The otherwise-excellent article does have one glaring error - it says you can recharge the card at night, when electric rates are low. Does anyone know of a location in the US where ordinary retail consumers are offered time-sensitive electric rates? It’s not on offer in Silicon Valley.

Cheers!
Oliver

The plain truth is, we usually get paid more for doing things we’re modestly good at, compared to what I’d get paid for, say, playing the guitar.

And how does one get good at something? Practice, aka repetition. One should logically expect to do more-or-less the same work over and over again. It’s what you’re good at.

Want some variety? Teach yourself to be good at something else. On your dime, on your time.

Cheers!
Oliver

It’s interesting tha you presume an unemployed person is powerless to contribute to my financial gain. Quite the contrary. While there can be some rivalry, I know from my own experience and that of others that there’s much to be gained by both parties in trading leads, tips, ideas, resources, etc. You have info which may not be useful to you but is to him, and vice versa. Why not share?

Broadly speaking, one has “friends” - people one knows well and chooses to spend time with; “acquaintances” - people you know but aren’t especially close to (perhaps a neighbor); and “business associates” who may be colleageus, co-workers, vendors, customers, or any of the legion of folks we encounter in our work lives.

I would agree that pestering acquaintances is an area that requires the most thought and care as to social appropriateness. As for friends, if one’s friends won’t help you in a job search, get new friends.

This leaves business associates. By definition, these are the folks with whom we buy, sell, exchange, and trade. When a sales person calls you - or you call him - the presumption of business intent is assumed. Suppose you leave your job, or it leaves you, and you call a former vendor. Would he be upset that you called? It’s unlikely. He has every reason to assist you in your job search. Not only does it give him the enormous emotional satisfaction of helping a fellow human being in his hour of need (which we shall assume is his primary motivation) but he is aware that you are unlikely to buy any more product until you are once again employed.

Ringo, you need not engage in social networking as part of your next job search. It isn’t required by law. If you dislike it, by all means don’t do it. But don’t presume that other who do engage in it are insufferable rude or busy annoying each other. It’s possible they’re engaging in a collective exercise in mutual co-operation and benefit.

As for your view of hiring via networking, I agree that it biases the pool. Thus, when I call friends and ask who’s _really, really_ good at the skill I need. I bias the pool toward RR good people. I can live with this. Furthermore, it’s often the case that the best people are currently employed and not necessarily looking. One doesn’t find them without networking.

Cheers!
Oliver

Yes, calling people you don’t know to ask for favors is aggressive. Suggesting a lunch meeting with a former colleague varies. Would you do so even if you knew they were unemployed and powerless to contribute to your financial gain? If the answer is yes, then there’s nothing wrong with it… unless the answer is “yes, you never know when some schmuck might hit the lottery or get promoted to CEO.” (In which case it’s not so much aggressive as cynical.)

I would also dispute the point that the other person knows exactly what one is doing (when networking) and is “doing it too”. To the extent that may be true, I say let the “consenting adults” principal rule, but it seems to me it calls for disclosure. Perhaps one could say, “I’m feigning a social interest in you for business purposes; if you’d like to reciprocate by pretending to tolerate me for potential financial gain, please do.”

In regards to your remark about sincerity, I think you’ve become confused in a way which is somewhat ironic for this venue. Sincerity doesn’t depend upon whether you wish someone well or ill. The crux of it is lack of pretense or affectation. One could sincerely “wish [someone] great evil.”

Here’s the bottom line: In so far as I know, there is no final arbiter for rudeness, nor for the kind of world we all want to live in. That means I can’t prove my assertion that career networking is rude. I also can’t prove that the social and business environment to which it leads is undesirable. I can, and have, and might again, point out and illustrate how rude and undesirable it is to me.

I say calling people one doesn’t know, pestering people at social functions to sell them something or ask for a job, pretending a personal interest in people in order to advance one’s career, and begging favors at every turn is rude. When that crosses the barrier between work/business and home/social life, the rudeness is extreme. I don’t want a world that works that way, but clearly some people do.

From my point of view networking, line (queue) cutting, and telemarketing are of a piece and more or less equally rude. However, when it comes to sheer damage to quality of life I’ll take the line cutters and the telemarketers every time, they do less damage.

Ringo

ps. Oh, in regard to using networking for hiring decisions, that dog won’t hunt. If you bias the applicant pool you bias the outcome. –r

I think you have missed the thrust of my commentary. I have no dispute with the facts you bring to bear. It is clear that Merck engaged in shady and underhanded practices; but this is hardly unusual behavior for Big Pharma.

The problem is that, at least as far as I can tell, nothing that they did was actually illegal. Also, as best as I can tell, they even had made note of potential cardiovascular effects in their original monograph (the link is to an early Canadian version; I wasn’t able to locate an initial U.S. copy).

In 2002, they revised their Canadian monograph in response to the Canadian health authorities. But in the U.S., they did nothing. Why? Because, as you indicate, the FDA used lots of harsh language but no legal force.

It is this lack of any actual illegal activity that makes the lawsuit specious, and grounds for dismissal. The indication, however insufficient in light of later facts, in the earlier monograph of potential cardiovascular problems also stands sufficiently as a disclosure to throw reasonable doubt on the plaintiff’s case. Now, you can argue that Merck’s behavior is so unconscionable that they should be tried anyway for their dirty deeds, regardless of their legal compliance, regardless of pre-existing disclosure. I wouldn’t agree, but it’s a valid argument all the same.

But that’s the whole problem, and the entire point of my original post: They weren’t tried for any of their actual underhanded behavior. You mention that every single fact was presented to this jury. Well, based on every account that I’ve seen, the jury didn’t pay one whit of attention to those facts. They preferred to make their decisions based on irrelvant, emotional, and self-aggrandizing criteria (like getting on Oprah). This is a travesty; it is cargo cult justice.

And that was the focus (or, at least, intended focus) of my initial post. I didn’t address Merck’s villainy simply because it’s off-topic for our site; we focus on appearance-over-reality, not unconscionable corporate behavior per se (we could never remotely hope to cover all that effectively). I did try to note it in passing (”This doesn’t excuse Big Pharma, or any other medical institution, from proper and forthright risk disclosure.”), but apparently not explictly enough.

As I am oft want to say, “the only conscience of a corporation is the limits set by law”. Should the FDA have forced Merck to revise the monograph, and conduct further CV studies? Absolutely. Should Merck have acted in the cause of virtue and proactively updated the U.S. monograph as well? Absolutely, as far as ethical behavior is concerned.

But unless it’s illegal to not do those things, it is wrong- and unethical for the judiciary- to try a corporation when they are complying with prevailing law. I’m the first to argue for judicial and legislative reform in eliminating (not merely reducing) the ability of corporations to subvert government processes. But a principled stand requires that I also recognize the real deficiencies in this situation, and here that lies with the FDA (and, further up, Congress) for letting Merck get away without revising the Vioxx monograph, and the judiciary for allowing suit to be brought against a legally compliant firm.

My previous post on the vaccination debacle shows what I think of collusion between Big Pharma and Government. But the Vioxx trial and subsequent verdict were a drumhead, a kangaroo court at its best. Invective and polemic, not justice and reason, carried the day. Had the FDA stepped in when they should have, the U.S. monograph would have been revised, the plaintiff would have had no case, and Vioxx would still be on the market. As it was, the lack of action by Congress and the FDA, and the fact they did indicate a potential cardiovascular risk, left Merck legally in the clear, however black their ethical position.

And, in point of fact, I think Vioxx should still be made available, just with the updated monograph and attendant risk disclosures. Instead, because a jury (and, by extension, the larger populace) are willing to act on emotion and not on reason, I and millions of others, who did not and would not experience any untoward effects of the drug, are now unable to obtain it, regardless of our willingness to assume risk. And barring some miraculous intervention on the part of the FDA, I don’t think that likely to change.

Regardless of any differences in our views, many thanks for your insightful and very relevant contribution to the discussion. You illuminate key issues that need to be, indeed must be, addressed within our medical industry. And I think getting them sorted out, and sorted out in favor of the patients, is all the more important in the wake of the Vioxx case.

Paul

This entire case is about what you want: Willingness to assume risk. If Merck would have said from the beginning, “this drug is little better than an aspirin for most people. Some people see great results. Its main benefit is that it causes less stomach problems than aspirin does. But it also greatly increases risk of a heart attack or a stroke, so if you have lot of cardiovascular problems, you may want to consult further with a doctor. Take in a 12.5 mg dose, or at maximum 25mg” WE WOULDN’T BE HERE TODAY. They would have said WHAT THEY KNEW, and everyone would have known and could have chosen accordingly. Many would have chosen to take it.

But they didn’t. They hid documents. They recategorized patients as “unknown” in studies who had actually died of heart attacks. They lied to doctors and intimidated researchers at places like Stanford. They threatened people, all so they could market a niche drug as some sort of cure-all.

Have you read the letters the FDA sent to Merck in 2001, lambasting them for the claims they were making about their drugs? One study clearly showed a 5x greater risk of cardiovascular problems over naproxen, but Merck’s press release was titled something like “Studies confirm cardiovascular benefits of Vioxx.” What is okay about that?

All you as a drug manufacturer have to do is tell me. Tell me the truth. If you don’t know when it comes out, tell me when you do. But don’t lie and hide to make more money.

Why should a judge have thrown out this “specious” case when the leading cardiologists have been trying to get the drug removed for five years? Why when there are emails reported on in the Wall Street Journal indicating that Merck’s top executives knew years and years ago that the cardiovascular risks were there? And why when the 1991 Merck Manual contained a section on the cardiovascular risks of altering the prostacyclin/thromboxane balance (this was 1980s science), but REMOVED IT in the next edition, as they began work on Vioxx?

Every single fact was presented to this jury. If you don’t like people who are probably poorer than you, just say so. If you want to rant without knowing the facts, just give us that warning before we assume the risk of reading this stuff. But don’t blame the jury for making the ONLY decision that could have been made.

Troubling the ether once more here at MDN,

I think odyssey67 makes better points than I did. First, his exposition of Apple’s need to switch to Intel (or lack thereof) is a more lucid treatment of that situation than my own. I concur with nearly all his points on that score, seeing the switch as somewhat precipitous. Absent some concealed reasons, such as media pressure or a stealth Ninja takeover of the PC market.

Second, he’s the first to bring up the very real possibility that the end game here isn’t general computing consoles, it’s media management consoles. Or at least, Apple’s end game lies there, effectively allowing them to exit a hostile market and summarily assume the throne in an area where MS’s lead race horse is the Xbox. Not that the Xbox isn’t bad, but can you imagine an Apple-designed game console? Ay caramba!

I’m not convinced that Apple couldn’t provide effective DRM on the PPC platform. But that’s based on a rational technology argument. Historically, Big Media hasn’t been known for favoring rational execution strategies. I can easily see the MPAA/RIAA insisting on an Intel architecture. You also gotta figure some smoke-filled room machinations in here among the various constituencies. The media, consumer electronics, and computing industries are in the classic Mexican stand-off from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I can’t begin to speculate how that power struggle is going to turn out (except that whatever happens, the majority of consumers will probably get screwed, simply because of the political dynamics, which I won’t go into here since they’re off-topic for this site). But the bottom line here is that Jobs and Apple may well be executing a superior exit strategy; it’d be awesome to watch that unfold.

I’d like to focus in on the clearly very popular view that the quintessence of Apple’s success is that success for them is going their own way. ndelc (apology accepted, danke schoen I think sums up the prevailing approach Apple has taken rather nicely: “The big difference between Apple and MS is their corporate culture. MS says, “Let’s make it good enough to market, and then force them to buy it.” Apple says, “Let’s make the best product we can, and hope they buy it”.

Although, I would contend that Apple’s vision has been solid enough that it’s not “hope they buy it”, it’s “expect they buy it.” In nearly all ways, Apple’s understanding of this dynamic– that there is a real and present market for Porsche’s and luxury sedans– is what has allowed it to astonish the world time and again with its successes. Heck, with it’s very existence, given how many analysts with “The end is nigh!” sandwich boards have been walking around Wall St. all these years.

To reiterate: I think the “we’ll just do our own thing, thank you very much” approach is highly meritorious. But there are these dogging questions with that approach, the chief of which is “how do you get everyone to leave you alone?” By which I mean, how do you dig a moat wide and deep enough to keep your marketshare from eroding in the face of pressing competitive factors.

I’m among the first to think that everyone buying those $499 Dells are idiots. (Anyone buying them for use as Linux or BSD servers excepted, of course I am boggled, just boggled, at how long Microsoft has managed to maintain a stranglehold on the enterprise environment given the support cost burden that goes with running a PC-based shop. Between the viruses, the Exchange server outages, the service pack treadmill, and the perpetual re-installs to recover from corrupted DLL’s, I honestly don’t know how a PC-based shop actually gets any work done. It certainly seems like the bigger the PC base being supported, the more catastrophic the outages are.

ndelc makes the point that the world is basically on one operating system. A few years ago, I would have agreed, but I think the tide has turned for the better in the new millenium. I would contend that, thanks to the twin terrors of Apple and OSS, there are now basically two OS’s: Unix and Windows. Unix, in the form of Linux, has got Microsoft on the ropes in their cushy corporate gold mine, and it’s a joy to see. That leaves Apple, with Darwin/BSD, on the consumer front, where there is no question that they have the high ground in terms of a superior product.

But the market clearly shows that the vast majority of buyers, corporate and consumer, aren’t interested in getting the best, and aren’t even interested in managing to TCO. They are a herd of lemmings, and will go where the majority goes, even if it’s off a cliff. That being the case, how do you stop the erosion of your marketshare? We know that box buying per se isn’t the problem; it’s keeping developer support heated up for the niche platforms, so that I’m not crippled in terms of what I can do on a Mac vs. on a PC (modulo that downtime factor, of course .

That’s why I like odyssey67’s points so well; if you can’t win at that game, change the game. But absent such a continental shift, I think it’s naive to think that Microsoft will just collapse under their own weight. They have way too many corporate slaves holding them up. I think sense and sensibility are slowly making their way into that environment, but it will be open source that takes down MS, not Apple.

Which brings me back to my thesis, which is that Apple needs a strategy now to a) defend it’s market position against MS and b) position itself for the open source battle to come. Seizing the consumer media throne sounds to me like a great way to go to make that happen, because we know that open source and big media don’t play well together. But meanwhile, you’ve got this erosion in the personal computer market going on. Apple may well succeed with every other product they make. But as the Mac drops off, they will become just another consumer electronics company, albeit one that can generate terrific heat.

I don’t really care how they escape the difficult position they seem to be in the PC market. I recognize that there are many who don’t see them in a difficult position. But as a Mac advocate (at least, that’s how I think of myself, obviously in this forum the mileage varies , I would like to see the Mac desktop in a solid advance against MS. 15 years from now, I want to be on OS X 20 (though they will have undoubtedly renamed it somewhere along the line by then). My fear is that Apple is at a crisis point in the market with their switch to Intel, and all the expectations of price points and performance that will go with that. Here’s hoping I’m mistaken in my assessments, or at the least, that Apple’s seemingly infinite supply of rabbits for those hats doesn’t run out anytime soon.

Once again, thanks for a great discussion.

Paul

Crossposted back to The Cargo Cult of Business