Yes, because I know from my introduction to THX as an audiophile 15 years ago, that their standards were high, the foundation secure and the management knew what they were doing. I also know from years of business experience that some companies put a lot of importance on their reputation. THX is one of them.
Oh, and I also got a hint from this part of the survey form:
# We check our database to make sure that the cinema possesses current THX Certification. # We determine if the reported problem requires immediate attention. We address actionable problems with a phone call or fax to the individual cinema managers. # We address secondary issues by contacting the cinema circuit district offices. # We re-inspect cinemas with chronic problems. If the non-compliance is not corrected, the venue may lose its certification status
Volume has to be the most irritating problem in a movie theater. Granted, the 14 year old lackeys don't give a rat's ass what they set it at, but if enough people complain through the THX survey, those 14 year old lackeys will be the most educated in town on the definition of 'audiophile.' THX will work hard to preserve its reputation vs. DTS and competitors. They'll come down hard on theater management, who will have no choice but to train and weed out failing staff. With keeping a uniform or theater clean, or keeping food safety in mind, a theater's reputation spreads. So too does "that theater's too loud, let's go to the one across town."
I had no idea until now that THX had a public survey. I'll have to use it.
I once had a recruiter tell me to answer the "Greatest Weakness" question with "chocolate" and a stupid smile. I stopped taking advice from that recruiter and started getting jobs again.
I believe the Greatest Weakness question is designed not to test what the actual answer is, but how you approach the challenge of the question itself. Admit fault? Blame someone else? Claim perfection? I like the latter two, myself.
On the issue of tests... I agree. If you don't want to take the test, it boils down to: you and the job don't fit together. Square peg, round hole. Keep looking. Eventually either they'll wear down your corners and you'll fit in the round hole they so diligently designed for everyone, or you'll create a square hole so you can be the boss and hire round pegs.
Think about it this way. You're a manufacturer trying to sell something... chips, diamonds, bottled water, dinner at a new restaurant, whatever. If you know you're getting publicity from a reviewer, it makes good business sense to give the best product you can. The reviewer expects to get the best you have, and if they see flaws they will tear you apart in print for your best not being good enough. The most we can gain from a review like this is to know the best possible chip this company will be likely to produce. And 471MHz x 2 = 942 is pretty darn good, making it more likely that the rest of their chips will be solid at DDR2-667. Finding some in the wild that will "only" OC to DDR2-842 is still impressive.
If someone wants an average random sampling, then they should go buy a random sample from a random store. Repeat 100 times and test all 100 of them. That's the scientific method, not the reviewer's method. The reviewer wants to wow you with the best and newest tech out there and say, "holy crap this thing's fast." And since the manufacturers know that, blind reviews are better to make sure they don't ship "special" hardware that differs in design from what the average Joe Penguin would buy.
I've heard the same, but have no specific reference. A middle-aged student in my US history class last semester said her father was sent a bill for basic rations (food, shelter, etc) he was given by the Red Cross several years after they helped him as a POW; I forget which conflict (WWII to Korean War timeframe). The bill was only a few bucks, but it shocked him so much he has no respect for them. It was the principle of the matter.
Not much to go on, but her father told her first-hand, so I believe it likely happened. I'd like to know if the RC considers their aid to be a loan like with FEMA or to be a gift. In a crisis people will take whatever they can get and forget the fine print, so maybe the world needs a public statement on the matter. Also, do active military get different aid than civilians?
The company I work for has products with a bug fix guarantee from inception to sunset, typical product life of 15+ years. All products we develop are guaranteed to work, be flexible with industry changes and otherwise give end users and their managers the ability to get the work done. We're not perfect by any means but when the health care industry changes the rules every week, and with 2,000 businesses wanting custom coding, we do a pretty good job. Some of our software costs over $100k, with a few multi-million $ installs and with annual support contracts (I think typically 8% of software cost). It's a bargain when you consider a 15-year life cycle.
How do we keep the software guaranteed for 15 years? They use our software as a front-end to our clearinghouse that gets their bills paid for a per-transaction fee. If our software doesn't work, they can't bill, we don't get the fee. That's motivation for us to improve our processes; it's a lot easier to deal with custom coding (revenue) than hearing that half your client base is shut down because you didn't test properly (support costs). With profit sharing, every employee has more motivation to try a little harder. For example, I know that if I improve a typical biller's process from 36 to 30 seconds, they're 20% more productive and that means we get more transaction revenue from that client.
So the keys I see to a long-term guarantee are: Annual support contract, unlimited bug-fix and industry keep-up guarantee, charge for custom work, and encourage developers to improve quality and app speed. If you're good enough, they'll pay the support contract happily, knowing they're avoiding the greater cost of errors.
My sister in law once had a Win98 PC infected with about two dozen trojans when she called for my assistance. After about 5 hours, I finally had everything taken out, so I dialed up the good ol' net, went straight to Windows Update, and before the first file list came up, bam, re-infected. One of the many worms, whose names I've buried deep in the dark corners behind my happy place, infected the machine within 5 minutes. Maybe it remembers active hosts, maybe it's just scanning a local subnet. Regardless, it found her pretty damn quick. These trojan/virus writers now see it as a challenge to infect more efficiently, with more stealth. Back in my teen years they were just out for destruction. We started with virtual chicken pox, now we have virtual HIV. I'm not sure these guys should be so proud of that.
I'd go the safest route possible -- you only need to get infected once to regret otherwise. At the very least, back up your system to DVD or tape if you can. If you get infected, wipe the machine from the original OS CD. Backups are a good idea anyway. And testing backups is essential.
I started with ANSI C about 15 years ago, moved to Foxpro for Database work, and eventually discovered VB6 and VB.Net. Going from ANSI C to any visual language is enough to make your head spin, and then from any to another is even more confusing -- they're all somewhat different. Don't go from VB6 to VB.Net and think of it in the same way... it really is a different animal. It's a lot more of a challenge to get some things done in.Net but once you get past the beginner-level stuff you find out there are some things that are just easier. Data access, configuration, authentication, refactoring, layout... a pain in 2003, but in 2005 those are a breeze. MS really did a better job with 2005 than with 2003. The Team Suite is killer -- unit testing, load testing, Visio, etc all integrated. You can get a 180-day fully functional trial at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/trial/ In classic MS fashion, it takes about 4GB on disk (make sure you install the MSDN Library) and 300MB RAM at runtime, so be ready for that.
From my own experience with the whole VFP/VS6 to.Net world -- don't just dig in right at the beginning, relying on online resources -- you'll get incomplete information, make too many assumptions and confuse yourself. Get books (I recommend starting with the MCSD training kit). Read them over again; learning the basic concepts of.Net-specific structure from a book will take you about 20 hours, and save you a month of frustration. I don't see the value in $15k of boot camps when a $100 book set will get me the same info. And I see $100 as well spent when it makes my job easier, gets me the better projects, and therefore advances my career.
Guatemala did the same thing back in '95. I looked into starting the country's first ISP. The government-owned phone company had an uplink to the internet, and refused to even give me 56k. Not a price issue, just refused -- the phone company would lose revenue from the $2/min voice calls because of email, and I'd be cutting into their email-only service that charged by the KB. I think AT&T/Sprint/etc went through the same pains in the early 90s, but they seem to be doing just fine now.
For years the government fought all the demands by businesses to set up ISPs, and eventually caved a few years ago. Now somebody went in and set up cable, DSL, wireless, the works. Now VoIP to/from there is free, so they dropped the international voice rate to near-USA rates.
P.S. You haven't lived until you've dialed your internet uplink internationally by modem on a pulse-dial origin system with a calling card only supporting touch-tone. After 2 full minutes of pulse dialing, you welcome that pittance of a 4800 baud connection and kill the first person to pick up a handset.
If it were tone you could just do something like ATDT 0018002255288,,,,,1234567890,,8011234567,,,,, But since it's pulse, you had to pick up a handset in the middle and dial the calling card # and destination by hand or use advanced Hayes AT-command scripting.
BellSouth does have some bad practices. Whether by choice or by negligence, they lost my business for as long as I have a choice. I made two calls to Guatemala in March, and found they had charged $3.00 per minute for those calls, totalling $108. I disputed the charge in April, because they never informed me that the rate had gone up from 35 cents. They did offer the $4/month "international plan" which had that 35 cent rate.
The next six bills came with the amount listed as in dispute, interest still accruing. Then I got a disconnect call (no paper notice) saying I was past due and they would cut off service unless I "made arrangements" right then. I repeated the dispute and they said they'd get back to me. I decided to give Vonage a try because they refused to delay the disconnect. In the next 3 months, BellSouth never got back to me, still charged interest on the $108 plus the $65/month for their "value plan" with the same features I'm getting with Vonage for $15. Vonage proved to be flawless, so I cancelled BellSouth. I have since gotten about 15 calls from BellSouth offering to switch me back. I get such joy out of telling the telemarketer why I switched and that even a $100 check won't get me to give up the $15/mo rate I get. They recognize the name and say, "yes, they're one of our biggest competitors."
It took them almost 3 months to release the number to Vonage. They wasted time when it was to my advantage, but when they want money, they're right on it. I spent an additional $400 on "we'll get back to you."
I can't claim malicious intent, but I know from 17 years of business experience -- corporate management sets priorities, and they don't usually set customers as number one. When a company gets to be a virtual monopoly, they stop trying hard to keep their customers. I've seen it first hand -- coworkers will say, "The customer won't want to go through the trouble of switching, so let them wait." Sometimes the 3 months to switch is better than a year of being blown off.
What the industry can do is make it easy enough to switch and then BellSouth will once again be motivated to keep its customers in a gentler grip. I think that's happening more now with VoIP competition.
I attended UoP online for 3 classes. My first 3 classes, in fact. They require you attend 3 or 4 of their own "intro to learning" type classes. 9 hours of credit and $3,600 later I dropped them in favor of a brick and mortar school which US News and World Report rates in its fourth tier -- ranking 165-215 in their class. (USNWR 2006 Edition, America's Best Colleges)
UoP isn't even listed. I have an opinion as to why -- their education is hollow. I didn't learn a damn thing there, and the "team projects" consisted of one person doing all the work while the other 5 slacked off or did a halfass job - most of the time causing the whole team's grade to suffer. Sure it was convenient to go online once a week instead of driving 2 hours to class, but think about this... if each person is only online one hour a week, do you really think they're putting in 15-20 hours a week on the actual classwork?
And then there was my job interview. I had 14 years programming experience and showed "9 hours completed at UoP online campus" on my resume. The VP I interviewed with saw said, "Well, a piece of paper is a piece of paper, right?" I got the job, but only because I'm one of two people within 200 miles with 10+ years of Foxpro experience. I'm still not sure if showing UoP on my resume helped or hurt my salary negotiations.
Now, on getting employers to call you back... note that the resume gets 8 seconds attention. I know from watching my bosses, who get the resume from HR and read it in between emails, phone calls and visits. You have 8 seconds to make them say, "Damn, this guy's good. I think I'll ignore that phone call." Content matters most - concise, informative. Pink paper, perfume, frilly fonts - straight to the trash. Times New Roman 10-point, that won't give them a headache. Give it to someone who doesn't know your experience (email to me if you'd like). In 8 seconds, would they say "gimme" or "g'bye"? If the latter, work on the words and layout. Don't sound desperate.
In 9 months during 1997 I went through 150 resumes, no interviews, no callbacks. I read "What Color is Your Parachute" by Richard N Bolles. It taught me a lot of the process. I landed my next job within weeks, and most of what I applied for after that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because I know from my introduction to THX as an audiophile 15 years ago, that their standards were high, the foundation secure and the management knew what they were doing. I also know from years of business experience that some companies put a lot of importance on their reputation. THX is one of them.
Oh, and I also got a hint from this part of the survey form:
# We check our database to make sure that the cinema possesses current THX Certification.
# We determine if the reported problem requires immediate attention. We address actionable problems with a phone call or fax to the individual cinema managers.
# We address secondary issues by contacting the cinema circuit district offices.
# We re-inspect cinemas with chronic problems. If the non-compliance is not corrected, the venue may lose its certification status
If only mod points went to 11...
Volume has to be the most irritating problem in a movie theater. Granted, the 14 year old lackeys don't give a rat's ass what they set it at, but if enough people complain through the THX survey, those 14 year old lackeys will be the most educated in town on the definition of 'audiophile.' THX will work hard to preserve its reputation vs. DTS and competitors. They'll come down hard on theater management, who will have no choice but to train and weed out failing staff. With keeping a uniform or theater clean, or keeping food safety in mind, a theater's reputation spreads. So too does "that theater's too loud, let's go to the one across town."
I had no idea until now that THX had a public survey. I'll have to use it.
I once had a recruiter tell me to answer the "Greatest Weakness" question with "chocolate" and a stupid smile. I stopped taking advice from that recruiter and started getting jobs again.
I believe the Greatest Weakness question is designed not to test what the actual answer is, but how you approach the challenge of the question itself. Admit fault? Blame someone else? Claim perfection? I like the latter two, myself.
On the issue of tests... I agree. If you don't want to take the test, it boils down to: you and the job don't fit together. Square peg, round hole. Keep looking. Eventually either they'll wear down your corners and you'll fit in the round hole they so diligently designed for everyone, or you'll create a square hole so you can be the boss and hire round pegs.
These are Quantum Pixels.
Between Scott Bakula and Kevin Sorbo, there's got to be a spaceship involved in this whole scandal.
Think about it this way. You're a manufacturer trying to sell something... chips, diamonds, bottled water, dinner at a new restaurant, whatever. If you know you're getting publicity from a reviewer, it makes good business sense to give the best product you can. The reviewer expects to get the best you have, and if they see flaws they will tear you apart in print for your best not being good enough. The most we can gain from a review like this is to know the best possible chip this company will be likely to produce. And 471MHz x 2 = 942 is pretty darn good, making it more likely that the rest of their chips will be solid at DDR2-667. Finding some in the wild that will "only" OC to DDR2-842 is still impressive.
If someone wants an average random sampling, then they should go buy a random sample from a random store. Repeat 100 times and test all 100 of them. That's the scientific method, not the reviewer's method. The reviewer wants to wow you with the best and newest tech out there and say, "holy crap this thing's fast." And since the manufacturers know that, blind reviews are better to make sure they don't ship "special" hardware that differs in design from what the average Joe Penguin would buy.
No, they use OnStar but Spirit hit the NOS button by mistake. The little guy was last seen hurtling across the planet surface at 2 meters per hour.
Cook with a Scrumptious Reagent, and you get Wrath Serum.
[obligatory KoL reference]
It runs Java.
I've heard the same, but have no specific reference. A middle-aged student in my US history class last semester said her father was sent a bill for basic rations (food, shelter, etc) he was given by the Red Cross several years after they helped him as a POW; I forget which conflict (WWII to Korean War timeframe). The bill was only a few bucks, but it shocked him so much he has no respect for them. It was the principle of the matter.
Not much to go on, but her father told her first-hand, so I believe it likely happened. I'd like to know if the RC considers their aid to be a loan like with FEMA or to be a gift. In a crisis people will take whatever they can get and forget the fine print, so maybe the world needs a public statement on the matter. Also, do active military get different aid than civilians?
Will any of these sensors be running Linux?
The company I work for has products with a bug fix guarantee from inception to sunset, typical product life of 15+ years. All products we develop are guaranteed to work, be flexible with industry changes and otherwise give end users and their managers the ability to get the work done. We're not perfect by any means but when the health care industry changes the rules every week, and with 2,000 businesses wanting custom coding, we do a pretty good job. Some of our software costs over $100k, with a few multi-million $ installs and with annual support contracts (I think typically 8% of software cost). It's a bargain when you consider a 15-year life cycle.
How do we keep the software guaranteed for 15 years? They use our software as a front-end to our clearinghouse that gets their bills paid for a per-transaction fee. If our software doesn't work, they can't bill, we don't get the fee. That's motivation for us to improve our processes; it's a lot easier to deal with custom coding (revenue) than hearing that half your client base is shut down because you didn't test properly (support costs). With profit sharing, every employee has more motivation to try a little harder. For example, I know that if I improve a typical biller's process from 36 to 30 seconds, they're 20% more productive and that means we get more transaction revenue from that client.
So the keys I see to a long-term guarantee are: Annual support contract, unlimited bug-fix and industry keep-up guarantee, charge for custom work, and encourage developers to improve quality and app speed. If you're good enough, they'll pay the support contract happily, knowing they're avoiding the greater cost of errors.
Teletubbies are best viewed at 16x.
My sister in law once had a Win98 PC infected with about two dozen trojans when she called for my assistance. After about 5 hours, I finally had everything taken out, so I dialed up the good ol' net, went straight to Windows Update, and before the first file list came up, bam, re-infected. One of the many worms, whose names I've buried deep in the dark corners behind my happy place, infected the machine within 5 minutes. Maybe it remembers active hosts, maybe it's just scanning a local subnet. Regardless, it found her pretty damn quick. These trojan/virus writers now see it as a challenge to infect more efficiently, with more stealth. Back in my teen years they were just out for destruction. We started with virtual chicken pox, now we have virtual HIV. I'm not sure these guys should be so proud of that.
I'd go the safest route possible -- you only need to get infected once to regret otherwise. At the very least, back up your system to DVD or tape if you can. If you get infected, wipe the machine from the original OS CD. Backups are a good idea anyway. And testing backups is essential.
I started with ANSI C about 15 years ago, moved to Foxpro for Database work, and eventually discovered VB6 and VB.Net. Going from ANSI C to any visual language is enough to make your head spin, and then from any to another is even more confusing -- they're all somewhat different. Don't go from VB6 to VB.Net and think of it in the same way... it really is a different animal. It's a lot more of a challenge to get some things done in .Net but once you get past the beginner-level stuff you find out there are some things that are just easier. Data access, configuration, authentication, refactoring, layout... a pain in 2003, but in 2005 those are a breeze. MS really did a better job with 2005 than with 2003. The Team Suite is killer -- unit testing, load testing, Visio, etc all integrated. You can get a 180-day fully functional trial at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/trial/
.Net world -- don't just dig in right at the beginning, relying on online resources -- you'll get incomplete information, make too many assumptions and confuse yourself. Get books (I recommend starting with the MCSD training kit). Read them over again; learning the basic concepts of .Net-specific structure from a book will take you about 20 hours, and save you a month of frustration. I don't see the value in $15k of boot camps when a $100 book set will get me the same info. And I see $100 as well spent when it makes my job easier, gets me the better projects, and therefore advances my career.
In classic MS fashion, it takes about 4GB on disk (make sure you install the MSDN Library) and 300MB RAM at runtime, so be ready for that.
From my own experience with the whole VFP/VS6 to
Guatemala did the same thing back in '95. I looked into starting the country's first ISP. The government-owned phone company had an uplink to the internet, and refused to even give me 56k. Not a price issue, just refused -- the phone company would lose revenue from the $2/min voice calls because of email, and I'd be cutting into their email-only service that charged by the KB. I think AT&T/Sprint/etc went through the same pains in the early 90s, but they seem to be doing just fine now.
For years the government fought all the demands by businesses to set up ISPs, and eventually caved a few years ago. Now somebody went in and set up cable, DSL, wireless, the works. Now VoIP to/from there is free, so they dropped the international voice rate to near-USA rates.
P.S. You haven't lived until you've dialed your internet uplink internationally by modem on a pulse-dial origin system with a calling card only supporting touch-tone. After 2 full minutes of pulse dialing, you welcome that pittance of a 4800 baud connection and kill the first person to pick up a handset.
If it were tone you could just do something like
ATDT 0018002255288,,,,,1234567890,,8011234567,,,,,
But since it's pulse, you had to pick up a handset in the middle and dial the calling card # and destination by hand or use advanced Hayes AT-command scripting.
BellSouth does have some bad practices. Whether by choice or by negligence, they lost my business for as long as I have a choice. I made two calls to Guatemala in March, and found they had charged $3.00 per minute for those calls, totalling $108. I disputed the charge in April, because they never informed me that the rate had gone up from 35 cents. They did offer the $4/month "international plan" which had that 35 cent rate.
The next six bills came with the amount listed as in dispute, interest still accruing. Then I got a disconnect call (no paper notice) saying I was past due and they would cut off service unless I "made arrangements" right then. I repeated the dispute and they said they'd get back to me. I decided to give Vonage a try because they refused to delay the disconnect. In the next 3 months, BellSouth never got back to me, still charged interest on the $108 plus the $65/month for their "value plan" with the same features I'm getting with Vonage for $15. Vonage proved to be flawless, so I cancelled BellSouth. I have since gotten about 15 calls from BellSouth offering to switch me back. I get such joy out of telling the telemarketer why I switched and that even a $100 check won't get me to give up the $15/mo rate I get. They recognize the name and say, "yes, they're one of our biggest competitors."
It took them almost 3 months to release the number to Vonage. They wasted time when it was to my advantage, but when they want money, they're right on it. I spent an additional $400 on "we'll get back to you."
I can't claim malicious intent, but I know from 17 years of business experience -- corporate management sets priorities, and they don't usually set customers as number one. When a company gets to be a virtual monopoly, they stop trying hard to keep their customers. I've seen it first hand -- coworkers will say, "The customer won't want to go through the trouble of switching, so let them wait." Sometimes the 3 months to switch is better than a year of being blown off.
What the industry can do is make it easy enough to switch and then BellSouth will once again be motivated to keep its customers in a gentler grip. I think that's happening more now with VoIP competition.
I attended UoP online for 3 classes. My first 3 classes, in fact. They require you attend 3 or 4 of their own "intro to learning" type classes. 9 hours of credit and $3,600 later I dropped them in favor of a brick and mortar school which US News and World Report rates in its fourth tier -- ranking 165-215 in their class. (USNWR 2006 Edition, America's Best Colleges)
UoP isn't even listed. I have an opinion as to why -- their education is hollow. I didn't learn a damn thing there, and the "team projects" consisted of one person doing all the work while the other 5 slacked off or did a halfass job - most of the time causing the whole team's grade to suffer. Sure it was convenient to go online once a week instead of driving 2 hours to class, but think about this... if each person is only online one hour a week, do you really think they're putting in 15-20 hours a week on the actual classwork?
And then there was my job interview. I had 14 years programming experience and showed "9 hours completed at UoP online campus" on my resume. The VP I interviewed with saw said, "Well, a piece of paper is a piece of paper, right?" I got the job, but only because I'm one of two people within 200 miles with 10+ years of Foxpro experience. I'm still not sure if showing UoP on my resume helped or hurt my salary negotiations.
Now, on getting employers to call you back... note that the resume gets 8 seconds attention. I know from watching my bosses, who get the resume from HR and read it in between emails, phone calls and visits. You have 8 seconds to make them say, "Damn, this guy's good. I think I'll ignore that phone call." Content matters most - concise, informative. Pink paper, perfume, frilly fonts - straight to the trash. Times New Roman 10-point, that won't give them a headache. Give it to someone who doesn't know your experience (email to me if you'd like). In 8 seconds, would they say "gimme" or "g'bye"? If the latter, work on the words and layout. Don't sound desperate.
In 9 months during 1997 I went through 150 resumes, no interviews, no callbacks. I read "What Color is Your Parachute" by Richard N Bolles. It taught me a lot of the process. I landed my next job within weeks, and most of what I applied for after that.