But if enough people use it, and enough people submit paper copies of their return, causing enough pain and cost to the IRS, then they will open up an E-File capability for open source.
I have already bought a commercial package. But I will use this one, if for no other reason than to support the effort and to see how accurate it is. Who knows, it might save me a few bucks. And if the return is substantially the same as what the commercial package says, then I will likely print the return and mail it in, just to be one who "votes with my feet" and causes a little bit of pain and cost for that lousy FAQ IRS response.
I don't see what the big deal is with E-file. I mean, I like the idea of saving the government (meaning me, the tax payer) a few bucks, and save a few trees. But really, I don't need the return to be processed instantly, so mail is just as good for me. Am I missing something? I sure don't like to PAY for the right to make them efficient!
I want to second that. "Top ranked" schools are over-rated. Do an ROI analysis, and it'll become obvious. Unless they're going to make it VERY cheap for you, you may find that it's just not worth it to go to a "top tier school (as if Carnegie Mellon isn't good enough).
When considering the "R" in ROI, you have to consider all factors, including fun, personal pride, etc. Many people I have met who "had to" go to top tier schools were so insecure that they needed that school name to feel like a whole person. That's silly! Feel good about who you are; you've done quite well - you don't need some school's name to validate you! Feel good about the 95.6% that you got right, not the 4.4% FAILURE RATE that you've had.
That said, if pride is a huge factor to you, and you need the validation, and you think you'd enjoy it, and the costs are comparable, go for it. Just don't feel bad if they "reject" you. You really don't need their validation. And remember what C.S. Lewis says: "pride is the greatest sin."
We were just about to launch into a SugarCRM implementation at our company. Reading this thread, and conducting the associated research with other forums, I've decided to cancel the SugarCRM installation and install vtiger. No feature comparison necessary. No further research necessary. I have hated SugarCRM's philosophy about kinda-sorta-open-source for years. (I didn't know about vtiger.) Goodbye SugarCRM, Welcome vtiger!
We aren't ones to analyze decisions to death. Pick a market leader and move forward. And it's clear that vtiger is a leader, and in my book, SugarCRM has its priorities mixed up.
There was nothing innovative about Bram's protocol, other than that it was well integrated into the browser (so that you just click and it runs).
There were plenty of competitive offerings in the market which pre-date the original release of Bit Torrent. In fact, I have a white paper from early 2001 that lists them all, with the pros and cons of each implementation.
Several cool things that BitTorrent does well were all done by others. Turning the client into a server was done by Gnutella (Gnucleus, Bearshare, etc), Kazaa, eDonkey and others.
Pulling one file from multiple sources was done by others. (referred to as "Swarm" technology in some cases.)
Throttling performance based on how much you upload - that was done by others.
Checksums and uploading partials - all done first by others.
Integration with the browser, and tying all these features into one package - that's really the only innovation, as far as I could see.
Hmm... I've ordered quantities of Dell computers, and supplied the disk image. Never 500. More like 350 (in groups of 50 at a time), and their integration center pre-loads the image that we supplied.
It happened to be a Windows image, but my impression is that they would have installed any image that we requested, including Linux.
"The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now."
Our view from Earth is that we can see one planet in the galaxy that can support life as we know it - Earth - and it has life on it.
So from our perspective, it sure looks like it's been colonized. And therefore it's not unreasonable to assume that extraterrestrial civilizations exist.
Just because you weren't impressed, doesn't mean it's not impressive. Consider the first computer: It does addition, subtraction, multiplication and division? Big deal. Humans can do that! I'm sure there were people like you back then who weren't impressed.
If the claims were accurate, then the solving of a Sudoku puzzle is an excellent choice for a demonstration. Especially if it's a 100x100 sudoku, which (if designed properly) no human or computer could solve in the amount of time left in the universe. Yet quantum computers could potentially solve instantaneously. (or 50x50 or 500x500... whatever. The point is, the larger it is, the time it takes to solve it becomes prohibitively expensive).
Sudoku problems are in the realm of "hard" problems (whereby the larger the puzzle, the number of steps required to solve it becomes *exponentially* more difficult). A human can solve any 4x4 sudoku in seconds. Adding a couple of rows and columns and potential digits makes it much harder. Making it 9x9 makes it a 20 or 30 minute challenge (often measured in the length it takes to go #2!).
Read up on Big_O and complexity theory and NP problems, and you may understand why Sudoku could be considered an impressive demonstration. You may then understand and appreciate it. Until then, though, you just confirm your lack of understanding of complexity theory.
Vendors will not know who is on the list or how many are on the list.
I will not waste my time to respond to blind RFPs. If I don't know I have a reasonable shot at it, it's either a no-bid or a boiler-plate bid. And yes, boilerplate is the 30-60 minute version. And you can get all that information from our website.
If you want a thorough "answer these questions" response, then you need to convey that I have a reasonable shot at winning the business. 25% at least. Otherwise it's not worth my effort. There are plenty of companies out there and competing RFPs that I DO have a 25% or better chance of winning. Remember, it's not just me competing to do business with the customer, it's the customer competing with other prospects to do business with me.
The only time I have spent time chasing RFPs is if the application requirements that the prospect describes EXACTLY match my feature set (to the exclusion of my competitors). In that case, the prospect has conveyed some requirements, and I have assessed my probability as greater than 25%.
If I don't know who the competition is, or how many competitors there are, then it's a no-bid,
or a boilerplate bid.
39 possible choices, not actual choices. Some won't respond.... Let's say 15 responded.
Don't you see an issue with your process that you are EXPECTING 60% to no-bid????
I certainly hope you wouldn't treat your prospective customers like that!
Someone who doesn't show me enough respect to winnow the choices down is not a desirable prospect, and therefore are NOT a prospective customer. I don't want customers like that - who show no respect for me or my time. To be successful in business, you need to make some tough decisions. One tough decision which I make on a daily basis is who do I want to do business with.
I would say a 1 in 15 chance of a many thousands-of-dollars sale and multiple years of support contracts is worth 30-60 minutes of paperwork by a technical salesman (I mean, that *is* his job, isn't it?)
Actually, no, my job is NOT to do paperwork. The job of the Sales department is to maximize sales. And companies are very clear about that. Trust me, chasing RFPs is NOT the way to do that. You significantly underestimate the time it takes to do a thorough job of responding to an RFP.
One sales force I crossed paths with had a policy. Quotes to RFPs were uplifted by a sales cost factor amounting to $1000 per page of the RFP. That response to the 75-page RFP included a penalty $75,000 UPLIFT to the normal cost of the product. If you can't win the business with the uplift added in, then don't waste your time bidding it. And the sales force learned early on not to waste their time. This was a regional policy of a VERY successful company whose name you would surely recognize.
Think about what you just said. Say your "many thousands of dollars and multiple years of support" amounts to $100K, with 40K in the first year. If sales commission on that is, say, $10K and I have a 1 in 15 shot, then I shouldn't spend more than $600 TOTAL SELLING COST on that deal. If say, I'm trying to make $120K in commission a year (to make the math easy), then my time is worth $60/hour. So I have 10 hours to spend TOTAL on a deal like this. Responding thoroughly to an RFP (i.e. not boilerplate) is usually 4-8 hours, depending on the length. So by spending 4-8 hours on an RFP, my allotted time is about shot, and I haven't even gotten to do a demo. No thanks.
So you decide if you process is sound. No offense intended - you Asked Slashdot in order to get opinions, and I gave you one. Please take it in the spirit intended. I wanted to point out to you one vendor's perspective. Maybe other vendors will respond with an alternative perspective.
Call it being pissy if you'd like. I'm just stating my opinion, and not trying to give you any flack. Somehow, I think you're expecting me to "walk a mile in his shoes" - and yes, I have recommended and purchased numerous things from vendors (tens of millions of dollars worth, perhapes even hundreds of millions), so I have been in his shoes. I've been the evaluator, and also the buyer before. I think he (perhaps you?) haven't been in the vendors' shoes. And I'm just relating that perspective.
Honest, people expect the vendors to bend over backwards, and they have very unrealistic expectations. The sales person's job is to make money for their company in a smart way. And chasing every RFP with a 1 in 39 chance isn't smart.
And as I stated early on, my products do not directly fit into what he is looking for. He has looked at hundreds of companies, and I'm not one of them. I don't sell software in this field. I have something to add to the conversation - not facts about the product sector, but recommendations about his process, which, frankly, needs work in my opinion.
Evaluating products is a process - and it's not just comparing facts about product features. Successful business transactions requires respect of the other party. I'm not a party to this transaction... he is. So my recommendation is that he should show a little respect for the vendors and winnow the field down. It's common courtesy (which isn't so common these days).
Am I upset? Naaaah, I'm actually laughing quite a bit at this thread! But if you don't see my point, then I've failed to convince you (or him) - go ahead and conduct business your way. Send out 39 RFP's. See what happens!:) <--- there.. is that pissy? I don't even know what a pissy emoticon looks like!
I have searched through hundreds of vendors so far and identified 39 possibilities, but could always use more.
If he's narrowed it down from hundreds to 39, it sounds as though he HAS eliminated those that aren't a good fit. He needs to winnow it down MUCH further if he "expects" the vendors to jump to respond to his RFP/RFI.
We get a lot of RFP/RFI/RFQs from IT guys who think that the spray method is the right way to go (i.e. send it out to a ton of companies). And I can tell you, the untrained sales reps often try to respond to each one. It's a huge waste of time. It's a much better strategy, from the vendor's perspective to choose a few incoming RFPs, and respond WELL to those. And ultimately, a cost effective vendor means a more profitable, successful vendor, which often means a better price for the buyer and/or a more stable long-term partner.
As a vendor, I MUST "qualify" my prospects to be successful. If the prospect hasn't even shown me the respect to narrow down the field to a reasonable number, then they aren't a good fit. Not worth my time.
Call it being pissy, but that's the facts. Yes, I no-bid a lot of these. Or send a printed/emailed copy of the website information, if I am feeling generous. But it's just smart business.
So what he will get, when he sends it out to 39 companies, is boilerplate responses, no-bids, and an occasional aggressive-but-foolish (or desperate) thorough response. Who would you rather do business with - a smart business person, or a foolish, desperate, aggressive one?
I work for a vendor. Our software doesn't address this application, but I'll tell you, if I get an RFP like this (provide information to me... and have a one in 39 chance of being selected), I say pound salt. Here's my website. Read it, you lazy ass. Don't have me answer your silly questionnaire just so I can waste my time, and then eliminate me and 37 of my competitors.
Why don't you do your homework and narrow the field down to 3 or 4, before you send out an RFI/RFP?
I'm amazed that you have 39 choices, and you are looking for MORE!
On the downside, these "cured" mice couldn't speak, function at parties or hold down even minimum wage jobs. So I'd be skeptical about this cure's applicability to humans.
Actually, had you clicked on the link (on that same page) that says "See all jobs with Microsoft Corporation" and looked at the individual descriptions, you would have seen that they have posted more than 237 jobs right on that site alone!
Everybody, quick, put down Slashdot for just a moment, and get your resume over there!
I was really joking a bit - skepticism raced through my head, and I realize I can check it out myself.
Just to continue as Devil's Advocate: Even screen captures can very easily be faked (simple to take the real essjay page, save it to my drive and edit the HTML). And even if that text were on his page, the inherent nature of Wikipedia says that it could have been put on there by anyone (and without the history, it's hard to tell).
Given the facts at my immediate disposal, your story is more of a black mark against the New Yorker than Wikipedia.
Seems, though, that essjay is a real turd though. Someday when I create my own contributory site, I hope I have passionate users like him!
Perhaps because he is employed by Wikia now, Essjay has coughed up his real name. He doesn't have two PhDs, and he isn't a tenured professor. He's a 24-year-old living near Louisville, Kentucky. The New Yorker, famous for its fact-checking, got it all wrong.
I read your post with great interest. My jaw dropped to read such a story. Then I though, "hey wait. I'm supposed to believe you?
So which search engine will have the guts to put links to their competitor right on their page?
Google does it with finance and with maps (search for HPQ and see links to Yahoo. Search for San Francisco, and see links to Mapquest).
But wouldn't it be a huge breakthrough to offer a link to Yahoo right on the Google home page (or vice versa)? I'd make one my default home page if they had the guts to link to the other one.
Slashdot Mirror
I have already bought a commercial package. But I will use this one, if for no other reason than to support the effort and to see how accurate it is. Who knows, it might save me a few bucks. And if the return is substantially the same as what the commercial package says, then I will likely print the return and mail it in, just to be one who "votes with my feet" and causes a little bit of pain and cost for that lousy FAQ IRS response.
I don't see what the big deal is with E-file. I mean, I like the idea of saving the government (meaning me, the tax payer) a few bucks, and save a few trees. But really, I don't need the return to be processed instantly, so mail is just as good for me. Am I missing something? I sure don't like to PAY for the right to make them efficient!
When considering the "R" in ROI, you have to consider all factors, including fun, personal pride, etc. Many people I have met who "had to" go to top tier schools were so insecure that they needed that school name to feel like a whole person. That's silly! Feel good about who you are; you've done quite well - you don't need some school's name to validate you! Feel good about the 95.6% that you got right, not the 4.4% FAILURE RATE that you've had.
That said, if pride is a huge factor to you, and you need the validation, and you think you'd enjoy it, and the costs are comparable, go for it. Just don't feel bad if they "reject" you. You really don't need their validation. And remember what C.S. Lewis says: "pride is the greatest sin."
We were just about to launch into a SugarCRM implementation at our company. Reading this thread, and conducting the associated research with other forums, I've decided to cancel the SugarCRM installation and install vtiger. No feature comparison necessary. No further research necessary. I have hated SugarCRM's philosophy about kinda-sorta-open-source for years. (I didn't know about vtiger.) Goodbye SugarCRM, Welcome vtiger!
We aren't ones to analyze decisions to death. Pick a market leader and move forward. And it's clear that vtiger is a leader, and in my book, SugarCRM has its priorities mixed up.
There were plenty of competitive offerings in the market which pre-date the original release of Bit Torrent. In fact, I have a white paper from early 2001 that lists them all, with the pros and cons of each implementation.
Several cool things that BitTorrent does well were all done by others. Turning the client into a server was done by Gnutella (Gnucleus, Bearshare, etc), Kazaa, eDonkey and others.
Pulling one file from multiple sources was done by others. (referred to as "Swarm" technology in some cases.)
Throttling performance based on how much you upload - that was done by others.
Checksums and uploading partials - all done first by others.
Integration with the browser, and tying all these features into one package - that's really the only innovation, as far as I could see.
Bummer for you, someone beat ya to it!
It happened to be a Windows image, but my impression is that they would have installed any image that we requested, including Linux.
Our view from Earth is that we can see one planet in the galaxy that can support life as we know it - Earth - and it has life on it.
So from our perspective, it sure looks like it's been colonized. And therefore it's not unreasonable to assume that extraterrestrial civilizations exist.
If the claims were accurate, then the solving of a Sudoku puzzle is an excellent choice for a demonstration. Especially if it's a 100x100 sudoku, which (if designed properly) no human or computer could solve in the amount of time left in the universe. Yet quantum computers could potentially solve instantaneously. (or 50x50 or 500x500... whatever. The point is, the larger it is, the time it takes to solve it becomes prohibitively expensive).
Sudoku problems are in the realm of "hard" problems (whereby the larger the puzzle, the number of steps required to solve it becomes *exponentially* more difficult). A human can solve any 4x4 sudoku in seconds. Adding a couple of rows and columns and potential digits makes it much harder. Making it 9x9 makes it a 20 or 30 minute challenge (often measured in the length it takes to go #2!).
Read up on Big_O and complexity theory and NP problems, and you may understand why Sudoku could be considered an impressive demonstration. You may then understand and appreciate it. Until then, though, you just confirm your lack of understanding of complexity theory.
If you want a thorough "answer these questions" response, then you need to convey that I have a reasonable shot at winning the business. 25% at least. Otherwise it's not worth my effort. There are plenty of companies out there and competing RFPs that I DO have a 25% or better chance of winning. Remember, it's not just me competing to do business with the customer, it's the customer competing with other prospects to do business with me.
The only time I have spent time chasing RFPs is if the application requirements that the prospect describes EXACTLY match my feature set (to the exclusion of my competitors). In that case, the prospect has conveyed some requirements, and I have assessed my probability as greater than 25%.
If I don't know who the competition is, or how many competitors there are, then it's a no-bid, or a boilerplate bid.
Don't you see an issue with your process that you are EXPECTING 60% to no-bid???? Someone who doesn't show me enough respect to winnow the choices down is not a desirable prospect, and therefore are NOT a prospective customer. I don't want customers like that - who show no respect for me or my time. To be successful in business, you need to make some tough decisions. One tough decision which I make on a daily basis is who do I want to do business with. Actually, no, my job is NOT to do paperwork. The job of the Sales department is to maximize sales. And companies are very clear about that. Trust me, chasing RFPs is NOT the way to do that. You significantly underestimate the time it takes to do a thorough job of responding to an RFP.One sales force I crossed paths with had a policy. Quotes to RFPs were uplifted by a sales cost factor amounting to $1000 per page of the RFP. That response to the 75-page RFP included a penalty $75,000 UPLIFT to the normal cost of the product. If you can't win the business with the uplift added in, then don't waste your time bidding it. And the sales force learned early on not to waste their time. This was a regional policy of a VERY successful company whose name you would surely recognize.
Think about what you just said. Say your "many thousands of dollars and multiple years of support" amounts to $100K, with 40K in the first year. If sales commission on that is, say, $10K and I have a 1 in 15 shot, then I shouldn't spend more than $600 TOTAL SELLING COST on that deal. If say, I'm trying to make $120K in commission a year (to make the math easy), then my time is worth $60/hour. So I have 10 hours to spend TOTAL on a deal like this. Responding thoroughly to an RFP (i.e. not boilerplate) is usually 4-8 hours, depending on the length. So by spending 4-8 hours on an RFP, my allotted time is about shot, and I haven't even gotten to do a demo. No thanks.
So you decide if you process is sound. No offense intended - you Asked Slashdot in order to get opinions, and I gave you one. Please take it in the spirit intended. I wanted to point out to you one vendor's perspective. Maybe other vendors will respond with an alternative perspective.
Anyway, good luck on your selection!
Honest, people expect the vendors to bend over backwards, and they have very unrealistic expectations. The sales person's job is to make money for their company in a smart way. And chasing every RFP with a 1 in 39 chance isn't smart.
And as I stated early on, my products do not directly fit into what he is looking for. He has looked at hundreds of companies, and I'm not one of them. I don't sell software in this field. I have something to add to the conversation - not facts about the product sector, but recommendations about his process, which, frankly, needs work in my opinion.
Evaluating products is a process - and it's not just comparing facts about product features. Successful business transactions requires respect of the other party. I'm not a party to this transaction... he is. So my recommendation is that he should show a little respect for the vendors and winnow the field down. It's common courtesy (which isn't so common these days).
Am I upset? Naaaah, I'm actually laughing quite a bit at this thread! But if you don't see my point, then I've failed to convince you (or him) - go ahead and conduct business your way. Send out 39 RFP's. See what happens! :) <--- there.. is that pissy? I don't even know what a pissy emoticon looks like!
Even more like it: Associated Content. Looks like you can write about anything you want, and get paid. AND it shows up on Google News.
We get a lot of RFP/RFI/RFQs from IT guys who think that the spray method is the right way to go (i.e. send it out to a ton of companies). And I can tell you, the untrained sales reps often try to respond to each one. It's a huge waste of time. It's a much better strategy, from the vendor's perspective to choose a few incoming RFPs, and respond WELL to those. And ultimately, a cost effective vendor means a more profitable, successful vendor, which often means a better price for the buyer and/or a more stable long-term partner.
As a vendor, I MUST "qualify" my prospects to be successful. If the prospect hasn't even shown me the respect to narrow down the field to a reasonable number, then they aren't a good fit. Not worth my time.
Call it being pissy, but that's the facts. Yes, I no-bid a lot of these. Or send a printed/emailed copy of the website information, if I am feeling generous. But it's just smart business.
So what he will get, when he sends it out to 39 companies, is boilerplate responses, no-bids, and an occasional aggressive-but-foolish (or desperate) thorough response. Who would you rather do business with - a smart business person, or a foolish, desperate, aggressive one?
Why don't you do your homework and narrow the field down to 3 or 4, before you send out an RFI/RFP?
I'm amazed that you have 39 choices, and you are looking for MORE!
On the downside, these "cured" mice couldn't speak, function at parties or hold down even minimum wage jobs. So I'd be skeptical about this cure's applicability to humans.
But if you can't follow instructions, you probably aren't qualified for any of the jobs, so never mind. ;-)
Everybody, quick, put down Slashdot for just a moment, and get your resume over there!
I was really joking a bit - skepticism raced through my head, and I realize I can check it out myself.
Just to continue as Devil's Advocate: Even screen captures can very easily be faked (simple to take the real essjay page, save it to my drive and edit the HTML). And even if that text were on his page, the inherent nature of Wikipedia says that it could have been put on there by anyone (and without the history, it's hard to tell).
Given the facts at my immediate disposal, your story is more of a black mark against the New Yorker than Wikipedia.
Seems, though, that essjay is a real turd though. Someday when I create my own contributory site, I hope I have passionate users like him!
Good chuckle. I had to go check for myself! he apparently had an affair with Rooselvelt too!
HP, the absorber of the losers in the computer wars:
Google does it with finance and with maps (search for HPQ and see links to Yahoo. Search for San Francisco, and see links to Mapquest).
But wouldn't it be a huge breakthrough to offer a link to Yahoo right on the Google home page (or vice versa)? I'd make one my default home page if they had the guts to link to the other one.
Anyone else notice that the stick man had too many balls? I mean, one to the left, one in the middle, one on the right?
I thought they were just a string quartet.