Mostly it came down to greed and complete incompetence. Although the traders (Enron was at heart a trading company) actually valued being a jerk. The senior guys actually had very little idea of what they were doing. Skilling was a brilliant consultant, and an absolutely horrible manager. They all became so enamored by the power and the money that they didn't question when Andy Fastow could make huge mistakes and debts just disappear.
When speaking to the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) last year, Mike Griffen was asked about his decision to launch Discovery (July 2006) against the advice of Bryan O'Connor (NASA Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer.) Please keep in mind that contrary to popular belief, test pilots are notoriously anal. They will refuse to fly an aircraft for the smallest inconsistencies or defects. Griffen's response (to a highly skeptical audience) was something to the effect of, "Without trying to sound arrogant, I believe I am now a world class authority on the Space Shuttle's external tank foam. After Columbia, I was well aware that the next launch decision could come down to my two top deputies giving me different recommendations. I've studied the foam so intensively that I felt confident approving the launch against O'Connor's advice."
There are pesky things like tax laws. For example, does Apple have to deduct a Social Security tax for him? How about any Belgian taxes? Pay them both?
Not to mention how difficult it is to transfer money between international divisions of the same company. I don't know where you work, but international payroll isn't like getting an out of state check from Grandma.
I work for a credit card company, and you're very wrong. It is not good business to lend to people who can't pay it back, for the following reasons:
1. Once the customer falls below a certain delinquency level we must write-off the debt. Meaning, we can no longer count their account as part of our A/R or their interest as profit. That's bad. At this point we just try to get whatever we can, "You can only pay $5? You owe us $5,000! Ok, whatever, put it in the mail and we're square."
2. The customer declares bankruptcy. See number 1, except we don't get the $5.
3. Delinquent accounts cost us additional variable cost. When we collect, it's not free money. We have to hire collections people, build their systems, pay for the dialer software, plus protect the customer's information since most collections people are temps. We don't make a lot of additional revenue from delinquency.
Our favorite customer is someone who is 15 days delinquent, for all time. Not bad enough that we need to call, but we still get to charge fees and stuff.
I prefer to think of science fiction as any literature in which some physical law, technological barrier, or other natural phenomenon is broken to allow the author to examine an issue from another perspective.
Under this definition Card is right, Charlie Kaufman does fall into Sci-Fi (as does C.S. Lewis.)
"What does ActiveX do that XPCOM and Java are incapable of performing?
If you are not able to answer that question, you have no base to stand on."
How about millions of dollars invested capital? Whether or not XPCOM and Java do it is irrelevant. The question is, 'Are companies going to spend millions to redevelop ActiveX dependent applications?' I can tell you right now, (unless you show a significant cost benefit of switching) the answer is no.
If art or other entertainment mediums were judged by video game standards, there would be no:
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter) Fyodor M Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) Kurt Vonnegut (Anything he wrote) Jack Kerouac (Anything he wrote) Allen Ginsberg (Anything he wrote) Stanely Kubric (pick one) Salvador Dali William Shakespeare...
"This isn't about a dying 'business model' as much as you'd like it to be. This isn't tantamount to Congress legislating that every horseless carriage have a horse whip to save the horse whip maker."
Partially right. The problem is that music labels do have a fundamentally flawed distribution model.
In the past, labels had to search the world for talent then promote and distribute them. Some artists made money, others lost. The labels had to charge more for the artists people liked, to recoup the costs from the artists they lost money on. The margins on the popular CD's had to be high, because for every artist that they made money on they lost money on two.
The internet changes the game. It's incredibly cheap to promote and distribute music now.
It's not the 'horseless carriage and horse whip,' it's more like the printing press. Pre-Gutenberg, if you wanted a book you paid a lot for it. After all somebody had to sit down and copy the whole thing out by hand. After the printing press book prices fell dramatically. Artists' rights still apply; you should still pay for the book. But lets be honest here, you can't charge the same for a book off a printing press as you can for a hand-copied version. In reality this is what record labels are trying to do. The worst part is they want to outlaw the printing press.
Slashdot Mirror
No, No!
First they commit the code, then you build it, then you have the users test and sign off, THEN you pay them.
Too many 'oh we must have a different jdk version' or 'but we thought JBOSS and WebSphere would behave the same' mistakes have taught me this.
Actually, that's not exactly what killed Enron.
Mostly it came down to greed and complete incompetence. Although the traders (Enron was at heart a trading company) actually valued being a jerk. The senior guys actually had very little idea of what they were doing. Skilling was a brilliant consultant, and an absolutely horrible manager. They all became so enamored by the power and the money that they didn't question when Andy Fastow could make huge mistakes and debts just disappear.
When speaking to the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) last year, Mike Griffen was asked about his decision to launch Discovery (July 2006) against the advice of Bryan O'Connor (NASA Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer.) Please keep in mind that contrary to popular belief, test pilots are notoriously anal. They will refuse to fly an aircraft for the smallest inconsistencies or defects. Griffen's response (to a highly skeptical audience) was something to the effect of, "Without trying to sound arrogant, I believe I am now a world class authority on the Space Shuttle's external tank foam. After Columbia, I was well aware that the next launch decision could come down to my two top deputies giving me different recommendations. I've studied the foam so intensively that I felt confident approving the launch against O'Connor's advice."
Yes, but tomorrow Churchill may...damn it!
you are going to have such a backlog of beer!
.25)) { getMeABeer(); }
while ((drunk == false) && (beer_can_contents/beer_can_volume <=
you only want it when you're almost out.
It's Vietnam.
Seriously, at least Google your troll first.
Everything in Domino depends on an IE plug-in. God help you if you use a non-IE-with-plug-in browser. *VERY* painful.
so buy a suit
There are pesky things like tax laws. For example, does Apple have to deduct a Social Security tax for him? How about any Belgian taxes? Pay them both?
Not to mention how difficult it is to transfer money between international divisions of the same company. I don't know where you work, but international payroll isn't like getting an out of state check from Grandma.
I work for a credit card company, and you're very wrong. It is not good business to lend to people who can't pay it back, for the following reasons:
1. Once the customer falls below a certain delinquency level we must write-off the debt. Meaning, we can no longer count their account as part of our A/R or their interest as profit. That's bad. At this point we just try to get whatever we can, "You can only pay $5? You owe us $5,000! Ok, whatever, put it in the mail and we're square."
2. The customer declares bankruptcy. See number 1, except we don't get the $5.
3. Delinquent accounts cost us additional variable cost. When we collect, it's not free money. We have to hire collections people, build their systems, pay for the dialer software, plus protect the customer's information since most collections people are temps. We don't make a lot of additional revenue from delinquency.
Our favorite customer is someone who is 15 days delinquent, for all time. Not bad enough that we need to call, but we still get to charge fees and stuff.
Russian Space engineering is currently the best in the world?
Tell me:
How many Russians walked on the moon?
How many Russian missions to Mars?
How many Russian space telescopes?
I prefer to think of science fiction as any literature in which some physical law, technological barrier, or other natural phenomenon is broken to allow the author to examine an issue from another perspective.
Under this definition Card is right, Charlie Kaufman does fall into Sci-Fi (as does C.S. Lewis.)
"What does ActiveX do that XPCOM and Java are incapable of performing? If you are not able to answer that question, you have no base to stand on."
How about millions of dollars invested capital? Whether or not XPCOM and Java do it is irrelevant. The question is, 'Are companies going to spend millions to redevelop ActiveX dependent applications?' I can tell you right now, (unless you show a significant cost benefit of switching) the answer is no.
If art or other entertainment mediums were judged by video game standards, there would be no:
...
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter)
Fyodor M Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
Kurt Vonnegut (Anything he wrote)
Jack Kerouac (Anything he wrote)
Allen Ginsberg (Anything he wrote)
Stanely Kubric (pick one)
Salvador Dali
William Shakespeare
When you make a statement about what you can find in porn shops, preface it with: "A friend told me..." or "I've heard..."
"This isn't about a dying 'business model' as much as you'd like it to be. This isn't tantamount to Congress legislating that every horseless carriage have a horse whip to save the horse whip maker."
Partially right. The problem is that music labels do have a fundamentally flawed distribution model.
In the past, labels had to search the world for talent then promote and distribute them. Some artists made money, others lost. The labels had to charge more for the artists people liked, to recoup the costs from the artists they lost money on. The margins on the popular CD's had to be high, because for every artist that they made money on they lost money on two.
The internet changes the game. It's incredibly cheap to promote and distribute music now.
It's not the 'horseless carriage and horse whip,' it's more like the printing press. Pre-Gutenberg, if you wanted a book you paid a lot for it. After all somebody had to sit down and copy the whole thing out by hand. After the printing press book prices fell dramatically. Artists' rights still apply; you should still pay for the book. But lets be honest here, you can't charge the same for a book off a printing press as you can for a hand-copied version. In reality this is what record labels are trying to do. The worst part is they want to outlaw the printing press.
you, sir, should be shot.