Either because your predecessor 'made it work' with little or no funding (better translated as 'he made it almost work'), or because your predecessor failed to acquire sufficient funding to do it 'right'.
As a former field tech/consultant, try to avoid bringing in consultants to explain why the stuff needs to be bought. Many a manager ends up believing the consultants and disbelieving their staff. You get to either hire the consultant to justify your plan or find yourself undercut by that lack of confidence.
And of course nail some problems and show improvements as early as you can. It's wise to both solve pressing impactful problems first, and gain trust.
I always loved going into a client with lots of problems. Not just for the thrill of making things right, but knowing that if I did it right I had a referral for my next client - because the end result was most often working my way out of the gig. Either I passed the client on to another tech to maintain, or they got their staff's legs under them and could carry on. So long as there are more clients, this is good. Great fun to figure things out, isn;t it?
When youd add a physical keyboard to it, it's just not a tablet any more, functionally. It's either a two-piece notepad, or if the keyboard is attached, even with just a cover, it's a notepad period.
The form factor changes. I expect tablets to be just one piece. A salient feature of a tablet is the LACK of a keyboard.
But if he was saying that adapting his tablet for everyday uses onle required adding a keyboard, well, doh. This is news for nerds? Not for a few years.
By TFA measure, my X41t is a tablet. Oh, sure, it needs a stylus and comes with a keyboard, and most of the logic is in the 'keyboard part', but it's touch sensitive (just the touch of the stylus, I know), has an onscreen keyboard etc. and folds over so it's just screen. and the stylus.
In today's world, it isn't what most people think they mean by 'tablet'. Adding a keyboard muddies this even more.
Unlike sports, which this whole team analogy is built upon, in the real life of employment, you HAVE to be on a team, or you're broke. Or on welfare.
Since I don't want to settle for welfare, I work. And that means I choose the best available team, based on opportunity. Wages, conditions, etc.
My wages now are 15% less than they were in the beginning of 2009, and will not change. For now, that's still a better deal than 0%, and it's not obvious there is an equally opportunistic job available, so I watch and wait.
I don't have the luxury of nor inclination to reduce my effort by 15%. Indeed, my workload is increased, since our force was reduced by 25% in the same time frame.
Yes, life sucks sometimes. No one ever had the power to make it fair, even the government. Less unfair is good. Sometimes we get that.
It seems that RIM has found the sweet spot in pricing. WIll they price the next PB there? If not, I would expect another sale.
Of course, RIM gives up 'non-entierprise' data (so far as we know) when governments demand it. BES is the target of many nations, and RIM may find itself forced to either give it up via some back door added in, or disclaim the data and let themselves be forced out of those nations - though I suspect a comprmise will be reached.
On the Android front, RIM is apparently developing tools to manage other platforms. I expect BES services to be delivered on those platforms in time, sooner rather than later, and BBX (is that it?) may become a bit player. Even a small share of the phone market is good money, and RIM may yet compete.
And any 'new Android player' isn't at all doomed to minimal share. RIM knows how to design devices people like to use. They do need to learn how to build those devices with the performance in demand now, and they may yet. But there are indeed a lot of players in the phone manufacturing business now. Room still.
There's a lot of denying the concept that RIM will bail on the PB and move on to a new tablet. I'm surprised so many people actually can't accept this. If the PB was a business device, they would probably support it longer, but as a consumer product it's going to last as long as they think their customers will expect it to. 2 years? No, more likely until the next generation of hardware entirely obsoletes it. A year tops, and probably less. When spares get scarce or more expensive to produce, game over. I'm wondering how many G1s HTC gets in for repair nowadays. It's been, what, a little over three years for that phone. Bet ya a small cup of coffee they didn't fix many at all this year. That's not to say there aren't a lot out there still, I have two and both work fine. But they aren't all that useful any more, since they are just so limited. PBs will survive an upgrade in software for a while but we are a year from OS versions that demand quad-core phones and 2GB or more base RAM, with display processors well past what's common now.
The market is on a fast cycle. Not much survives a whole year in the market - iPhones mostly, a 'special case'. My Sensation 4G I got in April, I think, and it's due to be replaced though HTC hasn't shown anything new to TMO so far as we can tell. Samsung is chewing through models pretty well.
And RIM is held to task for being slow to bring new models out. Churn, baby.
Only about $99 too high for me. Sorry, almost worth it, but I'm not springing $200 for what is a short-lived product. The hardware will not be supported much beyond warranty, I fear.
Still, RIM is on track to convert to Android. So long as their mail client is better on Androidt than it is on iOS, they have a chance. Even Google is stumbling out of the iOS gate. There is still time for RIM to maintain some relevance.
And privacy isn't much of a problem for RIM any more. They are no more or less secure than Facebook, and their corporate clients are losing any hope of being safe from the prying eyes of sovreign states. Welcome to the party, security is an illusion.
Google can have its fun, but somehow this seems more like the Wikipedia model, where trusted editors both create content and ratify it.
Prior art all over this. Rotsa ruck, Roogle.
But moderation isn't so broken on/. compared to OTHER problems.
- On my phone,/. renders fairly well, but when I moderate, it jumps around the screen. Annoying.
- Again, on my phone, commenting on/. is fubar. The comments editing screen appears, but then the screen is refocused to the bottom of the page. I can type blind and it is in there. If I scroll up and display the comment screen, touching it scrolls the page to the bottom again. Arg. Android 2.3.4 HTC Sense browser. This is a pisser, something just doesn't like this Android browser.
- At work, I can't moderate, the button just never responds. Probably security settings here, so I'll give/code a pass on this.
- depending on what settings I have,/. renders on my phone with the floating bar trying to tell me something about how many comments are displayed, or how many I'm missing, or something, but it's so badly rendered I can't tell, and it floats to obscure comments. Annoying.
I'm venting, yes, but it's been a long time since I've posted a complaint about these issues, and previous responses were inadequate, as in zero. Youse gets what youse pays for, so I'm just venting. I don't expect it to be fixed.
And there is worse out there, like our state retirement system, where the enrollment process is not just broken, it's institutionalized as broken. The help desk pretends you're an idiot while they proceed to take you through the workarounds to solve the problems - like failing to save the password accurately, presenting you with the predetermined security question instead of the one you selected, and saving a user ID that is not the same as the one you entered, since they require you to use a particular format for user ID while presenting you with an enrollment screen that lets you enter whatever you want there. Interesting. Annoying. Worse than/. by a mile.
Right. Nearly meaningless. The next step, in three years (it will take a full year of investigation), will be to fine them some insignificant amount and make them promise, again, to not do that.
Truth is, the FTC has little incentive to actually punish bad behavior or compel corporations to stop their bad behavior:
- If they were truly effective, not only would corporations stop behaving badly, but they would therefore have very little to do at the FTC; not many new complaints, having seen what a $2B fine against Facebook, for instance, as if it would ever happen, really meant.
- If they were trying to be effective, the Congressional delegation from California (where Facebook actually lives) and Delaware (where they are very likely incorporated) would crush the FTC's budget like a roach. And move enforcement to some agency they could more properly 'manage'.
- And if that all weren't enough, Facebook would let its IPO benefactors know, many of whom will be Congressmen and Senators, that this is not good for the nation, users, government, the economy, and those very same representatives who profited well indeed from that IPO. And not necessarily in that order.
Another ineffective response from the FTC, and predictably so. Perhaps the EU can do better? Non? Plus Ãa change, eh?
Well, since I used the qualifier 'much of American (sic)', you're missing my point.
Much of America doesn't have useful public transportation. If you think living in Montana, for instance is optional, and having to suffer the DMV to be able to travel there is a self-induced trauma, ok, you got me.
But even where there is some public transportation, certain jobs just need personal transport. I was a field tech for almost 35 years, and taking the bus would just not work.
You're sounding a little like someone who thinks private transport is a problem. Maybe so, but the complaints about DMVs that fail to serve their customers is not solved by eliminating cars. Do that, eliminate cars, and depopulate 40-60% of the US. In other words, stupid.
Or are actually defending government agencies that fail to serve their customers well?
Some are also selling data on you to commercial outfits, charging more fees per legislation to help fund other government operations, and being forced into the role of maintaining the consolidated ID, merging voter registration, picture ID services, and even masquerading as immigration identity managers.
Securing your personal data would be a nice feature to have.
A few, very few, make a little money on the side by selling special access to data. That revenue is being retained by clerks, at least in New Jersey. This falls within the description of 'illicit access to data'. So I guess, in New Jersey, 'securing your data' wasn't part of the daepartment's mandate, or not done very well.
Exactly. DMV should, generally, be testing drivers, keeping records on who got caught committing what violations and when, reporting to the police who had their privileges suspended and who got them back, and collecting enough money to pay for the service,even for the ancillary services like reporting to such agencies as needed, etc.
This is the debate. If you don't like the restrictions, don't drive.
This is the WRONG attitude and approach.
We expect our government to, among other things, serve us by managing certain things. One of these is the licensing of drivers, so that we can be marginally safe on the roads, that entirely unqualified drivers are not allowed to operate vehicles, and that dangerous drivers are removed from the road to some degree. Imperfection is rampant, but it works farly well.
Driving is, in much of American a NECESSITY. To claim it is a privilege may be linguistically accurate, but it is not accurate at all. It is a necessity for most of us.
In that light, our governments' role shoudl never be to make licensing as difficult as possible, nor should it be to force applicants to exert themselves merely to satisfy the bureacracy's self-serving purposes. It should be the goverments' role to facilitate and deliver the needed service, IE licensing etc.
The argument that driving is a privilege is to leave open the option that for some reason, we should serve our govermnent. The opposite is the desired relationship, and one that should be not only normal, but expected.
I know you're being sarcastic, and you're excused from being the target this screed. But some people actually hold that driving as a privilege means that the agencies can be permitted to make it difficult to maintain the privilege.
Exactly. DT has already made it clear that they want OUT of the US market. Maybve selling TMO off to some other operator would satisfy them, but I'm doubtful. And $3B isn't enough to change their mind.
Than again, this could be pure masterful strategy; DT gets $3B for playing along, accumulates even more spectrum, locks in roaming, sells it off for payments to say Virgin or Boost or MetroPCS or even Sprint, who ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BUY TMO.
Masterful strategy. Nearly as brilliant as Peyton Manning having dual surgery on his neck so the Colts dive into last place and draft Andrew Luck.
If you want to see telecommuting as a negative, and allow your boss to shit all over you, that's not something I can fix. Your employer can only abuse you as much as you allow them to. If you're afraid to put your foot down and say no from time to time, you have only yourself to blame."
I think I'm offended by most of that.
Telecommuting doesn't happen to work for me. Face-to-face os critical. Some of the people I must deal with will not be fronds and are not part of my 'team'.
You have a great situation. Finding fault with others who make other choices for reasons you are entirely unaware of is unkind, od not oblivious.
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Either because your predecessor 'made it work' with little or no funding (better translated as 'he made it almost work'), or because your predecessor failed to acquire sufficient funding to do it 'right'.
As a former field tech/consultant, try to avoid bringing in consultants to explain why the stuff needs to be bought. Many a manager ends up believing the consultants and disbelieving their staff. You get to either hire the consultant to justify your plan or find yourself undercut by that lack of confidence.
And of course nail some problems and show improvements as early as you can. It's wise to both solve pressing impactful problems first, and gain trust.
I always loved going into a client with lots of problems. Not just for the thrill of making things right, but knowing that if I did it right I had a referral for my next client - because the end result was most often working my way out of the gig. Either I passed the client on to another tech to maintain, or they got their staff's legs under them and could carry on. So long as there are more clients, this is good. Great fun to figure things out, isn;t it?
When youd add a physical keyboard to it, it's just not a tablet any more, functionally. It's either a two-piece notepad, or if the keyboard is attached, even with just a cover, it's a notepad period.
The form factor changes. I expect tablets to be just one piece. A salient feature of a tablet is the LACK of a keyboard.
But if he was saying that adapting his tablet for everyday uses onle required adding a keyboard, well, doh. This is news for nerds? Not for a few years.
By TFA measure, my X41t is a tablet. Oh, sure, it needs a stylus and comes with a keyboard, and most of the logic is in the 'keyboard part', but it's touch sensitive (just the touch of the stylus, I know), has an onscreen keyboard etc. and folds over so it's just screen. and the stylus.
In today's world, it isn't what most people think they mean by 'tablet'. Adding a keyboard muddies this even more.
USPS comes to my mailbox 5 days a week. no Thursday or Saturday delivery in Mesa AZ.
That would be the job of ICANN or WIPO.
Neither of which care to step in and make the effort unless forced to.
Marx's theory here is obvious. Perhaps you think his 'solutions' are worthy of consideration?
I can think of a very few countries you can move to and have that experience. Some of them may actually let you...
Can you find out what company stocks she's buying?
You do know that 'they' is 'us', right?
Keeping score by party affiliation is not helping. They ALL are capable of this.
Unlike sports, which this whole team analogy is built upon, in the real life of employment, you HAVE to be on a team, or you're broke. Or on welfare.
Since I don't want to settle for welfare, I work. And that means I choose the best available team, based on opportunity. Wages, conditions, etc.
My wages now are 15% less than they were in the beginning of 2009, and will not change. For now, that's still a better deal than 0%, and it's not obvious there is an equally opportunistic job available, so I watch and wait.
I don't have the luxury of nor inclination to reduce my effort by 15%. Indeed, my workload is increased, since our force was reduced by 25% in the same time frame.
Yes, life sucks sometimes. No one ever had the power to make it fair, even the government. Less unfair is good. Sometimes we get that.
I just checked, and Maine no longer shows such an exemption in title 26. But they adopted the same wage limit ($27.63) for some exemptions, I think.
I can't find any exemptions in Arizona. I wonder if these were ever widespread...
It seems that RIM has found the sweet spot in pricing. WIll they price the next PB there? If not, I would expect another sale.
Of course, RIM gives up 'non-entierprise' data (so far as we know) when governments demand it. BES is the target of many nations, and RIM may find itself forced to either give it up via some back door added in, or disclaim the data and let themselves be forced out of those nations - though I suspect a comprmise will be reached.
On the Android front, RIM is apparently developing tools to manage other platforms. I expect BES services to be delivered on those platforms in time, sooner rather than later, and BBX (is that it?) may become a bit player. Even a small share of the phone market is good money, and RIM may yet compete.
And any 'new Android player' isn't at all doomed to minimal share. RIM knows how to design devices people like to use. They do need to learn how to build those devices with the performance in demand now, and they may yet. But there are indeed a lot of players in the phone manufacturing business now. Room still.
There's a lot of denying the concept that RIM will bail on the PB and move on to a new tablet. I'm surprised so many people actually can't accept this. If the PB was a business device, they would probably support it longer, but as a consumer product it's going to last as long as they think their customers will expect it to. 2 years? No, more likely until the next generation of hardware entirely obsoletes it. A year tops, and probably less. When spares get scarce or more expensive to produce, game over. I'm wondering how many G1s HTC gets in for repair nowadays. It's been, what, a little over three years for that phone. Bet ya a small cup of coffee they didn't fix many at all this year. That's not to say there aren't a lot out there still, I have two and both work fine. But they aren't all that useful any more, since they are just so limited. PBs will survive an upgrade in software for a while but we are a year from OS versions that demand quad-core phones and 2GB or more base RAM, with display processors well past what's common now.
The market is on a fast cycle. Not much survives a whole year in the market - iPhones mostly, a 'special case'. My Sensation 4G I got in April, I think, and it's due to be replaced though HTC hasn't shown anything new to TMO so far as we can tell. Samsung is chewing through models pretty well.
And RIM is held to task for being slow to bring new models out. Churn, baby.
So THAT'S why I didn't feel anything... At all.
Best Buy is trying to dump these for $199.
Only about $99 too high for me. Sorry, almost worth it, but I'm not springing $200 for what is a short-lived product. The hardware will not be supported much beyond warranty, I fear.
Still, RIM is on track to convert to Android. So long as their mail client is better on Androidt than it is on iOS, they have a chance. Even Google is stumbling out of the iOS gate. There is still time for RIM to maintain some relevance.
And privacy isn't much of a problem for RIM any more. They are no more or less secure than Facebook, and their corporate clients are losing any hope of being safe from the prying eyes of sovreign states. Welcome to the party, security is an illusion.
They ' keep us safe' not with licenses, but with enforcement. Licensing becomes record keeping.
Google can have its fun, but somehow this seems more like the Wikipedia model, where trusted editors both create content and ratify it.
Prior art all over this. Rotsa ruck, Roogle.
But moderation isn't so broken on /. compared to OTHER problems.
- On my phone, /. renders fairly well, but when I moderate, it jumps around the screen. Annoying.
- Again, on my phone, commenting on /. is fubar. The comments editing screen appears, but then the screen is refocused to the bottom of the page. I can type blind and it is in there. If I scroll up and display the comment screen, touching it scrolls the page to the bottom again. Arg. Android 2.3.4 HTC Sense browser. This is a pisser, something just doesn't like this Android browser.
- At work, I can't moderate, the button just never responds. Probably security settings here, so I'll give /code a pass on this.
- depending on what settings I have, /. renders on my phone with the floating bar trying to tell me something about how many comments are displayed, or how many I'm missing, or something, but it's so badly rendered I can't tell, and it floats to obscure comments. Annoying.
I'm venting, yes, but it's been a long time since I've posted a complaint about these issues, and previous responses were inadequate, as in zero. Youse gets what youse pays for, so I'm just venting. I don't expect it to be fixed.
And there is worse out there, like our state retirement system, where the enrollment process is not just broken, it's institutionalized as broken. The help desk pretends you're an idiot while they proceed to take you through the workarounds to solve the problems - like failing to save the password accurately, presenting you with the predetermined security question instead of the one you selected, and saving a user ID that is not the same as the one you entered, since they require you to use a particular format for user ID while presenting you with an enrollment screen that lets you enter whatever you want there. Interesting. Annoying. Worse than /. by a mile.
Audited. Now THAT'S gonna fix 'em!
Every two years. Quaking in their slippers.
Right. Nearly meaningless. The next step, in three years (it will take a full year of investigation), will be to fine them some insignificant amount and make them promise, again, to not do that.
Truth is, the FTC has little incentive to actually punish bad behavior or compel corporations to stop their bad behavior:
- If they were truly effective, not only would corporations stop behaving badly, but they would therefore have very little to do at the FTC; not many new complaints, having seen what a $2B fine against Facebook, for instance, as if it would ever happen, really meant.
- If they were trying to be effective, the Congressional delegation from California (where Facebook actually lives) and Delaware (where they are very likely incorporated) would crush the FTC's budget like a roach. And move enforcement to some agency they could more properly 'manage'.
- And if that all weren't enough, Facebook would let its IPO benefactors know, many of whom will be Congressmen and Senators, that this is not good for the nation, users, government, the economy, and those very same representatives who profited well indeed from that IPO. And not necessarily in that order.
Another ineffective response from the FTC, and predictably so. Perhaps the EU can do better? Non? Plus Ãa change, eh?
Well, since I used the qualifier 'much of American (sic)', you're missing my point.
Much of America doesn't have useful public transportation. If you think living in Montana, for instance is optional, and having to suffer the DMV to be able to travel there is a self-induced trauma, ok, you got me.
But even where there is some public transportation, certain jobs just need personal transport. I was a field tech for almost 35 years, and taking the bus would just not work.
You're sounding a little like someone who thinks private transport is a problem. Maybe so, but the complaints about DMVs that fail to serve their customers is not solved by eliminating cars. Do that, eliminate cars, and depopulate 40-60% of the US. In other words, stupid.
Or are actually defending government agencies that fail to serve their customers well?
Some are also selling data on you to commercial outfits, charging more fees per legislation to help fund other government operations, and being forced into the role of maintaining the consolidated ID, merging voter registration, picture ID services, and even masquerading as immigration identity managers.
Securing your personal data would be a nice feature to have.
A few, very few, make a little money on the side by selling special access to data. That revenue is being retained by clerks, at least in New Jersey. This falls within the description of 'illicit access to data'. So I guess, in New Jersey, 'securing your data' wasn't part of the daepartment's mandate, or not done very well.
Ugh.
Exactly. DMV should, generally, be testing drivers, keeping records on who got caught committing what violations and when, reporting to the police who had their privileges suspended and who got them back, and collecting enough money to pay for the service,even for the ancillary services like reporting to such agencies as needed, etc.
Again, who's working for whom?
This is the debate. If you don't like the restrictions, don't drive.
This is the WRONG attitude and approach.
We expect our government to, among other things, serve us by managing certain things. One of these is the licensing of drivers, so that we can be marginally safe on the roads, that entirely unqualified drivers are not allowed to operate vehicles, and that dangerous drivers are removed from the road to some degree. Imperfection is rampant, but it works farly well.
Driving is, in much of American a NECESSITY. To claim it is a privilege may be linguistically accurate, but it is not accurate at all. It is a necessity for most of us.
In that light, our governments' role shoudl never be to make licensing as difficult as possible, nor should it be to force applicants to exert themselves merely to satisfy the bureacracy's self-serving purposes. It should be the goverments' role to facilitate and deliver the needed service, IE licensing etc.
The argument that driving is a privilege is to leave open the option that for some reason, we should serve our govermnent. The opposite is the desired relationship, and one that should be not only normal, but expected.
I know you're being sarcastic, and you're excused from being the target this screed. But some people actually hold that driving as a privilege means that the agencies can be permitted to make it difficult to maintain the privilege.
That is wrong.
Unless your work environment blocks Facebook. Then being able to log in independently is a blessing.
Assuming they also don't block Disqus. Weasels.
Well, at least not for your dirver's license. Kinda like using the same password everywhere. Break into one, break into them all.
Why do I have to see his screen to know what he's doing in his computer? in fact, why do I have to be on the same continent?
Exactly. DT has already made it clear that they want OUT of the US market. Maybve selling TMO off to some other operator would satisfy them, but I'm doubtful. And $3B isn't enough to change their mind.
Than again, this could be pure masterful strategy; DT gets $3B for playing along, accumulates even more spectrum, locks in roaming, sells it off for payments to say Virgin or Boost or MetroPCS or even Sprint, who ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BUY TMO.
Masterful strategy. Nearly as brilliant as Peyton Manning having dual surgery on his neck so the Colts dive into last place and draft Andrew Luck.
Brilliant.
And also unlikely. Sort of.
If you want to see telecommuting as a negative, and allow your boss to shit all over you, that's not something I can fix. Your employer can only abuse you as much as you allow them to. If you're afraid to put your foot down and say no from time to time, you have only yourself to blame."
I think I'm offended by most of that.
Telecommuting doesn't happen to work for me. Face-to-face os critical. Some of the people I must deal with will not be fronds and are not part of my 'team'.
You have a great situation. Finding fault with others who make other choices for reasons you are entirely unaware of is unkind, od not oblivious.
But congrats. You're doing well. Good.