Work to build an understanding of senior management business objectives, work to align your scorecard to key business goals and initiatives and focus on performance against these in your report, senior management will be able to relate to your contribution and may start to see IT as a value partner in achieving business agility and industry leading performance instead of as a utility provider.
it might be tough to start with as you will be starting to report on their expert area and from time to time they will have a different perspective on success to you but if you declare what you are trying to do up front then you can likely buy the cooperation of a key business sponsor that can help you speak their language and make it work.
You are clearly misinformed as regards the capability of (according to our Prime Minister), the worlds 4th most sigificant military power, this is ok as the output from the defence review was only yesterday.
To summarise
We no longer have enough ships to do anything useful, we cannot afford for them to carry missiles.
Anything in the future that might have been useful has been cancelled in favour of aircraft carriers with no planes (sorry, one might have 12, eventually), meanwhile our only current aircraft aircraft carrier is being mothballed and all its planes decommssioned.
We couldn't fight another Falklands if we wanted to as we no longer have the reach or the strength in our armed forces to do so...
I think this is just an example of someone who is exhibiting the natural human trait of 'resistance to change', we do however have an even stronger trait and that's the desire to evolve.
The first console I ever played with was an old Binatone machine, it played ping pong and had a light gun, the second was the Atari VCS, it had a joystick, this was better at doing somethings as it allowed you to move in more dimensions, I don't think it was any better at Tennis.
Thereafter, down the years I have used many controllers, I play a lot of PC games and have both an old fashioned Sidewinder for playing some sims (I loved the SW FF btw) and a Thrustmaster FCS for playing some sims more properly, both are great at sims but would be rubbish at Tennis.
The only console I own is a Wii, the Wiimote is great at Tennis and with the nunchuk and the Zelda Crossbow plastic extension it also makes a great gun. If you make a Wiimote look like a wheel with another bit of plastic then that works fine as well.
I'm not sure we'll ever see one true controller as I think the controller is part of the immersive gameplay experience so it needs to have a character that matches what you are trying to achieve, both in order to feel right and also in order to work well. The wiimote is good at achieving this as it's different sleeves allow it to very effectively bridge the gap between what it is and what you want it to be like for a particular game.
I'm afraid I've never really been into fighting games so can't empathise with the loss of being able to make your favourite combo, I did really like my MS FF though and I've not found anything which felt quite as good since for the purpose of flying helicopters in BF1942 so I guess that's kind of similar. It was rubbish at Tennis though.
Using DRM make a game more difficult to pirate, this drives up sales, particularly in the 18-30 age group.
The number of people who will actively boycott a title because of DRM is extremely small and below the level of the publishers 'Do I care about this ?' radar.
MS are spending a lot of time saying to Enterprises that their move to Vista is very important as it will make the move to Windows 7 a lot easier.
Its terrifying that they are saying' please buy our product, it won't do anything special for you but it will make it easier for you to buy our product again later' and getting away with it !
Other replies to this story have adequately dealt with the issue of whether Amazon had a right to cancel an order for an item which had been incorrectly priced.
Further replies seem to indicate that Amazon sent many of its customers emails advising them of the cancellation and would have likely attempted to do so in the case of the customer who reported this story.
What I haven't seen debated is the point about the disappearance of the item from the order history - I had an issue in the Uk last month where Amazon becamse unable to supply a book I had orders three months ago due to continued isuses obtaining stock of the book, they wrote to me confirming that the order was cancelled and at that point THE ITEM WAS COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM MY ACCOUNT HISTORY (not just listed as canncelled, just gone !)
I have no problems with amazon cancelling orders at a point where they decide they can't reasonably fulfill them, I don't think its good system design on their part for these cancellations to result in the item completly disappearing from users account records.
So, I think the only real debate remaining is, should they change that practice ?
The BSA was formed and initially funded by the major software companies as a revenue protection organisation, their only motive is and always has been to ensure that as many copies of software out in the commercial world are paid for as is possible, by whatever means achieved the desired result.
How could anyone beleive it was ever anything else ?
much of my professional life has been spent helping to recover users/systems from faults which 'should never happen'
strangely, it only seems to be the SW developers who never expect this behaviour, the support guys and end users both seem to expect them on a regular basis.
I think its a valid example of operating as closely within the boundaries of the law as are possible in order to gain competitive advantage.
There are risks associated with using legal but potentially immoral tax avoidance strategies - in the case of Google there are reputational risks for a company preaching good moral beahaviour to be found to be using loopholes in the law to pay less taxes (gaps in taxation which are ultimately picked up by the taxpaying public).
It would be interesting to note that these risks are mitigated to an extent by the fact that everyone else is doing the same (indluing those that wopuld like to make press out of Google having questionably immoral accounting practices).
In the case of cheating search engines, it might be a little unethical but its not illegal and its certainly not harmful to the public reputation of a company even if caught (although it would harm their search ranking so there is a real cost risk potential), it's not even as reputationally harmful as offshoring revenue for tax purposes as it doesn't have any financial impact to the man in the street.
Perhaps a more interesting question is that - If a company is willing to exploit tax loopholes and offshore their revenue, robbing the US government of valid income and burdening the US taxpayer with additional tax dollars as a consequence then where do their ethical boundaries begin and end and how do they reconcile this with a mission statement of not being 'evil' ?
I'm sorry but anyone that leaves themselves as wide open to fraudulent use as ebay does whilst quite happily taking commission from the perpetrators is at best immoral and at worst as guilty as hell of fraud themselves.
It would be really interesting if someone could make a reasonable estimate of the number fraudulent/illegal transactions each year that take place on ebay and then work out how much ebay themselves are earning out of that.
Perhaps if ebay spent that amount on combatting fraud each year rather than what I'd guess would be a tiny fraction of it then people might start to take them seriously.
I'd agree entirely, many Wii owners will only buy 2 or 3 games during it's lifetime.
Personally I look out for anything that scores over about an 8 on gamespot (in both critic and user areas) and I buy that, otherwise I make sure I try stuff first, consequently I reckon I'll buy maybe 8-10 games max (so far its only Wii sports, Wii play, Res. Evil, Mario Galaxy and GH 3).
As many have realised, Nintendo changed the rules and have taken themselves out of the war.
There is currently a two side race to the best HD next gen console between MS and Sony, MS are currently winning that hands down and I don't think Sony (outside of Japan) have a hope of catching up.
Nintendo have left the race, and the war by creating a fun, cheap, party machine that is attracting a new type of buyer as well as a proportion of the traditional gamer market.
I believe this expanded potential market goes someway to explaining the constant shortages of the Nintendo console and why everyone seems happy with their sales at the moment.
As an example - I'm a 38 yr old father of four and I've bought myself a Wii so I can play it with my younger kids, I've also bought one for my 19 yr old son. I've never bought a console for myself before and have no interest in games which offer 20 hrs+ of play as I simply don't have 20hrs to spend playing a game.
As an aside, the only game I've finished (due to time) in the last 10 yrs has been Portal.
In conclusion, I believe that Nintendo and MS will remain happy and Sony, in the long term will become pretty unhappy but will still claim to be happy.
Slashdot Mirror
Work to build an understanding of senior management business objectives, work to align your scorecard to key business goals and initiatives and focus on performance against these in your report, senior management will be able to relate to your contribution and may start to see IT as a value partner in achieving business agility and industry leading performance instead of as a utility provider.
it might be tough to start with as you will be starting to report on their expert area and from time to time they will have a different perspective on success to you but if you declare what you are trying to do up front then you can likely buy the cooperation of a key business sponsor that can help you speak their language and make it work.
why can't you just buy it on Steam ?
You are clearly misinformed as regards the capability of (according to our Prime Minister), the worlds 4th most sigificant military power, this is ok as the output from the defence review was only yesterday.
To summarise
We no longer have enough ships to do anything useful, we cannot afford for them to carry missiles.
Anything in the future that might have been useful has been cancelled in favour of aircraft carriers with no planes (sorry, one might have 12, eventually), meanwhile our only current aircraft aircraft carrier is being mothballed and all its planes decommssioned.
We couldn't fight another Falklands if we wanted to as we no longer have the reach or the strength in our armed forces to do so...
I think this is just an example of someone who is exhibiting the natural human trait of 'resistance to change', we do however have an even stronger trait and that's the desire to evolve.
The first console I ever played with was an old Binatone machine, it played ping pong and had a light gun, the second was the Atari VCS, it had a joystick, this was better at doing somethings as it allowed you to move in more dimensions, I don't think it was any better at Tennis.
Thereafter, down the years I have used many controllers, I play a lot of PC games and have both an old fashioned Sidewinder for playing some sims (I loved the SW FF btw) and a Thrustmaster FCS for playing some sims more properly, both are great at sims but would be rubbish at Tennis.
The only console I own is a Wii, the Wiimote is great at Tennis and with the nunchuk and the Zelda Crossbow plastic extension it also makes a great gun. If you make a Wiimote look like a wheel with another bit of plastic then that works fine as well.
I'm not sure we'll ever see one true controller as I think the controller is part of the immersive gameplay experience so it needs to have a character that matches what you are trying to achieve, both in order to feel right and also in order to work well. The wiimote is good at achieving this as it's different sleeves allow it to very effectively bridge the gap between what it is and what you want it to be like for a particular game.
I'm afraid I've never really been into fighting games so can't empathise with the loss of being able to make your favourite combo, I did really like my MS FF though and I've not found anything which felt quite as good since for the purpose of flying helicopters in BF1942 so I guess that's kind of similar. It was rubbish at Tennis though.
Using DRM make a game more difficult to pirate, this drives up sales, particularly in the 18-30 age group.
The number of people who will actively boycott a title because of DRM is extremely small and below the level of the publishers 'Do I care about this ?' radar.
MS are spending a lot of time saying to Enterprises that their move to Vista is very important as it will make the move to Windows 7 a lot easier.
Its terrifying that they are saying' please buy our product, it won't do anything special for you but it will make it easier for you to buy our product again later' and getting away with it !
I've even got a map around here someplace with an x marking the spot...
I didn't think you could track accuracy below a metre with anything other than Ultra WideBand
this from a launch vehicle designed to carry a maximum of three satellites internally (the other seven were sitting on the roof).
I made a Mii with a face like a Peanut the other day...
7.5% is actually a hair over $65 million
Other replies to this story have adequately dealt with the issue of whether Amazon had a right to cancel an order for an item which had been incorrectly priced.
Further replies seem to indicate that Amazon sent many of its customers emails advising them of the cancellation and would have likely attempted to do so in the case of the customer who reported this story.
What I haven't seen debated is the point about the disappearance of the item from the order history - I had an issue in the Uk last month where Amazon becamse unable to supply a book I had orders three months ago due to continued isuses obtaining stock of the book, they wrote to me confirming that the order was cancelled and at that point THE ITEM WAS COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM MY ACCOUNT HISTORY (not just listed as canncelled, just gone !)
I have no problems with amazon cancelling orders at a point where they decide they can't reasonably fulfill them, I don't think its good system design on their part for these cancellations to result in the item completly disappearing from users account records.
So, I think the only real debate remaining is, should they change that practice ?
(I vote yes)
The BSA was formed and initially funded by the major software companies as a revenue protection organisation, their only motive is and always has been to ensure that as many copies of software out in the commercial world are paid for as is possible, by whatever means achieved the desired result.
How could anyone beleive it was ever anything else ?
much of my professional life has been spent helping to recover users/systems from faults which 'should never happen'
strangely, it only seems to be the SW developers who never expect this behaviour, the support guys and end users both seem to expect them on a regular basis.
I'm amazed that a statement with so much bias is allowed past the moderators onto /.
/. for allowing it on there !
Hasbro are seeking that various free apps on Facebook which rip-off their IPR are taken down.
How is this refusing to take part in the online games market ?
Its a BS statement by a complete idiot and it has no place on the frontpage, shame on
asteroids in the local chippy when I was about 8
...then we should be talking about the next richest man in the world.
I think its a valid example of operating as closely within the boundaries of the law as are possible in order to gain competitive advantage.
There are risks associated with using legal but potentially immoral tax avoidance strategies - in the case of Google there are reputational risks for a company preaching good moral beahaviour to be found to be using loopholes in the law to pay less taxes (gaps in taxation which are ultimately picked up by the taxpaying public).
It would be interesting to note that these risks are mitigated to an extent by the fact that everyone else is doing the same (indluing those that wopuld like to make press out of Google having questionably immoral accounting practices).
In the case of cheating search engines, it might be a little unethical but its not illegal and its certainly not harmful to the public reputation of a company even if caught (although it would harm their search ranking so there is a real cost risk potential), it's not even as reputationally harmful as offshoring revenue for tax purposes as it doesn't have any financial impact to the man in the street.
Perhaps a more interesting question is that - If a company is willing to exploit tax loopholes and offshore their revenue, robbing the US government of valid income and burdening the US taxpayer with additional tax dollars as a consequence then where do their ethical boundaries begin and end and how do they reconcile this with a mission statement of not being 'evil' ?
it's a combination of setting an inappropriate resolution and being incapable of refreshing it correctly that leads to monitoring breakdowns
Questions :
If the credit card companies won't allow Romanian cards to be used on the internet then why do ebay allow listings from romanian users ?
Answer :
P R O F I T
I'm sorry but anyone that leaves themselves as wide open to fraudulent use as ebay does whilst quite happily taking commission from the perpetrators is at best immoral and at worst as guilty as hell of fraud themselves.
It would be really interesting if someone could make a reasonable estimate of the number fraudulent/illegal transactions each year that take place on ebay and then work out how much ebay themselves are earning out of that.
Perhaps if ebay spent that amount on combatting fraud each year rather than what I'd guess would be a tiny fraction of it then people might start to take them seriously.
I'd agree entirely, many Wii owners will only buy 2 or 3 games during it's lifetime.
Personally I look out for anything that scores over about an 8 on gamespot (in both critic and user areas) and I buy that, otherwise I make sure I try stuff first, consequently I reckon I'll buy maybe 8-10 games max (so far its only Wii sports, Wii play, Res. Evil, Mario Galaxy and GH 3).
As many have realised, Nintendo changed the rules and have taken themselves out of the war.
There is currently a two side race to the best HD next gen console between MS and Sony, MS are currently winning that hands down and I don't think Sony (outside of Japan) have a hope of catching up.
Nintendo have left the race, and the war by creating a fun, cheap, party machine that is attracting a new type of buyer as well as a proportion of the traditional gamer market.
I believe this expanded potential market goes someway to explaining the constant shortages of the Nintendo console and why everyone seems happy with their sales at the moment.
As an example - I'm a 38 yr old father of four and I've bought myself a Wii so I can play it with my younger kids, I've also bought one for my 19 yr old son. I've never bought a console for myself before and have no interest in games which offer 20 hrs+ of play as I simply don't have 20hrs to spend playing a game.
As an aside, the only game I've finished (due to time) in the last 10 yrs has been Portal.
In conclusion, I believe that Nintendo and MS will remain happy and Sony, in the long term will become pretty unhappy but will still claim to be happy.
I vaguely remember, in the timeslieceocene era of Win95 encountering exactly the same bug, but wouldn't that mean ????
it couldn't be.......
Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!
legos are too expensive, for this movie it would need to be mega bloks