I'd say the moderators for the above comment are rubbish. Poster is "willing to bet" - anybody check any fact of any sort? Anybody who's actually in the R&D of those products? Speak up. I thought this is a scientific community. This proves to me this place is more like a religion.
I can't agree more. Plenty of readers here should complain about why their washing machines uses Linux for the control but there's no public API nor a RS-232 port for tweaking purpose.
Ditto on the toaster thing. For the "dead lappies for cheap" thing? Good luck on that one - Apple provides pretty good service if the thing broke down. Those type of customers will go there to fix it, maybe trade it, instead of listed on ebay/kijiji to sell it for cheap.
BB here in Canada is not bad I'd say. We have their evil twin brother Futureshop here with pushy sales on extended warranty and monster cables. I've stopped shopping at FS and only go BB here.
I guess for consumer trade show it's mostly for look alone, BUT at a startup I previously worked for, our sales folks from the states (Canada here) hired one of these "PR agent" at a show in the states. Obviously she looks great. But she actually took the time to learn about our product (wide area enterprise storage), dress business-like, and spoke with visitors as if she's part of the company that knows the product. She has the ability to gather crowd and talk to a group of audience and at some point in time, she'll pull in the real tech. sales guy in and the group still stay intact. Off she goes "generating more traffic".
Honestly, if you look around any large organization, pretty people are hired as PR/marketing partially because of how they look. Obviously they have to go beyond that but it is definitely not purely meritocracy.
"And it's *always* cheaper to in-source (provided you can find the appropriate resources). You can either do it yourself, or you can pay someone their cost, which could be your cost, plus 20% or more overhead and profit. So outsourcing costs you a minimum of 20% more than doing it in house. But all the consultants swear it's better to outsource - to their company. That's like hiring the Fox and Co security company to guard the hen house.
"
Which Fortune 500 are you the CIO? Oh they're all idiots, right, right...
When I thought about your mentioning of "(boys) were encouraged to play with computers", I think it comes down to this: How do I hack the machine to run faster so I can play that game a bit smoother? How do I crack the files in the save game file so that all attributes are 255/255/255? Instead of a new computer, I'm given $200 bucks max, what do I get for it so that I get best bang for buck...etc.
"a quite useable small box for running emulators and watching low-quality media (720p), like e.g. YouTube videos."
I'd want one of those. It seems the 'full' system will be around $150. Wait a minute, isn't that the cost of some cheap version of Android tablet directly from China?
US said the same thing on Canadian softwood lumber. Talking about industry prop up by government capital? Please don't kid yourself - US automotive, banking...etc.
Another OT lesson here: describe your problem in a paragraph and post it on slashdot - get many one-liner recommendations on solving your problem, that you can probably guess what it's gonna be.
I find that a lot of commenters are over simplifying the situation. The value of a product or company comes from the the competitive advantage the company can offer, and that needs to be retained internally. Does that come from the two principals of the company? Or does that rely partly from the contractor? An architect wouldn't go design a building, and manage the actual construction - because the that's not the core competency. The OP has not identify what "monkey work" is and that has to be determined. The other question is, can the company retain the employee to give them enough work so the company stay afloat? Commenting on the company should just shutdown because there's only 2 people is plain silly - startups start with 1 employee, business goes up and down. May be the principal do have some business knowledge that keep them around, there are still opportunities there, but they need to build from ground up? Meanwhile they don't have cashflow to fund internally employees? It almost sounds like using contract developers is universally bad - well, then why do they even exist?
Common practice here in Canada with the same "illegal" tactic, maybe with the exception of Telus (i.e. ISP owning content provider). In Roger's case it even own its sports teams (Raptors and Blue Jays). They need to be broken up in maintaining neutrality.
Although not totally related but I think a game like this illustrate better on possible outcome. They should have fund a game like this:
http://www.molleindustria.org/en/oiligarchy
Slashdot Mirror
There may be some truth to that shitty desktop -> shitty phone. I wonder how would they do if they branded it AWAY from the "Windows" moniker.
Maybe they could have tried on guitarpro files? I'm not sure if they can be read by 3rd party but those a analogous to midi files.
And then the entire discussion becomes a cess pool.
I'd say the moderators for the above comment are rubbish. Poster is "willing to bet" - anybody check any fact of any sort? Anybody who's actually in the R&D of those products? Speak up. I thought this is a scientific community. This proves to me this place is more like a religion.
It should be considered that if "It remove 80 percent of human solid waste."
I can't agree more. Plenty of readers here should complain about why their washing machines uses Linux for the control but there's no public API nor a RS-232 port for tweaking purpose.
Ditto on the toaster thing. For the "dead lappies for cheap" thing? Good luck on that one - Apple provides pretty good service if the thing broke down. Those type of customers will go there to fix it, maybe trade it, instead of listed on ebay/kijiji to sell it for cheap.
Thank you.
BB here in Canada is not bad I'd say. We have their evil twin brother Futureshop here with pushy sales on extended warranty and monster cables. I've stopped shopping at FS and only go BB here.
News for you, Office Depot is pretty much wiped out by Staples here in Canada.
I guess for consumer trade show it's mostly for look alone, BUT at a startup I previously worked for, our sales folks from the states (Canada here) hired one of these "PR agent" at a show in the states. Obviously she looks great. But she actually took the time to learn about our product (wide area enterprise storage), dress business-like, and spoke with visitors as if she's part of the company that knows the product. She has the ability to gather crowd and talk to a group of audience and at some point in time, she'll pull in the real tech. sales guy in and the group still stay intact. Off she goes "generating more traffic". Honestly, if you look around any large organization, pretty people are hired as PR/marketing partially because of how they look. Obviously they have to go beyond that but it is definitely not purely meritocracy.
Big Gulp is "Regular" in america.
This would at least make them walk a bit, of course, unless you sit right by the pop machine : )
"And it's *always* cheaper to in-source (provided you can find the appropriate resources). You can either do it yourself, or you can pay someone their cost, which could be your cost, plus 20% or more overhead and profit. So outsourcing costs you a minimum of 20% more than doing it in house. But all the consultants swear it's better to outsource - to their company. That's like hiring the Fox and Co security company to guard the hen house. "
Which Fortune 500 are you the CIO? Oh they're all idiots, right, right...
Totally agree. Virtual desktop is going to that direction, of course, unless somebody mess up / infect the VM-base, or hardware problem.
When I thought about your mentioning of "(boys) were encouraged to play with computers", I think it comes down to this: How do I hack the machine to run faster so I can play that game a bit smoother? How do I crack the files in the save game file so that all attributes are 255/255/255? Instead of a new computer, I'm given $200 bucks max, what do I get for it so that I get best bang for buck...etc.
I'd want one of those. It seems the 'full' system will be around $150. Wait a minute, isn't that the cost of some cheap version of Android tablet directly from China?
US said the same thing on Canadian softwood lumber. Talking about industry prop up by government capital? Please don't kid yourself - US automotive, banking...etc.
Another OT lesson here: describe your problem in a paragraph and post it on slashdot - get many one-liner recommendations on solving your problem, that you can probably guess what it's gonna be.
I find that a lot of commenters are over simplifying the situation. The value of a product or company comes from the the competitive advantage the company can offer, and that needs to be retained internally. Does that come from the two principals of the company? Or does that rely partly from the contractor? An architect wouldn't go design a building, and manage the actual construction - because the that's not the core competency. The OP has not identify what "monkey work" is and that has to be determined. The other question is, can the company retain the employee to give them enough work so the company stay afloat? Commenting on the company should just shutdown because there's only 2 people is plain silly - startups start with 1 employee, business goes up and down. May be the principal do have some business knowledge that keep them around, there are still opportunities there, but they need to build from ground up? Meanwhile they don't have cashflow to fund internally employees? It almost sounds like using contract developers is universally bad - well, then why do they even exist?
FYI based on wiki numbers, Oracle generates about $1129 in revenue/second.
I don't think it solve much more than a better organized way for cabling.
I have a dresser. 12 years and 2 moves and 2 kids - still kicking : ) But I'd to say some of them are pretty bad quality.
Common practice here in Canada with the same "illegal" tactic, maybe with the exception of Telus (i.e. ISP owning content provider). In Roger's case it even own its sports teams (Raptors and Blue Jays). They need to be broken up in maintaining neutrality.
Although not totally related but I think a game like this illustrate better on possible outcome. They should have fund a game like this: http://www.molleindustria.org/en/oiligarchy