Another great example of how finance mumbo-jumbo destroys industries.
So the publishing industry's balance sheet looks better because they carry no inventory. How is the publishing balance sheet going to look when the industry implodes?
2,794 karma · joined January 12, 2011
So the publishing industry's balance sheet looks better because they carry no inventory. How is the publishing balance sheet going to look when the industry implodes?
I think you need to write down the things that you want in a job, wait a few days, and see if those things still make sense. Then figure out how you are going to get a job where you can have those things.
I've worked in small companies, fortune 500 and government. My satisfaction at these jobs had/has very little to do with the type of organization. It's a combination of the culture of the organization, quality of management, and where you are in life. The things I loved about working in a late stage startup at 21 are things that I would hate today as a 33 year old father.
You need to find the right role. You can even find gigs in government with a fast pace and minimal bureaucratic nonsense or hardcore operations roles that demand overtime and pagers.
The original New Deal guys had mechanisms in place to deal with those sorts of things. But in order to keep funding in place for the Vietnam War and other things, the Congress accelerated cost of living adjustments in the 60s and 70s -- basically using Social Security as a political tool.
Since adjustments were made long ago, many other tweaks have affected Social Security. Welfare reform pushed folks who were chronic public assistance recipients onto the SSDI rolls. The ceiling for payroll tax adjustments hasn't kept up with inflation. And of course, the Obama administration decided to cut the payroll tax in the short term to stimulate the economy.
If you're looking for a cushion to reduce the impact of receivables, it's a good option.
I can understand wanting to avoid Oracle lockin.... But Postgres?
The problem is, it is a rough drug on your kidneys and has potential cardiac side effects.
OS X Finder UI is a mess anyway, so changes that make it easier for non-technical folk are probably net positives.
I don't have a good public example in mind, but the users at my employer often flip with volcanic rage when applications are changed -- even godawful VB5 legacy apps. Usually you can discern the "I hate change, and am typing up a memo of complaint" arguments versus "you made things worse" arguments based on who is complaining.
With respect to GMail, when people like pg who get the big picture are saying that the UI sucks, it probably sucks.
Personally, I don't mind the new interface that much -- once it's in compact view and you change to a darker theme. They did make some significant improvements for folks who live in multiple Google Accounts, and I think the Google+ integration is pretty slick.
But, there is no way that incessant testing produced metrics leading to the default white-on-white theme and non-compact view configuration. Maybe they surveyed people with poorly chosen questions or did something else that caused the testing to fail. But they didn't do a meaningful usability test that involved using a mail app.
GMail originally moved email UI forward with the conversation view -- I think they saw this new look as a similar thing, and pushed it out.
What the chief architect did or didn't do isn't relevant to the testimony of Jonathan Schwartz or rebuttal by McNealy.
Schwartz's testimony basically said that Sun was most concerned about protecting the Java trademarks and wider ecosystem, and while he wasn't necessarily happy with what Google did, he didn't see it as actionable. (Perhaps he thought that Google & Sun would eventually reconcile?)
There's a big difference between not encouraging something and having the ability to forbid it. The strategy of making Java an open platform accelerated adoption, at the risk of having it replicated. This happened before as well -- remember the Microsoft-Sun dispute re: Microsoft J++?
Also consider the fact that there are at least two major POSIX-compliant implementations of Unix-like systems on the market today. BSD was a cleanroom implementation of AT&T Unix -- very similar conceptually to what is happening in Oracle vs. Google.
It's also absurd to claim that the public writings of the CEO or other officer of a corporation, published on a corporate website, are merely "personal opinion".
Lazy network admins assume that a private network protects them against poor planning and decision-making.
Private networks give you more flexibility to do whatever crazy thing you want to do. For larger enterprise, this may mean building their own private internet.
For smaller users in particular, NATing saves time and money. You don't have to wrangle with ISPs who want to bill by IP, or get an IP block assigned.
The key to any of this "flat organization" stuff is to keep the organization small enough that you can either keep out nasty personalities, or prevent them from burrowing into the org.
People seem fickle sometimes, but why should they have to drop lots of money to take home a product that doesnt work for them? Example: back in the 90's, Packard Bell shipped a monitor with this massive bezel which didn't fit in most "computer furniture" of the era. No measurements were on the box. Result? 20% return rate. Packard Bell "fixed" this problem by offering a rebate that required you to remove stickers necessary for return.
The average US household makes less that $50k/year. Gadgets aren't cheap -- return policies give consumers the confidence to take a risk on a new product.
End result is that nearly a decade later, physically installing more than 3 servers at any given time is a project that takes many weeks. In one instance, installation of a small cluster took over 3 years.
Email is the digital successor to the memorandum, which is turn the apex of a line of written communication mechanisms dating back thousands of years.
A Sumerian boss got his reports via tablet. Phahroh via papyrus. Roosevelt via telegram. Pershing via a rolled up message tied to a bird.
Instead of futzing around with some fragile app which may or may not be designed for what I'm doing, I can send an email to nearly anyone on earth that I need to deal with.
1. They are a bunch of jerks. 1a. Legal counsel within the organization is too strong. 2. Their counsel advised them to seek the most advantageous terms for the company possible. 3. It's something to haggle over that isn't money.
IP is a murky area from a litigation perspective. Its difficult to distinguish intellectual things created outside vs. inside, so the "solution" from a lawyers pov is to buy all of your intellectual property. (ie the lawyer version of "Kill them all, let God sort them out.") Since employers have a lot of leverage, and employees who aren't collectivelly bargaining are usually scared/too lazy to negotiate, it usually works out.
One example was my local newspaper, which put this flash overlay of a local bigmouth car deal floating in the middle of the screen -- in a area that you typically click on.
I click it by mistake and end up with a high-volume "it's huuuge" booming across my office. Screw that... adblock=on.
I guess your point is that girls can't hack diff eq? Whatever -- most CS majors know jack about organic chemistry, biology, or other premed programs in undergrad, and know nothing about what is taught in med school.
Many medical schools have female enrollments in the 40-50% range.
Email has been around in it's present form for a good long time now. That staying power is a good example of why it is a "good enough" solution for just about anything.
It's like anything else... A general purpose tool will address 80% of your needs. The other 20% works best with something more specialized.