1) Start Web 2.0 web site utilizing every buzzword you can find
2) Desparately woo users until you get large enough to matter
3) Sit down a year or more later to desperately figure out a revenue model
4) Provide Spammers a way to proliferate
5) Sue them!
6) PROFIT$$$$$$$

Not only that, but this also avoids the usual problem in Slashdot business plans in that there is no question marks in either steps 3 or 4.

Anyone got a good idea?

Remember, most piracy is reported by pissed off employees. In an effort to do the right thing, as other posters have pointed out, first inventory everything you can. Next, figure out the extent of the problem. Then go to your boss, or the owner, and let them know your concerns, as well as the legal ramifications. Do this in the best possible fashion for you, of course. And then let them know how much of a risk they are at, in terms of financial impact. All it takes in this environment (or any, for that matter) is one fired or layed off employee (yourself for instance, but I wouldn't mention that, all things being equal) to cost them far more in productivity, time, money, and embarassment than finding solutions.

The response should dictate your further actions. However, if worse comes to worse, you can always report them yourself, should they vindictively attack you over this.

Also keep in mind that the previous IT guy might very well be much better connected if he's still there. Do what you need to do to avoid embarrassment for all parties.

Bill

Documentation is critical to business success, no matter what the business. The reality is not about "protecting" your job or keeping the PHB's from mucking with things. The reality is that it may not be what you do, but what the other guy has in his head that is critical information for your business.

In other words, what happens when a critical employee has a heart attack, or gets hit by a bus. What do you do then? If everyone has their little piece in their head, no one else benefits, and the business overall loses. Or, even more simply, what happens when someone goes on vacation? Or when you go on vacation? Do you (or does the business) suffer because there isn't a way to replicate what that person does?

In this day and age, business processes are perhaps the most valuable thing a business owns. Knowledge can be learned, information can be looked up. But utilizing information in a business is *NOT* as simple as having that information. How information is applied to the business is the key. And documenting that information is the *ONLY* way to get it out of someone's head and into the general domain.

I've had this discussion recently both as part of my business (an IT Services vendor) and as part of my customers businesses. In every case the answer is the same. The processes are the most valuable asset for any company, no matter what the size or business. In fact, the smaller the business, the more valuable, because the likelihood is that in a smaller company there are more concentrations of knowledge, more key people who, if hit by the hypothetical bus, would take with them the day to day processes that run that business.

There are many ways to approach the problem. From embedding processes into a help desk program, to external solutions such as Wiki's, to professional programs that are specifically designed to collect knowledge, flowchart it, and also align it to your business processes.

One of the products that my company handles is specifically designed for this: aligning IT processes to business processes. While this is generally a new concept, and a tough sell, when you can map out what you do in your IT department, and also see the business reasons for why you do it, not to mention see the business impact if you don't do it, the value can be staggering. This is one of the greatest untapped barriers to IT becoming part of the larger business, and demonstrating its value. Far too often IT does things because they need doing, but they don't understand how what they do affects the business, or what value their day-to-day activities actually have in the larger business. And the reverse holds true as well: the business doesn't understand how their needs and requests impact IT, or why they cannot simply "make a wish" and have things their way.

Control of your business processes is the single best way to ensure that IT is doing things the right way for the business, and to clearly demonstrate the value (monetary and otherwise) of their jobs to the PHB's and accountants and other ickey people on the business side.

Documenting processes might be the best way to protect yourself, and save yourself grief. Its only a very narrow and stupid point of view that sees this as being a way to protect themselves, and make themselves "valuable" to the business.

Bill

Its very simple, really, and there is nothing sinister or state-regularted about it (which, in some minds, might be the same thing...

Charter grew up like every other cable provider: acquisition. Cable franchises are granted on a city (or county) by city (or county) basis. In other words, Charter (or a company it acquired) negotiated at some point with the municipalities in question and bought the rights to provide service.

So, they bought those cities.

Note that rural areas are generally much cheaper for a cable company to expand into. Two reasons: one, franchises are cheaper, because of the lower number of potential subscribers, and two, in a rural area the costs associated with building a system are *RADICALLY* cheaper. For instance, in the county of Charters HQ (St. Louis, County, Missouri) the average cost per foot (inclusive) to lay fiber is about $8/foot. (Okay, this was the cost in 2002, but it will suffice for this discussion.) However, if you across the river from St. Louis, into Southern Illinois (also Charter territory) the cost per foot averages about $2 per foot. (also 2002 figures). In other words, a sparsely populated, more rural or rural area *CAN* be a cheap acquisition and buildout for a provider. Obviously, this is dependent on simple cost-ratios, and there will come a point where an area is simply too underpopulated to cost-effectively support.

Also, you have to look at Charter's history to understand why they have lots of rural populations under their belts. The original founders, headed up by Jery Kent, all lived in rural areas of Missouri. When Paul Allen bought into the company, he had completely and totally bought into the "wired world" concept. As a result, between the founders (who desparately wanted service in areas nearly and hour from the edges of St. Louis), Jerry Kent, and the relative cheapness of such systems, there was a gold-rush mentality on these outlying systems that no one wanted.

So Charter ended up in lots of smaller systems and areas.

Not necessarily a bad business plan, just one they screwed up with some unrelated decisions much later.

Bill

Quote: "If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia," he said."Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?"

I don't know...maybe that's because a few hundred million people visit Wikipedia every year, and maybe because someone like me, who remembers when Lynx was the only web browser available, has never actually gone to Brittanica's website? Just maybe? Perhaps if they resolved their rectal-cranial inversion and made an accessible, easy to use, accurate product their PageRank might improve?

Bill

You know, as much as we've heard about the auto industry in the last few months, and their ailments, as well as endless ad nauseam fixes, there are a few things that *NOBODY* wants to talk about here, at least no one involved.

First off, tage a gander at CAFE regulations, or the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards set by the EPA in the US. This is something which, of course, was instituted after the Oil Crisis in 1972. In theory, its a nice noble set of standards for regulating better fuel economy in the US.

Now, in spite of the fact that these standards are something of a joke (they haven't changed a bit since 1992, and have only been increased a grand whopping total of 9.5 MPG since they were instituted over 30 years ago), there are a few peculiarities in the enforcement of these which, I think, are specifically causing or have caused the problems the Big 3 face today, and, in fact, were specifically caused by Congress and the Clinton Administration.

Now, buried within these standards is a little rule called the Two Fleet Rule. Essentially, what it says is that the foriegn produced cars imported by a company to the US are a different "fleet" from the domestically produced cars. It goes further to say that, in fact, if a car company (by default the Big 3) want to be considered "domestic" producers that the cars they produce in the US are, in fact, the only ones that count for their inclusion in the CAFE regulations.

Now, this has some nasty side effects, the biggest being that, in order to be considered "domestic" car producers, the Big 3 were actually forced to manufacture all of their vehicles in the US, regardless of whether or not they could actually afford to sell said vehicles at a profit. In other words, this "2 Fleet Fule" was a very specific sop directly to the Auto Unions and forced the Big 3 to produce and sell their economy cars a loss for 2 decades. Not only that, but since they were actually losing money on a huge percentage of sales, they were forced to concentrate production on the most profitable lines, namely SUV's and Minivans. Which worked great, sort of, for a decade or so. Until the public decided that a) gas was too expensive to spend in a gas guzzling vehicle, and b) the enviroment matters.

So, a downturn in large vehicle sales causes a double whammy against the Big 3, in that they can't afford not to make them, and the fact that they still have to produce a significant amount of small vehicles to sell at a loss since they can't make a profit anyway. Not only that, but they can't make a profit on increased sales of economically viable vehicles as those were already selling at a loss...

Sucks to be them.

So we need to blame government, specifically the Democrats but I believe the measure had decent bi-partisan support, for this mess. By giving a few people job security, they've endangered the well being of an entire industry.

Oh, and these are the same people we're trusting to solve the mess...

What could possibly go wrong?

Bill

The problem with your assumption is that you obviously don't understand bottom line costs to company. Most small companies that I have worked with/for have very tight margins on their products. As this guy said "blue collar", lets assume its manufacturing or something similar.

A manufacturing company is unlikely to make 5% profit on sales. But lets be really generous and say they make 25%.

Lets assume there are 5 developers, and the only thing the company will pay for is the console. (This is patently untrue, but I'll get to that in a moment).

So, minimum outlay is $1000 dollars. Which means that the company has to recoup $4000 in sales just to cover the cost of the consoles.

This is a bottom line hit. Its a ridiculous use of money in a budget that could likely be spent in better places.

Not only that, but its likely that there will, at some point, be a productivity hit directly related to the consoles. I can't imagine a developer worth anything that can't in some way disable/scam the monitoring software. So if they slack off, their salary is also a bottom line hit to the company.

Of course you're next argument will be that they are likely working overtime and such, which is likely (although not certain) to be free, as they might be salaried. However, if others are working that overtime, and the overtime directly affects productivity, this is effectively time that benefits the company in product and revenue, which, again they must make by selling 4x the amount of product completely on top of what they already sell.

In other words extraneous hits to the budget can have a dramatic affect on profitability, with little or no demonstrable gain to the company.

And please don't throw out the strawman on this one: that the company shouldn't expect its employees to work free overtime. That may or may not be right or wrong, but if that's part of their job, its happening and arguing about the morality and ethics of such things won't change the reality on the ground.

And I won't even go into litigation costs if someone sues over the myriad number of issues this would raise in a company.

Bill