The Queen has nothing to do with government IT procurement. She has very little to do with government bar rubber-stamping things (pretty much for the sake of tradition) and as a PR/international relations envoy. Government is the MP's who sit in the house of common(er)s. They are mainly led by the Cabinet (elected MPs given particular jobs by the party that elected the majority of MPs). The House of Lords is a second house. They aren't elected but are mainly given lifetime appointments by whoever was in government at the time. They are basically an independent(ish) check on the legislation passed by the House of Commons.
The corporate analogy isn't too far away from the Cabinet being the Chief Executive Whatevers, the other MPs being Director of Operations at Constituency X, while the House of Lords are the independent non-executive directors.
The analogy is apt. Government is a very large organisation. Organisations have leaders, structures, controls, processes, responsibilities, reporting and so on. MPs mainly oversee things, the actual activity is undertaken primarily by "civil servants", i.e. management and staff. Any suggestion that all software should be open source is absurd and irresponsible. Their objective, every single individual time they have a procurement task to undertake, is to satisfy a raft of criteria. What they should do is pick whatever available best suits the criteria. The nature of open source gives it one inherent advantage over some of that criteria, nothing more. All else being equal, the open source should be picked, but there is no reason to presume all else is equal.
Appearance is an insightful point, however. Less for the literal appearance and more for implication that professionalism and commercialism is extremely important. Lofty goals are great and everything, but the guys tasked with the procurement are tasked with getting a solution to a problem. A friend - a scientist turned programmer - noted the biggest difference between his new commercial job and his previous academic one (with apologies for paraphrasing): "in academia, the best code is the best code producing the best solution to the problem. In a company, the best solution is what you can do that works. The academic-best is a total failure in commerce because it just can't be done and anyway you have all these other things to think about". The translation is that the circumstances fundamentally changes what the problem actually is.
So whatever happened to books, or the relevant chapters, being given out privately to the people in them prior to publishing? I thought that was standard practice.
I suppose it got put to the wayside since it was only relevant when the concepts of truth and balanced reporting were practised. As far as papers go, the Guardian is still far from the worst offender, but it used to be a high quality liberal broadsheet. The last few years it has seemed to put most value on web hits over quality paper journalism. Sensible liberalism has given way for sensational liberalism.
I suspect you're a little over optimistic about the hygiene and other habits in effect today. There's also far greater potential for spread and acceleration of infection due to the vastly greater and faster transportation of people, foods and other goods.
Consider how widespread many virulent infections are, such as the common cold or flu (basic sanitation should keep those at bay too). Or how about: - 1 in 6 Americans carries herpes. - "An estimated 2.8 million [Chlamydia] infections occur annually in the U.S." - Over a million Americans have HIV.
True, you are right to point out the probability of a fast-killing pandemic being low, especially relative to the alarmists. But risk is a combination of the probability and the severity of the outcome. It is logical to be more concerned about a 1% lifetime chance of decimation than the annual 99% chance of a minor drop in productivity such as caused by flu.
The response to a small potential for pandemic also has to be excessive. Acting swiftly and severely is vastly more effective. The reminders also help encourage people to practice that basic sanitation.
Disclaimer: the UK is not the US, but I would be surprised if there are major differences in principle.
I'm concerned you have set up a charity but appear to have no knowledge of basic charity operation nor accounting - you HAVE arranged for accounting, I hope? In UK, you trustees who manage the charity have to prepare and file statutory accounts (in a very specific format, a UK charity's accounts differ substantially from those of a business' even down to some basic principles) as well as having other statutory obligations imposed upon you. I would be surprised if there aren't free booklets kicking around giving sound advice - many countries have a good quasi-independent charity regulator likely to produce such things, but I see the US's equivalent is the IRS, so I'm less hopeful, but surely somebody produces one?
Moving on to the topic at hand:
If you go to the American Red Cross donation page they give options for 4 specific purposes and one "Where The Need Is Greatest". If this was in the UK, and I assume the same applies in the US and most countries, the latter would result in a donation to the unrestricted fund i.e. they can spend it on whatever they consider appropriate within the purposes set out the the articles/trust deed. These donations would not normally be returned, if the charity ceased the trustees would probably donate to the most similar other charity.
Donations for the "Horn of Africa Drought" however would be recorded separately in the accounts as a donation to that restricted fund and it must be spent on that project. Should the project cease then in theory the Red Cross should communicate with the donor for permission to transfer the money to another project or return it to you. (Admittedly, for an organisation the scale of the Red Cross communicating with small donors would be impractical, so they very likely have a disclaimer that allows them to transfer funds on specific triggers like the cessation of a project.)
Therefore all you need to do is assure your donor that their money goes on exactly your project or else it will be returned. For you, it's just a matter of recording who from & what for in the books properly. Give donors a form with two check boxes - one which requires the money to be returned in the event the project is frustrated and one that gives permission for you to donate to an "a suitable alternative purpose for the advancement of scientific education" or whatever.
As far as websites go, here in UK I have clients having good experience with http://www.justgiving.com/ , they appear to have an American site http://www.firstgiving.com/ . They do take 5% of the donation so you might prefer direct giving, but there's minimal admin for you and its convenient for some donors (who might also feel more secure donating via the officialdom-ish of the big website).
You could of course to take pledges, so people only pay when you get enough pledges to finance the project. However pledges have the obvious habit of the pledger changing his mind by the time it actually comes to pay up. Even if you used some automatic system, you don't really want your donors having forgotten about it then going overdrawn or whatever. It's a problem and headache. I'd suggest you want to be in the position of having cash that you might have to return rather than having to chase people for cash later.
Poor article. It portrays strategic risks in outsourcing as new thinking yet it was covered in depth in my business minor 10 years ago. Actually, we covered it in highschool. It also implies that companies are outsourcing out of pure greed. As ever, broad statements rarely portray complex issues accurately.
Consider what your thoughts are when a company approaches you and says that they can do what you do for 20% less. That's 20% after applying their profit margin, mind. The reaction is not "yay, more profit" but rather "oh shit". The decision is not a choice of either taking the proposal vs everything stays the same. If you don't take the proposal there is still someone out there who can do what you do for 20% less. The choice is either taking the proposal vs everything changes anyway.
The problem was an underlying one. Dell could not make the components as cheaply as the Taiwanese company could. That fact does not change if Dell continued making their own components. Best Buy would still be buying cheap components from Asustek. The only difference is Dell would be finding it even harder to compete. Outsourcing was only a bad decision only if it was actually plausable for Dell to reinvest and be competitive with Asustek. Have no doubt they considered it.
the only realization is that accountants truly create nothing in the enterprise. They don't produce a saleable asset. They don't offer any services to the clients.
Neither does anyone else not directly involved in production. Are you suggesting the only people of significance, the only people required, are the developers? Do you think everything else is just there, everything just works, by magic? You might want to consider getting out of your cubicle a bit more, maybe interact with colleagues from other areas of the company, figure out how things work?
Accountants provide information. Accountants stop the tax man getting very angry... and liquidating your employer. Accountants provide decision support, some of those decisions resulted in your job. Accountants are the people processing your payroll. Accountants manage cash flow, so that your employer had the cash to pay the payroll, and everyone else so that the creditors didn't have the company liquidated. These are the more direct things that your company accountants mean to you personally. If you were involved in making decisions, they would mean a lot more. Without an accountant, you have no company.
Something similar in principle to the above will apply to pretty much everyone in your company, by the way.
Generally when I cannot see the purpose of something that is widely used and perceived as valuable, I assume I am ignorant. The logical responses are to go find out, or accept ignorance; do not make assertions as they can only have a random chance of being correct.
The PEBKAC isn't unique to the IT and related industries.
My home desktop boots fully (everything loaded and into the browser homepage) in about a minute or so, including password login. It used to be around 20 seconds, not sure if it's all the updates or the HDD now being half full, I don't have much crap running.
The Ubuntu machine does it in about 20 seconds, including login and despite both being wireless and an older machine.
My work desktop takes about 10 minutes. Or an hour if it's Tuesday (weekly Norton scan). Actually that's not really true, thanks to the 512mb RAM and an old HDD, nothing ever seems to be fully loaded.
The logic behind the calculations often appears fundamentally flawed to the extent that conclusions are very obviously completely wrong. They explain as much in the article and then carry on regardless due to "convention". It's "convention" because conventionally the calculations are being performed for purposes where the basis is reasonable, unlike for the purposes of the article.
A rise on public transport produces negligible *marginal* emissions, until the point whereby an extra bus is required. Taking total emissions and dividing by the number of passengers makes no sense because the bus was travelling anyway. Some people have neither car nor bike, or the ability to operate them, thus the empty bus emissions are a "sunk cost" and thus irrelevant. Only the incremental emissions caused by the additional weight and stopping & starting to collect and decant a solitary passenger count.
Where buses are fulfilling a requirement of the transport link the emissions are unavoidable and irrelevant. Buses produce more relevant emissions during peak times because this is when extra buses are on the roads to cope with demand. This is still only relevant to transport planning decisions, it still isn't relevant to the decision of an individual.
Oh yes. They allow for road wear but then forget to allow for roads. As in, take off the peak time buses and put those passengers in cars and you will need more roads, there will be more congestion slowing all cars (more emissions per mile for everyone) and there will be need for more parking spaces. Come to think of it, you will need more cars.
If you take a bus journey the emissions are trivial. If the transport planning authorities make decisions affecting buses, that's another story.
This doesn't make much sense for anything other than perhaps congestion.
Firstly, funding roads. The main benefit to a car user is that the road exists. My parents home has a shared driveway, but despite my neighbour using it far more frequently they both paid the same for it. Given the marginal wear and tear on the drive, this makes sense because what all parties were primarily paying for was access. This is also why it is right that roads are subsidised by general taxation and not only car taxes/licenses - I admit this despite not owning a car since I moved into the city.
Secondly, environmental concerns. Both emissions and the consumption of depleting reserves are important. The latter is clearly tackled most directly through taxation on the fuel. Emissions could potentially be targeted more directly using the Dutch system however the system appears to know only the car's factory certified emissions, distance and route. It does not know the individual's driving style nor the condition of the individual car. Tax on fuel accounts for all of these things to a greater and more direct extent with the exception of the certified emissions. That is a moot point because the individual has no control over the certified emissions other than when he chooses what car to buy, in which case adjusting the car licence fee (and taxable benefit if a company car) based on emissions (as done in UK) performs this action in a manner more easily considered by the purchaser.
Furthermore, tax on fuel is more easily (automatically, even) paid by the driver and means he has a relatively straightforward estimation to make when considering the cost of making a journey. It also does not require the government to be tracking every movement, nor expensive equipment, nor so much administration, nor is it prone to error (or cheating).
The only apparent advantage of the Dutch system is that it can be varied based on time of day and potentially busy routes, which may be useful for managing traffic, but may be prone to being unfathomable by the drivers, i.e. ineffective. There is potential for perverse incentives, particularly government increasing charges for roads not to manage congestion but to maximise revenue. Oh and it may also be more easily subjected to political favouritism, like exempting things like police cars (even though they use roads, congest traffic and emit particles too), some noisy group of motoring voters or indeed politicians' vehicles.
Just to be clear, that $250 pays not only for their incomes but overheads and non-billed time like training/update, managing and so on.
The (very broad) general rule for all industry is a chargeout rate should be approx double their payroll cost, but more than that for the learned professions due to the large amount of non-billable time.
I'm of another profession and my rate is 3x my pay, if I get promoted it will be about 4x.
Due to the multiple clients and the public generally do tend to assume pay is much higher than it is. I've had managers at clients bemoan that they "wish [she] received the kind of salary [I] must be on, but [she's] glad [she's] not made to work as hard". I just replied "no you don't", since I'd done the payroll and noticed she gets paid almost double what I do.
Lawyers spend lots and lots of money on their IT, at least here in Scotland they do.
The medium-sized (5-10 partners) firms I deal with (as their accountant) all hire specialist firms to provide the software, support and hardware. The hardware, installation and initial software is billed and-and-when. The ongoing software + support costs are usually the second biggest expense on the P&L.
From memory the total legal software costs (i.e. everything but hardware, installations, MS Office etc, even though their costs appear inflated) probably equate to around 20% of payroll.
Probably some of the high cost is due to the compliance with the Law Society. That page doesn't seem to give the half of it though, I gather they do a lot of poking about since the software providers suddenly change things like lock nominal accounts at their request.
I imagine open sourced software would be popular with all and sundry but any ideas about free is... Well, irrelevant, at least to the customer. Fundamentally they buy software as a service. They are quite content to pay for good service and ensured compliance.
This is completely untrue. I'm from UK, on holiday from work at the moment and following the news all day on numerous formats.
It is true that technology, particularly social networks and Blackberry messenger are being cited as a reason why pockets are able to spring up and move around quickly (hence being difficult for the police to respond to). It is an explanation - an absolutely valid explanation - but an explanation for a phenomenon is quite different from assigning it blame.
Frankly local MPs and suchlike have come across as surprisingly knowledgeable. I got a schooling on Blackberries from a 50-something female MP from a fairly posh London borough this morning. I'd wager she knew more about these things and why they're popular amongst London youths than RIM's marketing department, she might be deserving of a commission on my next phone.
I find it rather odd that/. posts a link to a tiny article (apologies if my adblock etc is cutting things out) on an American newspaper's site when there is a detailed discussion on the London-based BBC. I'll note the BBC carefully states "A number of politicians, media commentators and members of the police force have suggested that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger, in particular, had a role to play." Again, having "a role to play" is quite different to being culpable or responsible, my impression is the BBC is responding to those misunderstanding the frequent references.
Oh yeah and technology is also being mentioned with the likes of "Twitter and Facebook users plan clean-up" (again, not social media being credited but noted as a tool used for people worthy of praise).
Why do they all insist on producing basically the same product lines?
Specifically, I'm still confused why they aren't offering SSDs in anything but the highest end laptops. Even Apple only offers them towards the higher end.
They're better than HDD in every way except for things that I don't care about in a laptop - capacity (I have a desktop for that), price per gig (60gb SSD isn't much more expensive than a 750gb HDD when 60gb is more than enough) and reliability (SSD plenty good enough for most laptop users).
Advantages? Battery savings, better shock resilience, a bit of weight, most importantly a big performance boost over a 5,200rpm 2.5" HDD.
Oh yeah and junk the optical drive thanks. Why is it so hard to find a laptop that does away with the weight, size, battery consumption and cost of a near obsolete component (again, there's a desktop for the rare occurrences) without having to drop down to a crappy netbook?
Alperovitch told Xinhua that they "don't have direct evidence that conclusively points to a particular nation state" behind the scheme.
The McAfee report on Tuesday had said that the campaign was likely sponsored by a nation state because of the breadth and tenacity of the attacks and the information that was accessed.
Not having read the original report nor the full interview transcript (neither of which seem like reliable sources), I don't see anything contradictory. Combine the quotes and it's still perfectly reasonable:
The McAfee report says that the campaign was likely sponsored by a nation state because of the breadth and tenacity of the attacks and the information that was accessed. However, they don't have direct evidence that conclusively points to a particular nation state.
Regretfully having read much of the report, the above is a good example of how worthless it is. PC Pro rubbishes poor media coverage of a government report, then another government report quotes PC Pro and uses the figure in exactly the wrong way that PC Pro was complaining about in the article the report is citing!
Admittedly the report does refer once to "median total cost of ownership", but either they failed to understand what that meant or failed to communicate the meaning in the report. Read para 16 & 17.
It's a very poorly written report, irritating to read and lacking in professional verse. While they appear to have sourced widely, assertions are made in the form of regurgitations of other's material, and throughout those sources are often very poor. There's no sense that they explored any of these sources in depth, let alone went into the field and investigated for themselves.
This is a pity partly as it attempts some very interesting topics and partly because a group of people running the country can't write a decent report.
I thought the primary problem with electric cars was the amount of power that can be stored for the weight of the batteries? Weight is an even more important issue for planes.
I would have thought batteries would need to be able to store twice (or thereabouts) the energy per kg since presumably they wont be allowed to jettison spent batteries. True aeroplane fuel is expensive but then it's saving costs on weight, something that also translates into emissions.
I guess the research is valuable regardless, but every time I hear about some electric vehicle the problem seems to always return to the batteries.
The calculations may be correct, and it's a point well worth making, but it only considers the external charitable value.
Volunteering has benefits for the volunteer too. Like, using your skill set in a different way. Experiencing a (likely very) different work environment. The work may be much more personally satisfying. The submitter hints as much with his query for "interesting" projects. This is before considering doing it in a foreign country/culture.
It's not unknown for a volunteer project to turn out to be a sound career investment if you find yourself managing a project much bigger than you would be back home.
I don't wish to imply volunteering is self-serving, but it can be win-win.
The submitter also indicated he has a 1-2m gap between jobs, there may well be contractual conditions preventing him from obtaining paying work (at least locally) in that period, or it may simply be impractical to do so.
Not to mention that some places in the 3rd world actually have to pay MORE for highly skilled workers than the USA. The skill set simply isn't there so they have to fly in foreigners and pay them a huge premium plus relocation fees.
Numerous comments seem to suggest many have taken this as sarcasm.
To be clear, the judge/Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission set a precedent. In future, in every case with similar circumstances the default position is Verizon pays $1,000.
The car industry is THE case study in success of the "MBAs". The Japanese devastated the US car industry with techniques introduced through management theory, such as Kaisen and Just In Time. They also monitored the market and produced cars that there was demand for, rather than whatever the US car makers wanted to produce.
Of course, engineering was extremely important too, the point is they had a good balance of pretty much everything.
Men "for whom no vehicle could ever be too big, too fast, or too thirsty for gasoline" is whom caused the downfall of the US car industry and I don't see that changing unless something crazy good happens to the price of oil.
"China plans to open 40 new graduate schools of business in the next few years" is deeply disturbing news because while they can produce stuff for extremely cheap, they can't manage for shit. That's why you have Western companies ultimately turning most of the profit on Chinese-made goods.
I watched the video, saw all the charges racking up. They're arbitrary right enough, but it's not to say that there's no underlying basis to support what the artist actually gets. I'm kinda playing devil's advocate here, I really dislike and distrust the labels but at the same time the arguments made here have major flaws.
Firstly, the royalty being on wholesale rather than retail is totally fair and logical. Almost nobody in any industry is paid based on the retail price apart from retailers. Neither the artist nor the label has, or at least should have, any control or even ability to monitor the retail price - you absolutely do not want to have your royalty based on retail price on a product that has basically no per-unit cost, I'll run through an example at the end *1.
Sure, if labels are telling prospective artists the headline "10%" royalty and not mentioning the deductions, this is misrepresentation. The explanation of the charges also appears to be a fabrication, there's various guesstimate deductions, mostly for things that the label is supposed to be taking the risk on and (if we believe this guy's figures) clearly what really happens is the artists gets an effective 5% royalty. But lets not pretend that if laws were enacted and labels had to only pay a royalty, no deductions allowed, the money you make is not going to change, you'll just be told the 5%.
So moving onto the question as to whether the 5% is fair? No idea. Seeing as labels' are claiming big losses in the financial statements, there's basis to presume 5% is fair but I'd need to spend a lot of time with a very detailed look at a few label's accounting records to form a view on that.
A couple of other annoyances with the video. I dislike their own sleight of hand with the $300k artist advance. It's presented in a manner to allow the viewer to believe that the artist actually makes a $500k loss. Even if the figures are right, he still got $300k at the start so even if he did have to repay that $500k the loss would be $200k.
Anyway, while I don't wish to imply certainty, my understanding is that $500k is non-recursive. It's not a loan, it's a charge applied against future royalties only. If all your next albums flop the label writes it off. Most of that huge chunk of the revenue that goes to them from successful artists pays up the losses incurred on the unsuccessful ones.
Even if you did have to repay that $500k, losses are things that can happen when you go into business. When you start getting paid based solely on sales and costs then fundamentally you're in business. Businesses with a turnover of $1m can rightly be expected to get advice from lawyers and accountants. When you can get big rewards from commercial success you take on some risk too. What, you think you just have to work hard and develop your talent and then the world owes you riches? Sorry, world doesn't work like that. The vast majority of everybody who have made a lot of money through commercial success (musicians, actors, sportsmen, businessmen, anyone) either are extremely savvy at the business side or have someone loyal who is.
If you don't want to take on the risk of losses, sign over your royalties and sign an employment contract instead. Sure, if you're really successful you'll make a lot less, but then if you don't work out you still made a bit. That's the breaks, risks & rewards and all that.
____________ *1 consider what happens when royalties are based on retail price. Lets pretend currently a retail store pays $10 for a CD and this comprises $1 in unit variable cost plus $1 royalty to you plus $8 contribution for the label. The store can do what it wants to the price but you get $1 and the label makes $8 contribution. Sell 0.5m records in Store A + 0.5m in Store B for total 1m units = $20m retail sales which is $10m wholesale sales and you (kind of) get $1m. Store A and B each made $5m contribution.
Should Store A decide to reduce the price to $11, B's customers flock over and if sales units remain at 1m you s
to see that at least they are actually detecting and disciplining breaches, since I was already assuming the worst.
If they were to have the right security and ethical culture, it's not implausible that they have a high detection rate when running a full access log, hopefully cross-referenced to some sort of case allocation log, in which case 900 out of ~242k is less than 0.4% of staff in a 3 year period. On the other hand it is possible the 900 is only from audit sampling, in which case since the sample size is unknown the actual rate can only be anything higher than that.
Incidentally this is bigger news due to it's related nature with the News of the World investigation. Since the recent Slashdot story the "news" paper has been shut down and today there has been arrests of both the editor and a sub-editor at the time on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption allegations. The investigation and the story seems to be turning it's attention to allegations of bribes paid to the police for information, having hit what surely is as deep as the depravity goes on the phone hacking (I've said this a few times before and been proven wrong) by discovering targets included the phones of families of victims of the 7/7 London bombing, soldiers killed in Iraq/Afghanistan and murdered children.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, what?
The Queen has nothing to do with government IT procurement. She has very little to do with government bar rubber-stamping things (pretty much for the sake of tradition) and as a PR/international relations envoy. Government is the MP's who sit in the house of common(er)s. They are mainly led by the Cabinet (elected MPs given particular jobs by the party that elected the majority of MPs). The House of Lords is a second house. They aren't elected but are mainly given lifetime appointments by whoever was in government at the time. They are basically an independent(ish) check on the legislation passed by the House of Commons.
The corporate analogy isn't too far away from the Cabinet being the Chief Executive Whatevers, the other MPs being Director of Operations at Constituency X, while the House of Lords are the independent non-executive directors.
The analogy is apt. Government is a very large organisation. Organisations have leaders, structures, controls, processes, responsibilities, reporting and so on. MPs mainly oversee things, the actual activity is undertaken primarily by "civil servants", i.e. management and staff. Any suggestion that all software should be open source is absurd and irresponsible. Their objective, every single individual time they have a procurement task to undertake, is to satisfy a raft of criteria. What they should do is pick whatever available best suits the criteria. The nature of open source gives it one inherent advantage over some of that criteria, nothing more. All else being equal, the open source should be picked, but there is no reason to presume all else is equal.
Appearance is an insightful point, however. Less for the literal appearance and more for implication that professionalism and commercialism is extremely important. Lofty goals are great and everything, but the guys tasked with the procurement are tasked with getting a solution to a problem. A friend - a scientist turned programmer - noted the biggest difference between his new commercial job and his previous academic one (with apologies for paraphrasing): "in academia, the best code is the best code producing the best solution to the problem. In a company, the best solution is what you can do that works. The academic-best is a total failure in commerce because it just can't be done and anyway you have all these other things to think about". The translation is that the circumstances fundamentally changes what the problem actually is.
So whatever happened to books, or the relevant chapters, being given out privately to the people in them prior to publishing? I thought that was standard practice.
I suppose it got put to the wayside since it was only relevant when the concepts of truth and balanced reporting were practised. As far as papers go, the Guardian is still far from the worst offender, but it used to be a high quality liberal broadsheet. The last few years it has seemed to put most value on web hits over quality paper journalism. Sensible liberalism has given way for sensational liberalism.
That;s why I don't buy it any more.
I suspect you're a little over optimistic about the hygiene and other habits in effect today. There's also far greater potential for spread and acceleration of infection due to the vastly greater and faster transportation of people, foods and other goods.
Consider how widespread many virulent infections are, such as the common cold or flu (basic sanitation should keep those at bay too). Or how about:
- 1 in 6 Americans carries herpes.
- "An estimated 2.8 million [Chlamydia] infections occur annually in the U.S."
- Over a million Americans have HIV.
True, you are right to point out the probability of a fast-killing pandemic being low, especially relative to the alarmists. But risk is a combination of the probability and the severity of the outcome. It is logical to be more concerned about a 1% lifetime chance of decimation than the annual 99% chance of a minor drop in productivity such as caused by flu.
The response to a small potential for pandemic also has to be excessive. Acting swiftly and severely is vastly more effective. The reminders also help encourage people to practice that basic sanitation.
Disclaimer: the UK is not the US, but I would be surprised if there are major differences in principle.
I'm concerned you have set up a charity but appear to have no knowledge of basic charity operation nor accounting - you HAVE arranged for accounting, I hope? In UK, you trustees who manage the charity have to prepare and file statutory accounts (in a very specific format, a UK charity's accounts differ substantially from those of a business' even down to some basic principles) as well as having other statutory obligations imposed upon you. I would be surprised if there aren't free booklets kicking around giving sound advice - many countries have a good quasi-independent charity regulator likely to produce such things, but I see the US's equivalent is the IRS, so I'm less hopeful, but surely somebody produces one?
Moving on to the topic at hand:
If you go to the American Red Cross donation page they give options for 4 specific purposes and one "Where The Need Is Greatest". If this was in the UK, and I assume the same applies in the US and most countries, the latter would result in a donation to the unrestricted fund i.e. they can spend it on whatever they consider appropriate within the purposes set out the the articles/trust deed. These donations would not normally be returned, if the charity ceased the trustees would probably donate to the most similar other charity.
Donations for the "Horn of Africa Drought" however would be recorded separately in the accounts as a donation to that restricted fund and it must be spent on that project. Should the project cease then in theory the Red Cross should communicate with the donor for permission to transfer the money to another project or return it to you. (Admittedly, for an organisation the scale of the Red Cross communicating with small donors would be impractical, so they very likely have a disclaimer that allows them to transfer funds on specific triggers like the cessation of a project.)
Therefore all you need to do is assure your donor that their money goes on exactly your project or else it will be returned. For you, it's just a matter of recording who from & what for in the books properly. Give donors a form with two check boxes - one which requires the money to be returned in the event the project is frustrated and one that gives permission for you to donate to an "a suitable alternative purpose for the advancement of scientific education" or whatever.
As far as websites go, here in UK I have clients having good experience with http://www.justgiving.com/ , they appear to have an American site http://www.firstgiving.com/ . They do take 5% of the donation so you might prefer direct giving, but there's minimal admin for you and its convenient for some donors (who might also feel more secure donating via the officialdom-ish of the big website).
You could of course to take pledges, so people only pay when you get enough pledges to finance the project. However pledges have the obvious habit of the pledger changing his mind by the time it actually comes to pay up. Even if you used some automatic system, you don't really want your donors having forgotten about it then going overdrawn or whatever. It's a problem and headache. I'd suggest you want to be in the position of having cash that you might have to return rather than having to chase people for cash later.
Poor article. It portrays strategic risks in outsourcing as new thinking yet it was covered in depth in my business minor 10 years ago. Actually, we covered it in highschool. It also implies that companies are outsourcing out of pure greed. As ever, broad statements rarely portray complex issues accurately.
Consider what your thoughts are when a company approaches you and says that they can do what you do for 20% less. That's 20% after applying their profit margin, mind. The reaction is not "yay, more profit" but rather "oh shit". The decision is not a choice of either taking the proposal vs everything stays the same. If you don't take the proposal there is still someone out there who can do what you do for 20% less. The choice is either taking the proposal vs everything changes anyway.
The problem was an underlying one. Dell could not make the components as cheaply as the Taiwanese company could. That fact does not change if Dell continued making their own components. Best Buy would still be buying cheap components from Asustek. The only difference is Dell would be finding it even harder to compete. Outsourcing was only a bad decision only if it was actually plausable for Dell to reinvest and be competitive with Asustek. Have no doubt they considered it.
The article describes the symptom, not the cause.
And yet ____________ are still treated like second class citizens in far too many organizations...
This isn't novel to IT.
Neither does anyone else not directly involved in production. Are you suggesting the only people of significance, the only people required, are the developers? Do you think everything else is just there, everything just works, by magic? You might want to consider getting out of your cubicle a bit more, maybe interact with colleagues from other areas of the company, figure out how things work?
Accountants provide information. Accountants stop the tax man getting very angry... and liquidating your employer. Accountants provide decision support, some of those decisions resulted in your job. Accountants are the people processing your payroll. Accountants manage cash flow, so that your employer had the cash to pay the payroll, and everyone else so that the creditors didn't have the company liquidated. These are the more direct things that your company accountants mean to you personally. If you were involved in making decisions, they would mean a lot more. Without an accountant, you have no company.
Something similar in principle to the above will apply to pretty much everyone in your company, by the way.
Generally when I cannot see the purpose of something that is widely used and perceived as valuable, I assume I am ignorant. The logical responses are to go find out, or accept ignorance; do not make assertions as they can only have a random chance of being correct.
The PEBKAC isn't unique to the IT and related industries.
My home desktop boots fully (everything loaded and into the browser homepage) in about a minute or so, including password login. It used to be around 20 seconds, not sure if it's all the updates or the HDD now being half full, I don't have much crap running.
The Ubuntu machine does it in about 20 seconds, including login and despite both being wireless and an older machine.
My work desktop takes about 10 minutes. Or an hour if it's Tuesday (weekly Norton scan). Actually that's not really true, thanks to the 512mb RAM and an old HDD, nothing ever seems to be fully loaded.
The logic behind the calculations often appears fundamentally flawed to the extent that conclusions are very obviously completely wrong. They explain as much in the article and then carry on regardless due to "convention". It's "convention" because conventionally the calculations are being performed for purposes where the basis is reasonable, unlike for the purposes of the article.
A rise on public transport produces negligible *marginal* emissions, until the point whereby an extra bus is required. Taking total emissions and dividing by the number of passengers makes no sense because the bus was travelling anyway. Some people have neither car nor bike, or the ability to operate them, thus the empty bus emissions are a "sunk cost" and thus irrelevant. Only the incremental emissions caused by the additional weight and stopping & starting to collect and decant a solitary passenger count.
Where buses are fulfilling a requirement of the transport link the emissions are unavoidable and irrelevant. Buses produce more relevant emissions during peak times because this is when extra buses are on the roads to cope with demand. This is still only relevant to transport planning decisions, it still isn't relevant to the decision of an individual.
Oh yes. They allow for road wear but then forget to allow for roads. As in, take off the peak time buses and put those passengers in cars and you will need more roads, there will be more congestion slowing all cars (more emissions per mile for everyone) and there will be need for more parking spaces. Come to think of it, you will need more cars.
If you take a bus journey the emissions are trivial. If the transport planning authorities make decisions affecting buses, that's another story.
This doesn't make much sense for anything other than perhaps congestion.
Firstly, funding roads. The main benefit to a car user is that the road exists. My parents home has a shared driveway, but despite my neighbour using it far more frequently they both paid the same for it. Given the marginal wear and tear on the drive, this makes sense because what all parties were primarily paying for was access. This is also why it is right that roads are subsidised by general taxation and not only car taxes/licenses - I admit this despite not owning a car since I moved into the city.
Secondly, environmental concerns. Both emissions and the consumption of depleting reserves are important. The latter is clearly tackled most directly through taxation on the fuel. Emissions could potentially be targeted more directly using the Dutch system however the system appears to know only the car's factory certified emissions, distance and route. It does not know the individual's driving style nor the condition of the individual car. Tax on fuel accounts for all of these things to a greater and more direct extent with the exception of the certified emissions. That is a moot point because the individual has no control over the certified emissions other than when he chooses what car to buy, in which case adjusting the car licence fee (and taxable benefit if a company car) based on emissions (as done in UK) performs this action in a manner more easily considered by the purchaser.
Furthermore, tax on fuel is more easily (automatically, even) paid by the driver and means he has a relatively straightforward estimation to make when considering the cost of making a journey. It also does not require the government to be tracking every movement, nor expensive equipment, nor so much administration, nor is it prone to error (or cheating).
The only apparent advantage of the Dutch system is that it can be varied based on time of day and potentially busy routes, which may be useful for managing traffic, but may be prone to being unfathomable by the drivers, i.e. ineffective. There is potential for perverse incentives, particularly government increasing charges for roads not to manage congestion but to maximise revenue. Oh and it may also be more easily subjected to political favouritism, like exempting things like police cars (even though they use roads, congest traffic and emit particles too), some noisy group of motoring voters or indeed politicians' vehicles.
Just to be clear, that $250 pays not only for their incomes but overheads and non-billed time like training/update, managing and so on.
The (very broad) general rule for all industry is a chargeout rate should be approx double their payroll cost, but more than that for the learned professions due to the large amount of non-billable time.
I'm of another profession and my rate is 3x my pay, if I get promoted it will be about 4x.
Due to the multiple clients and the public generally do tend to assume pay is much higher than it is. I've had managers at clients bemoan that they "wish [she] received the kind of salary [I] must be on, but [she's] glad [she's] not made to work as hard". I just replied "no you don't", since I'd done the payroll and noticed she gets paid almost double what I do.
Lawyers spend lots and lots of money on their IT, at least here in Scotland they do.
The medium-sized (5-10 partners) firms I deal with (as their accountant) all hire specialist firms to provide the software, support and hardware. The hardware, installation and initial software is billed and-and-when. The ongoing software + support costs are usually the second biggest expense on the P&L.
From memory the total legal software costs (i.e. everything but hardware, installations, MS Office etc, even though their costs appear inflated) probably equate to around 20% of payroll.
Probably some of the high cost is due to the compliance with the Law Society. That page doesn't seem to give the half of it though, I gather they do a lot of poking about since the software providers suddenly change things like lock nominal accounts at their request.
I imagine open sourced software would be popular with all and sundry but any ideas about free is... Well, irrelevant, at least to the customer. Fundamentally they buy software as a service. They are quite content to pay for good service and ensured compliance.
If you don't get to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre then I don't think you get to shout "burn down the theatre" to a willing crowd.
For what it's worth it is illegal to incite a riot in both the US and the UK. I do not see anything special in the means of communication.
This is completely untrue. I'm from UK, on holiday from work at the moment and following the news all day on numerous formats.
It is true that technology, particularly social networks and Blackberry messenger are being cited as a reason why pockets are able to spring up and move around quickly (hence being difficult for the police to respond to). It is an explanation - an absolutely valid explanation - but an explanation for a phenomenon is quite different from assigning it blame.
Frankly local MPs and suchlike have come across as surprisingly knowledgeable. I got a schooling on Blackberries from a 50-something female MP from a fairly posh London borough this morning. I'd wager she knew more about these things and why they're popular amongst London youths than RIM's marketing department, she might be deserving of a commission on my next phone.
I find it rather odd that /. posts a link to a tiny article (apologies if my adblock etc is cutting things out) on an American newspaper's site when there is a detailed discussion on the London-based BBC. I'll note the BBC carefully states "A number of politicians, media commentators and members of the police force have suggested that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger, in particular, had a role to play." Again, having "a role to play" is quite different to being culpable or responsible, my impression is the BBC is responding to those misunderstanding the frequent references.
Oh yeah and technology is also being mentioned with the likes of "Twitter and Facebook users plan clean-up" (again, not social media being credited but noted as a tool used for people worthy of praise).
Well said.
Why do they all insist on producing basically the same product lines?
Specifically, I'm still confused why they aren't offering SSDs in anything but the highest end laptops. Even Apple only offers them towards the higher end.
They're better than HDD in every way except for things that I don't care about in a laptop - capacity (I have a desktop for that), price per gig (60gb SSD isn't much more expensive than a 750gb HDD when 60gb is more than enough) and reliability (SSD plenty good enough for most laptop users).
Advantages? Battery savings, better shock resilience, a bit of weight, most importantly a big performance boost over a 5,200rpm 2.5" HDD.
Oh yeah and junk the optical drive thanks. Why is it so hard to find a laptop that does away with the weight, size, battery consumption and cost of a near obsolete component (again, there's a desktop for the rare occurrences) without having to drop down to a crappy netbook?
While we're at it, on-chip fast encryption.
Not having read the original report nor the full interview transcript (neither of which seem like reliable sources), I don't see anything contradictory. Combine the quotes and it's still perfectly reasonable:
Thanks for the link to the PC Pro article, it's very interesting and personally I felt you left out it's most interesting point:
Regretfully having read much of the report, the above is a good example of how worthless it is. PC Pro rubbishes poor media coverage of a government report, then another government report quotes PC Pro and uses the figure in exactly the wrong way that PC Pro was complaining about in the article the report is citing!
Admittedly the report does refer once to "median total cost of ownership", but either they failed to understand what that meant or failed to communicate the meaning in the report. Read para 16 & 17.
It's a very poorly written report, irritating to read and lacking in professional verse. While they appear to have sourced widely, assertions are made in the form of regurgitations of other's material, and throughout those sources are often very poor. There's no sense that they explored any of these sources in depth, let alone went into the field and investigated for themselves.
This is a pity partly as it attempts some very interesting topics and partly because a group of people running the country can't write a decent report.
I thought the primary problem with electric cars was the amount of power that can be stored for the weight of the batteries? Weight is an even more important issue for planes.
I would have thought batteries would need to be able to store twice (or thereabouts) the energy per kg since presumably they wont be allowed to jettison spent batteries. True aeroplane fuel is expensive but then it's saving costs on weight, something that also translates into emissions.
I guess the research is valuable regardless, but every time I hear about some electric vehicle the problem seems to always return to the batteries.
The calculations may be correct, and it's a point well worth making, but it only considers the external charitable value.
Volunteering has benefits for the volunteer too. Like, using your skill set in a different way. Experiencing a (likely very) different work environment. The work may be much more personally satisfying. The submitter hints as much with his query for "interesting" projects. This is before considering doing it in a foreign country/culture.
It's not unknown for a volunteer project to turn out to be a sound career investment if you find yourself managing a project much bigger than you would be back home.
I don't wish to imply volunteering is self-serving, but it can be win-win.
The submitter also indicated he has a 1-2m gap between jobs, there may well be contractual conditions preventing him from obtaining paying work (at least locally) in that period, or it may simply be impractical to do so.
Not to mention that some places in the 3rd world actually have to pay MORE for highly skilled workers than the USA. The skill set simply isn't there so they have to fly in foreigners and pay them a huge premium plus relocation fees.
Numerous comments seem to suggest many have taken this as sarcasm.
To be clear, the judge/Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission set a precedent. In future, in every case with similar circumstances the default position is Verizon pays $1,000.
Ouch.
The car industry is THE case study in success of the "MBAs". The Japanese devastated the US car industry with techniques introduced through management theory, such as Kaisen and Just In Time. They also monitored the market and produced cars that there was demand for, rather than whatever the US car makers wanted to produce.
Of course, engineering was extremely important too, the point is they had a good balance of pretty much everything.
Men "for whom no vehicle could ever be too big, too fast, or too thirsty for gasoline" is whom caused the downfall of the US car industry and I don't see that changing unless something crazy good happens to the price of oil.
"China plans to open 40 new graduate schools of business in the next few years" is deeply disturbing news because while they can produce stuff for extremely cheap, they can't manage for shit. That's why you have Western companies ultimately turning most of the profit on Chinese-made goods.
I watched the video, saw all the charges racking up. They're arbitrary right enough, but it's not to say that there's no underlying basis to support what the artist actually gets. I'm kinda playing devil's advocate here, I really dislike and distrust the labels but at the same time the arguments made here have major flaws.
Firstly, the royalty being on wholesale rather than retail is totally fair and logical. Almost nobody in any industry is paid based on the retail price apart from retailers. Neither the artist nor the label has, or at least should have, any control or even ability to monitor the retail price - you absolutely do not want to have your royalty based on retail price on a product that has basically no per-unit cost, I'll run through an example at the end *1.
Sure, if labels are telling prospective artists the headline "10%" royalty and not mentioning the deductions, this is misrepresentation. The explanation of the charges also appears to be a fabrication, there's various guesstimate deductions, mostly for things that the label is supposed to be taking the risk on and (if we believe this guy's figures) clearly what really happens is the artists gets an effective 5% royalty. But lets not pretend that if laws were enacted and labels had to only pay a royalty, no deductions allowed, the money you make is not going to change, you'll just be told the 5%.
So moving onto the question as to whether the 5% is fair? No idea. Seeing as labels' are claiming big losses in the financial statements, there's basis to presume 5% is fair but I'd need to spend a lot of time with a very detailed look at a few label's accounting records to form a view on that.
A couple of other annoyances with the video. I dislike their own sleight of hand with the $300k artist advance. It's presented in a manner to allow the viewer to believe that the artist actually makes a $500k loss. Even if the figures are right, he still got $300k at the start so even if he did have to repay that $500k the loss would be $200k.
Anyway, while I don't wish to imply certainty, my understanding is that $500k is non-recursive. It's not a loan, it's a charge applied against future royalties only. If all your next albums flop the label writes it off. Most of that huge chunk of the revenue that goes to them from successful artists pays up the losses incurred on the unsuccessful ones.
Even if you did have to repay that $500k, losses are things that can happen when you go into business. When you start getting paid based solely on sales and costs then fundamentally you're in business. Businesses with a turnover of $1m can rightly be expected to get advice from lawyers and accountants. When you can get big rewards from commercial success you take on some risk too. What, you think you just have to work hard and develop your talent and then the world owes you riches? Sorry, world doesn't work like that. The vast majority of everybody who have made a lot of money through commercial success (musicians, actors, sportsmen, businessmen, anyone) either are extremely savvy at the business side or have someone loyal who is.
If you don't want to take on the risk of losses, sign over your royalties and sign an employment contract instead. Sure, if you're really successful you'll make a lot less, but then if you don't work out you still made a bit. That's the breaks, risks & rewards and all that.
____________
*1 consider what happens when royalties are based on retail price. Lets pretend currently a retail store pays $10 for a CD and this comprises $1 in unit variable cost plus $1 royalty to you plus $8 contribution for the label. The store can do what it wants to the price but you get $1 and the label makes $8 contribution. Sell 0.5m records in Store A + 0.5m in Store B for total 1m units = $20m retail sales which is $10m wholesale sales and you (kind of) get $1m. Store A and B each made $5m contribution.
Should Store A decide to reduce the price to $11, B's customers flock over and if sales units remain at 1m you s
to see that at least they are actually detecting and disciplining breaches, since I was already assuming the worst.
If they were to have the right security and ethical culture, it's not implausible that they have a high detection rate when running a full access log, hopefully cross-referenced to some sort of case allocation log, in which case 900 out of ~242k is less than 0.4% of staff in a 3 year period. On the other hand it is possible the 900 is only from audit sampling, in which case since the sample size is unknown the actual rate can only be anything higher than that.
Incidentally this is bigger news due to it's related nature with the News of the World investigation. Since the recent Slashdot story the "news" paper has been shut down and today there has been arrests of both the editor and a sub-editor at the time on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption allegations. The investigation and the story seems to be turning it's attention to allegations of bribes paid to the police for information, having hit what surely is as deep as the depravity goes on the phone hacking (I've said this a few times before and been proven wrong) by discovering targets included the phones of families of victims of the 7/7 London bombing, soldiers killed in Iraq/Afghanistan and murdered children.
To be fair it's all the same thing, just change a few words to "France".
Update: News of the World to close amid hacking scandal. full statement here.