my first thought was of Jen in the I.T. crowd getting the task of "entertaining" the visiting executives ...

Second thought is that "good marketing" is also a great way to quickly kill a bad product - if your product doesn't "perform" (choose a metric any metric) then "good marketing" will have the unintended consequence of letting a lot of people find out that your product is worthless. These people will "get the word out" and ipso facto - yadda yadda yadda - good bye product/company

example: the whole dot com boom and bust

of course large amounts of money have been made by "good marketing" and mediocre/"good enough" products - (depending on your preference) Microsoft and/or Apple are great examples

as far as "booth babes" go - my guess is that this is a cyclical phenomenon (they aren't going to go away - because they generate "booth visits" - which is the point of going to an expo). It is possible that the whole convention/expo thing is becoming obsolete but that is another subject...

... My 14 year old nephew loved it. I was looking at my watch a lot - the best thing I can say is that it is definitely a "reboot" of the franchise - Superman as Greek hero ...

If a school is offering online classes as part of their "normal" curriculum, and if you use the university's resources to produce something while being paid by the university - does this become a work for hire situation?

in the economics of running a college (in the United States at least) "academics" isn't at the top of the "income generating list" - my "traditional big college university" income list = 1. housing, 2. alumni donations, and sometimes 3. athletics/research. Which means actually "educating" students isn't the primary mission for a lot of schools - so it follows that the professors/instructors become a necessary evil - i.e. a "cost" to be constrained or a "resource" to be utilized.

(of course at smaller schools student tuition - and government grants/loans - are the main source of income but that is a different subject)

online classes are great for actually educating people, and can enhance a school's "brand" (which is the approach I'm seeing with a lot of coursera classes) - so I don't see free mooc's as a huge threat to the acdemic status quo - but "ownership" probably leans towards the university.

of course nothing is stopping an enterprising instructor from creating mooc's on their time, with their resources, and with their name attached...

in the "I don't work at the MIT admissions office" category - I don't think 12 years of OpenCourseware has had a negative impact on M.I.T.'s admissions numbers ...

I agree with everyone who has said some version of "hire a consultant" to evaluate the situation.

Since you were "asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective" - I'm assuming that you are the consultant they hired

Think of your job as proving "I.T. malpractice" - with the specific role of proving "I.T. negligence." The manager was negligent if they weren't "reasonably skillful and careful" - which you can prove by taking those "countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive" and explaining what a "skilled and careful" professional would have attempted (i.e. the simple, cost effective, solution)

calling the manager "incompetent" isn't much better than saying that they are "stupid" (both of which may be true - but are hard to objectively prove).

the company might want to keep the manager around for some reason (*cough* nepotism *cough*) so the preferred solution might mean getting the manager "trained up" (.. and I'm guessing that they don't want to fire the manager - or they would have done that by now...)

of course ymmv, ianal, and all those other acronyms - here is a place to start for the theory

the head of NCR (way back in the first half of the 20th century) was asked about the generous "fringe benefits" the company provided (including a golf course). He pointed out that employees were move productive when provided with the benefits. In his opinion NCR wasn't "giving away" anything, just doing what was best for the company.

any "perks" (like free soda) only increase productivity if the employee is happy with their base compensation. If someone thinks they are drastically underpaid/unvalued then no amount of freebies will matter

if someone feels like they are valued and doing important work - then they will be more productive/loyal

my guess is that the return on investment for free soda/coffee (in increased productivity) is extremely high - but it isn't about the soda

There is actually quite a bit of research on this type of thing - I'd recommend "Drive" by Daniel Pink and "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely (he just did a coursera class as well) for anyone interested ...

I'm not saying we aren't in another tech bubble -but I don't think Yahoo!'s buying Summly says anything about the industry in general.

Fast Company probably has it right - that this was more about hiring talent/changing company culture than about the actual business value of the app.

Brokers don't think you should have full access to your investment account (after all THEY are professionals and you are too stupid to understand what they are doing).

Mechanics don't think you should have full access to your car's maintenance record (see above).

file this under ruductio ad absurdum - I can understand the physicians point of view. I simply disagree...

"sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes"

is still a job. if you want to lower crime in general, then take steps to improve the economy - which (in the past) has meant the government getting out of the way.

I'm not opposed to gun control - I just don't think it will make any difference (except make politicians feel like they "did" something about the problem)

with my libertarian leanings satisfied, I'll point out that the only nation-state I know of to successfully manage "gun control" was feudal Japan (Samurai who had spent a lifetime perfecting their skills wanted protection from poorly trained peasants with guns).

If you believe that a primary function of government is to protect citizens from each other - then maybe we should be discussing repeal of the second amendment. Simply make it illegal for everyone (except the "government") to own guns - then be prepared to incarcerate everyone you find with a gun.

if THAT works, we could make all drugs illegal to cut down on drug addiction ... (after all making something illegal NEVER has unintended consequences)

on the other hand the pointless reference of the day: this debate always reminds me of the "Treehouse of Horror" episode where Lisa wishes for world peace - "He's got a board with a nail in it!" and "They constructed a board with a nail in it, but they won't stop there. They'll construct bigger boards with bigger nails, and then they'll construct a board with a nail in it so large, it will destroy them all..."

The legal question isn't "is this a common practice" but what type of contract HP had with the employees.

Years ago I was an "on site tech guy" for a small tech firm (fixing IBM PC/XTs and PS/2s - good times), they asked me to sign a "non compete" agreement which basically said if I stole their customer away that I'd have to pay damages equal to the value of the contract. I'd be surprised if HP didn't have some such agreement with their employees (it is expensive to find talent - and it sounds like these were the people that HP wanted to keep around)

I'm sure Mr. Mott is a fine human being - and will do a fine job. A huge part of his job will be hiring good people. After your post, I'm even more convinced that HP can't win and needs to re-evaluate their HR practices.

Mr. Mott doesn't make a very convincing defense. Sounds like "Yeah, we did what we are accused of - but so what"

this is probably a very simple case - assuming HP made their employees sign some form of "non compete" or other employment agreement/contract, but proving collusion or conspiracy and getting damages is going to be hard for HP. Sure, the employees in question were free to "'resign en masse and without notice' but were probably contractually limited from going to work directly with GM - (which is why HP wants to talk to the people involved).

my IANAL opinion is that no matter how this plays out, HP looks bad and "loses."

so when is he announcing his new branch of mathematics

the link the Jon Stewart interview. Two very smart men, one of them is funnier than the other, you can decide :-)

I start wondering (every 4 years when people talk about getting rid of the electoral college) if we still teach United States History in high school. Sure let's reform it, take the rubber stamp "electors" out of the process - but you still have the fundamental "big states vs small states" issue (the reason we have a bicameral legislature) and not to mention some other big problems

Nate Silver deserves all of the plaudits he is receiving, I have nothing bad to say about Mr. Silver. I'm going to hunt up a copy of his book. #prepareToDuckAndRun do you know the difference between Nate Silver and God? Nate Silver wouldn't get booed at the Democratic convention #duckAndRun

This same question gets asked about writers and alcohol.

the question will be stated something like: There have been many incredibly talented writers who also abused alcohol (Hemingway immediately comes to mind - but there is there is a large sample size). Did alcohol make them better writers? Will alcohol make you a better writer?

The popular answer is: "The genius that made them great writers probably contributed to thier drinking, but drinking didn't make them great writers."

Drinking might make people think they are great writers, but simply being a drunk won't improve your writing. the cliche "correlation doesn't imply causality" applies.

Many great programmers may have also used recreational drugs - but recreational drugs didn't make them great programmers.

in both writing and coding there is a lot of hard work involved to become (and stay) "good" at your craft - and addiction (to anything) will interfere.

But remember: Mr Garrison says drugs are bad.

So just say no.

This is your brain: this is your brain on /.

Follow your dreams, but stay in school.

I admit my considerable ignorance of Nate Silver's blog - and humbly ask for pardon. i did not mean to question anyone's integrity and I don't think I was "making up shit" :-)

I question the value of any polling - even if it is well done. example: The Carter/Reagan 1980 election was "too close to call" according to the polling data - and reagan won an electoral college landslide. Of course most /.'s probably remember Gore/Bush and the exit polling brouhaha (and "hanging chads" who could ever forget "hanging chads" I've also heard pollsters complain about the limitations of current methodologies (if you are calling people on landlines then you are using an increasingly smaller portion of the likely voters) - I'm wondering if a "Dewey defeats Truman" event could be in the works ...

Yes, there is polling done on a state by state basis - but that does not seem to be what is being discussed: from the blog, emphasis mine: "And increasingly, it is hard to find leads for Mr. Romney in national surveys — although several of them show a tie."

I'm surprised the NY Times says the race is that close. Even if we throw out the Times' bias and the fact that a bunch of inaccurate/biased polls don't make them more accurate, I disagree with the logic behind the article ...

I have no idea who will win, but "national" polls aren't useful because of the Electoral college (skipping the U.S. history lesson) - I'll wholeheartedly agree that Obama has a 98% chance of winning the popular vote, but the election will come down to a couple "swing states" (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin). Romney could lose the popular vote big in California and New York, therefore lose the popular vote, but win enough of the other (smaller) states to win the required 270 Electoral college votes.

I am also extremely confident in predicting that neither candidate will win a "landslide" of the popular vote, but either candidate could win an electoral college landslide (define "landslide" as 60% or more).

For example: 1984 the popular vote was 58.8% Reagan over 40.6% Mondale, but Mondale only won 13 Electoral college votes to Reagan's 525 ("landslide"). In 2008 the popular vote was 52.9% Obama over 45.7% McCain, the Electoral College result was 365 to 173 ... (landslide in Electoral college, but not in the popular vote)

the only thing that is 97.7% probable is that it will be very close. The "election experts" have been saying for a long time that it will come down to voter turnout, which is 100% true

something about history repeating itself probably applies ...