Christian and heavily Jewish areas, I don't see any reason why companies should feel afraid to use holiday decorations appropriate to those there.
As for them removing all vestiges of religion from government I'm on the fence. When it comes to law, and law enforcement, there's a need to maybe go to an extreme. Rewriting the constitution to remove the word God? No, that's just plain dumb. In general there's this continuous attempt by governement officials and citizens alike to blur the line between morality and law. I'm not sure it's necessarily bad for the ACLU to remind us that these are different things.
You don't understand the term quality then. Apple's advantage is their system design. Even the best designed PCs will develop problems when new apps, OSes or hardware is installed. Apple computers do not have this problem. It has nothing to do with their HW design.
I have the quality metrics for most desktop computer manufacturers, Apple's is nothing special. Dell is actually better in recent years. The part where Apple shines however is they spend far less in phone calls for tech support caused by software conflict.
Actually Dell's laptop designs are done in house as well, just they're done overseas in cheapo geek sweatshops instead of in Texas. Dell designs a lot more than most people think, but only their servers are actually built in the US =(
Every employer I have had starts out by "contracting" their designs out to 3rd parties in some asian sweat shop. Those designs are usually of poor quality and sometimes don't quite work, but it's a cheap way to test the market. Then if there's money they bring them in house (which may mean in a corporate owned sweatshop) to bump up the quality.
I see no advantage to the US in allowing this to continue, since now all companies do this, they're still at each others throats on margins, only US employees are hurt by the lack of income.
That would depend on the quality of the compression, not the fact that it's digital.
Since I'm watching my Dish network box now and I can see all sorts of compression artifacts, I won't argue with the rest except to say it's still a lot better than analog, over the air TV.
Traditionally governments have become involved in situations where the free market will not act in the best interests of the country at large. While that does not happen as often as it should, in this case the FCC is doing its job.
You wouldn't want TV over your air traffic control spectrum, or in your cell phone spectrum. Similarly you wouldn't want someone with a 3MW transmitter irradiating you. The government long ago divided up the airwaves into categories and sold chunks of it to interested parties. Thus we can all work and play well together.
There are many good reasons for the government to force digital transmission, the number one being the ability to permanently reclaim and repurpose some of the spectrum. However I suspect their real motivations are content owners and the $ that may come from selling that extra spectrum.
Personally I believe that nothing hollywood comes up with will ever be hackproof, but that digital TV is likely going to result in a somewhat higher observed video quality, so it's probably a good thing for us. I think the price issue is a red herring, I've seen the component chips required for this sell for cheap, it's just a matter of "this integrated feature will compete with our overpriced stand alone box and this will hurt our margins" whining.
What I wish some committee could come up with is a way to force cable companies to removing the set top box from their system. They're a pointless excuse to waste our money and cable/satellite companies deserve LESS control in our homes, not more. (This is an example of a non-free market that the government ought to be dealing with better)
I think that's temporary. The only thing that is uniquely good about Apple's computers (let the flames rage on) is their OS & software. Yes they make the $ on the hardware, but it's a side effect. Otherwise it's just yet another computer system. The only part of their hardware worth copying is the fact that their hardware spec is tight and centrally driven resulting in a cleaner system. This can be dealt with in other ways than actually having them build the HW themselves. Already PC hardware is going in the same direction, how much of your PC is truly configurable anymore? What new applications have come around that aren't standard in every PC? Your video card? Your hard drive? Your total system RAM? You can change those on a Mac (afaik). The only other things I can think of are niche's for tech developers such as myself. The day will come with the "PC" is as rigid as an Apple.
If not for their OS Apple is a developer of yet another incompatible computer system that was once insanely popular, but fell behind due to overbearing, unresponsive, greedy, elitist corporate governance. Those types of companies tend to get what is coming to them.
I don't think so, I think Intel is thrilled to have another platform using their chips. His competition just became AMD again.
I don't see Intel merging with Apple, I see Apple using Dell/HP/Lenovo to build their hardware (at worst). I'm not even sure about that as MS has a lot of control over these companies.
Yeah I saw that too, back in my day we called sports figures "Jocks". There was never any problem with women having sex with THEM. I don't know if they were good lovers, but they certainly got more than their share of action.
I guess the thinking here is that golf is not a real sport, it's not a business enterprise, thus the only category left for Tiger is a nerd?
Slashdot Mirror
You could have typed less and pointed out companies are outsourcing US labor too.
Our FMLA is nice to have, but hard to use effectively. Most of us have 2-3 weeks of paid vacation, depending. No strikes since most of us are not unionized. We have plenty of bureacracy. I don't think any culture ought to put work ahead of family, those that do are doing so temporarily. Our form of "capitalism" is now much more big business friendly, and less real capitalism. Anyhow by his argument the US is better, but jobs aren't flooding here, the opposite is true.
The message is clear, companies want the most for the least. What's new, governments exist to protect us from that but are slow and corrupt.
Probably someone told them that certain pieces of open source software critical to unix servers. Apache comes way at the front of that list. Without it, I don't think any *nix would be under much scrutiny now, least of all anything SCO offers.
I noticed you left off "Future Business Leaders of America" from your list.
Freudian slip, but we have you now!
I do work in development. If you're in a company that puts a schedule ahead of quality:
- You're small and the product needs to be released to get more funding, it's probably better to release it at expense to quality (you're looking for a big name buyer most likely anyhow, or you're releasing something new with no market expectations).
- You're big and you're looking for a lawsuit, lots of warranty repairs, customer dissatisfaction or are making a product so cheap no one looks too close.
In the past two companies I've worked at, both in the top 20 from Fortune, quality came first. It comes from lots of reviews, examination against databases of past mistakes, process standards etc. The managers who make these schedules, which are in many cases insane will not allow a product out that hasn't been through the full process and received sign off. Believe it or not, most of us here think lovingly of our start-up days when we had to pull all-nighters to get a product out (and when we COULD, since it didn't require 100 sign-offs to get a product out).
It depends on your industry, I make hardware, poor quality costs us in terms of warranty repairs and phone calls. In another company I worked at, poor quality came out of our (very lucrative) support contract. In all cases it cost money, reduced profit and our VPs have learned to keep close track of these as part of the bottom line.
I can't tell you how many times we've had to send some "overseas" designed stuff back for rework because it didn't meet our standards. It had become such a problem that we won't work with any 3rd party overseas without subjecting them to our own process. The resulting savings in labor is far less since an american engineer has to oversee those overseas.
The thing about quality, without sounding too much like a PHB, is that it's a process. You start with a few smart people who remember the important points, then you develop ways of ensuring no problems, continuously building up solutions to issues that arise. Technology changes too fast for even your geekiest super-geek to get perfection. Similarly our overseas "friends" are using this time to learn from us how to build better stuff. In a few more years we won't even be able to accuse them of making low quality crap.
AOL was a useful service once upon a time, like compuserve and prodigy. Technology has obsoleted it, and now they're struggling to find a place in the world.
Unfortunately corporations reach a point where they feel like they must be immortal. Sometimes you make something people like for a while, then they don't need it and you need to find something else to do. It's no ones fault, it just happens. Time to move on, do it gracefully, help your employees move on and then close up shop.
AOL however seems to envision itself as an eternal net parasite, preying on people who don't know any better. At least they could make nicer coasters.
--
Austerity Empowers, Councilor for the Undead
A rule I've learned is don't argue politics here (or anywhere?). Stay away from YRO in general. There's no point in arguing politics, the one truth is that there is no truth, so what's the point? There are lies, damn lies, politics and statistics.
/. or anywhere. Even in a newspaper we let reporters, people with $$$, hollywood stars (WTF?!?) and politicians shape our news. Not exactly a guarantee for intelligent or even semi-comprehensible insight. Good ideas start small, and people just adopt them. Sometimes no one gets credit.
On most other subjects moderation seems to be pretty reasonable. The more tech related the subject matter is, the better the moderation is. Of course, it's also easier to detect trolls, dimwits and other degenerates, which helps.
There's no perfect system, on
Their people will work happily for peanuts so we can have manufactured goods for less than the price of air. Their government contrasts our own governments slow but deliberate transition to facism, making us think we're still "free".
In other words, why wouldn't we trade with them!
Cuz your kids school teachers cost about 1000x more.
One MS staff programmer will teach 30 vietnamese natives, who will teach the masses. All for the price of a big mac.
I so don't want to know why it skilled female technicians are uniquely able to do this job.
That's not really true, if these people are not as good and you have a standard for quality such that you will not release a product until it is met, then they will cost you in redevelopment. This is not an academic consideration, it comes up with any company who does overseas development but is large enough to care about quality.
They just don't have to be nearly as good to be cheaper.
Why the hell would anyone want to move to India?! There's a reason they can get away with paying pennies overthere yet still be making the native programmers rich....
I guess I don't know why we care. Yes /. hates MS, but I would hope we hate monopolies more. If MS dies tomorrow and Apple replaces it, we've gained nothing at all, except perhaps a slight loss in open HW.
/. better when it was full of hopeless linux zealots, at least I could agree on the ideal.
Let's not forget when Apple was in charge they were as evil as Microsoft, but more powerful.
I liked
It's probably in both Linus' and Theo's best interest to claim they have never used the competition.
But seriously, someone who has never used Windows? I don't even think it's possible, I use it when I go to my damned ATM.
You have no idea what you're talking about. I know exactly how Dell and HP build and test their PCs. None of what you say is true, any component in those machines has been stress tested for months. From month to month different hardware may be present...maybe WD hard drives one week, maxtor another. Both have been thoroughly tested in that system and just plain work. Stuff happens from time to time, but if you did any research in the matter you'd see how wrong you are.
What you mean to say is some components you care a lot about are not the specific brand you want. The problem is most people do not care, hence you do not get the card you want. That's not quality, that's feature. PC mfg's are not good at that aspect which is why people like myself still build our own and suffer the bugs.
Apple does not suffer from this problem, not because their engineers are any better, but because they have a system spec defining how the system fits together. If Dell or HP were put in the position of having to deliver products to meet this spec, you'd get a cheaper mac, with the same features and maybe even better quality. Both are quite capable and would actually prefer this. You have no idea how much money all PC mfg's spend in phone support because of this defecit.
Dell currently has the highest quality statistics of any PC manufacturer, HP is close. It's flat out wrong to state they can't make quality PCs. It's flat out wrong to say they have the cheapest crap, in fact they design a good portion of it themselves, and if you look you'll see there's a number of places they could have cut cost at the expense of quality.
The only part that may accidentally be true is surplus. Holding inventory is bad, companies with surplus tend to try to sell at a lower price. Any pc mfg will buy the lowest price component (that is qualified for their system). Neither Dell nor HP will buy components that are not qualified for their systems however, regardless of the price. Getting qualified takes quite a bit of time, and I know for a fact these two companies make their vendors suffer until everything exceeds spec by a certain margin.
Get your facts straight and try again.
No I think Dell would like to keep its options open. Dell could make the same quality Mac's you guys enjoy now, for less. I know there's a segment of /. that doesn't believe it, until I worked at a company like that I wouldn't have either. However I'm convinced it's true. Volume requests from a single source in particular do amazing things to costs.
The question is a) does apple want to use other HW vendors and b) which one will make the sweetest offer, they probably won't want too many. I really see no business reason for Apple to build its own hardware.
Dell in particular could benefit from such a relationship. Some may believe that MS is in trouble it can't easily escape from, and if Apple fixes its cost problem, it will once again dominate. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it's possible.
I'd say simplify that, OS X for gray boxes that has no support at all.
Maybe I misunderstood but I was actually in agreement with what I thought the premise of your original comment. I have seen effects of ACLU trying to "protect us from" religion in corporate offices which are afraid to put Christmas trees up for fear of litigation. I need protection from discrimination based on religion, not from religion itself. I have lived in heavily Christian and heavily Jewish areas, I don't see any reason why companies should feel afraid to use holiday decorations appropriate to those there.
As for them removing all vestiges of religion from government I'm on the fence. When it comes to law, and law enforcement, there's a need to maybe go to an extreme. Rewriting the constitution to remove the word God? No, that's just plain dumb. In general there's this continuous attempt by governement officials and citizens alike to blur the line between morality and law. I'm not sure it's necessarily bad for the ACLU to remind us that these are different things.
You don't understand the term quality then. Apple's advantage is their system design. Even the best designed PCs will develop problems when new apps, OSes or hardware is installed. Apple computers do not have this problem. It has nothing to do with their HW design.
I have the quality metrics for most desktop computer manufacturers, Apple's is nothing special. Dell is actually better in recent years. The part where Apple shines however is they spend far less in phone calls for tech support caused by software conflict.
Actually Dell's laptop designs are done in house as well, just they're done overseas in cheapo geek sweatshops instead of in Texas. Dell designs a lot more than most people think, but only their servers are actually built in the US =(
Every employer I have had starts out by "contracting" their designs out to 3rd parties in some asian sweat shop. Those designs are usually of poor quality and sometimes don't quite work, but it's a cheap way to test the market. Then if there's money they bring them in house (which may mean in a corporate owned sweatshop) to bump up the quality.
I see no advantage to the US in allowing this to continue, since now all companies do this, they're still at each others throats on margins, only US employees are hurt by the lack of income.
He's not lying he's got it dead on.
That would depend on the quality of the compression, not the fact that it's digital.
Since I'm watching my Dish network box now and I can see all sorts of compression artifacts, I won't argue with the rest except to say it's still a lot better than analog, over the air TV.
Traditionally governments have become involved in situations where the free market will not act in the best interests of the country at large. While that does not happen as often as it should, in this case the FCC is doing its job.
You wouldn't want TV over your air traffic control spectrum, or in your cell phone spectrum. Similarly you wouldn't want someone with a 3MW transmitter irradiating you. The government long ago divided up the airwaves into categories and sold chunks of it to interested parties. Thus we can all work and play well together.
There are many good reasons for the government to force digital transmission, the number one being the ability to permanently reclaim and repurpose some of the spectrum. However I suspect their real motivations are content owners and the $ that may come from selling that extra spectrum.
Personally I believe that nothing hollywood comes up with will ever be hackproof, but that digital TV is likely going to result in a somewhat higher observed video quality, so it's probably a good thing for us. I think the price issue is a red herring, I've seen the component chips required for this sell for cheap, it's just a matter of "this integrated feature will compete with our overpriced stand alone box and this will hurt our margins" whining.
What I wish some committee could come up with is a way to force cable companies to removing the set top box from their system. They're a pointless excuse to waste our money and cable/satellite companies deserve LESS control in our homes, not more. (This is an example of a non-free market that the government ought to be dealing with better)
I think that's temporary. The only thing that is uniquely good about Apple's computers (let the flames rage on) is their OS & software. Yes they make the $ on the hardware, but it's a side effect. Otherwise it's just yet another computer system. The only part of their hardware worth copying is the fact that their hardware spec is tight and centrally driven resulting in a cleaner system. This can be dealt with in other ways than actually having them build the HW themselves. Already PC hardware is going in the same direction, how much of your PC is truly configurable anymore? What new applications have come around that aren't standard in every PC? Your video card? Your hard drive? Your total system RAM? You can change those on a Mac (afaik). The only other things I can think of are niche's for tech developers such as myself. The day will come with the "PC" is as rigid as an Apple.
If not for their OS Apple is a developer of yet another incompatible computer system that was once insanely popular, but fell behind due to overbearing, unresponsive, greedy, elitist corporate governance. Those types of companies tend to get what is coming to them.
I don't think so, I think Intel is thrilled to have another platform using their chips. His competition just became AMD again.
I don't see Intel merging with Apple, I see Apple using Dell/HP/Lenovo to build their hardware (at worst). I'm not even sure about that as MS has a lot of control over these companies.
Yeah I saw that too, back in my day we called sports figures "Jocks". There was never any problem with women having sex with THEM. I don't know if they were good lovers, but they certainly got more than their share of action.
I guess the thinking here is that golf is not a real sport, it's not a business enterprise, thus the only category left for Tiger is a nerd?