A name is just a name. The code doesn't belong to either you nor the new developer (most cases). It belongs to the client. If they wanted to change the name or the new developer (agent owner) wanted to; it is completely fine and legal cause they own the work. If you wrote something and you owned it, it is your right to put your sons or wife's name on it.
All this does now is slightly increase the cost to the credit card holders as it is just charging them rather than spreading it across the customer base. It also makes it very transparent to the consumer and becomes another factor in choosing to purchase at a certain retailer.
Some retailers will choose to not pass on the cost to those generating it. Others will pass on the cost similar to a tax. Yet others will pass on the cost via discounts for cash and maybe debit. It will be interesting to see which of the prior wins. 2-3% isn't much, but today it does affect where people shop for gas. So I think it will have an impact on sales and retail is a low margin business.
The whole point of credit is to increase volume. I think the retailers who do NOT pass on the cost will eventually win. Also the cost of manually handling cash is not small, just better covered up and has more unknown risk. So for small to some parts of middle level retail this may make sense as they already have the infrastructure for handling cash and it is underutilized. But for semi-large to large operations, any increase in cash transactions probably mean additional costs.
For the former, they will choose the discounts for cash. The later will continue business as usual. I don't see my normal shopping retails like Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, and Target changing anything. But maybe Walgreens and CVS will go the Aldi way. I am a credit card guy so I will probably adjust by lowering the volume I do in the smaller group.
Make sure that you read up on all the building codes or talk to an inspector for the below.
1) A 2-3" conduit from top to bottom. Possibly two depending on the number of wires you will be running which depends on the number of rooms on each floor. Don't forget to fire stop and steel plate the floor/ceiling studs. 2) 1" electrical (grey PVC) conduit in each room, including garage. Top floor goes to attic, and bottom floors go to basement. If no basement, all conduits go to attic. Same regs as #1 3) Drop a HDMI over ethernet where ever you are going to put a TV or system. All lead back to the command center so you can do & change what links to what there. 4) Put in a magnetic circuit trip on each window and door. Most homes already come with this (security system) but you can better segment the house (ie: a circuit for sets of living room windows). Of course leading back to command center. 5) Wire in motion sensors in rooms and hallways (cameras are a bit creepy). Again, this may already be done for you. Wireless is fine too. 6) In wall speakers in every room (hey, you said you have 10k plus) (I haven't done these) 7) In wall mics (I haven't done these) 8) Camera for front and back door. 9) UPS (w/ 2x cheap car batteries) at the command center. 10) Tablet on fridge for kitchen inventory & movies
1-3 & 8-10 are obvious. 4 & 5 you want to hook up to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It can email you a SMS when your phone (you) isn't in the house and someone trips one. 6 & 7 if you want to do voice commands with playlists or your TV(s).
I think the above pretty much summarize the demands on your command center.
Why was this marked +4 Interesting? The poster basically posted a random all-encompassing opinion with out any sources.
In North America? Have you traveled to parts outside of the Continental US to make that claim? I don't think Mexico & Canada would like to be put into the same bucket.
Least Respected? You said NA so I am guessing compared to the world. There are many countries out there where the senior students run the school and/or the teachers only show up to work on pay day.
53?!? And 6-8 weeks of PTO? WOW. Talk to any IT Developer, 50-100 hours per week. Average, easily 60. I was in Accounting & Auditing and averaged 55 hours (60+ for month, quarter, & annual closes). In IT, averaged 55; 100+ for deadlines. As an IT PM, 50-70 hours. 15-20 days PTO + 10 holidays.
And no, that does not count the hours spent on further education, certifications, and air travel for clients. And in the consulting world, not seeing home Monday to Thursday. Yes, our salaries are higher, 50k starting and growing to 80k+ over 5+ years, but considering the hours, I think comparable to teachers.
BUT COME ON, "consistently one of the least respected, poorest paid professionals... longest hours of anyone"? BULL! Go see a few episodes of Dirty Jobs.
Seniority has nothing to do with teachers becoming "heroes". My teacher heroes can be counted on both hands and they were some of the least paid in the schools (except 2). I respect them to the Nth degree. But the worst teachers, although just 4, made some of the highest salaries (90k+). Every time this topic comes up, I remember those 4 and think how much of a handicap each generation that they touch start off with. All the other teachers were mediocre but I still thank them for their contribution to what I am today.
THANK YOU. I had to come this far down to read a post where the poster may know SOMETHING about HFT and trading in general. People see "$450m" mistake and instantly think that is a BAD thing and that HFT is the culprit that must be stopped. I was losing faith in Slashdot.
People, believe it or not, HFT is one of the few things that migrates power from the centralized, connected elites to the little guys (and if you aren't making $500k+ a year, you are the little guy). It is one of the few equalizers that is on your side. Before, being on the trading floor or in the box was worth the massive cost to be, now a days, it is more a symbol of "Wall Street" and "Markets" than anything else of real value. This is because electronic trading & HFT have made the location of the end user and their position in society less relevant.
I think the modern day equivalents of "Export Tea leaves to Britain, buy back, and pay taxes on tea" and "Have coastal territories pay taxes on salt" is Design and Software patents.
There are so many people on here saying Waltz is a "idiot" or "moron" for an observation he has made. Talk about knee jerk and shooting the messenger. I understand about not RTFA but not RTFS which is fairly clear? Waltz is making a very clear & though provoking observation that most people (and clearly it exists here too) are "head stuck in the sand" about.
All Waltz is saying is that through out human history, nukes have been the best deterrent to big wars. Prior to nuclear proliferation, there was a MAJOR country at war with another big country every bloody decade. And it impacted a significant part of the known world population. We fought with Japan, Russia, & Germany. Once we all got nukes, we stopped fighting on the big scale cause escalation will result in mutual destruction. We nuked Japan once, do you think we will nuke them again? Do you think Japan would invade and conquer like it did before and risk getting nuked? We aren't "enlightened", we are the same as before.
Yes, nukes are not a permanent solution... BUT THERE ISN'T ONE. There is no such thing as "getting rid of nukes". That is fairly tale talk. The world doesn't have a Superman standing on a incorruptible moral highground who can detect nukes around the world and toss them into the sun. What nuclear disarmament means in reality is that a small batch of people have secret nukes and the rest don't. And this is a far more dangerous and unstable situation than nuclear proliferation.
Why? Cause when one/few nations have nukes, they have a very high value weapon: They can destroy your enemy! When your enemy has nukes... Nukes will destroy you! Before, you risked losing, but you could win too. Someone has to win! Now, BOTH parties' options are one totally wins, OR more likely both totally lose and having no winner at all. The reward of war has gotten smaller and risk has gotten higher.
Just look at our history and even today. USSR and the US never went to war. They both setup nukes right next to each other but never went to war. They hated and despised each other right down to the 2 year olds, but no war! India didn't want Pakistan to have nukes cause else the sky will fall. Didn't happen once they got it. In fact, they have defused every escalating skirmish since they both got nukes. What's the most unstable region in the world? Middle East... the only location where one superpower has the nukes and the rest don't. So the rest constantly scheme about how to take out the giant and the giant schemes how to keep the little guys down. Both live in constant fear of the other in a restless twitching mode of operation.
NO, nukes are not a permanent solution and they will cause utter destruction... if used. But, the risk of that is small and there is no realistic alternative. The best deterrent that humans have come up with against war is nukes. The best deterrent humans have come up with against nukes.... is nukes. That's all Waltz is really saying.
Yes, there are lots of "wars" happening all over the world but in relative terms per history, they are the equivalent of a few villages duking it out somewhere in the British empire. The empire itself is at peace.
No, I disagree. Prior to HFT, rich people, countries, and those with connections made out best. Historically if a big bank or big business wanted to change their currency holding to alter their risk exposure, they had to partner up with foreign entities or branches. And the liquidity was limited cause there were so few buyers and sellers.
For small businesses, banks, and regular people this translated to very high costs in currency transactions. Simply put, the big guys were taking higher risks that massive fluctuations could occur. They hedged this risk with inefficient methods of keeping vast amounts of foreign currencies, limiting the percentage of currency transfers, or bullying their partners to pay in specific currencies. And that wasn't even taking into consideration of what politicians felt like doing Monday morning.
With HFTs, the information of every movement of currency is instantly instilled into the various clearing houses and the global exchange rate is reflective of the new information. Additionally, they could predict the decision making of politicians and compensate for it. Basically spreading the Monday's massive price differential over a period of 1-6 months. What results is less price variation over time compared to the past. Yes, it fluctuates a LOT, but do we care how much it does when its within a 0.01% range? So the regular Joes can send something as little as $1000 over to many countries with NO transaction costs and a 0.05% variance from the current exchange rate. This was NOT possible in the old days. This only happens cause of the level of liquidity and price stabilization in the global markets. You STILL see this when you go to foreign Airports and see the currency exchange counters. Match it up to your iPhone brokerage App and see the spread those counters need to keep the risk down cause they handle slow moving physical cash that they must hedge on the back end. Compare them to counters from the old days which had even larger spreads.
Take Greece, we worry about it and get prepared for either path they take. We couldn't do this 50 years ago. We had to wait till Monday 9am to find out what to do and if it was the drachma, hope we got to the bank windows by 1pm else they ran out of Euros. Only the politicians and those connected spent Friday setting their affairs straight. With HFTs, it is still bad but it evens the playing field between the rich and poor. Every transaction is treated equally and accumulates in setting the exchange rates globally for the two currencies. You already know what is going to happen Monday based on the politicians "secret" preparations for Friday on Thursday!
It's one thing to lie about something and another to be completely truthful in a buyer-seller situation. Would you have a problem if I said I am selling this $100 book for $10,000 and I get a buyer? Would you say I scammed them? I clearly told them it was a $100 book and they can take it from me for $10,000... and they chose to. The government doesn't hunt down people who honestly over price their wares and are truthful about it. Nor should we. Else we would be a nanny state where our own money is completely centrally controlled in how we spend it.
This is no different, actually its more truthful than Monster Cables but we don't go after them. "Manipulating a few pennies out of thousands or million of people's bank..." is NOT what HFT does. It's net effect is actually to smooth out price differentials and provide a more stable price point that businesses can plan with. Yes, the fluctuation is very very high, but the standard deviation is extremely small.
The reason we complain about HFT is because we know it exists and we can complain about it. Before, no one knew what was happening and thus couldn't complain. Go to India, Honk Kong, or Japan to see what random stuff they complain about. You want to avoid HFTs, it is EXTREMELY simple: 1) Take more control over your investing. 2) Diversify your investments. 3) Don't be a day, week, or month trader. That's it, cause in net over time HFTs don't do anything significant.
You want to complain about something (what you are actually describing), complain about how the government doesn't do enough to put risk taking restrictions on pension funds. They do a little by not allowing pensions into Junk like bonds, but all that has accomplished is a complicated & nearly useless rating system. Rather the companies that take risks with pension funds should keep higher reserves and buy insurance similar to FDIC but where the principal of each year is completely covered. That will either make the fund managers seek truly safer investments or actually risk their companies & neck in the investments too.
And JP's liquidity was limited to a few rich and sucked in comparison to today. Back then they were the ones siphoning 1/8 of a dollar at a time but due to low volume, could only do millions. Now, it is billions, but atleast it is spread out across a lot more players. HFT basically brings the stock price in line with the present information (private and public) on hand as quickly as possible. Is there a cost for this... yes, but on a per transaction basis, it is small compared to the past. We only complain cause we know about it and are shocked at the total. In the past, we just didn't know cause it remained in a black box. Today's black boxes are smaller in the forms of $10/trade at your broker.
Market makers were understandably pissed that computers would do their job at 1/10 of a penny vs 1/8 of a dollar.
Dude! I would PAY to hear the real Santa talk about Super Computers cause he has got to have the sweetest glacier cooled quantum something helping him out.
Actually currency trading makes up a ton of the HFT. People just don't know about it. There are hundreds (thousands?) of machines around the world that do nothing but look for 1 USD => 0.65 GBP => 0.80 Euro => 1.001 USD. And all those machines will try to instantly trade in that clearing house making pennies till that fund holder is out of cash (seconds).
The benefit of all this is that the system will instantly correct that 0.001 diff to a zero and provide near instant liquidity for someone looking for a particular (openly traded) currency at a fraction of the cost it used to be in the past.
And what exactly was wrong with the flash crash... from an ordinary investor point of view? Basically machines sold sold sold, and other machines compensated with a massive delay (minutes) with a buy buy buy. Yes, some capital was lost from the market, but that didn't just go into the ether. It mostly went into brokers via transaction fees, the stock markets via transaction fees, and to the ordinary investors. Mostly, really rich people lost money and that is why it became such big issue.
Granted retiree & pension funds lost some too, but not much. And that's not a system issue. That is a regulation issue, that is a mis-understanding of risk issue. It could easily be fixed if the companies were regulated on how much risk they could take with those funds. We would just need to write laws on what kind of triggers companies would be allowed and what they can invest in (this part is already done) and how much insurance they need to buy and what they need to keep in reserve.
Yup, and that is the system we had. Unfortunately, the companies thought that system moved too slow and had a high transaction cost. So they bullied the regulators to let them keep their own clearing house... which they didn't properly maintain. It's the dumbest concept ever, private companies self-regulate on who owns the land today and then tell the government at their leisure. Little wonder that we are now seeing the benefit of our great grandfather's line of thinking.
BUT, wouldn't that be a great thing? The moron who had a software glitch would be out of the market in about 1 second cause his bank account (or those backing him) is empty. I don't really see a problem with putting $100 books up for $1,000,000. The fact that someone bought that book shouldn't concern us. People should have the freedom to make stupid decisions. Its the fastest correction system ever, takes money from those too stupid to keep it and gives it to those who would use it better... all entirely voluntarily! Because of this possibility, businesses have fail safes, fund transfer limits, and insurance to spread the risk. HFT is the worst thing for really rich accounts. They can't ignore it, and they can't keep from over leveraging it.
However, I do have a problem with how unfair the market is. If a company makes a mistake and loses 500 billion in pension returns for a 10,000 retirees, they get a small hit and tell the underlying investors... nothing of the reduced returns. The idiot fund manager won't make his 50% bonus that year. If a retiree questions, he is told that is just how the market works; risk/benefit BS. Never mind the fact that if the company just returned all the fees, bonuses, & taxes they took for prior year's returns which were undone by this loss, the investors would be whole.
Now, if a single unregulated independent fund manager loses a 100 billion dollars for ~2500 people... we plaster him all over the news, make sure he gets put in jail, demand that the orders be undone, demand the regulators or government make people whole, blah blah blah. He was bloody unregulated, these "investors" could have just as easily gone to a casino! But NO, they are powerful people and we need to kiss their toes.
At the same time, we dare not regulate the unregulated independent fund managers who continue to mail monthly statements of high returns. And companies scream that we restrict the big companies who manage retiree funds too much.
I am going to respond to you cause the other guy was just simply uncivilized and doesn't merit one. You got me wrong. I know a few people who actually got out of research and IT consulting to pursue a career in modeling cause that paid more. Of course that also meant that they were very attractive. So pretty has little to nothing to do with smarts and education. I understand the concept well. As I stated, I had nothing against the actors, I meant it.
I was criticizing the Ad. Ads are all about symbolism and stereotypes. And the vibe I got from the Ad was that of stereotypical 80's brightly colored comedy relief that tags along with the heroes in movies (think the reverse of Austin Powers, as it was making fun of the 80's hero and propped up the females) aka: 80's bimbo. My personal opinion was that, symbolically speaking, mixing what is an intellectual concept (beakers & lab) with an air head concept (lipstick, fashion, babes posing in various stances) was the wrong way to go. You may say equating beakers to intellect and lipstick to air head is wrong... and I completely agree. But that is what our society has equated them to be... just look at any recent movie... or even in the last 40 years. Even the tough heroines utilize lipstick and such to catch the bad guys off guard. Ask yourself what our society says & thinks about that symbol?
I don't think girls want to make it their goal to become models. I think that is a concept that gets environmentally influenced on them conscientiously and sub-conscientiously from the minute they realize that there are "boys" and "girls". It's a reality that we face. My problem was that rather than utilizing that reality to show pretty & intellectual babes, they choose to go the "posing models" route. Which although not true, doesn't symbolically come off as "intellectual"... just for a lack of a better word... bimbos.
On that point why was only a LAB taken as the symbol science? That is a very 80's boring, nerdy symbol. Why didn't they show astronomy, nanotechnology, or robotics? The message shouldn't have been, "Lipstick, poses, & pretty smiles work in a geeky lab too!" but rather "Women are just as beautiful and sexy _working_ in any of these fields!" (which is very true).
So, I am not leading some revolution on society, I am just saying... that was NOT the way to use society's symbolic representations. For me, the Ad almost felt satirical. If it wasn't for the source, I wouldn't have taken it seriously and have assumed as such. If you want girls to get interested in science... go ask Disney or Victoria Secret for advice. Those guys are experts in getting their customer's attention and guiding it which ever way they intend.
Just adding my voice to those that are already here. Seriously, 80's look with random high school symbols of science splashed over a lipstick commercial. I don't think the creators know what science is, nor that women are nothing like the bimbos shown in the video (nothing personal against the actors).
Lets put it this way, the stereotypical women depicted in the video couldn't get past grade school math let along drop into science. The Ad ends with "It's a girl thing" but that is NOT what science is (for those close to high BP, it's not a guy thing either). Science is science, and the rest of the Ad is what society "appears" to want girls to be like. All the Ad did was support the negative later!
Please, depending on the age group you are targeting, pay some experts in the field to get your message across like: Disney, Vogue, Glamour, Victoria Secret, or even Target! Don't buy rejected lipstick Ads on the cheap and throw a guy & some beakers into it.
You need to have [bi?] monthly Sales + Engineering meetings. And not top level ones, get the experienced low level guys on both sides. If your company is big, get those low level guys' managers. And make sure the cost doesn't touch the Engineering guys. Ideally it will come out of sales, cause it's a sales improving function, but it can come out of a general operating budget if need be.
Get 1 or 2 (backup) well experienced and seasoned employees from both camps to be leads in the meeting. And get an operations guy (new or old; pref: a good PM) as the neutral party who runs the meeting. The point of the meeting is to bring up concerns, upcoming requests, questions on products, questions on customers, the current pipeline, and potential solutions. The moderators are there to prioritize the discussion points, filter the requests (some items may have been answer before), and generate the content for the meeting. The runner keep things civil & on track, does the meeting minutes, and is the arbiter in opposing view points. If you are a small company and got someone who can do all three roles (again, neutral party), that's fine.
Preferably you have this meeting in person but virtual works too. If you got the bandwidth, you should also open it to all engineers and sales people who want to passively participate. Depending on the company size, one or two hours will do, no more than two and it can never run over. You need to create an environment where people will allocate the time to participate (not necessarily come to) and do so freely without reducing to a complaints board. Time should be allocated to note accomplishments for Engineers & Sales.
As you noted, Sales doesn't need to know how to program. But they do need to understand the limits & flexibility of your products, what causes trouble (cost & time) for the engineers, and where things were very successful. Your sales staff will internalize these things when dealing with clients, avoid problem areas, and encourage the stuff that will have a high rate of success.
At the same time, Engineers do not need to know how to sell. But they do need to know what audience the company is targetting, what those clients are asking, what the competition is providing, and what is coming in the future. Your engineers will internalize these things when they do their "offline" coding, increase code reuse, and in brainstorming future enhancements.
If you alter that just a bit, I have seen this too.
Sales: "we need function XYZ in our software" Dev: "no, that doesn't make any sense. We don't do that, the software doesn't work or support like that." Sales: "but the client asks for it" Dev: "client is a dumbass, and doesn't know our software" Sales: "customers pay your salary" [developer walks away and implements TUV (w/ budget & time overruns) which either passes off as XYZ or Sales butters up customer at next meeting]
The problem... Sales "twist the truth" to pass the sale. Devs don't communicate their area of expertise well. It should have gone like this:
Sales: "We need function XYZ in our software" Dev: "Our product isn't designed to support that." Sales: "Client asked for it and I told him we should be able to do it." Dev: "You should have told him that you would consult your dev team first." Sales: "This customer is paying us a lot and they require that feature." Dev: "It will cost us a lot of money & time to alter our product to accomodate that feature. You will need to tell the customer that either the product will be delivered late or that feature won't be there till later. Let me know what the customer decides and bring me a more detailed description of what it is they want. I can use that to estimate the additional cost of what you are selling." [Sales works with customer to make decision and Devs do their job]
Or how General Mills - Naturally Flavored Honey Nut Cherrios still says "More WHOLE GRAIN than any other ingredient!*" They even shamelessly explain "That's why it's first on the ingredient list!" and footnote "*as compared to any other single ingredient".
So what's right after "Whole Grain Oats"? Sugar, Modified Corn Starch, Honey, Brown Sugar Syrup. So basically: "sugar" in various forms, split just enough to keep #2 from overtaking #1. I guess we should be happy little mindless drones that atleast #2 or #3 isn't HFCS.
I remember when they just had the big heart and dumb ads on "Can Help Lower Cholesterol**" where each serving only gives you 1/4 of what can actually or may help lower cholesterol. The real atrocity would be if their Marketing guys weren't the highest paid in the industry.
But this optimization is no longer done. People kind of program for the xbox and keep in mind about porting to the PS3, and some times the Wii. Some even consider the PSP! Meaning your game is the lowest denominator.
I agree with you on the whole "don't call vegans stupid...". But the rest of your logic doesn't flow common science. If anything the rest of your post supports the grandparent's point more than yours.
Meat does not take a week to process. It hits the blood stream much faster than veggies. Fruits are only slightly faster but only in terms of energy. Armies incorporated meat into thier diets cause it was the fastest way to power them. Given choice, they would eat meat over veggies.
Our canines don't need to be anywhere as lethal as wolfs, cause we don't eat raw or full game meat. We don't take down live game or rip through hide to eat. We cook our food. Our teeth are much closer to omnis than herbs. Compare to apes or bears and you will see that if they had cooked food, they wouldnt need their rippers. As for their vegi side, they don't consume heavy veggies. They primarily go for softer, sweeter veggies like berries, and simple leaves.
As for the stomach, we have very small stomachs relatively compared to most other species. This is because cooked food digests easier. Compare that to a cow that needs four stomachs and multiple regurgitations to extact energy from grass. And a good portion of the waste is still in grass form. Most carnies have smaller relative stomachs than herbs.
The reality is that meat is a far more energy dense, and higher nutritional source than veggies. That doesn't mean we have to consume it, cause we are humans who can think in terms of morality and we aren't anywhere as limited as the rest of the species on this plant. But from a raw biological point, let's not kid ourselves.
Also to add, unless you only eat fruit, you are killing things... or worse!
Re:Why is dealing with IT like dealing with retard
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IT Calls of Shame
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IT support is NOT like other support. I am sure the others have their funny stories (ie: "Doc, my arm hurts real bad...") but not like IT. I have done basic electronic, mechanical, PC, and other assistance for family & friends. Given multiple trainings & classes. And currently part of my job is to kind of run a help desk support for cellphones. I would say ~5% of our user base falls into the below, and they take up >50% of our time.
Reality is, the majority of the customers never call the helpdesk. But some of those who do... would be the equivalent to a person who couldn't figure out how to open their car door and they are now pissed they are late to a meeting. I kid you NOT. And they want a bill to reflect what the fix was, NOT the time or resources it took to give them that. A good majority of the rest is simple, but dumb questions. Questions which are covered by a common FAQ. These two groups, no matter how good natured a tech is will eventually wear him down. That is the problem with IT Support.
My group does cellphone support (billing, & ordering) for 20k employees, but we don't support email on the smartphones. Those users are assumed to be smart enough to setup their own ActiveSync accounts and we tell them repeatedly that we don't support (read: get paid for) email setup. It is assumed that the managers will determine who is 'smart' enough to utilize the devices. We provided them picture friendly instructions, and FAQs. Here are some of the questions we get on a weekly basis:
1) How do you install iTunes on my iPhone (not on their PC/Mac)? 2) Why didn't this phone come setup with email? 3) The password is case-sensitive on my Droid too? 4) Do you know my unlock PIN? 5) Could someone come install Flash on my iPhone? 6) I got a new Blackberry, but my email isn't on it like my old one. 7) Why does my Droid keep prompting that my Exchange password is incorrect (email password changed by user on laptop)? 8) I approved that order yesterday, but I need you to ship it to..... (this is after he got the Fedex shipping notification).
The above are simple ones. Where it didn't take us minutes to an hour of back and forth questions to realize the user mistake. It wears down on you. I wouldn't give some of these users beepers, let alone smartphones. The problem is that there are honest real issues that do need support and these guys just take up pointless time away from them. And it is NOT an age thing. People fresh out of college to tenured seniors make up this group. We aren't that expensive, but they all get mad that a simple "Yes" response still costs them 10 minutes of a tech's time.
No,.... well yes. It all depends on how deep you want to follow the supply chain and how much you want to remain ignorant of. And enough of that second part will also lead to a NO.
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A name is just a name. The code doesn't belong to either you nor the new developer (most cases). It belongs to the client. If they wanted to change the name or the new developer (agent owner) wanted to; it is completely fine and legal cause they own the work. If you wrote something and you owned it, it is your right to put your sons or wife's name on it.
Having said that, it has nothing to do with proving you wrote it in an interview. If someone said that you didn't write something, cause another persons name is on it. MOVE ON. Get your head out of your ethical ass and simply say they clearly did a lot of updates and the current version belongs to the new dev but you wrote the original. If the interviewee says you didn't create it, simply tell them you can answer any question about it's early development. Have them prove you didn't do it. If you are that uncomfortable about answering such questions, then don't have it on your résumé. Just your depth of detail in answering any questions will show people that you have intimate knowledge of the program. Let them come to their own conclusions about their developer. Don't be the dumb ass attacking their company by throwing out or implying accusations (however valid) in an interview.
Remember you DO NOT own the code, but that doesn't mean you can't take credit for your hard work. Two completely separate things.
All this does now is slightly increase the cost to the credit card holders as it is just charging them rather than spreading it across the customer base. It also makes it very transparent to the consumer and becomes another factor in choosing to purchase at a certain retailer.
Some retailers will choose to not pass on the cost to those generating it. Others will pass on the cost similar to a tax. Yet others will pass on the cost via discounts for cash and maybe debit. It will be interesting to see which of the prior wins. 2-3% isn't much, but today it does affect where people shop for gas. So I think it will have an impact on sales and retail is a low margin business.
The whole point of credit is to increase volume. I think the retailers who do NOT pass on the cost will eventually win. Also the cost of manually handling cash is not small, just better covered up and has more unknown risk. So for small to some parts of middle level retail this may make sense as they already have the infrastructure for handling cash and it is underutilized. But for semi-large to large operations, any increase in cash transactions probably mean additional costs.
For the former, they will choose the discounts for cash. The later will continue business as usual. I don't see my normal shopping retails like Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, and Target changing anything. But maybe Walgreens and CVS will go the Aldi way. I am a credit card guy so I will probably adjust by lowering the volume I do in the smaller group.
Make sure that you read up on all the building codes or talk to an inspector for the below.
1) A 2-3" conduit from top to bottom. Possibly two depending on the number of wires you will be running which depends on the number of rooms on each floor. Don't forget to fire stop and steel plate the floor/ceiling studs.
2) 1" electrical (grey PVC) conduit in each room, including garage. Top floor goes to attic, and bottom floors go to basement. If no basement, all conduits go to attic. Same regs as #1
3) Drop a HDMI over ethernet where ever you are going to put a TV or system. All lead back to the command center so you can do & change what links to what there.
4) Put in a magnetic circuit trip on each window and door. Most homes already come with this (security system) but you can better segment the house (ie: a circuit for sets of living room windows). Of course leading back to command center.
5) Wire in motion sensors in rooms and hallways (cameras are a bit creepy). Again, this may already be done for you. Wireless is fine too.
6) In wall speakers in every room (hey, you said you have 10k plus) (I haven't done these)
7) In wall mics (I haven't done these)
8) Camera for front and back door.
9) UPS (w/ 2x cheap car batteries) at the command center.
10) Tablet on fridge for kitchen inventory & movies
1-3 & 8-10 are obvious. 4 & 5 you want to hook up to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It can email you a SMS when your phone (you) isn't in the house and someone trips one. 6 & 7 if you want to do voice commands with playlists or your TV(s).
I think the above pretty much summarize the demands on your command center.
Why was this marked +4 Interesting? The poster basically posted a random all-encompassing opinion with out any sources.
In North America? Have you traveled to parts outside of the Continental US to make that claim? I don't think Mexico & Canada would like to be put into the same bucket.
Least Respected? You said NA so I am guessing compared to the world. There are many countries out there where the senior students run the school and/or the teachers only show up to work on pay day.
Poorest Paid Professional? Google: http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state/
Average HOUSEHOLD income? Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
Nuff Said (if you compare to most other countries, foreign teachers make less or about the same relative to other jobs there).
Longest hours? Google: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/survey-teachers-work-53-hours-per-week-on-average/2012/03/16/gIQAqGxYGS_blog.html
53?!? And 6-8 weeks of PTO? WOW. Talk to any IT Developer, 50-100 hours per week. Average, easily 60. I was in Accounting & Auditing and averaged 55 hours (60+ for month, quarter, & annual closes). In IT, averaged 55; 100+ for deadlines. As an IT PM, 50-70 hours. 15-20 days PTO + 10 holidays.
And no, that does not count the hours spent on further education, certifications, and air travel for clients. And in the consulting world, not seeing home Monday to Thursday. Yes, our salaries are higher, 50k starting and growing to 80k+ over 5+ years, but considering the hours, I think comparable to teachers.
BUT COME ON, "consistently one of the least respected, poorest paid professionals... longest hours of anyone"? BULL! Go see a few episodes of Dirty Jobs.
Seniority has nothing to do with teachers becoming "heroes". My teacher heroes can be counted on both hands and they were some of the least paid in the schools (except 2). I respect them to the Nth degree. But the worst teachers, although just 4, made some of the highest salaries (90k+). Every time this topic comes up, I remember those 4 and think how much of a handicap each generation that they touch start off with. All the other teachers were mediocre but I still thank them for their contribution to what I am today.
THANK YOU. I had to come this far down to read a post where the poster may know SOMETHING about HFT and trading in general. People see "$450m" mistake and instantly think that is a BAD thing and that HFT is the culprit that must be stopped. I was losing faith in Slashdot.
People, believe it or not, HFT is one of the few things that migrates power from the centralized, connected elites to the little guys (and if you aren't making $500k+ a year, you are the little guy). It is one of the few equalizers that is on your side. Before, being on the trading floor or in the box was worth the massive cost to be, now a days, it is more a symbol of "Wall Street" and "Markets" than anything else of real value. This is because electronic trading & HFT have made the location of the end user and their position in society less relevant.
I think the modern day equivalents of "Export Tea leaves to Britain, buy back, and pay taxes on tea" and "Have coastal territories pay taxes on salt" is Design and Software patents.
There are so many people on here saying Waltz is a "idiot" or "moron" for an observation he has made. Talk about knee jerk and shooting the messenger. I understand about not RTFA but not RTFS which is fairly clear? Waltz is making a very clear & though provoking observation that most people (and clearly it exists here too) are "head stuck in the sand" about.
All Waltz is saying is that through out human history, nukes have been the best deterrent to big wars. Prior to nuclear proliferation, there was a MAJOR country at war with another big country every bloody decade. And it impacted a significant part of the known world population. We fought with Japan, Russia, & Germany. Once we all got nukes, we stopped fighting on the big scale cause escalation will result in mutual destruction. We nuked Japan once, do you think we will nuke them again? Do you think Japan would invade and conquer like it did before and risk getting nuked? We aren't "enlightened", we are the same as before.
Yes, nukes are not a permanent solution... BUT THERE ISN'T ONE. There is no such thing as "getting rid of nukes". That is fairly tale talk. The world doesn't have a Superman standing on a incorruptible moral highground who can detect nukes around the world and toss them into the sun. What nuclear disarmament means in reality is that a small batch of people have secret nukes and the rest don't. And this is a far more dangerous and unstable situation than nuclear proliferation.
Why? Cause when one/few nations have nukes, they have a very high value weapon: They can destroy your enemy! When your enemy has nukes... Nukes will destroy you! Before, you risked losing, but you could win too. Someone has to win! Now, BOTH parties' options are one totally wins, OR more likely both totally lose and having no winner at all. The reward of war has gotten smaller and risk has gotten higher.
Just look at our history and even today. USSR and the US never went to war. They both setup nukes right next to each other but never went to war. They hated and despised each other right down to the 2 year olds, but no war! India didn't want Pakistan to have nukes cause else the sky will fall. Didn't happen once they got it. In fact, they have defused every escalating skirmish since they both got nukes. What's the most unstable region in the world? Middle East... the only location where one superpower has the nukes and the rest don't. So the rest constantly scheme about how to take out the giant and the giant schemes how to keep the little guys down. Both live in constant fear of the other in a restless twitching mode of operation.
NO, nukes are not a permanent solution and they will cause utter destruction... if used. But, the risk of that is small and there is no realistic alternative. The best deterrent that humans have come up with against war is nukes. The best deterrent humans have come up with against nukes.... is nukes. That's all Waltz is really saying.
Yes, there are lots of "wars" happening all over the world but in relative terms per history, they are the equivalent of a few villages duking it out somewhere in the British empire. The empire itself is at peace.
The only thing true about this statement is that is will _always_ resolve to be "False". Or 0 for you grey beards.
No, I disagree. Prior to HFT, rich people, countries, and those with connections made out best. Historically if a big bank or big business wanted to change their currency holding to alter their risk exposure, they had to partner up with foreign entities or branches. And the liquidity was limited cause there were so few buyers and sellers.
For small businesses, banks, and regular people this translated to very high costs in currency transactions. Simply put, the big guys were taking higher risks that massive fluctuations could occur. They hedged this risk with inefficient methods of keeping vast amounts of foreign currencies, limiting the percentage of currency transfers, or bullying their partners to pay in specific currencies. And that wasn't even taking into consideration of what politicians felt like doing Monday morning.
With HFTs, the information of every movement of currency is instantly instilled into the various clearing houses and the global exchange rate is reflective of the new information. Additionally, they could predict the decision making of politicians and compensate for it. Basically spreading the Monday's massive price differential over a period of 1-6 months. What results is less price variation over time compared to the past. Yes, it fluctuates a LOT, but do we care how much it does when its within a 0.01% range? So the regular Joes can send something as little as $1000 over to many countries with NO transaction costs and a 0.05% variance from the current exchange rate. This was NOT possible in the old days. This only happens cause of the level of liquidity and price stabilization in the global markets. You STILL see this when you go to foreign Airports and see the currency exchange counters. Match it up to your iPhone brokerage App and see the spread those counters need to keep the risk down cause they handle slow moving physical cash that they must hedge on the back end. Compare them to counters from the old days which had even larger spreads.
Take Greece, we worry about it and get prepared for either path they take. We couldn't do this 50 years ago. We had to wait till Monday 9am to find out what to do and if it was the drachma, hope we got to the bank windows by 1pm else they ran out of Euros. Only the politicians and those connected spent Friday setting their affairs straight. With HFTs, it is still bad but it evens the playing field between the rich and poor. Every transaction is treated equally and accumulates in setting the exchange rates globally for the two currencies. You already know what is going to happen Monday based on the politicians "secret" preparations for Friday on Thursday!
It's one thing to lie about something and another to be completely truthful in a buyer-seller situation. Would you have a problem if I said I am selling this $100 book for $10,000 and I get a buyer? Would you say I scammed them? I clearly told them it was a $100 book and they can take it from me for $10,000... and they chose to. The government doesn't hunt down people who honestly over price their wares and are truthful about it. Nor should we. Else we would be a nanny state where our own money is completely centrally controlled in how we spend it.
This is no different, actually its more truthful than Monster Cables but we don't go after them. "Manipulating a few pennies out of thousands or million of people's bank..." is NOT what HFT does. It's net effect is actually to smooth out price differentials and provide a more stable price point that businesses can plan with. Yes, the fluctuation is very very high, but the standard deviation is extremely small.
The reason we complain about HFT is because we know it exists and we can complain about it. Before, no one knew what was happening and thus couldn't complain. Go to India, Honk Kong, or Japan to see what random stuff they complain about. You want to avoid HFTs, it is EXTREMELY simple: 1) Take more control over your investing. 2) Diversify your investments. 3) Don't be a day, week, or month trader. That's it, cause in net over time HFTs don't do anything significant.
You want to complain about something (what you are actually describing), complain about how the government doesn't do enough to put risk taking restrictions on pension funds. They do a little by not allowing pensions into Junk like bonds, but all that has accomplished is a complicated & nearly useless rating system. Rather the companies that take risks with pension funds should keep higher reserves and buy insurance similar to FDIC but where the principal of each year is completely covered. That will either make the fund managers seek truly safer investments or actually risk their companies & neck in the investments too.
And JP's liquidity was limited to a few rich and sucked in comparison to today. Back then they were the ones siphoning 1/8 of a dollar at a time but due to low volume, could only do millions. Now, it is billions, but atleast it is spread out across a lot more players. HFT basically brings the stock price in line with the present information (private and public) on hand as quickly as possible. Is there a cost for this... yes, but on a per transaction basis, it is small compared to the past. We only complain cause we know about it and are shocked at the total. In the past, we just didn't know cause it remained in a black box. Today's black boxes are smaller in the forms of $10/trade at your broker.
Market makers were understandably pissed that computers would do their job at 1/10 of a penny vs 1/8 of a dollar.
Dude! I would PAY to hear the real Santa talk about Super Computers cause he has got to have the sweetest glacier cooled quantum something helping him out.
Actually currency trading makes up a ton of the HFT. People just don't know about it. There are hundreds (thousands?) of machines around the world that do nothing but look for 1 USD => 0.65 GBP => 0.80 Euro => 1.001 USD. And all those machines will try to instantly trade in that clearing house making pennies till that fund holder is out of cash (seconds).
The benefit of all this is that the system will instantly correct that 0.001 diff to a zero and provide near instant liquidity for someone looking for a particular (openly traded) currency at a fraction of the cost it used to be in the past.
And what exactly was wrong with the flash crash... from an ordinary investor point of view? Basically machines sold sold sold, and other machines compensated with a massive delay (minutes) with a buy buy buy. Yes, some capital was lost from the market, but that didn't just go into the ether. It mostly went into brokers via transaction fees, the stock markets via transaction fees, and to the ordinary investors. Mostly, really rich people lost money and that is why it became such big issue.
Granted retiree & pension funds lost some too, but not much. And that's not a system issue. That is a regulation issue, that is a mis-understanding of risk issue. It could easily be fixed if the companies were regulated on how much risk they could take with those funds. We would just need to write laws on what kind of triggers companies would be allowed and what they can invest in (this part is already done) and how much insurance they need to buy and what they need to keep in reserve.
Yup, and that is the system we had. Unfortunately, the companies thought that system moved too slow and had a high transaction cost. So they bullied the regulators to let them keep their own clearing house... which they didn't properly maintain. It's the dumbest concept ever, private companies self-regulate on who owns the land today and then tell the government at their leisure. Little wonder that we are now seeing the benefit of our great grandfather's line of thinking.
BUT, wouldn't that be a great thing? The moron who had a software glitch would be out of the market in about 1 second cause his bank account (or those backing him) is empty. I don't really see a problem with putting $100 books up for $1,000,000. The fact that someone bought that book shouldn't concern us. People should have the freedom to make stupid decisions. Its the fastest correction system ever, takes money from those too stupid to keep it and gives it to those who would use it better... all entirely voluntarily! Because of this possibility, businesses have fail safes, fund transfer limits, and insurance to spread the risk. HFT is the worst thing for really rich accounts. They can't ignore it, and they can't keep from over leveraging it.
However, I do have a problem with how unfair the market is. If a company makes a mistake and loses 500 billion in pension returns for a 10,000 retirees, they get a small hit and tell the underlying investors... nothing of the reduced returns. The idiot fund manager won't make his 50% bonus that year. If a retiree questions, he is told that is just how the market works; risk/benefit BS. Never mind the fact that if the company just returned all the fees, bonuses, & taxes they took for prior year's returns which were undone by this loss, the investors would be whole.
Now, if a single unregulated independent fund manager loses a 100 billion dollars for ~2500 people... we plaster him all over the news, make sure he gets put in jail, demand that the orders be undone, demand the regulators or government make people whole, blah blah blah. He was bloody unregulated, these "investors" could have just as easily gone to a casino! But NO, they are powerful people and we need to kiss their toes.
At the same time, we dare not regulate the unregulated independent fund managers who continue to mail monthly statements of high returns. And companies scream that we restrict the big companies who manage retiree funds too much.
THAT's the REAL problem with the markets.
I am going to respond to you cause the other guy was just simply uncivilized and doesn't merit one. You got me wrong. I know a few people who actually got out of research and IT consulting to pursue a career in modeling cause that paid more. Of course that also meant that they were very attractive. So pretty has little to nothing to do with smarts and education. I understand the concept well. As I stated, I had nothing against the actors, I meant it.
I was criticizing the Ad. Ads are all about symbolism and stereotypes. And the vibe I got from the Ad was that of stereotypical 80's brightly colored comedy relief that tags along with the heroes in movies (think the reverse of Austin Powers, as it was making fun of the 80's hero and propped up the females) aka: 80's bimbo. My personal opinion was that, symbolically speaking, mixing what is an intellectual concept (beakers & lab) with an air head concept (lipstick, fashion, babes posing in various stances) was the wrong way to go. You may say equating beakers to intellect and lipstick to air head is wrong... and I completely agree. But that is what our society has equated them to be... just look at any recent movie... or even in the last 40 years. Even the tough heroines utilize lipstick and such to catch the bad guys off guard. Ask yourself what our society says & thinks about that symbol?
I don't think girls want to make it their goal to become models. I think that is a concept that gets environmentally influenced on them conscientiously and sub-conscientiously from the minute they realize that there are "boys" and "girls". It's a reality that we face. My problem was that rather than utilizing that reality to show pretty & intellectual babes, they choose to go the "posing models" route. Which although not true, doesn't symbolically come off as "intellectual"... just for a lack of a better word... bimbos.
On that point why was only a LAB taken as the symbol science? That is a very 80's boring, nerdy symbol. Why didn't they show astronomy, nanotechnology, or robotics? The message shouldn't have been, "Lipstick, poses, & pretty smiles work in a geeky lab too!" but rather "Women are just as beautiful and sexy _working_ in any of these fields!" (which is very true).
So, I am not leading some revolution on society, I am just saying ... that was NOT the way to use society's symbolic representations. For me, the Ad almost felt satirical. If it wasn't for the source, I wouldn't have taken it seriously and have assumed as such. If you want girls to get interested in science... go ask Disney or Victoria Secret for advice. Those guys are experts in getting their customer's attention and guiding it which ever way they intend.
Just adding my voice to those that are already here. Seriously, 80's look with random high school symbols of science splashed over a lipstick commercial. I don't think the creators know what science is, nor that women are nothing like the bimbos shown in the video (nothing personal against the actors).
Lets put it this way, the stereotypical women depicted in the video couldn't get past grade school math let along drop into science. The Ad ends with "It's a girl thing" but that is NOT what science is (for those close to high BP, it's not a guy thing either). Science is science, and the rest of the Ad is what society "appears" to want girls to be like. All the Ad did was support the negative later!
Please, depending on the age group you are targeting, pay some experts in the field to get your message across like: Disney, Vogue, Glamour, Victoria Secret, or even Target! Don't buy rejected lipstick Ads on the cheap and throw a guy & some beakers into it.
You need to have [bi?] monthly Sales + Engineering meetings. And not top level ones, get the experienced low level guys on both sides. If your company is big, get those low level guys' managers. And make sure the cost doesn't touch the Engineering guys. Ideally it will come out of sales, cause it's a sales improving function, but it can come out of a general operating budget if need be.
Get 1 or 2 (backup) well experienced and seasoned employees from both camps to be leads in the meeting. And get an operations guy (new or old; pref: a good PM) as the neutral party who runs the meeting. The point of the meeting is to bring up concerns, upcoming requests, questions on products, questions on customers, the current pipeline, and potential solutions. The moderators are there to prioritize the discussion points, filter the requests (some items may have been answer before), and generate the content for the meeting. The runner keep things civil & on track, does the meeting minutes, and is the arbiter in opposing view points. If you are a small company and got someone who can do all three roles (again, neutral party), that's fine.
Preferably you have this meeting in person but virtual works too. If you got the bandwidth, you should also open it to all engineers and sales people who want to passively participate. Depending on the company size, one or two hours will do, no more than two and it can never run over. You need to create an environment where people will allocate the time to participate (not necessarily come to) and do so freely without reducing to a complaints board. Time should be allocated to note accomplishments for Engineers & Sales.
As you noted, Sales doesn't need to know how to program. But they do need to understand the limits & flexibility of your products, what causes trouble (cost & time) for the engineers, and where things were very successful. Your sales staff will internalize these things when dealing with clients, avoid problem areas, and encourage the stuff that will have a high rate of success.
At the same time, Engineers do not need to know how to sell. But they do need to know what audience the company is targetting, what those clients are asking, what the competition is providing, and what is coming in the future. Your engineers will internalize these things when they do their "offline" coding, increase code reuse, and in brainstorming future enhancements.
If you alter that just a bit, I have seen this too.
Sales: "we need function XYZ in our software"
Dev: "no, that doesn't make any sense. We don't do that, the software doesn't work or support like that."
Sales: "but the client asks for it"
Dev: "client is a dumbass, and doesn't know our software"
Sales: "customers pay your salary"
[developer walks away and implements TUV (w/ budget & time overruns) which either passes off as XYZ or Sales butters up customer at next meeting]
The problem... Sales "twist the truth" to pass the sale. Devs don't communicate their area of expertise well. It should have gone like this:
Sales: "We need function XYZ in our software"
Dev: "Our product isn't designed to support that."
Sales: "Client asked for it and I told him we should be able to do it."
Dev: "You should have told him that you would consult your dev team first."
Sales: "This customer is paying us a lot and they require that feature."
Dev: "It will cost us a lot of money & time to alter our product to accomodate that feature. You will need to tell the customer that either the product will be delivered late or that feature won't be there till later. Let me know what the customer decides and bring me a more detailed description of what it is they want. I can use that to estimate the additional cost of what you are selling."
[Sales works with customer to make decision and Devs do their job]
Or how General Mills - Naturally Flavored Honey Nut Cherrios still says "More WHOLE GRAIN than any other ingredient!*" They even shamelessly explain "That's why it's first on the ingredient list!" and footnote "*as compared to any other single ingredient".
So what's right after "Whole Grain Oats"? Sugar, Modified Corn Starch, Honey, Brown Sugar Syrup. So basically: "sugar" in various forms, split just enough to keep #2 from overtaking #1. I guess we should be happy little mindless drones that atleast #2 or #3 isn't HFCS.
I remember when they just had the big heart and dumb ads on "Can Help Lower Cholesterol**" where each serving only gives you 1/4 of what can actually or may help lower cholesterol. The real atrocity would be if their Marketing guys weren't the highest paid in the industry.
But this optimization is no longer done. People kind of program for the xbox and keep in mind about porting to the PS3, and some times the Wii. Some even consider the PSP! Meaning your game is the lowest denominator.
I agree with you on the whole "don't call vegans stupid...". But the rest of your logic doesn't flow common science. If anything the rest of your post supports the grandparent's point more than yours.
Meat does not take a week to process. It hits the blood stream much faster than veggies. Fruits are only slightly faster but only in terms of energy. Armies incorporated meat into thier diets cause it was the fastest way to power them. Given choice, they would eat meat over veggies.
Our canines don't need to be anywhere as lethal as wolfs, cause we don't eat raw or full game meat. We don't take down live game or rip through hide to eat. We cook our food. Our teeth are much closer to omnis than herbs. Compare to apes or bears and you will see that if they had cooked food, they wouldnt need their rippers. As for their vegi side, they don't consume heavy veggies. They primarily go for softer, sweeter veggies like berries, and simple leaves.
As for the stomach, we have very small stomachs relatively compared to most other species. This is because cooked food digests easier. Compare that to a cow that needs four stomachs and multiple regurgitations to extact energy from grass. And a good portion of the waste is still in grass form. Most carnies have smaller relative stomachs than herbs.
The reality is that meat is a far more energy dense, and higher nutritional source than veggies. That doesn't mean we have to consume it, cause we are humans who can think in terms of morality and we aren't anywhere as limited as the rest of the species on this plant. But from a raw biological point, let's not kid ourselves.
Also to add, unless you only eat fruit, you are killing things... or worse!
IT support is NOT like other support. I am sure the others have their funny stories (ie: "Doc, my arm hurts real bad...") but not like IT. I have done basic electronic, mechanical, PC, and other assistance for family & friends. Given multiple trainings & classes. And currently part of my job is to kind of run a help desk support for cellphones. I would say ~5% of our user base falls into the below, and they take up >50% of our time.
Reality is, the majority of the customers never call the helpdesk. But some of those who do... would be the equivalent to a person who couldn't figure out how to open their car door and they are now pissed they are late to a meeting. I kid you NOT. And they want a bill to reflect what the fix was, NOT the time or resources it took to give them that. A good majority of the rest is simple, but dumb questions. Questions which are covered by a common FAQ. These two groups, no matter how good natured a tech is will eventually wear him down. That is the problem with IT Support.
My group does cellphone support (billing, & ordering) for 20k employees, but we don't support email on the smartphones. Those users are assumed to be smart enough to setup their own ActiveSync accounts and we tell them repeatedly that we don't support (read: get paid for) email setup. It is assumed that the managers will determine who is 'smart' enough to utilize the devices. We provided them picture friendly instructions, and FAQs. Here are some of the questions we get on a weekly basis:
1) How do you install iTunes on my iPhone (not on their PC/Mac)? ..... (this is after he got the Fedex shipping notification).
2) Why didn't this phone come setup with email?
3) The password is case-sensitive on my Droid too?
4) Do you know my unlock PIN?
5) Could someone come install Flash on my iPhone?
6) I got a new Blackberry, but my email isn't on it like my old one.
7) Why does my Droid keep prompting that my Exchange password is incorrect (email password changed by user on laptop)?
8) I approved that order yesterday, but I need you to ship it to
The above are simple ones. Where it didn't take us minutes to an hour of back and forth questions to realize the user mistake. It wears down on you. I wouldn't give some of these users beepers, let alone smartphones. The problem is that there are honest real issues that do need support and these guys just take up pointless time away from them. And it is NOT an age thing. People fresh out of college to tenured seniors make up this group. We aren't that expensive, but they all get mad that a simple "Yes" response still costs them 10 minutes of a tech's time.
No, .... well yes. It all depends on how deep you want to follow the supply chain and how much you want to remain ignorant of. And enough of that second part will also lead to a NO.