I didn't pay any attention at all to this when the initial article went by, don't even remember it.
I'm really confused by the Slashdot ethics sometimes.
If the subject were copyright infringement of music, we'd all be in support (or at least sympathize with) the infringing party.
But it's not, it's stuff off web sites, and we identify with producing that, so we think the infringing party is the evil doer.
This is (was) a two-person organization putting out a tiny little magazine that was given out for free at the grocery store, so far as I can tell. Imagine your mom and her next-door neighbor putting out a magazine, assuming your mom barely knows anything about copyright.
This lady assumed that if it's free to get it's free to use and free to redistribute. For people who aren't hip-deep in the thing, the Internet can definitely give that impression.
Who makes up something as goofy as "the Internet is in the public domain" if they don't think it's true?
Based on the statement/apology her little magazine was teetering on the brink already, and now it's toppled over it. It's more an amusement than anything to most of us - I mean, I find it interesting, but I don't think it's exactly a tragedy.
I've had small businesses fail. It's like a death in the family. It's awful.
Quite possibly. Or it could be the recruiter's a stubborn proud idiot, who's afraid for the hiring manager to find out that he screwed up.
It often isn't an outsourcing situation when that happens. There's often an internal "candidate" that they want to put in the position, but in a sufficiently large company you can't just do that, you have to list the job and show that person is best for the job.
In that case, you write a req for the position that is identical to the person you want's credentials, put it on the intranet, sometimes even the internet, and a month later come to the impartial conclusion that the person you want (and who you wrote the job req to describe) is the best match. Shocking!
I've got an ongoing theory that most things that are perceived as malicious are actually due to incompetence.
In that light, perhaps someone wrote down "7.2" on their notepad in gathering hiring requirements, had crappy handwriting or spilled their coffee on it, couldn't quite read it, and wound up at 7.7?
I would love to hire some people. I think the people we're bringing in should be employees. Some have been here longer than I have been (and I'm coming up on 10 years.)
But it's a big, Fortune-listed company, and this is What Was Decided.
Indeed. I work with a lot of people who I assume are here on H1-b, with Patni claiming they can't find qualified Americans to fill these positions.
And yet the tiny US-based consulting firm we use doesn't seem to have any problem finding qualified Americans.
Of course, their people are mostly 40 - 50+ Americans, who are no doubt more expensive than 20-something Indians. But they also know what they're doing.
I'm pretty sure the billing rate to my company is about the same for both of them. So you apparently can make money pimping out Americans, too.
This is a courtesy email to let you know that Comcast's DNS servers are changing to servers that use DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), as part of an evolving suite of security protections that are part of Comcast Constant Guard. These changes, which have started today in some markets, will be completed within the next sixty days or so. You do not need to take any action and you should not notice any changes to your service, though behind-the-scenes your service will be more secure.
Additional Details: We know you have previously opted out of Comcast Domain Helper, which redirects you if you mistype a website address to a Comcast search page. Your opt-out preference will of course continue to be honored as you migrate to the new DNSSEC servers.
With DNSSEC, a web site name such as www.comcast.net can be signed with a secure key in the Domain Name System. Then, when you try to connect to that website, the Comcast DNS server checks that domain name, and it verifies the special key to ensure that it is valid and has not been tampered with by hackers or other criminals. You will only be connected if this security verification has been passed, which occurs so quickly you won't even notice that it's being done.
We're pleased to enhance Comcast Constant Guard with the addition of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), delivering you a more secure Internet experience. As the first major Internet Service Provider (ISP) to move to DNSSEC in the United States, you should know that you are among the first to be getting these new security capabilities and that we continue to push for a more secure Internet experience for you, as well as a more secure global Internet.
Jason Livingood Internet Systems Engineering Comcast
This is a service-related email. Comcast will occasionally send you service-related emails to inform you of service upgrades or new benefits to your Comcast High-Speed Internet service.
Copyright 2009. Comcast. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Comcast respects your privacy. For a complete description of our privacy policy, click this link.
Comcast One Comcast Center, 10th Floor 1701 JFK Boulevard Philadelphia, PA 19103-2838 Attn: CHSI
My uncle had used book stores. I know how he priced stuff; he mostly made it up unless he suspected an item might be of great value; then, he did research and figured it out.
Most used bookstores I've been in, on recent books, just made it a fixed percent of the original price.
And let's not pretend the old lady at the Salvation Army or the church thrift store has any idea what that book is work.
So no, I don't think most of them know what their books are worth.
They aren't doing loss leaders, they're just charging less than they could out of ignorance.
But how does kicking paying customers out of your store equate to "ignoring the bottom line"?
To me, sour grapes about what your customers are doing with the books you sold them is "ignoring the bottom line."
If you're going to seriously be in the used book business in 2010, you should be running every single book through a bar-code scanner, because if you don't know what your wares are worth you can't price it right.
If you're not doing something to actually know what your wares are worth, you aren't taking your business seriously.
And THAT is ignoring the bottom line in favor of some idealized vision of what YOUR used bookstore should be like.
So take off the tweed sports coat with the leather elbow patches, put down the pipe, and get down to business.
Unless his spending the day in a store somehow keeps another customer from doing so (and I'm sure it doesn't) then there's no cost to the store.
The store owner certainly is under no obligation to tolerate him. It's a private business, so unless they're refusing him service based on him being in a "protected class" they can certainly kick him out.
But why? They're in the business of selling books, he's in the business of buying books. They may not like that he turns around and sells them almost immediately for more money, but it is in no way harming them.
They wouldn't mind if he bought the exact same set of books and put them on a shelf at home. It's just sour grapes that he's making money they "should be making" but aren't.
I would think Slashdot would be in favor of this, just like we all want to be able to sell the songs we downloaded off iTunes but decided we didn't like. Once he's bought it, it's his to do with as he likes. Read it, sell it, burn it, mulch it, build a house out of it. It's his.
That assumes that "thrift stores" are "book stores."
Most "thrift stores" I've visited have a few sad looking shelves of books surrounded by a vast array of household goods and clothing. Nobody who's going there is really looking for a specific book.
Be honest. If you were looking for a specific book - or even a semi-recent release, since that's probably a good part of this guys's business - would you really head to a thrift store?
For a specific book, would you go to a used book store? Unless it's one of the few mega-used-book stores that I assume exist in places like Chicago or New York, I sure wouldn't. Because it would be a waste of my time. Used book stores are for browsing.
The only penny he's taking from someone's pocket is from his customer on Amazon.
The store was going to sell it for the price he paid, no loss to them. Could they have sold it for more? Sure. Were they going to? No.
If Slashdotters are so offended by this, they should create some free software that all the stores can use to figure out which books are worth selling on Amazon and help their local thrift store get up and running.
Let the used book stores get it running themselves.
Thrift stores aren't the same as used book stores or other for-profit resale stores. They're run by charities, both to sell things to the community at affordable prices and to make money to support their other programs.
Say "don't listen to me, I'm too biased in favor of open source software that I'm not really doing a legitimate comparison. In fact, maybe you should fire me."
Seriously, though, you need to research the two products, look seriously into support, total cost (not just initial sticker), compare functionality, and do all the other due diligence that you should be doing.
On the Plone side, for some of that you probably need to be talking to Enfold Systems or one of the other companies providing professional paid support and so forth for Plone.
(I'm assuming that things like support contracts are important to your bosses. Maybe they're not. I know they would be for mine.)
Asking Slashdot probably isn't the right answer. This isn't fun and games philosophical shopping time, boys. This is work and business.
I'll just sit waiting to be modded "asshole" or told how wrong I am in some fashion by other open source fan boys.
I would think a conversation with the applicable Dean might at least be considered. It probably won't get you anywhere, but who knows, it could....
It's pretty absurd to make your students use some non-free course management product if the school has already paid for an approved solution. Even if you think it sucks. (In my limited experience they all suck.)
I think we're running in somewhat different circles.
I work for a a company with $20 billion or so in annual revenues.... and we're supporting a deployment that, when complete, will be roughly 26,000 Windows 2003 Server systems and 100,000 XP systems. So there's a lot of testing.
But even the tiny little companies I've worked for had a system - even just a cast-off desktop with the Server OS installed - where you would test something before you broke the real server.
Really? Every company I, or my wife, have worked for of any size has entire test environments. My current employer has Test, Dev, Staging and Production environments which include entire active directory domains.
There's no excuse for putting something untested into production. None.
All the delivery companies play "ding-dong-ditch" with my packages - ring the door bell, dump 'em on the porch, and go. I've never signed any sort of waiver. The one time I put out a note because I thought they might require a signature it just confused them.
I bought something off Apple once and they required a signature - and shipped via Fed Ex Ground I think. What a pain in the ass that was to deal with. Real FedEx is great. FedEx Ground sucks. I will never accept them as a shipping option again.
Sadly, for a while there UPS and FedEx both were switching my packages and one of my (up the street) neighbors. I live at 13W512 Lundberg Place. The neighbors are at 3S512 Lundberg Avenue. I understand the mistake, but it gets tiresome walking a block and stealing your package off your neighbor's porch (or dropping theirs off.) They mostly stopped after I called and yelled at them about leaving a couple thousand dollars worth of merchandise on the wrong damn porch.
The USPS is required to deliver mail, every day except Sunday, to every US address. So if you mail something it's doing the "last mile" (or last 50 miles) on a truck that was almost certainly going anyway.
Don't assume it's a big truck, or a truck at all. Some of the stuff I buy from Amazon shows up in a passenger car, delivered by some courier service.
In the US, outside the core of what, perhaps a couple dozen cities at most, most people pretty much do take their car everywhere.
I live in the western Chicago suburbs; I'm more likely to not buy something than I am to walk to the store (or bicycle, I don't even own one) to get it.
If I want what I ordered from Amazon last night, two HDMI cables, a VGA cable, a 1/8-inch audio cable and some poster putty, I'd be hitting at least two stores to get that.
Best Buy is 3 miles away. There's a Walgreens next to it. (I wouldn't really buy that stuff at Best Buy, but they're the closest place I theoretically could. Aside from the VGA I could probably get it all at Walgreens.)
So I'd be driving 6 miles in a fairly new, theoretically at least "PZEV" car that gets about 25 mpg. (And because I would really go to Fry's or MicroCenter to get the stuff, that's more like a 15 or 20 mile round trip. Best Buy is for suckers.)
Or, I can order from Amazon, who will deliver to my front porch, and I have yet to see a UPS truck leave our neighborhood without making multiple stops.
UPS is really good at their business. I'll bet those trucks are running as efficiently as possible, and I'd swear they've gotten smaller in recent years.
Sometimes this weird courier service delivers it, and they're usually in either a 3/4-ton panel van (E250 or something) or a car. I don't know if they make other stops in the neighborhood or not.
Sometimes the USPS brings some of it, and they were going to drive through every day whether I got something or not.
My gut says that the negative environmental impact is in the packaging, not the travel. Each thing will come in a little box or envelope, which I will either reuse or toss in the recycle bin.
(From a personal economic standpoint, my wife paid for Prime with Amazon, so it's free shipping, and the total bill was less than $25.)
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't pay any attention at all to this when the initial article went by, don't even remember it.
I'm really confused by the Slashdot ethics sometimes.
If the subject were copyright infringement of music, we'd all be in support (or at least sympathize with) the infringing party.
But it's not, it's stuff off web sites, and we identify with producing that, so we think the infringing party is the evil doer.
This is (was) a two-person organization putting out a tiny little magazine that was given out for free at the grocery store, so far as I can tell. Imagine your mom and her next-door neighbor putting out a magazine, assuming your mom barely knows anything about copyright.
This lady assumed that if it's free to get it's free to use and free to redistribute. For people who aren't hip-deep in the thing, the Internet can definitely give that impression.
Who makes up something as goofy as "the Internet is in the public domain" if they don't think it's true?
Based on the statement/apology her little magazine was teetering on the brink already, and now it's toppled over it. It's more an amusement than anything to most of us - I mean, I find it interesting, but I don't think it's exactly a tragedy.
I've had small businesses fail. It's like a death in the family. It's awful.
For her, it's a tragedy.
Quite possibly. Or it could be the recruiter's a stubborn proud idiot, who's afraid for the hiring manager to find out that he screwed up.
It often isn't an outsourcing situation when that happens. There's often an internal "candidate" that they want to put in the position, but in a sufficiently large company you can't just do that, you have to list the job and show that person is best for the job.
In that case, you write a req for the position that is identical to the person you want's credentials, put it on the intranet, sometimes even the internet, and a month later come to the impartial conclusion that the person you want (and who you wrote the job req to describe) is the best match. Shocking!
I've got an ongoing theory that most things that are perceived as malicious are actually due to incompetence.
In that light, perhaps someone wrote down "7.2" on their notepad in gathering hiring requirements, had crappy handwriting or spilled their coffee on it, couldn't quite read it, and wound up at 7.7?
Seems kind of possible.
I would love to hire some people. I think the people we're bringing in should be employees. Some have been here longer than I have been (and I'm coming up on 10 years.)
But it's a big, Fortune-listed company, and this is What Was Decided.
We're not doing fancy stuff. It's just an IT department - Windows & Unix administration and development.
Indeed. I work with a lot of people who I assume are here on H1-b, with Patni claiming they can't find qualified Americans to fill these positions.
And yet the tiny US-based consulting firm we use doesn't seem to have any problem finding qualified Americans.
Of course, their people are mostly 40 - 50+ Americans, who are no doubt more expensive than 20-something Indians. But they also know what they're doing.
I'm pretty sure the billing rate to my company is about the same for both of them. So you apparently can make money pimping out Americans, too.
I realize it's a large, and no doubt heavily negotiated purchase, but is $10 per seat a real number or your own uninformed wild-ass guess?
That might be a bit much but you can legitimately request name, address, and SSN. How else can you send a 1099?
I get at least two dumped in my driveway every week that I carry directly from the driveway to the recycle bin.
I don't subscribe, nobody subscribes. They dump them in everybody's driveway.
There's no way to make them stop. I've considered swearing out a littering complaint with the sheriff but it doesn't seem worth the trouble.
I'm in a Chicago suburb and got this today:
This is a courtesy email to let you know that Comcast's DNS servers are changing to servers that use DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), as part of an evolving suite of security protections that are part of Comcast Constant Guard. These changes, which have started today in some markets, will be completed within the next sixty days or so. You do not need to take any action and you should not notice any changes to your service, though behind-the-scenes your service will be more secure.
Watch a short video about this change at http://www.dnssec.comcast.net/dnssec-video.htm.
Additional Details:
We know you have previously opted out of Comcast Domain Helper, which redirects you if you mistype a website address to a Comcast search page. Your opt-out preference will of course continue to be honored as you migrate to the new DNSSEC servers.
With DNSSEC, a web site name such as www.comcast.net can be signed with a secure key in the Domain Name System. Then, when you try to connect to that website, the Comcast DNS server checks that domain name, and it verifies the special key to ensure that it is valid and has not been tampered with by hackers or other criminals. You will only be connected if this security verification has been passed, which occurs so quickly you won't even notice that it's being done.
We're pleased to enhance Comcast Constant Guard with the addition of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), delivering you a more secure Internet experience. As the first major Internet Service Provider (ISP) to move to DNSSEC in the United States, you should know that you are among the first to be getting these new security capabilities and that we continue to push for a more secure Internet experience for you, as well as a more secure global Internet.
You can learn more by:
- Watching this short video: http://www.dnssec.comcast.net/dnssec-video.htm
- Learning about Comcast Constant Guard: http://security.comcast.net/constantguard/
- Diving deeper at our DNSSEC Information Center: http://www.dnssec.comcast.net/
Warm Regards,
Jason Livingood
Internet Systems Engineering
Comcast
This is a service-related email. Comcast will occasionally send you service-related emails to inform you of service upgrades or new benefits to your Comcast High-Speed Internet service.
Copyright 2009. Comcast. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Comcast respects your privacy. For a complete description of our privacy policy, click this link.
Comcast
One Comcast Center, 10th Floor
1701 JFK Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19103-2838
Attn: CHSI
Sorry, just realized I used 2 terms for the same thing - incremental cost = variable cost in the above.
My uncle had used book stores. I know how he priced stuff; he mostly made it up unless he suspected an item might be of great value; then, he did research and figured it out.
Most used bookstores I've been in, on recent books, just made it a fixed percent of the original price.
And let's not pretend the old lady at the Salvation Army or the church thrift store has any idea what that book is work.
So no, I don't think most of them know what their books are worth.
They aren't doing loss leaders, they're just charging less than they could out of ignorance.
There are fixed costs and there are incremental costs.
Fixed costs are the things that you're going to pay, pretty much whether anyone comes in or not.
That includes AC, rent, one employee, etc.
Variable costs are the only ones you should worry about on a per-customer-kick-the-bums-out basis.
I don't see how this guy is impacting variable costs in any meaningful way, and he is buying stuff, so your argument doesn't hold water for me.
But how does kicking paying customers out of your store equate to "ignoring the bottom line"?
To me, sour grapes about what your customers are doing with the books you sold them is "ignoring the bottom line."
If you're going to seriously be in the used book business in 2010, you should be running every single book through a bar-code scanner, because if you don't know what your wares are worth you can't price it right.
If you're not doing something to actually know what your wares are worth, you aren't taking your business seriously.
And THAT is ignoring the bottom line in favor of some idealized vision of what YOUR used bookstore should be like.
So take off the tweed sports coat with the leather elbow patches, put down the pipe, and get down to business.
Unless his spending the day in a store somehow keeps another customer from doing so (and I'm sure it doesn't) then there's no cost to the store.
The store owner certainly is under no obligation to tolerate him. It's a private business, so unless they're refusing him service based on him being in a "protected class" they can certainly kick him out.
But why? They're in the business of selling books, he's in the business of buying books. They may not like that he turns around and sells them almost immediately for more money, but it is in no way harming them.
They wouldn't mind if he bought the exact same set of books and put them on a shelf at home. It's just sour grapes that he's making money they "should be making" but aren't.
I would think Slashdot would be in favor of this, just like we all want to be able to sell the songs we downloaded off iTunes but decided we didn't like. Once he's bought it, it's his to do with as he likes. Read it, sell it, burn it, mulch it, build a house out of it. It's his.
That assumes that "thrift stores" are "book stores."
Most "thrift stores" I've visited have a few sad looking shelves of books surrounded by a vast array of household goods and clothing. Nobody who's going there is really looking for a specific book.
Be honest. If you were looking for a specific book - or even a semi-recent release, since that's probably a good part of this guys's business - would you really head to a thrift store?
For a specific book, would you go to a used book store? Unless it's one of the few mega-used-book stores that I assume exist in places like Chicago or New York, I sure wouldn't. Because it would be a waste of my time. Used book stores are for browsing.
The only penny he's taking from someone's pocket is from his customer on Amazon.
The store was going to sell it for the price he paid, no loss to them. Could they have sold it for more? Sure. Were they going to? No.
If Slashdotters are so offended by this, they should create some free software that all the stores can use to figure out which books are worth selling on Amazon and help their local thrift store get up and running.
Let the used book stores get it running themselves.
Thrift stores aren't the same as used book stores or other for-profit resale stores. They're run by charities, both to sell things to the community at affordable prices and to make money to support their other programs.
Say "don't listen to me, I'm too biased in favor of open source software that I'm not really doing a legitimate comparison. In fact, maybe you should fire me."
Seriously, though, you need to research the two products, look seriously into support, total cost (not just initial sticker), compare functionality, and do all the other due diligence that you should be doing.
On the Plone side, for some of that you probably need to be talking to Enfold Systems or one of the other companies providing professional paid support and so forth for Plone.
(I'm assuming that things like support contracts are important to your bosses. Maybe they're not. I know they would be for mine.)
Asking Slashdot probably isn't the right answer. This isn't fun and games philosophical shopping time, boys. This is work and business.
I'll just sit waiting to be modded "asshole" or told how wrong I am in some fashion by other open source fan boys.
I would think a conversation with the applicable Dean might at least be considered. It probably won't get you anywhere, but who knows, it could....
It's pretty absurd to make your students use some non-free course management product if the school has already paid for an approved solution. Even if you think it sucks. (In my limited experience they all suck.)
I think we're running in somewhat different circles.
I work for a a company with $20 billion or so in annual revenues.... and we're supporting a deployment that, when complete, will be roughly 26,000 Windows 2003 Server systems and 100,000 XP systems. So there's a lot of testing.
But even the tiny little companies I've worked for had a system - even just a cast-off desktop with the Server OS installed - where you would test something before you broke the real server.
Really? Every company I, or my wife, have worked for of any size has entire test environments. My current employer has Test, Dev, Staging and Production environments which include entire active directory domains.
There's no excuse for putting something untested into production. None.
All the delivery companies play "ding-dong-ditch" with my packages - ring the door bell, dump 'em on the porch, and go. I've never signed any sort of waiver. The one time I put out a note because I thought they might require a signature it just confused them.
I bought something off Apple once and they required a signature - and shipped via Fed Ex Ground I think. What a pain in the ass that was to deal with. Real FedEx is great. FedEx Ground sucks. I will never accept them as a shipping option again.
Sadly, for a while there UPS and FedEx both were switching my packages and one of my (up the street) neighbors. I live at 13W512 Lundberg Place. The neighbors are at 3S512 Lundberg Avenue. I understand the mistake, but it gets tiresome walking a block and stealing your package off your neighbor's porch (or dropping theirs off.) They mostly stopped after I called and yelled at them about leaving a couple thousand dollars worth of merchandise on the wrong damn porch.
Actually, a lot of the stuff I get from Amazon that is actually sold by Amazon comes from 200 miles away so far as I can tell.
I've gotten things from other online vendors that shipped from an area I might consider shopping in, it's so close.
The UPS and USPS truck is going to be at the shipper's facility every day. They're going to be in my neighborhood every day.
I don't do it for environmental reasons - that's silly - but it's hard to believe it's much more than a wash either way.
The USPS is required to deliver mail, every day except Sunday, to every US address. So if you mail something it's doing the "last mile" (or last 50 miles) on a truck that was almost certainly going anyway.
Don't assume it's a big truck, or a truck at all. Some of the stuff I buy from Amazon shows up in a passenger car, delivered by some courier service.
Well that's the thing then isn't it.
In the US, outside the core of what, perhaps a couple dozen cities at most, most people pretty much do take their car everywhere.
I live in the western Chicago suburbs; I'm more likely to not buy something than I am to walk to the store (or bicycle, I don't even own one) to get it.
If I want what I ordered from Amazon last night, two HDMI cables, a VGA cable, a 1/8-inch audio cable and some poster putty, I'd be hitting at least two stores to get that.
Best Buy is 3 miles away. There's a Walgreens next to it. (I wouldn't really buy that stuff at Best Buy, but they're the closest place I theoretically could. Aside from the VGA I could probably get it all at Walgreens.)
So I'd be driving 6 miles in a fairly new, theoretically at least "PZEV" car that gets about 25 mpg. (And because I would really go to Fry's or MicroCenter to get the stuff, that's more like a 15 or 20 mile round trip. Best Buy is for suckers.)
Or, I can order from Amazon, who will deliver to my front porch, and I have yet to see a UPS truck leave our neighborhood without making multiple stops.
UPS is really good at their business. I'll bet those trucks are running as efficiently as possible, and I'd swear they've gotten smaller in recent years.
Sometimes this weird courier service delivers it, and they're usually in either a 3/4-ton panel van (E250 or something) or a car. I don't know if they make other stops in the neighborhood or not.
Sometimes the USPS brings some of it, and they were going to drive through every day whether I got something or not.
My gut says that the negative environmental impact is in the packaging, not the travel. Each thing will come in a little box or envelope, which I will either reuse or toss in the recycle bin.
(From a personal economic standpoint, my wife paid for Prime with Amazon, so it's free shipping, and the total bill was less than $25.)