Really, this form of protecting the seller could cause an increase in their negative feedback, since buyers will have to post feedback earlier and may not be willing to give sellers a chance to correct any errors (like sending an office chair and some bandages when the buyer calls to say that the mispackaged bobcat hurt him) before posting feedback.
Just make sure that I can still leave feedback after I've actually received an item, including the possibility that I may have to work with the seller for a while to get it delivered. For instance, buying a car or a boat in another state drastically increases the length of time between the end of the auction and the time at which I know enough to leave informed feedback. Also, if a seller ships an item to the wrong address or if he can't get around to shipping it for a week, sometimes I am willing to forgive him and work with him to get my purchase into my hands, but I don't want to give up the ability to leave feedback for him in the event that the item does turn out to be a bobcat.
No need to apologize for that. The extrinsic influence I am thinking of is the cost to the company of the settlement negotiations being made public. Call that value X. Let Y be the amount of the eventual settlement and Z be the party's BATNA* expected through trial. Settlement should occur iff Y <= Z, because X is a sunk cost and it is irrational to consider it in making a settlement decision.
However, the vast majority of people are not purely rational and will consider sunk costs in making decisions (car maintenance, relationships, you name it). Therefore, some portion of X will work its way into the settlement decision, so for some value 0 < k <= 1, settlement will occur iff kX + Y <= Z.
There is also the simple cost of people being upset about the leak and not focusing on hammering out a settlement. It would really be nice if all lawyers and executives checked their egos at the door, but ending world hunger seems more likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
* - Linkified for the benefit of anyone other than BeeBeard and myself who may someday read this comment.
You assume that all negotiations are purely rational iterations of a game involving two BATNAs and no extrinsic influences. For better or worse, negotiations are not purely rational, do not strictly follow any set of rules other than a few regarding ethics, and are subject to extrinsic influence. There is more to a negotiation than FRE 408 or your local equivalent.
P.S. We use HTML in Slashdot comments, not BBcode.
You're forgetting one thing. SCO is just about entirely a legal team now, so anyone who currently works there is not only a lawyer but a lawyer who is capable of joining in SCO's legal chicanery with a straight face. I don't think they'll be so bad off.
You (and others) missed the point. That's okay. However, you should be aware that (a) I did not buy my Slashdot ID anywhere; I've just been here longer than most and (b) I at least have one and bother to use it, no matter what I have to say. You should try that sometime.
This from an AC who took the time to click through to the same. Good work, genius. The key difference, for those too myopic to catch it, is that one of these things was submitted to and posted on the Slashdot front page, whereas the other one exists for information purposes to those who seek it out. Incidentally, my web site has played a role in mothers naming children after me. What have you done for the world today, other than hide from it?
Jonathan Wise writes to share with us an interesting bit of prose describing life as a software engineer.
Interesting. No, wait, that other thing. Tedious.
A software developer must be part writer and poet, part salesperson and public speaker, part artist and designer, and always equal parts logic and empathy.
No. You're a code monkey. Your poetry sucks, your writing sucks (to the point of your having written "its for the best"), your salesmanship sucks (your article sells nobody on anything), your public speaking is probably twice as melodramatic as your article and therefore sucks, your art sucks, your designs are plagued with whining about having to make them, and you have never experienced logic or empathy as long as you've lived.
Get over it. If you want to make your pathetic job seem more important than it is, Slashdot isn't the place to do it. If you want to whine about being a code monkey, Slashdot is even less appropriate of a place to do it. Just get up, get coffee, go to job, and have boring meeting with boring manager Rob.
I dated a girl who was always sending text messages while driving. She always claimed that she could send a message without ever looking at her phone. I tried to explain that it wasn't an issue of having her eyes on the road while sending messages, but more an issue of having them on her phone when she was receiving one combined with her mind being on the messages instead of on driving.
Not typically, unless you are willing to live in a place where that's not much money anyhow and work 90 hours a week to try to get to the billable hour expectations of your firm. See this NALP article and others on their site for more information.
You didn't RTFA, did you? Now I have to post an off-topic, trollish, and utterly flame-baity comment to say that I have mod points but can't use them because there's no option for (-1: don't RTFA, newb).
Slashdot Mirror
Is that 650 times as many hits or 650 times as many bytes?
Really, this form of protecting the seller could cause an increase in their negative feedback, since buyers will have to post feedback earlier and may not be willing to give sellers a chance to correct any errors (like sending an office chair and some bandages when the buyer calls to say that the mispackaged bobcat hurt him) before posting feedback.
Just make sure that I can still leave feedback after I've actually received an item, including the possibility that I may have to work with the seller for a while to get it delivered. For instance, buying a car or a boat in another state drastically increases the length of time between the end of the auction and the time at which I know enough to leave informed feedback. Also, if a seller ships an item to the wrong address or if he can't get around to shipping it for a week, sometimes I am willing to forgive him and work with him to get my purchase into my hands, but I don't want to give up the ability to leave feedback for him in the event that the item does turn out to be a bobcat.
No need to apologize for that. The extrinsic influence I am thinking of is the cost to the company of the settlement negotiations being made public. Call that value X. Let Y be the amount of the eventual settlement and Z be the party's BATNA* expected through trial. Settlement should occur iff Y <= Z, because X is a sunk cost and it is irrational to consider it in making a settlement decision.
However, the vast majority of people are not purely rational and will consider sunk costs in making decisions (car maintenance, relationships, you name it). Therefore, some portion of X will work its way into the settlement decision, so for some value 0 < k <= 1, settlement will occur iff kX + Y <= Z.
There is also the simple cost of people being upset about the leak and not focusing on hammering out a settlement. It would really be nice if all lawyers and executives checked their egos at the door, but ending world hunger seems more likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
* - Linkified for the benefit of anyone other than BeeBeard and myself who may someday read this comment.
You assume that all negotiations are purely rational iterations of a game involving two BATNAs and no extrinsic influences. For better or worse, negotiations are not purely rational, do not strictly follow any set of rules other than a few regarding ethics, and are subject to extrinsic influence. There is more to a negotiation than FRE 408 or your local equivalent.
P.S. We use HTML in Slashdot comments, not BBcode.
Right, because leaking that kind of information about the negotiation won't have any effect on the course of the negotiations themselves.
You must be new here.* This is Slashdot, where we don't let facts get in the way of a good joke, a heated discussion, or even an outright flamefest.
* - I know you have a uid about 1/6 of my own, so maybe you just had a momentary lapse.
Thanks for the compliment. :)
You're forgetting one thing. SCO is just about entirely a legal team now, so anyone who currently works there is not only a lawyer but a lawyer who is capable of joining in SCO's legal chicanery with a straight face. I don't think they'll be so bad off.
You (and others) missed the point. That's okay. However, you should be aware that (a) I did not buy my Slashdot ID anywhere; I've just been here longer than most and (b) I at least have one and bother to use it, no matter what I have to say. You should try that sometime.
*whoosh* Was the original article melodramatic, over the top, and whiny? Sound familiar?
This from an AC who took the time to click through to the same. Good work, genius. The key difference, for those too myopic to catch it, is that one of these things was submitted to and posted on the Slashdot front page, whereas the other one exists for information purposes to those who seek it out. Incidentally, my web site has played a role in mothers naming children after me. What have you done for the world today, other than hide from it?
Interesting. No, wait, that other thing. Tedious.
No. You're a code monkey. Your poetry sucks, your writing sucks (to the point of your having written "its for the best"), your salesmanship sucks (your article sells nobody on anything), your public speaking is probably twice as melodramatic as your article and therefore sucks, your art sucks, your designs are plagued with whining about having to make them, and you have never experienced logic or empathy as long as you've lived.
Get over it. If you want to make your pathetic job seem more important than it is, Slashdot isn't the place to do it. If you want to whine about being a code monkey, Slashdot is even less appropriate of a place to do it. Just get up, get coffee, go to job, and have boring meeting with boring manager Rob.
Insubordinate Ibis
I dated a girl who was always sending text messages while driving. She always claimed that she could send a message without ever looking at her phone. I tried to explain that it wasn't an issue of having her eyes on the road while sending messages, but more an issue of having them on her phone when she was receiving one combined with her mind being on the messages instead of on driving.
Not typically, unless you are willing to live in a place where that's not much money anyhow and work 90 hours a week to try to get to the billable hour expectations of your firm. See this NALP article and others on their site for more information.
No wonder she never called back.
You didn't RTFA, did you? Now I have to post an off-topic, trollish, and utterly flame-baity comment to say that I have mod points but can't use them because there's no option for (-1: don't RTFA, newb).
The true art in xkcd rarely has much to do with drawing. :)
Meanwhile, Solaris still had enough sales to not only justify such a task but also to pay people to do it.
And MPAB takes an early lead for Best Comment of the Year 2008.
I think it a tad naive to imply that it was cool to be smart before the 1960s.
If that were the only error, you might get to keep your own geek card. Sorry.
Good summary. Thanks. Yes, pissing off the judge by disobeying his orders is rarely a good idea.