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<blockquote data-quote="Gizzard" data-source="post: 259363" data-attributes="member: 527">&gt; ... missed the chance to educate the bean counters on useful vs. not as useful.I think one of the sub-morals of that little fable was that the race of bean-counters has a hard time grasping abstract concepts like &quot;quality&quot; or &quot;new-ness&quot;.&nbsp; Things like &quot;ship date&quot;, &quot;cost to produce&quot; and &quot;monthly unit sales&quot; are the things that excite the bean people.When put in charge of operations, the Beans will simply select the most successful product yet produced and attempt to produce it over and over again.&nbsp; Until it stops selling due to market saturation.&nbsp; Then they will select a new golden goose and bleed that one dry as well.&nbsp; Arguements about &quot;quality&quot; or &quot;usefulness&quot; fall on uncomprehending ears.&nbsp; (&quot;How can anything about a silly pretending game be useful anyway?,&quot; they ask themselves.&nbsp; &quot;Certainly not as useful as a bean.&quot;)What galls me about the situation is that I could write a short computer program that would exactly duplicate this functionality.&nbsp; It would have to be updated from time to time with the current industry buzzwords (&quot;crunchy&quot;, &quot;immersive&quot;, &quot;pixel-shaders&quot;), but once that was decided I'm sure this program could compete successfully with all but the finest bean-counters.&nbsp; Here is a sample output:&lt;BEANSIM:&gt; Sales data input shows that Epic Level Handbook is the most successful product for the last 72 hours.&nbsp; Buzzdata shows that Epic Level Handbook is &quot;epic&quot;, &quot;non-locale driven&quot; and &quot;brown&quot;.&nbsp; As a result, production will be halted on all &quot;locale&quot; books.&nbsp; All books remaining in production will focus on being &quot;epic&quot;.&nbsp; And &quot;brown&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gizzard, post: 259363, member: 527"] > ... missed the chance to educate the bean counters on useful vs. not as useful. I think one of the sub-morals of that little fable was that the race of bean-counters has a hard time grasping abstract concepts like "quality" or "new-ness". Things like "ship date", "cost to produce" and "monthly unit sales" are the things that excite the bean people. When put in charge of operations, the Beans will simply select the most successful product yet produced and attempt to produce it over and over again. Until it stops selling due to market saturation. Then they will select a new golden goose and bleed that one dry as well. Arguements about "quality" or "usefulness" fall on uncomprehending ears. ("How can anything about a silly pretending game be useful anyway?," they ask themselves. "Certainly not as useful as a bean.") What galls me about the situation is that I could write a short computer program that would exactly duplicate this functionality. It would have to be updated from time to time with the current industry buzzwords ("crunchy", "immersive", "pixel-shaders"), but once that was decided I'm sure this program could compete successfully with all but the finest bean-counters. Here is a sample output: <BEANSIM:> Sales data input shows that Epic Level Handbook is the most successful product for the last 72 hours. Buzzdata shows that Epic Level Handbook is "epic", "non-locale driven" and "brown". As a result, production will be halted on all "locale" books. All books remaining in production will focus on being "epic". And "brown". [/QUOTE]

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