Wages have been flat in the US for too many years. Labor in general needs to push back, and on that basis alone, I will support unions.

You should look around. The nations you speak of do have strong unions, and formal representation of labor in their politics. We could use more of that here, because people have been significantly devalued.

some elements are very high margin, others not so much, and those are either investments, or something to be leveraged in the future.

In either case, Apple can afford to comp it's workers well. Any company can, or it's simply not a viable company.

We need more union labor in the US. And it seems to me, Apple operates on a high margin anyway. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. They compete extremely well, offering holistically designed and well managed solutions. People will pay nicely for that added value.

It makes perfect sense for the employees to expect the same values in like kind, doesn't it? Sure it does! They will offer the highest value they can, and they know the company can afford that loyalty and excellent service, because it's a hall mark of how their CEO does things.

Perfect. I like unions, and believe that everybody should persue every opportunity to see themselves and their peers properly valued. That means value in their person, equality under the law, not discriminated against, nor criminalized against for who they are born to be

, and

that means value in their labor, such that their labor is a net gain for them.

In this ever increasing push to distribute cost and risk onto ordinary people, organizing to push some of it right back, or secure enough dollars from their labor to actually bear it, makes perfect sense. ...or, let's get started on some improvements to health care, public works projects to help the economy and boost wages, and bring back defined benefit plans so that people can retire comfortably on, say $10 per hour, which seems to be the target wage most of these asses want to pay anyway.

and have some control over exposure.

Not sortable means you have to see more titles before you select one. For the person looking for a title that's bad. For the people wanting their title to be seen, and to know if there was interest in it, the new UI makes perfect sense.

How much do you want to bet they just log the mouse overs, seeing what people wanted to get detail on?

that breed of tech person, who has sales skills.

They are fairly rare. I found out I am one of them. After jumping careers a few times to avoid outsource waves, I find pre-sales type work a lot of fun. I do more generalist type work now, though I still do direct project implementation work too. The most rewarding, and difficult part happens to be the project planning where sales has sold something, and the customer expectations need to be managed. Often, these two are different, despite work to get agreement and alignment.

I will build plans and "sell" that implementation strategy for a best fit for longer term success, and it's often not easy, particularly when it involves enterprise software (read, big, messy stuff), scope creep, etc...

What I have found is the "trusted advisor" role can be maintained with credence, so long as I remain willing to talk about product weaknesses. That's hard, because everybody wants their product to just work, but products don't just work. Being realistic about that actually pays off huge, and it took me forever to make that case.

Here's the case:

When something is sold that isn't a good fit, there is a seriously large opportunity cost. Technical people have to do heroics to get things slammed in and working. That consumes time needed to qualify other deals, implement things, perform services, etc... Each bad project or deal costs the margin of that deal, and quite possibly a few others. Not ok, and that's a sufficient incentive to advise the customer, given they are told that.

It's perfectly ethical to tell them the costs of failure, and the importance of qualification no matter what vendor they deal with. I have a lot of success with that, often forming relationships that pay off down the line, because everybody appreciates that vendor who can say, "not this time", it's not good for us, and it's not good for you.

Pre-sales people often perform this task, where the sales person doesn't have the qualification ability, nor the drive to do it. Pre-sales type people, or that "sales engineer" type, can and will do it, and ideally do it early, seriously improving the productivity of the sales person, and the enterprise as a whole. Saying "no" actually matters in this way, and it's as important as saying "yes" at the macro level.

That's what you want out of your more sales oriented techs. The bond between sales person and the techs, or just tech, is key to this, because a sales person needs to trust them just as much when they say no as when they say yes. Good for everybody.

Structure your comp plan to encourage that, and you will benefit from it. Just thought I would clarify some of what I read up thread.

Yes I have, and I do.

I am currently a VP of pre-sales, which is basically the technical role you are describing. Our people do services, and help with sales.

One good comp is to give the technical folks a bonus when sales hits their number for the quarter. This can be cheaper than just comping them straight off the deal they contributed to, and it's very effective as sales will often consult with them often, on lots of deals, which is difficult to track and quantify. You don't want to discourage that behavior, because it will create the best sales and technical sales people you will ever see otherwise.

Another way is through time off, "toys", etc... Technical people often value those things differently than sales people will.

Do not take away from your sales commission to pay techs. You will discourage the team behavior that is necessary to get where you are going.

You will also find that spending that extra money, above and beyond your comp, pays off. Why? Because you can expect bigger deals, and you can expect some extra effort out of the techs, because there is money, or some material comp attached to it. Sales people will do what it takes to chase a deal, because that is how they are paid. You want your techs to do this when it matters, which is why you do the comp. Ideally, you will see some bonding with your sales and tech people, and that is worth gold. Encourage that, knowing you will lose a tech or two to sales for it, but they will be some of the best sales people there ever are, and you can get more techs mentored in anyway, where you can't always get new technical sales people.

Yes, your cost of sales will go up, but so will your deal size, and or number of closes in your pipe. Been there, done that many times.

Is it that hard to plan your fill ups?

I never, ever have that problem. I fill up when it makes sense, and I'm not under any pressure.

Deffo not a waste of time or money. The business just marks it all up, making the money they would always make. Then again, who gives a shit about the business?

Mine is staffed with nice people. I know them well, and I get good service consistently. Happy to pay for that, as I'm sure the business owner is happy to have my patronage, appreciating the quality service they do.

Business owners make money on people too, or did you miss that day in school somewhere?

There are some stations like you describe. Understaffed, kind of shitty really. I don't buy gas there. Why bother, when I can get it somewhere that wants to run it proper?

Seems to me, you are fixated on your own self, not really thinking the whole matter through, but that could just be me...

Cheers, and I sure hope you find a better gas station, and reconsider your fill up strategy, LOL!!

Totally. It does apply in the north west far more than it does your area. I have family there, and must say the very cold winter isn't a bad time to just stay in the car...

Nope! Just a old 89 corolla that gets about 40 MPG. Won't ever get rid of the thing. It's too cheap, and too easy to repair.

Yes, it is a job making law. No question.

As for no value added, do you live in Oregon? It rains A LOT. And when it's like 45 and soupy rain, getting colder, it's absolutely great to pull up, stuff a 20 out the window, and get your gas pumped, easy cheezy.

I know my regular gas guy. We have a running conversation over the years, kids, family, politics, you name it. There is a lot of value there too.

As for prices? It's a few pennies most of the time, and sometimes it's less here than it is in Washington.

There, it's all pre-pay, barren stations, often dirty, crime laden, with some dude in what I can only characterize as the smallest possible workspace, barking at you through some shitty PA.

Of course, one can go to the nicer stations, where they figure out new and interesting ways to get you inside to buy stuff...

So the value is debatable, clearly. No question. But, let's be clear. It's not a significant price difference. I've lived here a long time, and the cost of gas relative to the "do it yourself" states has never been significant enough to warrant giving up the option of just staying in the car on a shitty day.

Been doing it for years. And have been doing it for something along those lines for a reason.

1. The norm that we all need to lock the things down out of fear has got to be checked. There is no need for that.

2. I like the EFF reasoning.

3. The security stuff is a PITA. I've got some stuff that I would rather not share, and it's not on the open wi-fi. Easily done.

Drives my neighbor nuts. They say, "but I want to use MY INTERNET". And I say, "ok" and "why don't you just do that?". "But yours is just there", "Isn't it the SAME Internet", "well, yes but", "so then no worries right"....

It was just fun.

I think the idea that there are good people in the world, who care, who would risk their lives, and have fun is a great idea to muse upon. Lots of things are not fun right now, and there are a lot of not so good people, who don't care, risking our lives instead of theirs, and that sucks.

On some low fantasy level, I think it would be just fine to have a Kirk and crew, or even SG-1 and crew, swoop in and solve some problems.

Other things were the characters in that movie. They lit up. I enjoyed that, because I think they enjoyed doing it. That does not always come through on film, and on that movie, it did.

Well, I guess we are not yet done, because I really like the point you raised.

I think a lot of this has to do with the economies. In Russia and Asia, people don't make enough to even buy in at the level we do, and if we sell at their rates, it's brutal because it sets lower prices here.

The major software vendor I work with manages their price structure across the different regions. That's not as possible with games and common media because ordinary people don't see that dynamic, and or the complexity of the deal makes mass sales difficult.

Your characterization of the crowd here may be accurate, however I've been around a long while --before the site was filled with clowns like it is now. I'm not here advocating that piracy is good. It's not. But open is. The PC gaming scene is difficult because it's just a mess, but I don't think that's all piracy related. Sure, there is a big impact there, because it's just not hard on a PC. Never has been, never will be.

Honestly, gaming on PCs just isn't anywhere near on par with consoles. That's where the core driver behind the poor sales is. Hell, most people are moving to laptops and what I would characterize as poor gaming rigs, with the real PCs being used for higher end applications, CAD, VIDEO, etc...

The other impact is casual gaming on little devices.

I seriously question the broad applicability of big scale game productions. A good friend of mine just published for iPhone, and it's in the top 80 or so UK charts, and it's going to make a serious amount of money for the fraction of the dev done on a larger console project. Small team, low investment, mostly sweat equity and paying for some art and promotion, and it's looking good.

Nobody is "paying" for the piracy paradise in Asia. We are paying for the developments, which are profitable, and selling in the markets where they sell. Dealing with the markets where it's not sold is a separate problem. Sure, they are leveraging what is done, but then again, if they couldn't, the numbers wouldn't change, so the demand there is a opportunity that's not yet been cracked, not some justification to lock things down to the point where people can't own their stuff.

We've got politics as the problem there more than anything else.

One more thing on reverse engineering. I personally oppose software and business process patents, and restrictions on reverse engineering. Licensing content is fair game, and that's where the value is. Hobbling software development as a way to deal with that issue hurts a lot of people. The important dynamic of software is one can build on the efforts done before. The patents do more harm than good, creating artificial value and scarcity where there really is none. Real money is made actually producing things that solve problems, and continuing down that road, not doing it once, then locking it up for so many years.

We wouldn't have the level of computing we do today had we the law we do today back then, and that's what your real Slashdotter thinks about. At least that's what we thought about so long ago when this all started.

Finally, the piracy in the US is paid for. Money is being made, and a lot of it is being made. Don't forget that. So the question is how to leverage those opportunities, because that's exactly what they are.

We can continue the discussion, if you like. It's a good conversation here, and one I've not had for a while.

It's not the absolute evil, and neither is SONY.

How much money is made on 360 vs PS3, with the variations in piracy?

Another rub on this thing: If we actually do bring enforcement to the level desired, how is it that copying a game or movie carries a penalty worse than say rape?

Is there any wonder people don't respect the laws we have?

I do like what you wrote here: Show how to make money embracing it. I don't believe the majors right now are capable of that, but others are. The movie and music industries are slowly coming around, figuring out that when people are exposed to stuff, more of them buy stuff. Some book authors have done very well with creative commons too.

My only point in this is we need to have it open, so we get the geohots and advance our future. All this stuff was built by people who simply could. Take that away, and they can't and we don't get the new buildings. (metaphor)

You are honest for towing the industry line. I respect that. I aim in the software business too, and have to tow it where I'm involved. But that doesn't mean I don't give the macro view of things serious consideration, and remember my own roots, which did involve copies, and they paid off way more than they were a loss.

The industry is a notch better for somebody like me, and probably you too, because we did see the toys, and they were accessible. When I compare the PC to say cell phones, closed computing runs rampant with abuse that costs people a lot of money. It doesn't have to be that way. I would prefer that it didn't.

Good conversation, and you have the last word on it, if you are so inclined.

Well, let's say we disagree, and jesus. You could try some formatting.

The moral argument here is that without some checks on what SONY does with their OS, they can over exploit those using it. How do we know SONY is playing fair, for example?

When I said "access" you clearly have hardware that is developer hardware, and the documentation and the licenses that are needed to write programs.

What happens when the hardware gets old, or somebody wants to archive a game for later on?

Here's the reality on it. The current state of copyright and IP in general is too draconian. People are pushing back because of that. It's not all fair, and it's not all right, but it's being magnified into a bigger deal than it really is.

For what it's worth, I build my own game systems on smaller scale hardware and have a lot of fun with some friends who do the same. But, I also know how I got into this stuff, and it wasn't by just doing what I was told. Geohot is the future here, not the enemy. Either we will come to realize that, or pay very dearly as a society for that general failure.

The "want to play free" issue will always be there. Each instance of that is NOT A LOSS, as many of them simply would not have paid anyway, and the body of available entertainment dollars doesn't actually fund all those instances of free anyway. So, it's not about that. It's about structuring things so that more of the people make more of the right choices more of the time, not locking them out, untrusted, assumed criminals.

So we differ. I don't think gaming is at a scale that warrants this level of draconian IP law. Never have. Was there before it was that way, and I'm right now where it still isn't that way. Don't need the games.

Like I wrote above. There is a very simple solution. Don't sell people things. Rent them, and most all of the issue goes away. That can be done now, it would work, and it would be expensive, but secure, and effective against piracy. Don't tell me it's not a solvable problem. SONY and others just want their cake and to eat it too, and the world just does not work that way. Never has, never will.