Please God let them have a better camera system for this one. The one in SA on the PC was terrible. I cannot believe they let that crap out, and people still loved the game.
Did this guy just claim that he now thinks it was a bad idea to try to reduce Microsoft's monopoly power? He thinks because Linux is kicking ass in the server space, it's ok that consumers have suffered through all the sh*t Microsoft has foisted on them through the power of their monopoly? All of the virii, the worms, the trojans, the spam, adware, etc.? Has this guy ever used Windows?
I don't see that this guy deserves an audience. Reluctant regulator? More like reluctant cogitator. I hate to call anyone a moron, but come on.
If you are unwilling to be the hard man, there is another thing you can try. If you have good relationships with your two helpers, you can let them see you take an ass-chewing for their failures.
-Your boss comes into the office while they're present, invites you into the hallway and proceeds to tear you a new one. Loudly. With appropriate threats.
I used this method a couple of times when I was in the Navy. We had some junior airmen (e1 - e3) who were resistant to obeying junior petty officers (e4, e5). They were not bad guys, they just had a little trouble getting up to speed (it was a very autocratic environment and some of the senior guys would not give reasons for their orders*. Lame, I know.) I would just arrange to have them around when I knew I was going to get an ass-chewing, and let them see.
I was not the bad guy. They could see that I was under pressure from above. I got bonus points because I took an ass-chewing they knew they had earned. Net result = better obedience coupled with better team camaraderie.
You don't want to do this too much, though. It is very manipulative, and you run the risk of looking weak. A better solution is probably a combination of technical process improvement (see other comments in this thread) and aligning their goals with those of the organization.
Good luck!
* We were loading bombs onto airplanes on the flightdeck of an aircraft carrier. There is a time for unquestioning obedience, and there is a time (most of the time!) when it is appropriate to share as much information as possible. If you are reasonable about explaining why you are giving orders when you have the time, you are much more likely to get the unquestioning obedience when you need it. This is all about getting respect by being respectable. IMHO.
So to say the score is 928 to 0 is not a distortion of the facts, and it isn't bias. It is a lie.
It is very probably not a lie at all - it is just meaningless.
The 928 studies were randomly selected from many thousands. I have no problem believing the 928 number. I have a problem using a publication count to determine the existence of consensus on a highly polarizing idea like global warming. The problem is that warming skeptics have a hard time getting published. This is one of the main complaints of the skeptics - people are unwilling to hear the opposing view.
1. The presenters have a non-scientific agenda, they purposely only selected 928 studies that supported their position to provide as evidence to others.
2. The presenters are inept at analyzing the situation and failed to find and consider all possible studies.
3. What is the quality of each of the 928 "studies"?? It shouldn't take more than a few very well performed, argued and defended studies to make a solid case. It takes only one proof to prove Fermat's last theorem. Why do you need 928?
The 928 studies were randomly selected from many thousands. The problem is that warming skeptics have a hard time getting published. This is one of the main complaints of the skeptics - people are unwilling to hear the opposing view. I have no problem believing the 928 number. I have a problem using a publication count to determine the existence of consensus on a highly polarizing idea like global warming.
Well, I downloaded the files from sourceforge, but they seem to be assuming a lot of programming knowledge that I just don't have. There's a bunch of files there, but I have no idea what to do with them.
Likewise several solution suggestions from the Internet. I even installed Vis Basic Express on the off chance there was some simple way to add a video control to a form and manipulate it from there. I'm stumped. You would think this was a common enough task that there would be a million applications out there for it. It's like it's too simple for the 'programmers' but too difficult for the MBAs (that's me.)
I wonder how much it would cost to get someone to write the damn thing for me on E-Lance. Any ideas? Or any ideas about how to quality check the completed work? I wouldn't know how to check it for embedded malware.
Anyway, thanks for your input. I appreciate your time.
That was very informative. I wonder if I could ask you a different question as you seem to know the issues here?
I am actually looking for a program that will let me capture video from a webcam onto a laptop. I need to set it to come on automatically at a predetermined time, record for a period of time (like maybe an hour or two) and then shut off at another predetermined time. It must work through USB or USB2. I do not need unusual file formats, nor extremely high quality video (it's a webcam, after all.)
I am currently using the timershot.exe applet that comes with Powertoys for XP. It is functional, but it graps a series of stills, rather than video. I also jump through hoops to get it to start and stop at appropriate times (I am using 2 batch files (one to start, one to stop) that are started by the MS task scheduler.) I know this is lame, but I am no programmer, I'm doing the best I can with this.
I looked on sourceforge for about 45 minutes and couldn't find one package that met all of my needs. Download.com seemed a little worthless.
Could you give me any suggestions, or point me toward a better area to search? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Just be very anal and obsessive compulsive about how you fill everything out and you'll have no problems.
You haven't had problems. That doesen't mean others haven't. It certainly doesn't mean others won't in the future. One of the most common complaints is rebates that require the original proof of purchase. Sometimes the firm (incorrectly) says the PoP was never sent, and they won't accept a copy (which you might have saved, being prudent.) This has nothing to do with people not reading and following the directions.
Millions of people make this very complaint. Probably some of them forgot to send the PoP, but certainly not all of them did.
I guess it helps that I'm very anal and obsessive compulsive.
My. How self deprecating you are. You forgot arrogant.
...the EU can't afford for them to back out of their country...
...The effect of MS backing out would be disastrous to the economy...
If all goes to crap, MS doesn't pull out of the EU, EU refuses to enforce MS IP ownership. Everyone keeps using MS products, and pirated versions are available for download within the EU for free. THAT is the nightmare scenario and we will never see it.
MS knows that they will always make more money by squirming and partially-complying than they will by leaving a market. Also, the US is not going to start a trade war to protect MS when they know what what would happen if it went before the WTO.
Prediction: Wriggle, squirm, writhe, followed by minimal compliance (to stop the fine) coupled with rapid API evolution/development to make it hard for competitors to keep up.
PS: Other firms are not going to be afraid of their products being treated like MS products because everyone with a business big enough to matter knows how MS has behaved in the market (although I do think many are worried about the EU regulatory environment in general).
Let them just try and limit the availability of their clients to a popular media site and see their clients become someone else's clients.
The problem is that in this market there are only a few large providers and there are strong economies of scale. If all of the providers do it at the same time, the consumers are screwed.
Now if the providers all sit down together and discuss this move, it's collusion - a big no-no in the US. If they do not explicitly discuss this, then they have not committed collusion and are not guilty of trust activities.
Consider the case of the breakfast cereal industry in the US in the 50s to 80s. They operated in a competitive market for decades; it's just that none of the firms were competing very hard. Consequently, all of the big names were able to rake in crazy profits for years. They were displaying what is called "mutual forbearance." Nobody was trying to rock the boat. There was a huge anti-trust investigation that just went on and on for years. Reagan killed it when he came into office by de-funding it (sound familiar?)
It is in the nature of a cartel to successfully increase profits for all members as long as no member of the cartel breaks ranks and offers a better deal to the customers. This is much easier to achieve if there are only a few providers and significant barriers to entry.
Mutual forbearance in this case will probably look like all of the ISPs saying at the same time that they need to charge more. They will all raise their prices (or charge the content providers, forcing them to charge more) and there won't be an alternative provider. The consumer will get screwed, the market will suffer, and people will look back in 30 years and say "well, that sucked." This is how the US is experiencing the Internet right now. There are an awful lot of non-english speaking countries in the world with better broadband availabilities than in the US, for better prices, leading to more widespread adoption. Dang it.
Some day I'd like to see... a nice simple alternative... where the artists get paid on donations from people who liked their stuff. Until better bands start showing up there, I'll stick with my buck an album at AllOf for MP3s that do not limit me.
Of course, YOU'RE not donating money to the bands whose music you're downloading from Russia. Neither is anyone else. And why would a band move to a license where they won't be ABLE to afford to spend their time making music?
They KNOW you won't support them, because you're ALREADY not supporting them. Nice.
I had trouble understanding some of what you were trying to say, but you seem to be confusing short-term profit maximization with long-term profit maximization, which is really about economic sustainability. I would reply that the reason the RIAA firms are holding on to their old-fashioned business model (which looks like short-term profit maximization) is that nobody knows exactly what economic sutainability will require in the future of that industry. They can't just guess because they have too much investor money riding on the outcomes of their decisions. If it looks a little like they're paralyzed with fright, it's because they kind of are.
Apple has only been able to drive so strongly into this future because Steve Jobs is what's termed "a charismatic leader." Charismatic leaders can take those chances and try to innovate. Sometimes they fail. Steve has a long history of not failing, so investors are willing to follow him.
the fact that the 'market' is in fact people which have a tendency to behave according to their own choosing and not as mindless drones of the 'invisible hand' is not.
Actually, in the aggregate, they DO act as mindless drones. That's what the invisible hand is all about.
They always go for getting the maximum profit achievable with a given or minimum quantity of sales
Well, no. Sometimes firms go for volume at low prices (this is called 'penetration pricing'.) Consider, for instance, WalMart.
a sheer stupidity scratch for the marketing crowd ? yes.
I'm not even sure what that was supposed to mean. I would just point out that listening to the marketing people has worked out pretty well for Bill Gates and friends.
It took absolutely no more effort on the RIAA's part or any Label's part to create it
Popular music is often the end result of a very long (and expensive) exercise in recruitment, collaboration, production, and marketing. This exercise is financed by the labels, generally from the profits of previous successes. Labels often sign promising new artists knowing that the first album will not be a commercial success, gambling that as the artist matures and the fanbase grows, there is the possibility of gold at the end. They're good at it. They are also rapacious, but pretending that these expenses do not occur is unrealistic.
if a market has perfect elasticity, that curve would be a straight line at a 45 degree angle...
Actually, I think you're thinking of "unit elasticity," or an elasticity of 1. "Perfect elasticity" would be represented by a horizontal line. At price p the firm would sell as many as they could produce. At price p + $.01 consumers display their perfect willingness to refrain from purchasing, and the firm sells none of their product or service.
Dude, you completely left out the comma fault, the split infinitive, and the sentence capitalization errors. If you're gonna be a grammar nazi, show some attention to detail! Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
Please God let them have a better camera system for this one. The one in SA on the PC was terrible. I cannot believe they let that crap out, and people still loved the game.
I dream of a Grumman Goose with modern materials...
...will screw this up, count on it. They don't make sci fi so much as soap operas with laser guns.
Did this guy just claim that he now thinks it was a bad idea to try to reduce Microsoft's monopoly power? He thinks because Linux is kicking ass in the server space, it's ok that consumers have suffered through all the sh*t Microsoft has foisted on them through the power of their monopoly? All of the virii, the worms, the trojans, the spam, adware, etc.? Has this guy ever used Windows?
I don't see that this guy deserves an audience. Reluctant regulator? More like reluctant cogitator. I hate to call anyone a moron, but come on.
If you are unwilling to be the hard man, there is another thing you can try. If you have good relationships with your two helpers, you can let them see you take an ass-chewing for their failures.
-Your boss comes into the office while they're present, invites you into the hallway and proceeds to tear you a new one. Loudly. With appropriate threats.
I used this method a couple of times when I was in the Navy. We had some junior airmen (e1 - e3) who were resistant to obeying junior petty officers (e4, e5). They were not bad guys, they just had a little trouble getting up to speed (it was a very autocratic environment and some of the senior guys would not give reasons for their orders*. Lame, I know.) I would just arrange to have them around when I knew I was going to get an ass-chewing, and let them see.
I was not the bad guy. They could see that I was under pressure from above. I got bonus points because I took an ass-chewing they knew they had earned. Net result = better obedience coupled with better team camaraderie.
You don't want to do this too much, though. It is very manipulative, and you run the risk of looking weak. A better solution is probably a combination of technical process improvement (see other comments in this thread) and aligning their goals with those of the organization.
Good luck!
* We were loading bombs onto airplanes on the flightdeck of an aircraft carrier. There is a time for unquestioning obedience, and there is a time (most of the time!) when it is appropriate to share as much information as possible. If you are reasonable about explaining why you are giving orders when you have the time, you are much more likely to get the unquestioning obedience when you need it. This is all about getting respect by being respectable. IMHO.
So to say the score is 928 to 0 is not a distortion of the facts, and it isn't bias. It is a lie.
It is very probably not a lie at all - it is just meaningless.
The 928 studies were randomly selected from many thousands. I have no problem believing the 928 number. I have a problem using a publication count to determine the existence of consensus on a highly polarizing idea like global warming. The problem is that warming skeptics have a hard time getting published. This is one of the main complaints of the skeptics - people are unwilling to hear the opposing view.
The 928 studies were randomly selected from many thousands. The problem is that warming skeptics have a hard time getting published. This is one of the main complaints of the skeptics - people are unwilling to hear the opposing view. I have no problem believing the 928 number. I have a problem using a publication count to determine the existence of consensus on a highly polarizing idea like global warming.
Nice. Thanks.
Well, I downloaded the files from sourceforge, but they seem to be assuming a lot of programming knowledge that I just don't have. There's a bunch of files there, but I have no idea what to do with them.
Likewise several solution suggestions from the Internet. I even installed Vis Basic Express on the off chance there was some simple way to add a video control to a form and manipulate it from there. I'm stumped. You would think this was a common enough task that there would be a million applications out there for it. It's like it's too simple for the 'programmers' but too difficult for the MBAs (that's me.)
I wonder how much it would cost to get someone to write the damn thing for me on E-Lance. Any ideas? Or any ideas about how to quality check the completed work? I wouldn't know how to check it for embedded malware.
Anyway, thanks for your input. I appreciate your time.
That was very informative. I wonder if I could ask you a different question as you seem to know the issues here?
I am actually looking for a program that will let me capture video from a webcam onto a laptop. I need to set it to come on automatically at a predetermined time, record for a period of time (like maybe an hour or two) and then shut off at another predetermined time. It must work through USB or USB2. I do not need unusual file formats, nor extremely high quality video (it's a webcam, after all.)
I am currently using the timershot.exe applet that comes with Powertoys for XP. It is functional, but it graps a series of stills, rather than video. I also jump through hoops to get it to start and stop at appropriate times (I am using 2 batch files (one to start, one to stop) that are started by the MS task scheduler.) I know this is lame, but I am no programmer, I'm doing the best I can with this.
I looked on sourceforge for about 45 minutes and couldn't find one package that met all of my needs. Download.com seemed a little worthless.
Could you give me any suggestions, or point me toward a better area to search? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Linux geeks admit that the open source OS isn't necessarily a better platform for important applications
Next we'll be seeing the alternate-universe Ballmer wearing a little goatee...
Just be very anal and obsessive compulsive about how you fill everything out and you'll have no problems.
You haven't had problems. That doesen't mean others haven't. It certainly doesn't mean others won't in the future. One of the most common complaints is rebates that require the original proof of purchase. Sometimes the firm (incorrectly) says the PoP was never sent, and they won't accept a copy (which you might have saved, being prudent.) This has nothing to do with people not reading and following the directions.
Millions of people make this very complaint. Probably some of them forgot to send the PoP, but certainly not all of them did.
I guess it helps that I'm very anal and obsessive compulsive.
My. How self deprecating you are. You forgot arrogant.
The fine is backdated to Dec 15 2004.
...the EU default to linuxes and BSDs...
...the EU can't afford for them to back out of their country...
...The effect of MS backing out would be disastrous to the economy...
If all goes to crap, MS doesn't pull out of the EU, EU refuses to enforce MS IP ownership. Everyone keeps using MS products, and pirated versions are available for download within the EU for free. THAT is the nightmare scenario and we will never see it.
MS knows that they will always make more money by squirming and partially-complying than they will by leaving a market. Also, the US is not going to start a trade war to protect MS when they know what what would happen if it went before the WTO.
Prediction: Wriggle, squirm, writhe, followed by minimal compliance (to stop the fine) coupled with rapid API evolution/development to make it hard for competitors to keep up.
PS: Other firms are not going to be afraid of their products being treated like MS products because everyone with a business big enough to matter knows how MS has behaved in the market (although I do think many are worried about the EU regulatory environment in general).
Why they gotta be fat, yo?
Let them just try and limit the availability of their clients to a popular media site and see their clients become someone else's clients.
The problem is that in this market there are only a few large providers and there are strong economies of scale. If all of the providers do it at the same time, the consumers are screwed.
Now if the providers all sit down together and discuss this move, it's collusion - a big no-no in the US. If they do not explicitly discuss this, then they have not committed collusion and are not guilty of trust activities.
Consider the case of the breakfast cereal industry in the US in the 50s to 80s. They operated in a competitive market for decades; it's just that none of the firms were competing very hard. Consequently, all of the big names were able to rake in crazy profits for years. They were displaying what is called "mutual forbearance." Nobody was trying to rock the boat. There was a huge anti-trust investigation that just went on and on for years. Reagan killed it when he came into office by de-funding it (sound familiar?)
It is in the nature of a cartel to successfully increase profits for all members as long as no member of the cartel breaks ranks and offers a better deal to the customers. This is much easier to achieve if there are only a few providers and significant barriers to entry.
Mutual forbearance in this case will probably look like all of the ISPs saying at the same time that they need to charge more. They will all raise their prices (or charge the content providers, forcing them to charge more) and there won't be an alternative provider. The consumer will get screwed, the market will suffer, and people will look back in 30 years and say "well, that sucked." This is how the US is experiencing the Internet right now. There are an awful lot of non-english speaking countries in the world with better broadband availabilities than in the US, for better prices, leading to more widespread adoption. Dang it.
...like a cross between a bald eagle and a Florida panther.
I can't believe I wrote that. It's hard to believe that I actually have an MBA. Thanks for the gentle correction.
Nice.
Some day I'd like to see ... a nice simple alternative ... where the artists get paid on donations from people who liked their stuff. Until better bands start showing up there, I'll stick with my buck an album at AllOf for MP3s that do not limit me.
Of course, YOU'RE not donating money to the bands whose music you're downloading from Russia. Neither is anyone else. And why would a band move to a license where they won't be ABLE to afford to spend their time making music?
They KNOW you won't support them, because you're ALREADY not supporting them. Nice.
I had trouble understanding some of what you were trying to say, but you seem to be confusing short-term profit maximization with long-term profit maximization, which is really about economic sustainability. I would reply that the reason the RIAA firms are holding on to their old-fashioned business model (which looks like short-term profit maximization) is that nobody knows exactly what economic sutainability will require in the future of that industry. They can't just guess because they have too much investor money riding on the outcomes of their decisions. If it looks a little like they're paralyzed with fright, it's because they kind of are.
.
Apple has only been able to drive so strongly into this future because Steve Jobs is what's termed "a charismatic leader." Charismatic leaders can take those chances and try to innovate. Sometimes they fail. Steve has a long history of not failing, so investors are willing to follow him.
the fact that the 'market' is in fact people which have a tendency to behave according to their own choosing and not as mindless drones of the 'invisible hand' is not.
Actually, in the aggregate, they DO act as mindless drones. That's what the invisible hand is all about.
They always go for getting the maximum profit achievable with a given or minimum quantity of sales
Well, no. Sometimes firms go for volume at low prices (this is called 'penetration pricing'.) Consider, for instance, WalMart.
a sheer stupidity scratch for the marketing crowd ? yes
I'm not even sure what that was supposed to mean. I would just point out that listening to the marketing people has worked out pretty well for Bill Gates and friends.
Disclaimer: I hate the RIAA and the MPAA.
It took absolutely no more effort on the RIAA's part or any Label's part to create it
Popular music is often the end result of a very long (and expensive) exercise in recruitment, collaboration, production, and marketing. This exercise is financed by the labels, generally from the profits of previous successes. Labels often sign promising new artists knowing that the first album will not be a commercial success, gambling that as the artist matures and the fanbase grows, there is the possibility of gold at the end. They're good at it. They are also rapacious, but pretending that these expenses do not occur is unrealistic.
A more popular song will be purchased (ie downloaded) more often than a non-popular song. This will require more bandwidth.
if a market has perfect elasticity, that curve would be a straight line at a 45 degree angle...
Actually, I think you're thinking of "unit elasticity," or an elasticity of 1. "Perfect elasticity" would be represented by a horizontal line. At price p the firm would sell as many as they could produce. At price p + $.01 consumers display their perfect willingness to refrain from purchasing, and the firm sells none of their product or service.
Here's a page with some diagrams:
http://www.answers.com/topic/elasticity-economics
From the GPA:
"The result is I simply quit buying CD's. How is this profitable?"
The correct answer to this question is "You are not a part of our target market."
Dude, you completely left out the comma fault, the split infinitive, and the sentence capitalization errors. If you're gonna be a grammar nazi, show some attention to detail! Sheesh.