I'm seeing a big correlation between people getting older and screens getting bigger. And for people who rely on their phones for business, again, the phones are working devices, so their size and usability has direct payback for their working experience. So a phone's source of value directly corresponds with the price that people want to pay for the devices.
This is an open secret that's been known for decades. The best minds that I've work with are almost invariably from other majors. The sharpest programmer that I know came out of the music department. In most positions, technical skills represent about 1/5 of what you need to do a job. Those other 4/5 matter a whole lot. It's easier to teach a humanities person some technical skills than it is to teach a technical person humanities.
I learned early on, in the Palm days, that these electronic devices were horrible for me, so I formulated a way of interacting with them that put me on top and them on the bottom. I get where she's coming from.
If you grow up in an always-connected culture, one where timeliness and instant response are vital, you don't make a decision about it. It's your culture. Now, she's making a decision and talking about the implications of that decision. She no longer gets a social reward for prompt reaction while paying a quality of life penalty.
In other words, she's changing her game and learning to live by new rule, and that require purposefully developing new habits. If anything, she's the exact opposite of a special snowflake, and she's busy bucking up and taking responsibility. Go her.
If you know your use case, then it's a good idea. For example, as a self-employed person, you would write off a phone rental as a business expense, keeping that expense predictable, and never having to worry about the headache of depreciation. I'm sure that there are other use cases out there.
Reading those numbers, some Americans are abandoning wired internet. Only SOME. The vast majority remained wired to the internet in some form or another. My guess is that singles prefer paying for one internet connection, their mobile device. Maybe couples. Families, however, have far different requirements than singles or couples, and those requirements for faster broadband are only likely to increase over time.
My wife tried them, did her best, then gave up. She now has dedicated reading glasses.
I tried them by accident, as the glasses place sold them to me without telling me. I could not even walk around wearing them. I had to get them made three, complaining about the distortion, before we figured out that they sold me the wrong thing. Ick. I won't go there.
Your brain learns to do what you teach it. As indicated above, if you practice concentration, your concentration will get better.
I fell out of reading books for many years, now I'm back on the bandwagon. I've been cranking on books for about six months now. Once I got back into the rhythm, which took about a week, I was able to settle down and really read again.
Concentration is a choice, just like multitasking. All the cool kids showed off by doing many things at once, and now we think that's normal, but it's just a fashion like any other fashion. I've noticed a rise is "put your phone away on holidays," for instance, or willfully putting your phone down in meetings. This is an acknowledgement that multitasking doesn't work in many situations.
You may also need sleep.
Learn to make a business case for best practices. "Best practices will save this company money/time/liability because..." If you can make the case, support will follow. Avoid technical reasons in that explanation.
MOM: Why should we implement that?
YOU: We can get trainees up to speed quicker, which saves us money. We produce fewer bugs, which saves us money. Instead of wasting time squashing bugs, this lets us implement new features, which we can sell. That makes us money.
From my observation, you always want both. You want STEM folks because they think like STEM folks, and you want non-STEM folks because they don't.
How many programmers remain programmers? How many become managers? Account herders? Sales drones? GUI experts? Customer support? STEM folks are no more qualified for many of those jobs than liberal arts people. The difference is that liberal arts people are more willing to learn and master whatever job they are at, while STEM folks want to do what they trained for.
My daughter LOVES to sit at my computer. It has two screens. She can play flash games on it. She prints on a 10 year old color printer (USB 1) using 3rd party ink. Tablets just don't do that.
As for niche market, business isn't going away any time soon. Ergonomic needs will always prevail. The need for multitasking will prevail. The need for vast real estait will prevail. I know of no business which plans on ditching the PC. (They might exist, but I don't know about them.)
Did you read the actual article? He address those topics precisely. He waited to publish this article until he had a stack of corroborating studies using different methodologies. One study is nothing. Many different studies of many different places, and each one maps well? That's a whole heaping mound of coincidence.
Remodeling sucks down money. Focus instead on FURNITURE that matches the house. You will get far, far more return.
When throwing money into a project, ask yourself, "What tech will survive the next 10 years unscathed?" If a tech won't change much in that span, then it might be worth installing in the house. Otherwise, you are pissing money away. So that means that you invest in power outlets and upgraded power. Otherwise, invest in insulation and windows. Replace your fridge, especially if it's over 10 years old.
A few things to add. I've met too many IT folks who berate people for their ignorance. Of course those people are ignorant, they are experts in a different area. If you spend a great deal of time building specializing in an area of knowlege, don't you honestly expect most folks to know less about that area? Strangely enough, the more that you know, the less that you appreciate your knowledge. You begin wondering why others don't know this simple stuff.
Once you allow people to be ignorant, then you can focus on treating them like people. And really, people out there know all kinds of cool stuff that you don't, and that's great fun. They aren't ignorant. They are specialists in areas where you are ignorant.
If you are in technology, you are ALWAYS RETRAINING. My skill set turns over every few years.
I'm 46 and learning care of an apache/mysql/php setup. One year ago, I started serious wrestling with Windows 7. Two years ago, I picked up Powershell and dived into following smartphones. Three years ago, I picked up some SQL, lots of radiology technology, and VBA scripting. I keep up on Linux and Mac. I read about 30 tech related RSS feed per day. Keeping up with your field is part of being a professional.
As an English major, let me talk about practical uses of cheaper degrees.
This country needs lots of professionals in lots of areas, and many of those areas don't pay big bucks, yet the degrees cost a bundle. Thus, you wind up with people avoiding such fields. One solution to such a conundrum is to charge less for lesser paying fields. If students don't come out of school with a crushing debt, they will be more tempted to be social workers, physical therapists, teachers, or any number of less-glamorous professions.
I went to school for English literature. I read lots. Amazingly, in all that time, I never read the single most successful modern author, Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote Sherlock Holmes. Somehow, the most singularly famous character ever written was not worth serious time in a literature class.
A second story. The only reason that we read Washington Irving in my American Literature class was because the students kept demanding that the teacher teach it. That is a remarkable story. 200 years after he was a writer, not only were the students still clamoring to read him, he still had no respect from the establishment.
The #1 reason that I avoid smart phones is standby time. I rarely use my phone. I don't take care of it. It's there so that the wife can call me.
The current crop of smartphones eat power. I simply will not take care of a phone that runs down in a few days. That does not suit my needs. A phone without power can't do it's one and only job - be a phone.
I used to handle about 400 hundred people and 400 boxes as a sneaker admin. So two folks for PCs and one for servers is workable -IF- you have your act together.
My suspicion is that you all are a bit low. Reasons:
- People get sick.
- People take vacations.
- You need to cross-train each other.
- Special projects can and do come up.
- There are under-met needs in the company.
To get the person that you need, you really need to show the business case for it. Once you can do that, ratios don't matter.
Start by going to a few marriage councilors. I'm serious. Good marriage counseling is cheaper than a divorce by an order of magnitude and infinitely more helpful. Quite simply, it's a bargain.
We went to two difference councilors. One taught us skills and the other ran us through a battery of tests, and then reviewed our weaknesses. Both were informative.
Above all, your first job is to show how this is THEIR problem. You need to show the management how this issue is THEIR issue, will bite them in the ass, and that their best course of action will be to pony up the money. Politely, of course. You don't need to be an ass.
The second thing that you need is an ally. That's your boss. You need his help. You need him working the money/politics side for you. If not him, then you need someone who knows the money politics side.
Don't point fingers. Your job is to come in, straighten things out, and bring the shop up to a PROFESSIONAL level. Keep that as your attitude, and make sure that everyone knows it.
I think that too many folks here are overreacting.
These are difficult economic times. If you are not justifying your job, and selling that justification before trouble hits, then you might find yourself on the street.
Better to brush up on selling yourself before things get bad. Fortunately, you have a boss who is watching your back. When trouble comes calling, he'll have your prepared.
I do IT support. What I do is akin to oil in an engine. With me, everything runs smooth. Without me, things can crunch to a halt FAST.
- You intervene while troubles are minor, preventing problems from cascading from small issues to big issue.
- You can do things quickly where untrained people take far longer. In one day, you can help eight people who would use eight hours of their time being non-productive. Non-productive people start dragging in more people, which amplifies the drag on productivity.
- Your company has secrets. They need to trust the person with the keys. You can't buy that from a contractor.
- Most industrial systems are specific enough that you can't hire any available contractor. You need someone who knows the system to ensure that the system works in a timely manner.
For example, Linda the secretary can't print. She talks to another secretary. They then call Bill from accounting who is good with this stuff. Bill's not sure either. $15 hr secretary + $20 secretary + $25 accountant = $60/hour, and the boss gets the report late. You can do the same thing for $40/hour and fix the issue in 10 minutes, allowing the boss to get the report.
As someone else said, this is work that needs to be done. Getting rid of the worker who does this will not make the work go away. Any employee can sweep the lunchroom, but not every employee should have full access to the accounting system.
This looks one sided, but that view is incorrect. The NCAA sells radio and TV stations exclusive right for them to broadcast a real-time game. The consequence of that is that all other privileged media outlets do not get those same rights.
Yes, I know that there are ways to game this system and make it look foolish. As long as they have something to hold back, such as access to their team members, they will have a press corps willing to play by their rules.
I could believe this if I wasn't a music collector.
I listen to indie. Indie is where it's at. There's some amazing stuff being produced out there. The big labels occasionally get it right, but for the most part, they don't get it at all.
The recording industry has built a bad reputation for itself. Many of the best indie bands simply refuse to deal with the majors. In short, the majors are so good at screwing artists that indie artists selling fewer records makes the artists far more money.
I've been following the Amazon 100 for several years. It has no relationship to Billboard. Sales no longer match what's a "hit". Wanna know the weird thing? Teen musicals are at the top of the charts right now. By all measures, these are wicked-fun albums. "Wicked", the Broadway soundtrack, has been in the top 50 in Amazon for the lasts four years. Yet, billboard has "urban" all over as its hot music.
This ties into the radio industry issues as well.
One can write a lengthy book about how the entire music industry from live band venues, to recruiting, to recording, to payola, to monolithic radio has butchered the music industry in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm seeing a big correlation between people getting older and screens getting bigger. And for people who rely on their phones for business, again, the phones are working devices, so their size and usability has direct payback for their working experience. So a phone's source of value directly corresponds with the price that people want to pay for the devices.
This is an open secret that's been known for decades. The best minds that I've work with are almost invariably from other majors. The sharpest programmer that I know came out of the music department. In most positions, technical skills represent about 1/5 of what you need to do a job. Those other 4/5 matter a whole lot. It's easier to teach a humanities person some technical skills than it is to teach a technical person humanities.
I learned early on, in the Palm days, that these electronic devices were horrible for me, so I formulated a way of interacting with them that put me on top and them on the bottom. I get where she's coming from. If you grow up in an always-connected culture, one where timeliness and instant response are vital, you don't make a decision about it. It's your culture. Now, she's making a decision and talking about the implications of that decision. She no longer gets a social reward for prompt reaction while paying a quality of life penalty. In other words, she's changing her game and learning to live by new rule, and that require purposefully developing new habits. If anything, she's the exact opposite of a special snowflake, and she's busy bucking up and taking responsibility. Go her.
Tax reasons. Are you writing off the expense? That's the #1 reason that I see people renting.
If you know your use case, then it's a good idea. For example, as a self-employed person, you would write off a phone rental as a business expense, keeping that expense predictable, and never having to worry about the headache of depreciation. I'm sure that there are other use cases out there.
Reading those numbers, some Americans are abandoning wired internet. Only SOME. The vast majority remained wired to the internet in some form or another. My guess is that singles prefer paying for one internet connection, their mobile device. Maybe couples. Families, however, have far different requirements than singles or couples, and those requirements for faster broadband are only likely to increase over time.
My wife tried them, did her best, then gave up. She now has dedicated reading glasses. I tried them by accident, as the glasses place sold them to me without telling me. I could not even walk around wearing them. I had to get them made three, complaining about the distortion, before we figured out that they sold me the wrong thing. Ick. I won't go there.
Your brain learns to do what you teach it. As indicated above, if you practice concentration, your concentration will get better.
I fell out of reading books for many years, now I'm back on the bandwagon. I've been cranking on books for about six months now. Once I got back into the rhythm, which took about a week, I was able to settle down and really read again.
Concentration is a choice, just like multitasking. All the cool kids showed off by doing many things at once, and now we think that's normal, but it's just a fashion like any other fashion. I've noticed a rise is "put your phone away on holidays," for instance, or willfully putting your phone down in meetings. This is an acknowledgement that multitasking doesn't work in many situations. You may also need sleep.
As said earlier, always learn. Never stop.
..." If you can make the case, support will follow. Avoid technical reasons in that explanation.
Learn to make a business case for best practices. "Best practices will save this company money/time/liability because
MOM: Why should we implement that?
YOU: We can get trainees up to speed quicker, which saves us money. We produce fewer bugs, which saves us money. Instead of wasting time squashing bugs, this lets us implement new features, which we can sell. That makes us money.
Have you ever debugged badly documented code? What about well documented code? Have you noticed a difference?
From my observation, you always want both. You want STEM folks because they think like STEM folks, and you want non-STEM folks because they don't. How many programmers remain programmers? How many become managers? Account herders? Sales drones? GUI experts? Customer support? STEM folks are no more qualified for many of those jobs than liberal arts people. The difference is that liberal arts people are more willing to learn and master whatever job they are at, while STEM folks want to do what they trained for.
My daughter LOVES to sit at my computer. It has two screens. She can play flash games on it. She prints on a 10 year old color printer (USB 1) using 3rd party ink. Tablets just don't do that. As for niche market, business isn't going away any time soon. Ergonomic needs will always prevail. The need for multitasking will prevail. The need for vast real estait will prevail. I know of no business which plans on ditching the PC. (They might exist, but I don't know about them.)
Did you read the actual article? He address those topics precisely. He waited to publish this article until he had a stack of corroborating studies using different methodologies. One study is nothing. Many different studies of many different places, and each one maps well? That's a whole heaping mound of coincidence.
Remodeling sucks down money. Focus instead on FURNITURE that matches the house. You will get far, far more return.
When throwing money into a project, ask yourself, "What tech will survive the next 10 years unscathed?" If a tech won't change much in that span, then it might be worth installing in the house. Otherwise, you are pissing money away. So that means that you invest in power outlets and upgraded power. Otherwise, invest in insulation and windows. Replace your fridge, especially if it's over 10 years old.
20k is chump change in the renovation game.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
A few things to add. I've met too many IT folks who berate people for their ignorance. Of course those people are ignorant, they are experts in a different area. If you spend a great deal of time building specializing in an area of knowlege, don't you honestly expect most folks to know less about that area? Strangely enough, the more that you know, the less that you appreciate your knowledge. You begin wondering why others don't know this simple stuff.
Once you allow people to be ignorant, then you can focus on treating them like people. And really, people out there know all kinds of cool stuff that you don't, and that's great fun. They aren't ignorant. They are specialists in areas where you are ignorant.
If you are in technology, you are ALWAYS RETRAINING. My skill set turns over every few years. I'm 46 and learning care of an apache/mysql/php setup. One year ago, I started serious wrestling with Windows 7. Two years ago, I picked up Powershell and dived into following smartphones. Three years ago, I picked up some SQL, lots of radiology technology, and VBA scripting. I keep up on Linux and Mac. I read about 30 tech related RSS feed per day. Keeping up with your field is part of being a professional.
As an English major, let me talk about practical uses of cheaper degrees.
This country needs lots of professionals in lots of areas, and many of those areas don't pay big bucks, yet the degrees cost a bundle. Thus, you wind up with people avoiding such fields. One solution to such a conundrum is to charge less for lesser paying fields. If students don't come out of school with a crushing debt, they will be more tempted to be social workers, physical therapists, teachers, or any number of less-glamorous professions.
I went to school for English literature. I read lots. Amazingly, in all that time, I never read the single most successful modern author, Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote Sherlock Holmes. Somehow, the most singularly famous character ever written was not worth serious time in a literature class. A second story. The only reason that we read Washington Irving in my American Literature class was because the students kept demanding that the teacher teach it. That is a remarkable story. 200 years after he was a writer, not only were the students still clamoring to read him, he still had no respect from the establishment.
The #1 reason that I avoid smart phones is standby time. I rarely use my phone. I don't take care of it. It's there so that the wife can call me. The current crop of smartphones eat power. I simply will not take care of a phone that runs down in a few days. That does not suit my needs. A phone without power can't do it's one and only job - be a phone.
I used to handle about 400 hundred people and 400 boxes as a sneaker admin. So two folks for PCs and one for servers is workable -IF- you have your act together.
My suspicion is that you all are a bit low. Reasons:
- People get sick.
- People take vacations.
- You need to cross-train each other.
- Special projects can and do come up.
- There are under-met needs in the company.
To get the person that you need, you really need to show the business case for it. Once you can do that, ratios don't matter.
Start by going to a few marriage councilors. I'm serious. Good marriage counseling is cheaper than a divorce by an order of magnitude and infinitely more helpful. Quite simply, it's a bargain. We went to two difference councilors. One taught us skills and the other ran us through a battery of tests, and then reviewed our weaknesses. Both were informative.
Above all, your first job is to show how this is THEIR problem. You need to show the management how this issue is THEIR issue, will bite them in the ass, and that their best course of action will be to pony up the money. Politely, of course. You don't need to be an ass. The second thing that you need is an ally. That's your boss. You need his help. You need him working the money/politics side for you. If not him, then you need someone who knows the money politics side. Don't point fingers. Your job is to come in, straighten things out, and bring the shop up to a PROFESSIONAL level. Keep that as your attitude, and make sure that everyone knows it.
I think that too many folks here are overreacting. These are difficult economic times. If you are not justifying your job, and selling that justification before trouble hits, then you might find yourself on the street. Better to brush up on selling yourself before things get bad. Fortunately, you have a boss who is watching your back. When trouble comes calling, he'll have your prepared. I do IT support. What I do is akin to oil in an engine. With me, everything runs smooth. Without me, things can crunch to a halt FAST. - You intervene while troubles are minor, preventing problems from cascading from small issues to big issue. - You can do things quickly where untrained people take far longer. In one day, you can help eight people who would use eight hours of their time being non-productive. Non-productive people start dragging in more people, which amplifies the drag on productivity. - Your company has secrets. They need to trust the person with the keys. You can't buy that from a contractor. - Most industrial systems are specific enough that you can't hire any available contractor. You need someone who knows the system to ensure that the system works in a timely manner. For example, Linda the secretary can't print. She talks to another secretary. They then call Bill from accounting who is good with this stuff. Bill's not sure either. $15 hr secretary + $20 secretary + $25 accountant = $60/hour, and the boss gets the report late. You can do the same thing for $40/hour and fix the issue in 10 minutes, allowing the boss to get the report. As someone else said, this is work that needs to be done. Getting rid of the worker who does this will not make the work go away. Any employee can sweep the lunchroom, but not every employee should have full access to the accounting system.
This looks one sided, but that view is incorrect. The NCAA sells radio and TV stations exclusive right for them to broadcast a real-time game. The consequence of that is that all other privileged media outlets do not get those same rights.
Yes, I know that there are ways to game this system and make it look foolish. As long as they have something to hold back, such as access to their team members, they will have a press corps willing to play by their rules.
I could believe this if I wasn't a music collector.
I listen to indie. Indie is where it's at. There's some amazing stuff being produced out there. The big labels occasionally get it right, but for the most part, they don't get it at all.
The recording industry has built a bad reputation for itself. Many of the best indie bands simply refuse to deal with the majors. In short, the majors are so good at screwing artists that indie artists selling fewer records makes the artists far more money.
I've been following the Amazon 100 for several years. It has no relationship to Billboard. Sales no longer match what's a "hit". Wanna know the weird thing? Teen musicals are at the top of the charts right now. By all measures, these are wicked-fun albums. "Wicked", the Broadway soundtrack, has been in the top 50 in Amazon for the lasts four years. Yet, billboard has "urban" all over as its hot music.
This ties into the radio industry issues as well.
One can write a lengthy book about how the entire music industry from live band venues, to recruiting, to recording, to payola, to monolithic radio has butchered the music industry in the US.