The real lesson is to always hire experts to do the job that will stake their reputation on the success of the project. All too often, people will exaggerate their capabilities and think they can defy the laws of physics.
The mechanical failures of the project reek of poor coordination of the project and a failure to coordinate very early in the project with the architects and engineers. The loading, scanning, and software failures show a further lack of understanding of what needed to happen.
Clearly, it was the first time something like this was tried, and the DIA team failed to get someone on board at the onset that could understand the whole problem. Remedial repairs can be effective, but fundemental design failures often can't be solved if physical space is a limitation.
The important take-away is that different people value different things. That is what ultimately defines "quality of life."
I like being able to walk to restaurants, bars, corner stores. I really don't care about having a yard that requires me to cut the grass. I like not owning a car!
If I had three kids, I would have different priorities.
There is nothing wrong with either choice, but I see the metropolitan lifestyle making fewer compromises than the rural. I don't want to own a car or ever sit in traffic. I like having my options open. But there is no one Utopia.
I went to school in Lawrence, KS, and think the area is fantastic. KC is not a major metropolitan area. The GP mentioned the liquidity of the housing market; think about the same for the job market-- how hard is it to find another job.
In San Francisco, I have 10-20 companies that I could go to tomorrow and get a job. In KC, you would be lucky to have 2-7 companies in that kind of market if you were adequately marketable.
What do you value? Do you plan to work for the same company for the rest of your life? If you were laid off tomorrow, what would you do?
The problem is ultimately having your job moved to a "cheaper" place, not the idea that the work is done from some place with a lower cost of living.
When you look at real costs of doing business, recruiting is huge. Finding the talent pool is very hard. Being able to cater to (perfectly qualified) moms that want to be able to work, but have a newborn is hard. There are plenty of problems that companies face hiring the right people to get the job done. Yes, all of this has to be at the right price, but the real problem is finding that top 10%, 5%, or 2% that a company might need to be successful.
This is nothing more than the result of corporate strong-arming.
No. This is the result of decentralization. It didn't used to be possible for a company to have a tiny office in BFE that could provide useful contributions to the mother ship. The result of offshoring is that low-cost tools for permitting such collaboration have been created.
It isn't a sin to live in the stix. Some people actually like it! Myself, I will stick to living in San Francisco, but for those who want to live in BFE... go for it! And all the more power to the workforce and talent pool, since it is easier to get work done. That is the primary objective afterall.
The benefit of being able to do the offshoring within the US is that the money stays onshore, making better use of tax benefits that companies get anyway! It also helps in reducing traffic in major cities!
What I don't like is when work is moved to second-tier cities for the apparent cost of living savings. Many of these markets lack the talent pool, which is a negative byproduct of capitalism.
When a doctor writes a prescription, you take it to a pharmacy which fulfills the prescription. The drug company has no idea that a single doctor is filing many of the prescriptions.
So wrong! The drug companies actually track their success rates with specific doctors to help their marketing. They need to know what kinds of junkets are most effective!
When a perscription is filled, the information goes into a DEA database and a drug company database. I don't know the specifics on the system, but the DEA has a very good idea who is writing prescriptions for what. When a doctor looses a prescription pad and it gets abused, he will be investigated.
Nobody said they need to stick to 2.5" hard drives! You could have some interesting options with 1" or 1.5" drives! Or go really nuts and use flash drives in RAID!
Problem in a nutshell for Sony: It is the same argument as Minidisk vs. CDs (on release of MD). The players are smaller and more portable, but not nearly as useful. Until the cheap MD recorders came out, MD was completely lost. MD never really took off outside of Asia where smaller is always worth a price premium.
They should have seen this coming. Unfortunately, there is no way with DVDs (legally) to transfer the data to another medium. Classic case of the content providers shooting themselves in the foot for the sake of trying to get you to buy the same thing multiple times in different formats!
The Computational Fluid Dynamics, Electronic Codes Licenses, HVAC Load Calculation, Electrical Short Circuit/Coordination/Load Flow/Arc Flash programs all add to our costs significantly. Also, we have a number of small offices, which requires that we use multiple license servers (although not one per office). We basically use the license servers in a failover configuration, so some "extra" licenses are generally required (although not more than 10%).
As for the new employees getting new machines, that's really just a function of growth. Administrative employees are eligible for hand-me-downs, but most of the engineers end up needing fairly powerful laptops.
But yes, the HR costs are significantly higer... especially when a recruiter is involved!
Well, the good news is that the bulk consumers of power for running computers generally have generator backup, so when mains voltage drops to ~90% of rating, they switch to generator and "give back" the power for other users, which can help prevent the brownout from escalating. Ultimately, this is the only way things are going to work today, since everything thinks it is the most important load (or conversely, it is easier to design a product to be universal-voltage, which gives it tremendous ability to survive brownouts).
This is actually a perfect example of what Apple does differently than the competition. They are forced to make it "harder" to do something, but it is trivial to bypass. I was surprised how easy it was when I needed to do it myself.
Protected content won't move (at least not the way I tried), but that was to be expected.
Hopefully they keep this kind of mentality with the next big thing. We'll see what the next Xbox does...
You could also make the argument that by making spam less cost effective, you reduce its growth and thereby reduce the aggregate bandwidth requirement.
a lot of professors make serious cash by writing a textbook, producing a "new, improved version" every year (actually the old version with the questions rearranged a bit) and standardising on it for their course.
Most professors in the US are required to publish. They never really make money on the books, but have to publish to get tenure. The requirement for revisions is part of their "book deal." It isn't a bad requirement in a way (much like generating research grants), but it can distract from the task of educating students. Different Universities have different goals...
People being willing to buy and people wanting to sell are different incentives. Google used to be great for researching a topic. Now if I want to buy (say) a solar cell, it is very hard to find anything but storefronts.
The value originally afforded by the web was the fact that I could find things out about different technologies, efficiencies, lifespans, etc, prior to making the purchase. This gave me an advantage over traditional information gathering techniques.
If in the "real world" I want to buy a few hundred solar cells, I have to talk to a manufacturer's rep, where I am unlikely to find any unbiased information. The "real world" equivalent of some of these search results are trade magazines in highly specialized areas. Most of the ads are for unknown companies or companies trying to push into a new market.
For Google and Yahoo to keep ad revenue up, they are going to need to make sure people continue to get helpful information segregated from empty shells.
Actually, cost of new employee is going to be about triple the annual cost per employee; you have to buy those ACAD licenses and the machines.
The other big problem is plotters. There is a huge range of what companies have, but if you have 12 architects/designers/CAD people the plotting equation is tricky. We lease and bill back plots to projects. Without the kickbacks it would be a stupid move, but it moves the money between projects and as overhead.
I'm in an engineering shop (M&E), and I would put us closer to 7k/yr per person in my group, and expect that to be at the high end (lots of specialized technical software, but minimal ongoing development on customized CAD solutions).
It's also important to understand where the line is drawn between "utilities" (ISP, phone, electricity), and "office supplies" (toner, paper, CD blanks, DLT) as it impacts the IT budget.
How many "missing laptop" stories have there been?
Sadly, the only *real* solution to data ownership and control is DRM. The question then becomes can a DRM system be made that will allow sufficient control, but maintain the flexibility that is required for people to work within its constraints. At the same time, this snake oil must be easy to manage.
A USB thumb drive is more secure than a laptop in many ways; fewer people want to steal the thumb drive for theft of the physical object.
The trick is to find a nice, easy way to encrypt the data on a thumb drive to protect it against casual loss, and that is where the focus should really be.
I hope the shuttle comes home safe and then gets parked in a museum.
There is already a shuttle in a museum. Udvar Hazy at Dulles Airport, part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It's "just" the Enterprise, and has never been in space, but you can get up close.
Re:This is old news within the hospitality industr
on
Hacking Hotels 101
·
· Score: 1
Always bring a pair of long nose pliers, the real long ones with the flat ends.
Actually, it's easier if you just use a small allen key or two and spin the protective cable guard. Also easier to travel (fly) with.
While I agree with you in concept (the quality of stories has been getting worse, and the dupes have always been and continue to be insane),/. has an advantage over many of the rumor sites for discussing Apple rumors:
-Technically stronger user base, not just apple fanboys in discussion. -More mature user base; not just a bunch of teeny-boppers talking about how l33t something is. -Moderation system and nested/threaded discussion options./. should cut back on some of the rumors, or at least keep minor rumors off the front page. At the same time, a lot of apple fans think something big is coming out soon, and can't contain their excitement.
All in all,/. does a better job than any of the other sites I look at out there... but that isn't to say that there is no room for improvement.
The other advantages are that you can scale up systems as required centrally. Desktop blades offer a lot of cool advantages, but the ultimate problem is that they aren't designed for the server room, they are intended for the wiring closet.
This is a problem because most wiring closets aren't designed for the cooling requirement (even just puting in a 6500 series switch can be hard), and when you have a good number of PCs in one place you have to look at a UPS.
Starting from scratch it can be great, but it is hard as a retrofit to actually make work.
The thing is that credit isn't loose to give you what you want, it's to lower your threshold of objections. It is in the merchant's best intrest to make things easy to purchase, no matter what their price. Incidentally, this is why it is the merchants and not the banks that pay for fraud.
Well said; my effective tax rate was 12.8% for federal income tax. Not that bad. A flat tax would be in the 10-15% range.
Progressive tax rates compensate for the fact that people with more income have more tax deductable expenses. While someone just above the poverty line might be in the 15% tax bracket, the effective tax rate is still within reason. Likewise, someone making $250k/year is going to be in the same general effective tax range after taking deductions for mortgage and other things.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, lump social security into the total tax rate and see what the variations are across income ranges. The higher tax brackets only apply to ranges out of Social Security witholdings...
Flat tax is a better solution than VAT. VAT discourages spending in general, Flat tax is easier to process and eliminates a lot of the overhead associated with the income tax process.
Slashdot Mirror
The real lesson is to always hire experts to do the job that will stake their reputation on the success of the project. All too often, people will exaggerate their capabilities and think they can defy the laws of physics.
The mechanical failures of the project reek of poor coordination of the project and a failure to coordinate very early in the project with the architects and engineers. The loading, scanning, and software failures show a further lack of understanding of what needed to happen.
Clearly, it was the first time something like this was tried, and the DIA team failed to get someone on board at the onset that could understand the whole problem. Remedial repairs can be effective, but fundemental design failures often can't be solved if physical space is a limitation.
All you need is 1. ...if all you want is a job, and if they aren't having problems.
The important take-away is that different people value different things. That is what ultimately defines "quality of life."
I like being able to walk to restaurants, bars, corner stores. I really don't care about having a yard that requires me to cut the grass. I like not owning a car!
If I had three kids, I would have different priorities.
There is nothing wrong with either choice, but I see the metropolitan lifestyle making fewer compromises than the rural. I don't want to own a car or ever sit in traffic. I like having my options open. But there is no one Utopia.
I went to school in Lawrence, KS, and think the area is fantastic. KC is not a major metropolitan area. The GP mentioned the liquidity of the housing market; think about the same for the job market-- how hard is it to find another job.
In San Francisco, I have 10-20 companies that I could go to tomorrow and get a job. In KC, you would be lucky to have 2-7 companies in that kind of market if you were adequately marketable.
What do you value? Do you plan to work for the same company for the rest of your life? If you were laid off tomorrow, what would you do?
The problem is ultimately having your job moved to a "cheaper" place, not the idea that the work is done from some place with a lower cost of living.
When you look at real costs of doing business, recruiting is huge. Finding the talent pool is very hard. Being able to cater to (perfectly qualified) moms that want to be able to work, but have a newborn is hard. There are plenty of problems that companies face hiring the right people to get the job done. Yes, all of this has to be at the right price, but the real problem is finding that top 10%, 5%, or 2% that a company might need to be successful.
This is nothing more than the result of corporate strong-arming.
No. This is the result of decentralization. It didn't used to be possible for a company to have a tiny office in BFE that could provide useful contributions to the mother ship. The result of offshoring is that low-cost tools for permitting such collaboration have been created.
It isn't a sin to live in the stix. Some people actually like it! Myself, I will stick to living in San Francisco, but for those who want to live in BFE... go for it! And all the more power to the workforce and talent pool, since it is easier to get work done. That is the primary objective afterall.
The benefit of being able to do the offshoring within the US is that the money stays onshore, making better use of tax benefits that companies get anyway! It also helps in reducing traffic in major cities!
What I don't like is when work is moved to second-tier cities for the apparent cost of living savings. Many of these markets lack the talent pool, which is a negative byproduct of capitalism.
So wrong! The drug companies actually track their success rates with specific doctors to help their marketing. They need to know what kinds of junkets are most effective!
When a perscription is filled, the information goes into a DEA database and a drug company database. I don't know the specifics on the system, but the DEA has a very good idea who is writing prescriptions for what. When a doctor looses a prescription pad and it gets abused, he will be investigated.
Nobody said they need to stick to 2.5" hard drives! You could have some interesting options with 1" or 1.5" drives! Or go really nuts and use flash drives in RAID!
Problem in a nutshell for Sony:
It is the same argument as Minidisk vs. CDs (on release of MD). The players are smaller and more portable, but not nearly as useful. Until the cheap MD recorders came out, MD was completely lost. MD never really took off outside of Asia where smaller is always worth a price premium.
They should have seen this coming. Unfortunately, there is no way with DVDs (legally) to transfer the data to another medium. Classic case of the content providers shooting themselves in the foot for the sake of trying to get you to buy the same thing multiple times in different formats!
The Computational Fluid Dynamics, Electronic Codes Licenses, HVAC Load Calculation, Electrical Short Circuit/Coordination/Load Flow/Arc Flash programs all add to our costs significantly. Also, we have a number of small offices, which requires that we use multiple license servers (although not one per office). We basically use the license servers in a failover configuration, so some "extra" licenses are generally required (although not more than 10%).
As for the new employees getting new machines, that's really just a function of growth. Administrative employees are eligible for hand-me-downs, but most of the engineers end up needing fairly powerful laptops.
But yes, the HR costs are significantly higer... especially when a recruiter is involved!
Well, the good news is that the bulk consumers of power for running computers generally have generator backup, so when mains voltage drops to ~90% of rating, they switch to generator and "give back" the power for other users, which can help prevent the brownout from escalating. Ultimately, this is the only way things are going to work today, since everything thinks it is the most important load (or conversely, it is easier to design a product to be universal-voltage, which gives it tremendous ability to survive brownouts).
This is actually a perfect example of what Apple does differently than the competition. They are forced to make it "harder" to do something, but it is trivial to bypass. I was surprised how easy it was when I needed to do it myself.
Protected content won't move (at least not the way I tried), but that was to be expected.
Hopefully they keep this kind of mentality with the next big thing. We'll see what the next Xbox does...
You could also make the argument that by making spam less cost effective, you reduce its growth and thereby reduce the aggregate bandwidth requirement.
Most professors in the US are required to publish. They never really make money on the books, but have to publish to get tenure. The requirement for revisions is part of their "book deal." It isn't a bad requirement in a way (much like generating research grants), but it can distract from the task of educating students. Different Universities have different goals...
People being willing to buy and people wanting to sell are different incentives. Google used to be great for researching a topic. Now if I want to buy (say) a solar cell, it is very hard to find anything but storefronts.
The value originally afforded by the web was the fact that I could find things out about different technologies, efficiencies, lifespans, etc, prior to making the purchase. This gave me an advantage over traditional information gathering techniques.
If in the "real world" I want to buy a few hundred solar cells, I have to talk to a manufacturer's rep, where I am unlikely to find any unbiased information. The "real world" equivalent of some of these search results are trade magazines in highly specialized areas. Most of the ads are for unknown companies or companies trying to push into a new market.
For Google and Yahoo to keep ad revenue up, they are going to need to make sure people continue to get helpful information segregated from empty shells.
Actually, cost of new employee is going to be about triple the annual cost per employee; you have to buy those ACAD licenses and the machines.
The other big problem is plotters. There is a huge range of what companies have, but if you have 12 architects/designers/CAD people the plotting equation is tricky. We lease and bill back plots to projects. Without the kickbacks it would be a stupid move, but it moves the money between projects and as overhead.
I'm in an engineering shop (M&E), and I would put us closer to 7k/yr per person in my group, and expect that to be at the high end (lots of specialized technical software, but minimal ongoing development on customized CAD solutions).
It's also important to understand where the line is drawn between "utilities" (ISP, phone, electricity), and "office supplies" (toner, paper, CD blanks, DLT) as it impacts the IT budget.
How many "missing laptop" stories have there been?
Sadly, the only *real* solution to data ownership and control is DRM. The question then becomes can a DRM system be made that will allow sufficient control, but maintain the flexibility that is required for people to work within its constraints. At the same time, this snake oil must be easy to manage.
A USB thumb drive is more secure than a laptop in many ways; fewer people want to steal the thumb drive for theft of the physical object.
The trick is to find a nice, easy way to encrypt the data on a thumb drive to protect it against casual loss, and that is where the focus should really be.
I hope the shuttle comes home safe and then gets parked in a museum.
There is already a shuttle in a museum. Udvar Hazy at Dulles Airport, part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It's "just" the Enterprise, and has never been in space, but you can get up close.
Always bring a pair of long nose pliers, the real long ones with the flat ends.
Actually, it's easier if you just use a small allen key or two and spin the protective cable guard. Also easier to travel (fly) with.
But Apple is not a monopoly. You are not forced to buy anything from Apple, and in fact 95% of the market doesn't.
While I agree with you in concept (the quality of stories has been getting worse, and the dupes have always been and continue to be insane), /. has an advantage over many of the rumor sites for discussing Apple rumors:
/. should cut back on some of the rumors, or at least keep minor rumors off the front page. At the same time, a lot of apple fans think something big is coming out soon, and can't contain their excitement.
/. does a better job than any of the other sites I look at out there... but that isn't to say that there is no room for improvement.
-Technically stronger user base, not just apple fanboys in discussion.
-More mature user base; not just a bunch of teeny-boppers talking about how l33t something is.
-Moderation system and nested/threaded discussion options.
All in all,
The other advantages are that you can scale up systems as required centrally. Desktop blades offer a lot of cool advantages, but the ultimate problem is that they aren't designed for the server room, they are intended for the wiring closet.
This is a problem because most wiring closets aren't designed for the cooling requirement (even just puting in a 6500 series switch can be hard), and when you have a good number of PCs in one place you have to look at a UPS.
Starting from scratch it can be great, but it is hard as a retrofit to actually make work.
The thing is that credit isn't loose to give you what you want, it's to lower your threshold of objections. It is in the merchant's best intrest to make things easy to purchase, no matter what their price. Incidentally, this is why it is the merchants and not the banks that pay for fraud.
Well said; my effective tax rate was 12.8% for federal income tax. Not that bad. A flat tax would be in the 10-15% range.
Progressive tax rates compensate for the fact that people with more income have more tax deductable expenses. While someone just above the poverty line might be in the 15% tax bracket, the effective tax rate is still within reason. Likewise, someone making $250k/year is going to be in the same general effective tax range after taking deductions for mortgage and other things.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, lump social security into the total tax rate and see what the variations are across income ranges. The higher tax brackets only apply to ranges out of Social Security witholdings...
Flat tax is a better solution than VAT. VAT discourages spending in general, Flat tax is easier to process and eliminates a lot of the overhead associated with the income tax process.
General practice is to provide redundant cooling, so I only counted a single unit. Them things need to get shut down for maintenance!