I didnt suggest that the software might be for sale. Most software is ever sold. It still adds value and if it breaks once in a while, the cost to resolve that is usually far less than the cost of initial perfection.
Most of us dont work at NASA, and build significantly more complex systems. I may be a moron but it's sure as hell not because i accept software with flaws or because i expect people to tell me when to expect it.
When i'm deciding whether £300m should be invested in an IT project, you'd better believe I'm going to be seeking assurances on dates and business benefit.
Our customers? They get access to more products through more channels with improved customer service.
Sorry, people want input on where to focus and yoiu want to fire them? Have you ever actually worked for a living?
Unleas you're in a menial and/or manual job you inevitably have multiple and potentially conflicting priorities. You may have 18 things to do and time to do 3 of them. The right three is a complex function of social interactions, project dependencies, third party obligations, personal integrity and changing business priorities. Yesterday's tip rask could be irrelevant today - a window of opportunity has passed, someone else solved the problem, something else takes even higher priority.
But hey. Dont let us stip you from working dogmatically on the wrong thing and feeling proud that you're earning your paycheck. We'll be over here, actually earning ours.
Meanwhile, in the real.world companies are deriving great value from less perfect code and cant accord to.commit their businesses to open ended and unbudgeted developmenta that may never end.
If you cant tell me when I start getting return on my investment in your software then I don't invest in it.
Only to the extent that you differentiate between a militia and an armed and active asymmetric warfare unit that strikes at soft targets but refuses to engage in pitched battles.
I can download the full professional edition of MS Office for £9 due to a work discount.
To do that I'm entering my credit card into the MS website and downloading directly from them, so I'm pretty comfortable that this is legit.
Trust me, I wish I could get the fullscale release of Photoshop for the same price. I'd actually buy that, whereas MS aren't even going to get £9 from me for Office 2010 - I'm happy with LibreOffice and Google Docs.
So why do people still pirate music? Because they don't want to pay!!! I
I don't pirate music but I also don't want to pay. I refuse to give that industry my money.
Fuck them. Fuck their archaic business model. Fuck their aggressive anti-customer practices. Fuck their bullying. Fuck their lies. Fuck their politician bribing corruption. They can fuck off, they aren't getting my money.
I stopped buying CDs when Napster went down, and I refuse to pay higher than CD prices for a fucking digital download.
They had a chance to embrace a new distribution platform, offer value for money, increased choice, give their customers a better deal and they opted against all of those things. So fuck the music industry.
You forgot the class of - women with a child that just want someone adult to hug from time to time
I'm still trying to work out if my shallow desire not to support/raise/look after someone's kid outweighs my desire to, erm, give her a hug from time to time.
Oh wow, I want to work where you work. Everywhere I've worked has struggled to articulate, plan and provision for what the "user" has to do to perform their job.
Shit, step one in any IT development role: Find out what the user actually needs, because it sure as shit isn't what they're trying to ask for.
Storing work data without backups with misleading file extensions is the act of an obnoxious cunt that deserves to be sacked, and yes, I'll happily tell your boss that.
Blacklisting porn sites is fuck all to do with productivity and a hell of a lot to do with assuring an appropriate work environment. You do not have the right to impose your porn viewing on colleagues, even inadvertently. Blocking easily prevents this.
Trust me, if I were your boss and you complained about this shit to me, I'd invite you to learn how to act professionally. I'd also tell you to bring your own computing device into the office for your non-work computing needs, including web browsing, music playing and self gratification. I'd also prevent you using the company network for such activities, and pursue serious disciplinary actions if you did indeed view porn in the office.
Unless you are a salesperson or field support technician or some kind of external customer contacting person, your place is in the office doing your job. Sit the fuck down in your cube
Fuck me, you've had a good nap. Welcome to the 21st century. We have collaboration tools, organisations with a geographically diverse footprint and high speed network access from home that allows us flexibility to work at locations convenient and productive for us and our employers.
It makes us happier and means we work better.
Backend office jobs are there cause the systems were not designed properly.
Ah, you clearly haven't actually woken up from that nap yet. You must be dreaming if you think it's possible to cost effectively fully automate any moderately complex business.
People are cheap. 20 people fulltime doing repetitive work is often far cheaper than the automated alternative, even over a multi-year timeframe.
Back office jobs are the ones that can't be easily automated, and we provide our business people with the tools to automate their own processes.
Call centers are around still cause companies have been able to make useful self help website that actually answer the fucking questions people have. Better yet, if the shit worked well, people would not have questions in the first place. See where I went with that?
Yeah, straight to the "ignorant twat" pile. How's your wonderful website going to service customers that don't have Internet access? How's your useful self-help website going to provide excellent customer service to the daughter trying to claim on her father's life policy. How the fuck are you going to write a website that can cope with the 1 in 40 million scenario that happens to be literally one of forty million scenarios in which a customer may wish to contact you, including the multiple scenarios in which the customer is being just as fucking stupid as you are.
Do the job you were hired for.
Yeah. I'm hired to think this shit through, not sit in a cubicle fighting against the fuckwit in IT that thinks he can dictate how the company should be run.
Yeah. If only they'd respected their customers' privacy and written Origin to provide the service being paid for and not scan the hard disk, upload data to EAs servers and generally act like a bugridden piece of shit malware.
Better yet, if they'd made it compatible with Steam so that I don't have to install multiple pieces of software to access my game library, I might even have used it.
As it is, they've already lost one sale because of it - I would have bought Battlefield 3 and happily paid the 'new' price if it hadn't come bundled with Origin.
True. However, do you believe that a habitual copyright infringer (or a habitual used game buyer, for that matter) would buy many new games? Or would they spend their money on other stuff?
I'm not sure about computer games specifically but studies have demonstrated that people that habitually infringe on music copyrights spend more on music than people that don't.
I believe that habitual games players will play more games. I also believe that people have limited funds available to them. As a result I believe that people that habitually acquire non-full price games will also acquire full price games to the extent that their budget will allow.
I know many gamers, and my beliefs hold true for all of them.
You need the granularity of F over that of C? You can tell the difference between 82 and 83? When there's a breeze?
You're full of shit.
Feel free to express a preference, admit that you don't understand celcius but please, don't be stupid enough to pretend you need 3 decimal points to make the celcius scale useful.
I try and be consistent. I dont buy into GFWL or the playstation network. I wont buy books in Kindle format.
I do intend to use Ulta Violet if they successfully implement their published design - they've made some very intelligent and largely reasonable decisions.
Most "bargain" phone services (cricket, go-wireless) exchange cheap and features for spotty service with messages arriving up to two days after the fact and an inbox full of spam.
What bargain phone services? I access the internet on my phone, I can use any service available on it - including almost any service available to your laptop. I access the same email account on my phone and my laptop. I certainly don't have 2880 minute latency on my network connection.
I can see some people want to live in the '00s and follow along like good sheep. Small web appliances are soooooo 27 seconds ago... Man has since evolved to large viewable screens. Miniature computers are just a trend like disco and the pet rock. Comfort and utility will triumph in the end.
You're talking nonsense. I don't have a small web appliance, I have a portable multipurpose computer that's more powerful than my 9 year old laptop. It has a screen that's the same resolution as my current laptop; that makes it pretty viewable for me.
It's comfortable to carry and hold, and it's available to me where I am which gives it significant utility.
You're clearly delusional, you can't construct a coherent argument, your rationale is heavily flawed and I kind of feel sorry for you.
I know something you don't. I know there's a difference between being anti-competitive, and being legally actionable.
Why are you so desparate to claim that Apple aren't being anti-competitive? What's next, you're going to claim that the worldwide lawsuits against Samsung are because Apple customers are in danger of acquiring a superior device by accident?
If I sell an application that lets its users access a shop and buy goods, I don't expect someone else to take a cut of those sales.
Apple demands a cut of those sales. The alternative is that I can't sell that application to iDevice owners due to constraints to trade imposed by Apple.
I struggle to define that as anything other than anti-competitive.
Slashdot Mirror
It's very possible to get ROI on software investment without selling any. You USE it.
We seek assurance. We ensure appropriate mitigations are in place.
And yeah, by many measures of complexity what we do is significantly more complex than the software support for mere rocket science.
Probably less fun though.
I didnt suggest that the software might be for sale. Most software is ever sold. It still adds value and if it breaks once in a while, the cost to resolve that is usually far less than the cost of initial perfection.
Most of us dont work at NASA, and build significantly more complex systems. I may be a moron but it's sure as hell not because i accept software with flaws or because i expect people to tell me when to expect it.
When i'm deciding whether £300m should be invested in an IT project, you'd better believe I'm going to be seeking assurances on dates and business benefit.
Our customers? They get access to more products through more channels with improved customer service.
Sorry, people want input on where to focus and yoiu want to fire them? Have you ever actually worked for a living?
Unleas you're in a menial and/or manual job you inevitably have multiple and potentially conflicting priorities. You may have 18 things to do and time to do 3 of them. The right three is a complex function of social interactions, project dependencies, third party obligations, personal integrity and changing business priorities. Yesterday's tip rask could be irrelevant today - a window of opportunity has passed, someone else solved the problem, something else takes even higher priority.
But hey. Dont let us stip you from working dogmatically on the wrong thing and feeling proud that you're earning your paycheck. We'll be over here, actually earning ours.
Meanwhile, in the real.world companies are deriving great value from less perfect code and cant accord to.commit their businesses to open ended and unbudgeted developmenta that may never end.
If you cant tell me when I start getting return on my investment in your software then I don't invest in it.
Only to the extent that you differentiate between a militia and an armed and active asymmetric warfare unit that strikes at soft targets but refuses to engage in pitched battles.
Sure. FM2009, FM 2010, FM2011, FM 2012. There's four big-name PC games that sold millions of copies and all had demos.
Ok, I cheated a little. How about:
Kingdom's of Amalur?
Total War: Shogun 2?
Trine 2?
Dungeons?
Might & Magics Heroes VI?
Duke Nukem Forever?
Serious Sam Double D?
Magic the Gather: DotP2012?
Darkspore?
Dungeon Siege III?
Divinity 2?
Ok, admittedly I've had to go as far back in time as May last year, but I've also skipped numerous indie titles.
Maybe many of the triple-A titles like COD-MW3, BF3 and Skyrim didn't have demos but I didn't want to play them anyway.
30,000 games on the Android market and you expect me to buy all of them to find out which ones I want to play?
Shit, wish I had your disposable income...
I can download the full professional edition of MS Office for £9 due to a work discount.
To do that I'm entering my credit card into the MS website and downloading directly from them, so I'm pretty comfortable that this is legit.
Trust me, I wish I could get the fullscale release of Photoshop for the same price. I'd actually buy that, whereas MS aren't even going to get £9 from me for Office 2010 - I'm happy with LibreOffice and Google Docs.
So why do people still pirate music? Because they don't want to pay!!! I
I don't pirate music but I also don't want to pay. I refuse to give that industry my money.
Fuck them. Fuck their archaic business model. Fuck their aggressive anti-customer practices. Fuck their bullying. Fuck their lies. Fuck their politician bribing corruption. They can fuck off, they aren't getting my money.
I stopped buying CDs when Napster went down, and I refuse to pay higher than CD prices for a fucking digital download.
They had a chance to embrace a new distribution platform, offer value for money, increased choice, give their customers a better deal and they opted against all of those things. So fuck the music industry.
You forgot the class of
- women with a child that just want someone adult to hug from time to time
I'm still trying to work out if my shallow desire not to support/raise/look after someone's kid outweighs my desire to, erm, give her a hug from time to time.
Yes they do. More than one - Seasons and Rio are both available ad-free for a mere $0.99 each.
Oh wow, I want to work where you work. Everywhere I've worked has struggled to articulate, plan and provision for what the "user" has to do to perform their job.
Shit, step one in any IT development role: Find out what the user actually needs, because it sure as shit isn't what they're trying to ask for.
Storing work data without backups with misleading file extensions is the act of an obnoxious cunt that deserves to be sacked, and yes, I'll happily tell your boss that.
Blacklisting porn sites is fuck all to do with productivity and a hell of a lot to do with assuring an appropriate work environment. You do not have the right to impose your porn viewing on colleagues, even inadvertently. Blocking easily prevents this.
Trust me, if I were your boss and you complained about this shit to me, I'd invite you to learn how to act professionally. I'd also tell you to bring your own computing device into the office for your non-work computing needs, including web browsing, music playing and self gratification. I'd also prevent you using the company network for such activities, and pursue serious disciplinary actions if you did indeed view porn in the office.
Unless you are a salesperson or field support technician or some kind of external customer contacting person, your place is in the office doing your job. Sit the fuck down in your cube
Fuck me, you've had a good nap. Welcome to the 21st century. We have collaboration tools, organisations with a geographically diverse footprint and high speed network access from home that allows us flexibility to work at locations convenient and productive for us and our employers.
It makes us happier and means we work better.
Backend office jobs are there cause the systems were not designed properly.
Ah, you clearly haven't actually woken up from that nap yet. You must be dreaming if you think it's possible to cost effectively fully automate any moderately complex business.
People are cheap. 20 people fulltime doing repetitive work is often far cheaper than the automated alternative, even over a multi-year timeframe.
Back office jobs are the ones that can't be easily automated, and we provide our business people with the tools to automate their own processes.
Call centers are around still cause companies have been able to make useful self help website that actually answer the fucking questions people have. Better yet, if the shit worked well, people would not have questions in the first place. See where I went with that?
Yeah, straight to the "ignorant twat" pile. How's your wonderful website going to service customers that don't have Internet access? How's your useful self-help website going to provide excellent customer service to the daughter trying to claim on her father's life policy. How the fuck are you going to write a website that can cope with the 1 in 40 million scenario that happens to be literally one of forty million scenarios in which a customer may wish to contact you, including the multiple scenarios in which the customer is being just as fucking stupid as you are.
Do the job you were hired for.
Yeah. I'm hired to think this shit through, not sit in a cubicle fighting against the fuckwit in IT that thinks he can dictate how the company should be run.
How about you calm down a little first before bashing companies who might be completely innocent?
Who, Microsoft? Have you ever seen their business practices?
Yeah. If only they'd respected their customers' privacy and written Origin to provide the service being paid for and not scan the hard disk, upload data to EAs servers and generally act like a bugridden piece of shit malware.
Better yet, if they'd made it compatible with Steam so that I don't have to install multiple pieces of software to access my game library, I might even have used it.
As it is, they've already lost one sale because of it - I would have bought Battlefield 3 and happily paid the 'new' price if it hadn't come bundled with Origin.
It's attempting to bypass the existing business model, which has failed.
You mean those billions in gaming revenue and profits are a sign of failure?
Those independent game developers successfully making a living don't exist? EA, Ubisoft and Valve aren't profitable?
It's pretty simple. Develop a good product or market a bad one, and people will buy it.
People choosing not to give you their money is not a failure of any business model that includes value for money.
True. However, do you believe that a habitual copyright infringer (or a habitual used game buyer, for that matter) would buy many new games? Or would they spend their money on other stuff?
I'm not sure about computer games specifically but studies have demonstrated that people that habitually infringe on music copyrights spend more on music than people that don't.
I believe that habitual games players will play more games. I also believe that people have limited funds available to them. As a result I believe that people that habitually acquire non-full price games will also acquire full price games to the extent that their budget will allow.
I know many gamers, and my beliefs hold true for all of them.
You need the granularity of F over that of C? You can tell the difference between 82 and 83? When there's a breeze?
You're full of shit.
Feel free to express a preference, admit that you don't understand celcius but please, don't be stupid enough to pretend you need 3 decimal points to make the celcius scale useful.
I'd happily see a couple of billion people die to assure the principle of.justice, which includes the presumption of innocence.
Then again I'd give a button labelled "kill everyone" a press, just to see...
I try and be consistent. I dont buy into GFWL or the playstation network. I wont buy books in Kindle format.
I do intend to use Ulta Violet if they successfully implement their published design - they've made some very intelligent and largely reasonable decisions.
Try
Ann Widdecombe
Palace of Westminster
Parliament Square
London
England
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Most "bargain" phone services (cricket, go-wireless) exchange cheap and features for spotty service with messages arriving up to two days after the fact and an inbox full of spam.
What bargain phone services? I access the internet on my phone, I can use any service available on it - including almost any service available to your laptop. I access the same email account on my phone and my laptop. I certainly don't have 2880 minute latency on my network connection.
I can see some people want to live in the '00s and follow along like good sheep. Small web appliances are soooooo 27 seconds ago...
Man has since evolved to large viewable screens. Miniature computers are just a trend like disco and the pet rock. Comfort and utility will triumph in the end.
You're talking nonsense. I don't have a small web appliance, I have a portable multipurpose computer that's more powerful than my 9 year old laptop. It has a screen that's the same resolution as my current laptop; that makes it pretty viewable for me.
It's comfortable to carry and hold, and it's available to me where I am which gives it significant utility.
You're clearly delusional, you can't construct a coherent argument, your rationale is heavily flawed and I kind of feel sorry for you.
I know something you don't. I know there's a difference between being anti-competitive, and being legally actionable.
Why are you so desparate to claim that Apple aren't being anti-competitive? What's next, you're going to claim that the worldwide lawsuits against Samsung are because Apple customers are in danger of acquiring a superior device by accident?
If I sell an application that lets its users access a shop and buy goods, I don't expect someone else to take a cut of those sales.
Apple demands a cut of those sales. The alternative is that I can't sell that application to iDevice owners due to constraints to trade imposed by Apple.
I struggle to define that as anything other than anti-competitive.