quality of the product went down for many reasons. For one thing, the people who designed the stuff we were building used to work in the next building, after the move to china it was impossible for the factory workers to bring up concerns to the engineers in any kind of a timely fashion. Between the timezone problems, language barriers, and cultural differences, if a problem did get reported back to HQ, it was usually only after many many pallets of the product had been made.
The equipment we were making was all audio equipment, most of us at the factory testing were musicians who were familiar with the operation of the product. Automated test procedures were created so the general population of factory workers from china could perform the tests. Millions of dollars were spent on the equipment, but no human ears were listening to the units, and on the rare occasion they were listened to, it was by workers who had know idea what the product should sound like.
it has been quite a few years now, and no, the quality has not improved. A good example is a couple of years after I left the company I talked to a friend who was still working there doing quality control. Random pallets were shipped to him from the production facility in china for testing. This guy spent all of his time testing these products. After two years or so he had yet to see a single pallet that did not have at least one failure on it. Many of the products were large and only 2 units would fit on a pallet. 50% warranty claims is simply not good enough to make money.
I could go on and on, I do see your point, and in some cases the quality would improve if the production facilities were managed tightly enough. The problem is, that workers who are mistreated will never produce good quality results, in any line of work... especially if it is boring repetitive work, that requires much concentration.
I own a fender strat, it happens to be american made. Most people who play it tell me it is the best strat they have ever played. I dunno, I have played some great mexican strats too. There is a few things about them I might even like better (will never understand the stupid saddles on the American strats). The problem is that the products we were making were a hell of a lot more complicated than a guitar. Much higher precision is required to make a 24 track 96khz digital recorder with many thousands of components, than a guitar made out of a couple hundred. Perhaps eventually the workers in china would have gotten up to speed, but there was no way the company could survive the years of practice to get there.
"Being an American" doesn't make you inherently better than those workers in China who desperately want a way to improve their standard of living.
oh, I see, I am an American, therefore I must be an arrogant prick. Well let me bow at the ankles and apologize for the location of my birth. I DO NOT feel I am entitled to a standard of living better than a factory worker in china.... on the contrary, I think that EVERY human on earth is entitled to a better standard, than how these workers are treated. If you disagree, perhaps you should RTFA again.
my point is, that no matter what the exchange rate, and no matter how you want to do the math, the worker in china has a horrible life, as I said, the job was very hard on the worker's body. They are expected to work this job more hours than a human body could possibly tolerate. My guess is that within two years the worker would be unable to perform the tasks required due to RSIs, and he will be replaced by a new worker. In the meantime he will have no place to go since he is no longer healthy enough to perform assembly tasks.
the point is that he is not getting rich, even if he is given food to eat and a place to live, it is not a sustainable existence. I know that I would have had trouble paying for surgeries, to fix my ruined hands and back if I had been forced to work those hours. He will have trouble too.
The purpose of Wikipedia is to approach consensus, not truth.
I guess. This kind of critique gets pretty old. The whole point of moving away from "THE TRUTH" was to suggest that no one editing on wikipedia has access to "THE TRUTH". I'm not an expert. You're not an expert. Sure, we probably have our areas of expertise, but they aren't verifiable in a pseudonymous editing environment. In the absence of that verification, we have to trust references
the solution has been right under our noses the whole time!... lets just have the guys at Britannica write our consensus for us. Think about it.. then you never have to question the source of our info, cause the REAL experts are taking care of us.
personally I think all this wikishit is a load of tree hugging hippie crap. I am still using my 1994 CD-ROM version of the World Book encyclopedia because it sounded a lot more official than the names of the people writing wiki. I mean if I need to know the main industries of Sudan, I don't want to hear it from CaPtAinSwampA$$, I want it from a big faceless corporation I can trust.
I would love to call bullshit on this, but sadly I can't. Don't get me wrong I love the idea of capitalism and the relative plenty I have lived with because of it, but it only works if the working class is doing well enough to buy some goods.
perhaps I am rambling already, but this hits close to home for me. When I was a guitar playing, electronics geeking, jr. high student I found out that one of the worlds biggest audio electronics manufacturers had its headquarters about 10 miles away. As soon as I turned 18 and qualified to work there I started to chase it a little bit. Soon I was testing digital audio electronics and making more money than I had thought possible (for my age and experience I mean). My job was exciting (at least to me) and I could afford to live in a small apartment with one of my best friends from the factory. Everything was going great.
Well the company went after some major buyouts and a few of the new products flopped. 9/11 happened and people stopped purchasing entertainment related items like the recording equipment we were making. The company was de-listed from the nasdaq and things started to go downhill. There had been several competitors with production facilities nearby. Soon we were the only one. They had all moved to contract manufacturing in china. Our company faced the decision to either do the same or collapse completely. To the stockholders it was a no-brainer. They moved the production to china putting us all out of work.
I had been making about 150 dollars a day, for the first four ten hour shifts of the week, and if I worked friday and or saturday it was $225. I was told the man who gets my job in china will make the equivalent of 150 dollars a month, for working 14+ hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, living in some shitty dorms. I remember my hands aching from the job, and people were always needing surgery on their wrists, and that was with 40 to 60 hour weeks, I can't imagine the schedule in china. If they can't do the job though, there are people lined up around the block to take their place.
well some years have passed now, and it has been wild. I figured I had a career in electronics manufacturing, but there are really no factories in this area anymore. There used to be hundreds. I had to move back with my parents or be homeless, and I had to come up with a new career path. It has taken years to get qualified in some other type of work that is actually stable, its not nearly as much fun, but my bills are finally paid again.
As for the company, the quality of the product went to shit, people quit buying, they are a very small company now. Very few of the original people still survive there. Even the china production is very small now.
The dilemma for me is when I am out buying tools for my latest job, or when I am buying electronics, I picture whats going on in china and it makes me sick. But I go to the store and look around, and I no longer have the choice to buy from a country that respects the workers a little bit. Even if there were lots of American, Canadian, British, etc, keyboards around, I doubt I could afford them with my paycheck from the new career... so the house of cards continues to crumble.
the headline is confusing, was the problem caused by a recursive dupe or something?
I didn't read the rest of the summary cause it is longer than my finger and that is how we used to roll on the dialup BBSs... never read anything longer than your finger held up to the screen. this message is only intended for people of all finger sizes.
dear cloud,
please stop crapping up the front page of slashdot with your buzzword laden stories. I have not been this annoyed since everybody started "surfing" the "information superhighway". I hope you soon turn to "rain" and fall from the "cybersky" and die.
well I am glad SOMEBODY understood me... people should go to the movies more. after all I am an asshole american and never would have known shit about the 5th of November, had it not been for me wanting to look at Natalie Portman for a couple hours.
the message of the movie is really quite an appropriate discussion these days, whether you agree with it or not.
I don't agree totally, I mean I have analyzed the hell out of the NES game Kung Fu, and it is still fun. same with Super Mario Bros. I figure I have both of those games solved, yet they are still fun.
I agree with the OP though, there is not the same fun for beginners that chess used to provide... now if you want to try to become a good player you start with some damn thick books and study your ass off. Several times in my life I have "decided" to try to get better at chess and it always ends in frustration at the endless tedium of memorizing the "proper" responses to your opponent's moves.
several times I have found that whatever computer/console chess game I have just purchased, is insanely hard to beat at even the lowest difficulty levels, unless you open with some historically significant pattern. Some people enjoy these types of challenges, I no longer have the patience.
Slashdot Mirror
well we let AIG handle all of our insurance underwriting, and that has turned out good.
quality of the product went down for many reasons. For one thing, the people who designed the stuff we were building used to work in the next building, after the move to china it was impossible for the factory workers to bring up concerns to the engineers in any kind of a timely fashion. Between the timezone problems, language barriers, and cultural differences, if a problem did get reported back to HQ, it was usually only after many many pallets of the product had been made.
The equipment we were making was all audio equipment, most of us at the factory testing were musicians who were familiar with the operation of the product. Automated test procedures were created so the general population of factory workers from china could perform the tests. Millions of dollars were spent on the equipment, but no human ears were listening to the units, and on the rare occasion they were listened to, it was by workers who had know idea what the product should sound like.
it has been quite a few years now, and no, the quality has not improved. A good example is a couple of years after I left the company I talked to a friend who was still working there doing quality control. Random pallets were shipped to him from the production facility in china for testing. This guy spent all of his time testing these products. After two years or so he had yet to see a single pallet that did not have at least one failure on it. Many of the products were large and only 2 units would fit on a pallet. 50% warranty claims is simply not good enough to make money.
I could go on and on, I do see your point, and in some cases the quality would improve if the production facilities were managed tightly enough. The problem is, that workers who are mistreated will never produce good quality results, in any line of work... especially if it is boring repetitive work, that requires much concentration.
I own a fender strat, it happens to be american made. Most people who play it tell me it is the best strat they have ever played. I dunno, I have played some great mexican strats too. There is a few things about them I might even like better (will never understand the stupid saddles on the American strats). The problem is that the products we were making were a hell of a lot more complicated than a guitar. Much higher precision is required to make a 24 track 96khz digital recorder with many thousands of components, than a guitar made out of a couple hundred. Perhaps eventually the workers in china would have gotten up to speed, but there was no way the company could survive the years of practice to get there.
oh, I see, I am an American, therefore I must be an arrogant prick. Well let me bow at the ankles and apologize for the location of my birth. I DO NOT feel I am entitled to a standard of living better than a factory worker in china.... on the contrary, I think that EVERY human on earth is entitled to a better standard, than how these workers are treated. If you disagree, perhaps you should RTFA again.
my point is, that no matter what the exchange rate, and no matter how you want to do the math, the worker in china has a horrible life, as I said, the job was very hard on the worker's body. They are expected to work this job more hours than a human body could possibly tolerate. My guess is that within two years the worker would be unable to perform the tasks required due to RSIs, and he will be replaced by a new worker. In the meantime he will have no place to go since he is no longer healthy enough to perform assembly tasks.
the point is that he is not getting rich, even if he is given food to eat and a place to live, it is not a sustainable existence. I know that I would have had trouble paying for surgeries, to fix my ruined hands and back if I had been forced to work those hours. He will have trouble too.
The purpose of Wikipedia is to approach consensus, not truth.
I guess. This kind of critique gets pretty old. The whole point of moving away from "THE TRUTH" was to suggest that no one editing on wikipedia has access to "THE TRUTH". I'm not an expert. You're not an expert. Sure, we probably have our areas of expertise, but they aren't verifiable in a pseudonymous editing environment. In the absence of that verification, we have to trust references
the solution has been right under our noses the whole time!... lets just have the guys at Britannica write our consensus for us. Think about it.. then you never have to question the source of our info, cause the REAL experts are taking care of us.
personally I think all this wikishit is a load of tree hugging hippie crap. I am still using my 1994 CD-ROM version of the World Book encyclopedia because it sounded a lot more official than the names of the people writing wiki. I mean if I need to know the main industries of Sudan, I don't want to hear it from CaPtAinSwampA$$, I want it from a big faceless corporation I can trust.
No, just the illusion of security.
I would love to call bullshit on this, but sadly I can't. Don't get me wrong I love the idea of capitalism and the relative plenty I have lived with because of it, but it only works if the working class is doing well enough to buy some goods.
perhaps I am rambling already, but this hits close to home for me. When I was a guitar playing, electronics geeking, jr. high student I found out that one of the worlds biggest audio electronics manufacturers had its headquarters about 10 miles away. As soon as I turned 18 and qualified to work there I started to chase it a little bit. Soon I was testing digital audio electronics and making more money than I had thought possible (for my age and experience I mean). My job was exciting (at least to me) and I could afford to live in a small apartment with one of my best friends from the factory. Everything was going great.
Well the company went after some major buyouts and a few of the new products flopped. 9/11 happened and people stopped purchasing entertainment related items like the recording equipment we were making. The company was de-listed from the nasdaq and things started to go downhill. There had been several competitors with production facilities nearby. Soon we were the only one. They had all moved to contract manufacturing in china. Our company faced the decision to either do the same or collapse completely. To the stockholders it was a no-brainer. They moved the production to china putting us all out of work.
I had been making about 150 dollars a day, for the first four ten hour shifts of the week, and if I worked friday and or saturday it was $225. I was told the man who gets my job in china will make the equivalent of 150 dollars a month, for working 14+ hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, living in some shitty dorms. I remember my hands aching from the job, and people were always needing surgery on their wrists, and that was with 40 to 60 hour weeks, I can't imagine the schedule in china. If they can't do the job though, there are people lined up around the block to take their place.
well some years have passed now, and it has been wild. I figured I had a career in electronics manufacturing, but there are really no factories in this area anymore. There used to be hundreds. I had to move back with my parents or be homeless, and I had to come up with a new career path. It has taken years to get qualified in some other type of work that is actually stable, its not nearly as much fun, but my bills are finally paid again.
As for the company, the quality of the product went to shit, people quit buying, they are a very small company now. Very few of the original people still survive there. Even the china production is very small now.
The dilemma for me is when I am out buying tools for my latest job, or when I am buying electronics, I picture whats going on in china and it makes me sick. But I go to the store and look around, and I no longer have the choice to buy from a country that respects the workers a little bit. Even if there were lots of American, Canadian, British, etc, keyboards around, I doubt I could afford them with my paycheck from the new career... so the house of cards continues to crumble.
A friend of mine knows a guy who hacked Obama's blackberry.
It seems he just sent an email to Linus and rms. It was a short message:
all your source are belong to U.S.
the headline isn't exactly earth shattering news... I mean if you break out of jail it is obviously going to be illegal
the indisputable fact that cloud computing is buzz-word bull-crap, didn't make the top ten list. I find that strange...
well, yeah.... and, who the hell would you give it to?
the headline is confusing, was the problem caused by a recursive dupe or something?
I didn't read the rest of the summary cause it is longer than my finger and that is how we used to roll on the dialup BBSs... never read anything longer than your finger held up to the screen. this message is only intended for people of all finger sizes.
gspot is vaporware
not only is there an option to turn off blood, but you can turn off the web server too!
dear cloud,
please stop crapping up the front page of slashdot with your buzzword laden stories. I have not been this annoyed since everybody started "surfing" the "information superhighway". I hope you soon turn to "rain" and fall from the "cybersky" and die.
thank you,
umbrellaman
AND he was modded up!
well I am glad SOMEBODY understood me... people should go to the movies more. after all I am an asshole american and never would have known shit about the 5th of November, had it not been for me wanting to look at Natalie Portman for a couple hours.
the message of the movie is really quite an appropriate discussion these days, whether you agree with it or not.
QUICK! Somebody light this monkey!
don't leave yet! remember, remember, the fifth of November...
SOOOOO.... you are saying the inertial dampeners were offline?
I am only posting this as a way to see how many digits MY slashdot ID has.
I don't agree totally, I mean I have analyzed the hell out of the NES game Kung Fu, and it is still fun. same with Super Mario Bros. I figure I have both of those games solved, yet they are still fun.
I agree with the OP though, there is not the same fun for beginners that chess used to provide... now if you want to try to become a good player you start with some damn thick books and study your ass off. Several times in my life I have "decided" to try to get better at chess and it always ends in frustration at the endless tedium of memorizing the "proper" responses to your opponent's moves.
several times I have found that whatever computer/console chess game I have just purchased, is insanely hard to beat at even the lowest difficulty levels, unless you open with some historically significant pattern. Some people enjoy these types of challenges, I no longer have the patience.
yes but what are the chances that static electricity hits your keyboard as you type the word oreder??
Billy G., is that you? stop funnin' around with us slashdotters.
Ren and Stimpy will claim prior art and your patent will be rendered useless