Agreed. Knowing the needs of your customer and identifying which products to sell and whom to sell them to is just as important to business success as actually making the product.
Engineers can't build anything that makes money if no one is telling them the needs of normal people.
...and those are the people who are getting fleeced because they don't know how to swap out some computer parts.
I'm not sure if the newer macbooks are better, but it was a HUGE pain to replace the hard drives in the old iBooks. I suspect there are quite a few who know how to do it, but would rather pay more for someone else to do it for them.
I can see where low volume stuff isn't worth the hassle.
The whole premise of the Long Tail idea is that it's NOT a hassle for internet companies like Amazon and Apple to keep the low-volume stuff in inventory. That's what gives them an advantage over brick and mortar. If Amazon only sells 5 copies of the The "Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" a year, it only needs to keep 5 in inventory. If a chain store wants to sell the book it has to keep hundreds in inventory to ensure they have at least one in each store.
A lot of people mis-characterize the Long Tail as "making money by selling obscure stuff." That's only half of the definition. The other half is building a business where it does not cost you anything to keep lots and lots of obscure things in inventory, or alternatively, having access to millions and millions of customers, so if you sell to 1% of your market, it still adds up to something. Long tail does not work unless all of those 1% niches add up to 80% of the total market or unless you sell to 1% of a billion people. The internet helps businesses do both of these things.
The purpose of the Second Amendment is for people to be able to defend themselves from their own government, not to attack their own government. The Second Amendment is the amendment of last resort. Trust me, if you had the military start to invade Small Town USA, you'd probably have plenty of people in the surrounding area exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
Having elections every two years kind of makes this obsolete.
Sorry, but that's complete horse sh!t. When a Captain, LT, or SGT gets orders to secure a road or patrol an area for weapons caches - the orders do not tell them HOW to do it. It might say, these are your deadlines, here are your resources, here are rules of engagement, but the officer needs to manage and think through the actual mission planning and execution; and much of their training relates to how they should think through this process.
Most of the military I know will proudly put their lives on the line to protect their country and our freedom. No questions asked.
The problem is that it's not clear that our operations in Iraq are achieving either of the above.
It gets more difficult when US soldiers show up and realize they are being used by tribal leaders to wage civil war or settle old scores. That's not what they signed up for.
Above all, the article proves that you can be almost entirely incoherent and still get your article published in Wired if it says something about how Google is changing the world.
Well, it's a lose-lose. If he votes against it, the Republicans will hammer him to hell about "not being tough on terrorists". If he votes for it, a bunch of his voters will be pissed with him.
How this is different from ANY bill with Republican support since 9/11/01? That's the way politics works. You have to take a stance and fight off the critics.
No government intervention... M$ = Evil...No government intervention... M$ = Evil...No government intervention... M$ = Evil...No government intervention... M$ = Evil... Slashdotter's head esplodes.
No, we are arguing that the security of this information affects peoples' livelihoods and that users should be aware that the information in Google Health does not fall under the legal protections that HIPAA provides for privacy and security when deciding to use it.
It is how it works. After a long bout with emphysema an employee at Varney's, a family-owned business in Manhattan, Kan., died several years ago. But for Varney's health insurer, her legacy lived on.
The next year, 2002, the insurer raised Varne's premiums by 28 percent â" even though most of the other three dozen employees were significantly younger and healthier than their departed colleague, who had been in her mid-70â(TM)s. And Varney's premiums continued to climb.
âoeIt was as if her medical history stayed on the books for an additional three years,â said Jeff Levin, 46, who runs Varney's with his younger brother. âoeHow can you justify projecting those costs forward?â
Then, you would know that most group contracts are up for renewal every year or so. If a group had a big bump in claims in a given year, the next time the contract is up for renewal the premiums will increase. This is particularly a problem for small companies where risk cannot be spread widely -- if one person in a ten-person group has a catastrophic episode and files $1,000,000+ in claims, the company's premiums will sky-rocket. If the company has an ASO contract (like GM for example), the company underwrites the risk themselves and the insurance company manages claims and negotiates provider costs. In either case -- the health status of employees has a direct correlation with how much a business pays out in benefits. For this reason, companies would have a big financial incentive to discriminate against people with high-cost hereditary medical conditions in their families.
My Sentiment exactly. First off I don't know who would want to look at my medical record and second, I don't really care if someone does. Here are two types of organizations that would be very interested in you and your family's medical history: 1) Insurance companies: "Thank you for choosing Overabarrel Insurance, Co. Your policy is enclosed. Because your father and uncle had colon cancer, your monthly premium will be $10,000/month." 2) Employers: "You're a great programmer, but we can't bring you on full-time. Your records show that your father and uncle had colon cancer, and we can't afford to take on the risk of our insurance premiums going through the roof if you get it."
Essentially, health status can be a significant driver of discrimination in many different forms. The less someone knows about your health status (or your relatives health status), the hard it is for them to discriminate against you.
Depends on the investor. I voted in favor of the proposals on my proxy. I'd be curious to see the distribution of votes between individual and institutional shareholders.
No, it [the government] turned into crap immediately after his Presidency. Remember the recession of 2001? You can't blame that on GWB, he was only in office for a few months and hadn't enacted any of his platform yet.
You're confusing the government with the economy, so you're half right: The government turned to crap immediately after his presidency - but that falls squarely on the shoulders or GW. The economy is another story; I'm not sure how much control the government has in eliminating boom and bust cycles, but at least Clintons' administration and the Republican congress brought us into the 2001 recession with a balanced budget. The 6-year "conservative" monopoly on government even managed to f*%^ that up as we head into the next one.
"No one hires a director, artist, or writer based on their GPA (I challenge you to find one director's undergrad GPA on IMDB or wikipedia). The quality of their portfolio of work determines their success or failure - not their GPA."
It's either who you know and/or who you blow --- talent is secondary. Look at popular art, film, music or writing and tell me I'm mistaken.
Further proof that GPA does not mean anything. If you want to get into film, you don't focus on grades, you focus on putting together a good reel and networking.
Is it really that much different getting a job in any other industry?
"A much better solution would be to stop artificially inflating the grades of the weaker subjects."
How about designing the program around sending off graduates with a portfolio of work rather than a transcript with a number on it. Bitch all you want about grade inflation in arts schools. No one looks at the grades of artists. They look at their WORK. Not sure why more engineering programs don't do this.
I'm surprised that your scientific/engineering background allows you to use one anecdotal incident to make a broad conclusion about the whole universe of modern art. Even social "scientists" shoot for a cell size of at least 30.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Agreed. Knowing the needs of your customer and identifying which products to sell and whom to sell them to is just as important to business success as actually making the product.
Engineers can't build anything that makes money if no one is telling them the needs of normal people.
I'm a people person. I deal with the customers so the engineers don't have to. Don't you get that? What the hell is wrong with you people!
Some of us find that bickering terribly interesting though. I'm one of those people.
I doubt many of those people work for Google.
...and those are the people who are getting fleeced because they don't know how to swap out some computer parts.
I'm not sure if the newer macbooks are better, but it was a HUGE pain to replace the hard drives in the old iBooks. I suspect there are quite a few who know how to do it, but would rather pay more for someone else to do it for them.
I can see where low volume stuff isn't worth the hassle.
The whole premise of the Long Tail idea is that it's NOT a hassle for internet companies like Amazon and Apple to keep the low-volume stuff in inventory. That's what gives them an advantage over brick and mortar. If Amazon only sells 5 copies of the The "Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" a year, it only needs to keep 5 in inventory. If a chain store wants to sell the book it has to keep hundreds in inventory to ensure they have at least one in each store.
A lot of people mis-characterize the Long Tail as "making money by selling obscure stuff." That's only half of the definition. The other half is building a business where it does not cost you anything to keep lots and lots of obscure things in inventory, or alternatively, having access to millions and millions of customers, so if you sell to 1% of your market, it still adds up to something. Long tail does not work unless all of those 1% niches add up to 80% of the total market or unless you sell to 1% of a billion people. The internet helps businesses do both of these things.
-1 Off topic: Since when did the 2nd apply to Zimbabwe?
Having elections every two years kind of makes this obsolete.
Sorry, but that's complete horse sh!t. When a Captain, LT, or SGT gets orders to secure a road or patrol an area for weapons caches - the orders do not tell them HOW to do it. It might say, these are your deadlines, here are your resources, here are rules of engagement, but the officer needs to manage and think through the actual mission planning and execution; and much of their training relates to how they should think through this process.
Most of the military I know will proudly put their lives on the line to protect their country and our freedom. No questions asked.
The problem is that it's not clear that our operations in Iraq are achieving either of the above.
It gets more difficult when US soldiers show up and realize they are being used by tribal leaders to wage civil war or settle old scores. That's not what they signed up for.
Above all, the article proves that you can be almost entirely incoherent and still get your article published in Wired if it says something about how Google is changing the world.
...or if you are the publication's editor
Well, it's a lose-lose. If he votes against it, the Republicans will hammer him to hell about "not being tough on terrorists". If he votes for it, a bunch of his voters will be pissed with him.
How this is different from ANY bill with Republican support since 9/11/01? That's the way politics works. You have to take a stance and fight off the critics.
No government intervention... M$ = Evil...No government intervention... M$ = Evil...No government intervention... M$ = Evil...No government intervention... M$ = Evil... Slashdotter's head esplodes.
No, we are arguing that the security of this information affects peoples' livelihoods and that users should be aware that the information in Google Health does not fall under the legal protections that HIPAA provides for privacy and security when deciding to use it.
It is how it works.
After a long bout with emphysema an employee at Varney's, a family-owned business in Manhattan, Kan., died several years ago. But for Varney's health insurer, her legacy lived on.
The next year, 2002, the insurer raised Varne's premiums by 28 percent â" even though most of the other three dozen employees were significantly younger and healthier than their departed colleague, who had been in her mid-70â(TM)s. And Varney's premiums continued to climb.
âoeIt was as if her medical history stayed on the books for an additional three years,â said Jeff Levin, 46, who runs Varney's with his younger brother. âoeHow can you justify projecting those costs forward?â
Then, you would know that most group contracts are up for renewal every year or so. If a group had a big bump in claims in a given year, the next time the contract is up for renewal the premiums will increase. This is particularly a problem for small companies where risk cannot be spread widely -- if one person in a ten-person group has a catastrophic episode and files $1,000,000+ in claims, the company's premiums will sky-rocket. If the company has an ASO contract (like GM for example), the company underwrites the risk themselves and the insurance company manages claims and negotiates provider costs. In either case -- the health status of employees has a direct correlation with how much a business pays out in benefits. For this reason, companies would have a big financial incentive to discriminate against people with high-cost hereditary medical conditions in their families.
1) Insurance companies: "Thank you for choosing Overabarrel Insurance, Co. Your policy is enclosed. Because your father and uncle had colon cancer, your monthly premium will be $10,000/month."
2) Employers: "You're a great programmer, but we can't bring you on full-time. Your records show that your father and uncle had colon cancer, and we can't afford to take on the risk of our insurance premiums going through the roof if you get it."
Essentially, health status can be a significant driver of discrimination in many different forms. The less someone knows about your health status (or your relatives health status), the hard it is for them to discriminate against you.
dude, what's with the N bomb? was that necessary?
Depends on the investor. I voted in favor of the proposals on my proxy. I'd be curious to see the distribution of votes between individual and institutional shareholders.
MOD PARENT FUNNY
MOD Down. Link NSFW.
No, it [the government] turned into crap immediately after his Presidency. Remember the recession of 2001? You can't blame that on GWB, he was only in office for a few months and hadn't enacted any of his platform yet.
You're confusing the government with the economy, so you're half right: The government turned to crap immediately after his presidency - but that falls squarely on the shoulders or GW. The economy is another story; I'm not sure how much control the government has in eliminating boom and bust cycles, but at least Clintons' administration and the Republican congress brought us into the 2001 recession with a balanced budget. The 6-year "conservative" monopoly on government even managed to f*%^ that up as we head into the next one.
It's either who you know and/or who you blow --- talent is secondary. Look at popular art, film, music or writing and tell me I'm mistaken.
Further proof that GPA does not mean anything. If you want to get into film, you don't focus on grades, you focus on putting together a good reel and networking.
Is it really that much different getting a job in any other industry?
How about designing the program around sending off graduates with a portfolio of work rather than a transcript with a number on it. Bitch all you want about grade inflation in arts schools. No one looks at the grades of artists. They look at their WORK. Not sure why more engineering programs don't do this.
I'm surprised that your scientific/engineering background allows you to use one anecdotal incident to make a broad conclusion about the whole universe of modern art. Even social "scientists" shoot for a cell size of at least 30.