There are no consequences for making an exact copy and keeping it to yourself. Make an EXACT copy of a $20 and see how fast you get caught - you won't! There is nothing inherintly wrong with having a counterfit $20, as far as I know, the crime is when you try to pass it as an origional (ie, distributing). Sure, having a couple hundred thousand under your bed is risky, but only because there is no other reason to have such currency than to spend it (and break the law doing so).
Same applies to copyright, the distribution is what is illegal. Making your own backups, time shifting, etc have all been upheld as legal. Downloading copyrighted material via P2P also makes you an illegal distributor (simulatenous uploader).
Goddamn it it IS NOT STEALING.
If it were stealing we would not need copyright laws, as we already have laws and punishments for stealing!
Who cares what you call it, along the same lines there's no such thing as data theft, or identitiy theft, but it doesn't stop us from saying those things as non-lawyers can better relate to the terms theft/stealing. Besides, what I was countering was the previous poster's rationalization, that by making an exact copy without depriving the original owner there are no consequences.
And I never stole it, I just made an exact duplicate of it using my own resources. It never cost them a dime. In fact, they actually gained a small amount of money
Maybe I should print my own currency and use the same argument.
Constant complaining by the vast majority and no alternative has created a market where the Govt will bail the companies out after years of profit when people try to apply the free market principles that this country is founded on
Just goes to show that people will complain about anything, air travel prices are far cheaper than when the industry was regulated. The reason why the government bails out airlines is because they are an essential part of commerce. A truly free market environment would result in less airlines, higher prices, and less service... the government bailouts amount to subsidies to encourage less profitable routes, and increased competition.
Most modern economic liberals forget that wealth is just transferred, and if you're one of the millions that wealth is being transferred from because you've been replaced or have been FORCED into redundancy, that's hardly 'the persons fault'.
Many people on these boards are responsible for the elimination of jobs with automation. Overall it results in a net increase as productivity gains allow a wider range of goods and services. There is a difference between individual job loss and overall job losses.
When a IT dept is feeling underfunded they merely threaten to quit. The reaction is akin to a three year old being told mommy is leaving. Good IT people are worth their cost, and most are not so greedy.
Yes I agree, the question is how do you communicate it to others who do not understand how IT works? A bad beancounter boss is just trying to squeeze his employees, a good one is looking to work with his employees, and have some hard data to convince others on the value of the IT workforce as well as address any needs they may have. The threatening to quit routine is a lose-lose for all sides. Management has to deal with the productivity loss from things breaking down, and the IT staff will have alienated itself such that management will in the long term try to replace those disgruntled employees.
Has was stated earlier, You can not derive a metric for a negative event. You can only measure a sysadmin's stability factor in terms of (well) stability.
The metrics can be around how employees are maintaining the stability. Metrics don't just have to be about raw output such as uptime, they can also be used to describe how that is achieved so that the uninitiated don't think the staff is sitting around playing solitare waiting for something to break. Unless you have a perfect system the IT staff isn't just sitting around, they are constantly researching and fixing potential problems or helping customers.
Other metrics could be created by how long new services appear after they are requested, but there is no way to gauge the factors relating to them. We would like to replace Oracle with MySQL how long is it going to take?
All our servers are running Solaris 8, the current version is Solaris 10, please upgrade asap.
We want to move off linux and on to HP-UX before next month.
In those cases it's essential to have IT staff input on how to measure those factors. Otherwise you get the PHB basing his rating IT based on assumptions that may or may not be true. As the expert you should be able to create a target for achieving those goals, good management will listen to you.
One problem can generate 2000 helpdesk requests in 10 minutes and take less then that to fix. I am not going to write out two thousand emails to tell everybody that we had a fiber cut from the ISP and our mail server will be down.
Who says you need to respond to everybody with email? If that is how your company communicates issue resolution, then you can use that data to demonstrate your need for an admin, or better system. In fact that is a perfect case where good metrics will demonstrate a systemic problem.
Time to resolve issue: 10 minutes Time to communicate issue resolution: 2 hours
If the dept needs more money next time around they just explain what its for in a meeting. If it's not ludicrous then the usually get it. If the manager gets the numbers wrong then that manager has to fix it some way. A good manager will pad it and use Departmental luncheons which tend to eat up the slack.
That demonstrates poor management, the money you spend on luncheons may better be spent on other areas. If IT is padding its budget, and HR is padding its budget, and sales is padding its budget, you end up with the company being overbudget and upper management just cutting things randomly. So instead of having your budget plus a little padding, you may end up being underfunded and the sales guys taking a trip to hawaii. Good upper management should question your departments budget, and your manager should be able to clearly communicate the need with some data to back it up.
The problem with things such as requests per hour is the numerator can vary randomly; all it shows is the workload at a given point in time - making the metric meaningless as a productivity measure for things that exhibit large swings in the numerator.
It's not completely meaningless. When there are large swings in the numerator, it demonstrates the need for "burst" capability. If your manager sees you sitting around most of the time doing very little, he's going to question the need for approving overtime ("why don't you manage your time better"). If you demonstrate that your work requires such burst capability, eg you're doing nothing for 6 hours then all hell breaks loose, then a good manager will understand the need for overtime or other workforce flexibility.
The key to developing good performance management system is to identify the desired outcomes and what drives those outcomes and then measure the driver and outcome.
I agree, and one of the keys to good performance metrics is to have inputs from all stakeholders, both from the supplier side as well as the customer side. Too often performance is measured solely by output, without accurately examining the inputs.
So tell the PHB that productivity is not important, its problems. Its uptime, transactions delivered, average delay on transactions, etc.
Those are productivity metrics.
Get the Users to define what the 'requirements' are, and have the sysadmins deliver it. That is the measure of what is important
Relying only on users to define metrics can mean problems for the admin. For example if a user defined metric of time to repair a system increases, that may not accurately reflect the work of the IT staff if the total number of systems requiring repair had increased significantly. An admin defined metric of systems fixed per week, or issues per number of transacations can help put user defined metrics in context.
If this guy has an MBA or similar qualifications, it is he who should know how to measure productivity
That is wrong, as it falls into the category of somebody telling you how to do your job There should be a mutual agreement between the employee and the manager/Industrial Engineer/MBA/etc. You know what your job is better than anybody else, you should be able to understand what is important to measure in your job. The beancounter should be able to work with you to determine how those items you identify relate to the overall business.
Basically he should be asking you what you need in order to get your job done, and he should get it for you (within reason of course)
That is why mutally defined metrics are important, they help clearly communicate needs and put them in context. Metrics can demonstrate the need to purchase new hardware, hire additional technicians, etc.
Nevertheless beancounters are stupid (also Beancounters are not accountants), they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Beancounters who try to impose their metrics are stupid, as they really don't understand what to measure. Any worker should understand their job enough to put together metrics that demonstrate their value. In the original post the beancounter went about things the right way, ask the admin how they would measure their job.
Without metrics you leave yourself open to the opinions of others. For example if your company expands and the system slows down, some r-tard in accounting will complain it's taking longer for him to do his job. If you have a performance metric such as requests processed per hour, you can clearly demonstrate that while individual requests may take longer, the overall number of requests being processed is higher. It also lets you present data for additional resources, productivity improvements, etc.
I don't think that it's become so easy to program that the simplicity you're describing applies to IT.
It's not here yet, but it is getting there. Standards allow tools to be created so that developers can focus on content rather than nuts & bolts. Also, Hardware is much more forgiving to code that isn't optimized, on top of that compilers help optimize your code. A large number of programmers today wouldn't be able to program 25 years ago; either their algorithms aren't optimized, their code isn't tight, or they don't understand enough about how the hardware works.
If the DRM was dropped and people found that buying from seller "A" let them use their purchase however they wanted and it "just worked" but purchasing it from seller "B" didn't.
Of course there are many definitions of what works. People flock to iTunes because it "works," and is for the most part transparent to people. They can burn a CD and they can load their iPod. Many people happily pay 99cents for DRM music, when they can just as easily get DRM-free music for much less. On slashdot we can say that iTunes music is crippled by DRM, but for the general public it doesn't matter.
Gained sales of dropping stupid DRM schemes would come through increased word-of-mouth advertising and a much better relationship between movie/music labels and their consumers, as well as a lot more avenues for the media to be used for personal purposes.
I seriously doubt it. Most people don't care about DRM, they don't care about the RIAA or labels. What they care about is the music and what is now. So long as the CD "works," meaning it doesn't prevent them from playing the CD or putting it on their iPod, they could care less about DRM.
Is it really easy for most people without any additional education coming out of our public high schools to get jobs in either the programming or design fields?
As technology, tools, and access to information have improved it's become much easier for people to get into those fields. Used to be you couldn't make a metal widget without having been an apprentice, now you don't even need to know anything about metallurgy or machining, u just run a tool.
We've clearly shifted more towards a service-oriented economy, but that's only increasing the size of our unskilled underclass...There simply aren't as many good career paths for a high school graduate with no additional training.
Programming & design can be considered service jobs.
Microsoft in Redmond still gets a slice of every license sold there (or at least for the great majority of licenses).
That only occurs if Microsoft decides to repatriate the money and pay taxes on it. Unless there is a compelling reason to do so it makes more sense to just keep that money in local banks.
American society cares more about athletic ability than anything else.
We act like sports is life-and-death.
Go to a soccer game in Latin America, or Europe and then you will see true fanaticism.
Like you said, Americans are spoiled. There are billions in the world who would love to live in American "poverty." To use a sports phrase;), Americans don't go into math & science because they aren't hungry enough
Innovation is seeing a ball rolling, and making a bearing out of it. the 45nm process opposed to the 60nm process is seeing a 30cm diameter ball, and making a 40cm diameter ball.
Except making the 30cm ball requires radical advancements in materials and processing. The end product may not be innovative, but the steps to make it are.
and did away with the aging x86 instruction set and came up with something new.
I wish they'd do away with English and come up with something new - a language based on consistant & logical rules. I don't know how anything gets done using a set of words cobbled together over hundreds of years with all sorts of special rules and idioms.
Stephen Hawking does not have a healthy nervous system.
That is why your definition of intelligence fails, intelligence can be met without the requirements you list. I don't agree with intelligence being defined by physical actions, that's why it's difficult to define. Humans are primarily driven by physical interaction with the world, but we shouldn't restrict intelligence in those ways.
And anyways, isn't he able to take flights across the globe? Does that not count as migration?
Add some lasers and he can get the hunting done too:)
Bullshit- they can shut you down at any time and take your c-level executives and stockholders as debt slaves
That's the beauty of a corporation limited risk. The execs and stockholders at most lose the value of their share in the company (no debt slavery). If the bank decides to call your debt, the liquidation of assets will most likely not cover what is owed, leaving the bank out in the cold. It therefore is in the interest of the creditor to do what they can to help the debtor when extremely large sums of money are involved.
You've got a strange meaning of the word "stronger". I say it's become more dependent- more dysfunctional. More money in an economy does not make it stronger. More self-sufficiency makes an economy stronger.
Stronger = more efficient, more goods & services, more people serviced. Dependence is not a bad thing, otherwise I wouldn't have a computer, I would be out in the fields 12 hours a day growing food to support me and my family. Economics exists because we are better off trading than trying to be self-sufficient. Yes the system is more complex, but it also provides more.
Human interaction can be controlled and regulated- all you need to do is kill the humans that fail to comply.
The words of an idealistic tyrant - hundreds of millions have died due to such hubris
I'll give you that one- I did have it backwards. The creditor gets the ownership, and therefore the control.
Only for individual debt, for business debt which is much larger the "ownership" is reversed. If you owe the bank $1000 they control you, if you owe the bank $100M you control them.
Far more likely that the WTO will target your industry, just like they've targeted Textiles, TV sets, VCRs, magnets, etc. Their entire aim is to sell off the United States one group of jobs at a time.
And each time the US economy has become stronger because of it
A PROPERLY engineered system minimizes risk by minimizing chaos. Only a very bad engineer could support chaos.
Only if the chaos can be controlled. If chaos (which most systems of human interaction are) is inevitable, the best engineered systems are to understand the statistical likelihood and minimize risk as best as possible
(sarcasm)Umm, right, that's why American manufacturing is so competitive, eh?...
Your link is for Japanese manufacturing which is different than the lower cost Chinese/SE Asian production facilities. Japanese manufacturing is highly automated by virtue of a limited labor pool, and is more similar to the US which is why many US companies have embraced such things as lean manufacturing and other quality/productivity based initiatives. The competitive advantage of manufacturing in Japan & US is high quality, while in China it's mostly cost... there is a tradeoff and where you produce depends on the needs of the product. That said, the Chinese workforce and factory quality practices are being improved over time which is why more and more complex and quality driven products are moving to China.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, what I was countering was the previous poster's rationalization, that by making an exact copy without depriving the original owner there are no consequences.
There is a difference between individual job loss and overall job losses.
The threatening to quit routine is a lose-lose for all sides. Management has to deal with the productivity loss from things breaking down, and the IT staff will have alienated itself such that management will in the long term try to replace those disgruntled employees.
The metrics can be around how employees are maintaining the stability. Metrics don't just have to be about raw output such as uptime, they can also be used to describe how that is achieved so that the uninitiated don't think the staff is sitting around playing solitare waiting for something to break. Unless you have a perfect system the IT staff isn't just sitting around, they are constantly researching and fixing potential problems or helping customers.
In those cases it's essential to have IT staff input on how to measure those factors. Otherwise you get the PHB basing his rating IT based on assumptions that may or may not be true. As the expert you should be able to create a target for achieving those goals, good management will listen to you.
Who says you need to respond to everybody with email? If that is how your company communicates issue resolution, then you can use that data to demonstrate your need for an admin, or better system. In fact that is a perfect case where good metrics will demonstrate a systemic problem.
Time to resolve issue: 10 minutes
Time to communicate issue resolution: 2 hours
That demonstrates poor management, the money you spend on luncheons may better be spent on other areas. If IT is padding its budget, and HR is padding its budget, and sales is padding its budget, you end up with the company being overbudget and upper management just cutting things randomly. So instead of having your budget plus a little padding, you may end up being underfunded and the sales guys taking a trip to hawaii.
Good upper management should question your departments budget, and your manager should be able to clearly communicate the need with some data to back it up.
I agree, and one of the keys to good performance metrics is to have inputs from all stakeholders, both from the supplier side as well as the customer side. Too often performance is measured solely by output, without accurately examining the inputs.
Relying only on users to define metrics can mean problems for the admin. For example if a user defined metric of time to repair a system increases, that may not accurately reflect the work of the IT staff if the total number of systems requiring repair had increased significantly. An admin defined metric of systems fixed per week, or issues per number of transacations can help put user defined metrics in context.
There should be a mutual agreement between the employee and the manager/Industrial Engineer/MBA/etc. You know what your job is better than anybody else, you should be able to understand what is important to measure in your job. The beancounter should be able to work with you to determine how those items you identify relate to the overall business.
That is why mutally defined metrics are important, they help clearly communicate needs and put them in context. Metrics can demonstrate the need to purchase new hardware, hire additional technicians, etc.
Without metrics you leave yourself open to the opinions of others. For example if your company expands and the system slows down, some r-tard in accounting will complain it's taking longer for him to do his job. If you have a performance metric such as requests processed per hour, you can clearly demonstrate that while individual requests may take longer, the overall number of requests being processed is higher. It also lets you present data for additional resources, productivity improvements, etc.
A large number of programmers today wouldn't be able to program 25 years ago; either their algorithms aren't optimized, their code isn't tight, or they don't understand enough about how the hardware works.
On slashdot we can say that iTunes music is crippled by DRM, but for the general public it doesn't matter.
Like you said, Americans are spoiled. There are billions in the world who would love to live in American "poverty."
To use a sports phrase
I don't know how anything gets done using a set of words cobbled together over hundreds of years with all sorts of special rules and idioms.
Add some lasers and he can get the hunting done too
It therefore is in the interest of the creditor to do what they can to help the debtor when extremely large sums of money are involved.
Stronger = more efficient, more goods & services, more people serviced. Dependence is not a bad thing, otherwise I wouldn't have a computer, I would be out in the fields 12 hours a day growing food to support me and my family. Economics exists because we are better off trading than trying to be self-sufficient. Yes the system is more complex, but it also provides more.
The words of an idealistic tyrant - hundreds of millions have died due to such hubris
And each time the US economy has become stronger because of it
Only if the chaos can be controlled. If chaos (which most systems of human interaction are) is inevitable, the best engineered systems are to understand the statistical likelihood and minimize risk as best as possible
The competitive advantage of manufacturing in Japan & US is high quality, while in China it's mostly cost... there is a tradeoff and where you produce depends on the needs of the product. That said, the Chinese workforce and factory quality practices are being improved over time which is why more and more complex and quality driven products are moving to China.