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Cell Tracking on the Rise
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is reporting that with the recent advances in cell phone tracking tech more and more companies are using it to keep track of their employee's movements. From the article: 'The gains, say the converted, are many, ranging from knowing whether workers have been "held up" in the pub rather than in a traffic jam, to being able to quickly locate staff and reroute them if necessary. Not everybody is happy about being monitored, however, and civil rights group Liberty says the growth of tracking raises data privacy concerns.'"
Divert the calls from your employer's phone to your own phone and turn off your employer's phone.
Turn the phone off before you go somewhere you don't want to be tracked.
if i was caught in the pub, but the benefits of this tech from other angles, such as finding missing people or giving people better directions have got to outweigh the ocasional reprimand for a quick half down the local.
Liberty should be spending their time on real problems. i think most people who own a mobile phone realise they can be (to some extent) tracked, and accept it. its not like we're being tagged, there is an element of choice in it.
-AlexC
Just because you have a mobile doesn't mean that it has to be turned on.
I'd gotten very used to always having a mobile on, being able to be contacted anywhere and at anytime. But I got rid of my mobile 3 years ago and haven't bothered getting a replacement, and it's been very refreshing to have to make appointments to meet people and so on.
More realistically, if you have your own mobile, you can leave it on and have it with you 24/7. But a mobile from your job should be set to turn on at 9 and off at 5, if those are your hours. I'm shocked by how many people I work with allow their bosses to make them work outside of office hours by ringing them up and getting them to do errands in their own spare time. It's bad enough with European companies slowly moving towards the American model of unpaid lunch breaks that aren't even 30 minutes long, without also copying the 24/7 worker ethic.
At my current employment, I have refused receiving a company cell phone - I don't want my employer to reach me when I'm not at work! I CERTAINLY would not accept my employer tracking my movements! If the company I worked for implemented such a technology, I would quit - plain and simple.
If my employer has any reason to believe that I'm screwing him, he can damn well take it up with me, not play Big Brother.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I read the article, but when reading between the lines I noticed that someone could track your cell phone without any sort technological upgrade on your phone. This means that the tracking technology is on the telco's side, and if they are now offering it as a reliable service to the public, it means that it has been around for a while... sounds like old technology to me. I guess all this means is that now businesses can do what the government has been doing for years. Face it guys, our privacy has been invade-able for a while, and there is little that we (the concerned public) can do about it.
oblig.: "In Russia, you can always find a Cell Phone. In Soviet Britain, Cell Phone finds YOU!"
That (more and more) companies think they own employees, rather than that they pay for their time. If someone never shows up to work on one time or has bad performance reviews, that's one thing; and if it gets bad, let them go. But where that employee is and what that employee does (when not working) is normally not the company's business. Not that any of this is a new idea on their part --- think company towns or migrant worker camps --- but technology now is making the "dream" a possibility, though hopefully not a reality.
From TFA:
There is increasing awareness about the importance of knowing where your staff are in case of incidents like the July London bombings.
So what good exactly is businesses tracking employees on an incident like that?
The range of things you can justify in fear of terrorist attacks never stops widening.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
... for the US. Govt.? They could recoupe some of the development and deployment costs of their spy technology. Sell a complete Software/Hardware package for small operators and call it: Echelon (TM), Corporate edition.
.... Uhummmmm...... Now where did I leave that copy of 1984?????
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Turning off the cell phone is not enough not to be traced.
When you turn the cell phone off (or it is shutting down because of low battery), it nicely says the network is being shut down. So your evil tracer would know what you did.
It is a much better solution to unplug the battery. The cell phone will suddenly disappear from the network as if you were passing through an uncovered area.
And none could say where you are and why they don't know.
The only cons are about the loss of some cell phone data (like the last calls details and so on). But we can afford such a loss for the sake of privacy, can't we?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
That's like saying, "if you're not saying anything bad, then you should send all your mail on postcards". Bad theory. The issue here isn't that people want to avoid getting in trouble for nicking off to the pub when they should be working, it's that people think--and rightly so!--that their employers have no business being able to find out where they go, on a whim. After all, something that just puts a foot in the door. You let them have this, then it isn't unreasonable to ask for something else. Then the same with something else and something else until the people with the money and the power--so, the money--can do whatever they want, because you let them. And they're going to try to do it in the name of "keeping you safe"--did you notice the brief nod to the Underground bombing in July? It's like every civil liberty that's been revoked in the States in the name of "not letting the terr'ists win". Bullshit. When you take away any freedom, you're doing exactly what those same terrorists want you to do.
But enough about how incredibly, incredibly stupid I think the Bush administration is. That has nothing to do with this. Or does it?
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
Ha.
It's long been an absurd kabuki that the time you spend in commute is somehow 'your' time and, thus, unpaid. But, of course, who would sit in traffic in their true free time? Employers now show that they understand this dicotomy, this theft, perfectly well; they'll try to extert control over your unpaid time as if they somehow had bargained with you for it.
If employers are organized, so must employees be. Unions are the only solution.
This has been rattling around various blogs for a couple of days now, even making an appearance in the Guardian. It's interesting that it seems to be being posted as "news", as there has been user level access to this stuff since around 1995 when digital networks started rolling out properly. I'm not sure what's going, presumably it's one of those meme things...
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
The mobile provider knows which cell your phone had contacted last. If the last contact is a little old, your cell phone can be paged to find it. This paging is always done when there's a call for you, but it can be done at any time. Usally the cell phone networks page the mobile phones a few times a day on their own. This alone gives a rough estimate where your cell phone is located.
If more precision is necessary, there are applications that request from your mobile the signal strenght of the available cells and triangulate from this data a better location. Depending on how the network is laid out, this can give very good results.
So if you want to have a peaceful time in the pub, best just take the battery out of your phone. This way it drops out of the network without signing off and you can always blame no reception. As an alternative, select nice pubs in cellars with no coverage.
This applies to GSM and UMTS networks. I have no idea if it also works that way with those weird american networks.
"An employee has to consent to having their mobile tracked. A company can't request to track a phone without the user knowing,"
WTF? So if I DON'T consent, of course, on my annual employee's review, I won't be marked down with "TEAM PLAYER: -1" Riiiight....
"Some businesses want to keep an eye on their staff. Some feel they have an obligation to know where staff are in case of emergencies,... There is increasing awareness about the importance of knowing where your staff are in case of incidents like the July London bombings."
Huh? It's nice to know employers care about well being of emplyees, but seriously, what business of employer to track employees when something like "train bombing" occurs instead that of police? If that is the case, then health benifit and life insurance shouldn't be optional, but mandatory at work. Other wise, what does that really say? "We really care about your safty, but not really so much that we have to pay for your medicals."
"Knowing where your nearest employee is to a customer is also important. It allows a company to improve efficiency."
What? Any profession which requires (in my opinion) radio contact at all time may be useful in this case (such as EMT, police, fire fighters, cab drivers, doctors, field techicians, etc), but to improve efficiency on already shrunk-to-death workforce such as IT and sales (with high turnover)? Exactly how will that improve efficiency?
Jim the employer: Tom, I know you are by 3rd St. Get over to 5th and 7th, the nearest customer site ASAP.
Tom the employee: Jim, if you know where I am, you should know that I'm on a break and taking shit in a restroom.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
In my experience, employer try to treat their employees as cattle but very often they're very shy to put it in writing. Also, very often the low- and mid-level managers are on the power trip and most abusive - the upper management usually can't be bothered with such details while on the golf course.
This often boils down to the situation, that if those requests and abuses are ignored, they have no serious consequenses. If my employer abuses the privilege of knowing where I can be reached outside business hours, it simply will be revoked. I left in such situations my business mobile phone in a drawer in my desk when I left in the evening.
Last time it took only two incidents until my boss understood, that I'm not his personal slave and that outside business hours it's up to my good will only if I do his bidding. Most catastrophes can wait until monday morning anyway or are caused by bad planning.
For this reason, having a mobile phone that gives my location while at work is no problem for me.
But not doing anything wrong (apart from that being utterly subjective) is in itself a good reason I should be allowed to do so in private.
Umm....actually Nero was a bit less than 2000 years ago, not 2650.
A woman was kidnapped from a Boston suburb 2 or 3 years ago, killed and her body driven to a remote site in NH and dumped. No evidence at the scene pointed to who did it, how or where they'e taken her. But her cellphone was still on. The time of the crime and roughly the route taken in its perpetration were established. The body, then the car and finally the cultprit were all found. You win some, you lose something. take your choice.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
...but for complete safety wrap your mobile phone (and preferably also your entire head) in Aluminium foil.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Then you wouldn't lose any settings or personal information.
I used to work for a company that used those little HID access cards. They had a system that could detect those cards in each room, so they knew where employees were at all times. Well, one week I had the flu, and since they denied my request for sick time, I was in the office, making frequent runs to the restroom (get it?). Later that week, my manager actually wrote me up because he had proof I was spending over an hour a day in the rest room, and accused me of being a goof off.
So, I resigned and immediately sued them. It turns out that a jury is very sympathetic when it comes to a company forcing a sick employee to come to work, even with a medical diagnosis of the flu and doctor orders to stay home. They are especially generous when it comes to a company actually writing someone up for trying to deal with the symptoms.
Of course, since they were a startup (what other kind of company would do something like that?), they didn't have enough cash for the settlement. They couldn't appeal because the local DA promised criminal charges if they did. Since they didn't have case, I settled for a majority stake in the company. I then sold it all to one of their competitors who took all of their IP and fired all of the executives, including the asshole who did that to me.
most cell phones have a low power and high power mode for hitting the towers, and if you do this with a live phone, it'll drain the battery trying to connect...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Think like an East German.
East German secret police, the Stasi used scandium-46 with hidden radiation detectors to identify and track dissidents.
West German deutschmark banknotes, documents, clothing and meeting rooms where heavily tagged.
New Scientist, January 3, 2001
http://www.leftwatch.com/archives/years/2001/00000 4.html
They also used to get your odour by rubbing it onto a piece of fabric. They would then have a jar with your fabric in it.
Trained dogs would then sniff you out.
Stasiland by Anna Funder
http://www.arlindo-correia.com/081203.html
In Capitalist west phone irradiates you.
In Communist East Germany you irradiate phone.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ah I see, you're being hypothetical here!
"This is a process that started in 1948, when several changes happened: the development of the transistor, and re-establishment of Isreal being just two of'em."
Huh? What has the establishment of Isreal got do with this? Slashdot brings all kinds of freaks out of the woodwork, and you sir, are a freak.
"So nay-say all ya want, but we're on a schedule here...and there's no more changing this reality than killing Hitler when he was a corporal in WW1, to avoid WW2."
No, we're not on a schedule. You are, or at least you think you are, owing to your dodgy religious beliefs. The rest of us are simply on-topic and not dribbling from the sides of our mouths.
Hair splitting. I also didn't include changes to the various calendar systems since then, so it's off by 6 years, too. :)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Don't worry if your employer can track your whereabouts. Soon Google will release GoogleTracker, which will be a beta service you can route your calls through.
Of course, by using GoogleTracker you agree to allow non-humans to listen to your calls, for the purpose of identifying relevant ads.
Privacy advocates are satisfied that Google will not track your movement. They are satisfied that Google already knows everything about you. Google spokesmen have reinforced this, saying, "Monitoring your calls would be like triple-wiping. There's only a slim chance we'll get more dirt from you."
It would be nice to have our cake and eat it too. If I was driving in bad weather and had an accident (such that I could not call for help), I'd love for my loved ones and emergency personnel to be able to find me. Similarly, If a business lives or dies by ultra-efficiency, it is always good to be able to re-route on-the-ground employees to handle business issues as quickly as possible - while not wasting the employee's time by having them call in/be called constantly to know where they are.
However, I strongly dislike the idea that one can be tracked without one's permission. It isn't a government's job to know where I am at all times. I also don't believe that governments need to track non-criminal activities just in case a person does something wrong.
Law enforcement has always walked a fine line between police state activities and protecting the greater good. What I don't know is how our politicians and law enforcement can necessarily handle telling the difference between the two...
A Passionate Independent Musician
..you would have them. You are spot-on; by the facile rationale of these 'good citizens', then we may as well have CCTV in every room in our house, as 'we have nothing to hide, do you?' I am extremely sick of hearing the July Bombings cited as the justification for every casual erosion of our liberty in this country.
For shame, we in the UK are becoming as ignorant and badly-informed as the Americans, soon we will be bending over willingly for every pig-swill two-bit piece of legislation that happens to make us feel safe. False consciousness - words from my Sociology course which have never rung truer.
I have nothing further to add to your analysis, you said everything I believe myself.
All cell calls to 911 are located in this manner.
...in the same office? The one who uses the company phone location service to pursue and harass women in the office. What about the abusive husband who works for the same company as his wife and locates the women's shelter because of the company cell phone? As can be demonstrated by many abuses, companies aren't very good at keeping this kind of data protected from people that shouldn't have it. It's going to end up causing a certain amount of grief and accompanying lawsuits.
I'm sure that many people will accept this kind of intrusion into their privacy, simply because it will be a condition of employment. That giant stick that has been bashing holes in our personal privacy for some time now.
This technology will undoubtedly provide some useful services, but it will also be abused. My guess is that it will take quite a lot of abuse before proper rules and restrictions are put in place so that people can control when they are being monitored.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
"from being able to find missing children"
Yes, because missing children generally carry cell phones. Moreover, child molesters will all be too dumb to just throw the cell phone away the second they nab a child.
Not everything should be about "protecting the children". And yes, I have several of them.
The problem with that is unknowable consequences. Who will have access? Just because it is available to your boss doesn't mean it isn't available to others.
What then? Also, there may come a time when you need to do something and you don't want others to know where you are...like the free clinic for instance.
Privacy is just that, private, while I understand that the issue remains that work should be able to track you during work, what happens when the work day is done? Do you leave your "work" fone at work or do you take it home? Then what?
With this kind of technology, the ability to abuse it outweighs, to me anyway, its usefullness. Hire people you feel you can trust and fire the ones you can't. Much easier that way.
Just my nickle opinion.
Carriers should make you opt in to be tracked. I believe most Canadian cell carriers send you a text message requiring you to accept being tracked. Then when someone tries to track you you would also get a text message. If your company was tracking you, at least you would know it was happening and give you time to think of a good excuse. ;-)
Adventure City Tours
Every body has at least one!
Yes, it costs money; but isn't your privacy worth $20-50?
You just sent shivers down my spine. That line sounded like one of those insurance commercials: "Isn't the peace of mind from knowing your family won't be burdened with unexpected funeral costs worth $1 a day?"
So, we have to buy our privacy now? Do you propose that we pay to guarantee our other rights as well? How much is the right to free speech worth? How much would you pay to be able to travel, to meet with your friends and family? How about my right to legal representation? Who do I buy this "protection" from? The Government... Big Business... The Mob?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
always "raise concerns". Could any catchphrase be weaker or signal more inaction?
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
The worst part of this whole deal is that apparently everybody can track me using my cell phone *except me*. I'd love to be able to download some mapping software and use my phone like a GPS when I'm somewhere unfamiliar-- but apparently, only other people can get my location. All the third-party software for the treo I've seen requires an external bluetooth GPS receiver, even though the phone has GPS tracking built-in for E911 (and apparently employer tracking.)
Why does everybody get to track me but me?
In Star Trek, the communicators are tracking military personell on active duty.
Granted that this article applies to the UK, but for our US readers (such as myself) where does this expectation of privacy in the workplace come from?
/. at work but that's within the limitations and boundaries that my employer and myself have mutually agreed to. It's really not a big deal.
You have chosen to work for a private employer. You are using the employer's property and/or equipment. You are working on the employer's time during designated work hours that you have mutually agreed to.
Beyond the personal property on company property issue that has been dealt with by many courts (the 4th amendment simply does not directly apply to private employers - IANAL; notice I said "directly"), why exactly do you feel that you have any right to conceal your actions from your employer (during the course of business)? For that matter, why is this even an issue for you?
As an honest and ethical person, I do not worry about what my employer may see me doing during working hours. Yes, I do read
Do I have a reasonable expectation of privacy from our governments (local, state and federal) while in the privacy of my own home? Yes! Do I/would I fight to maintain this status? Absolutely! Does this apply to private employers within the bounaries of your contract and/or company policies? Not necessarily - read your contact and/or employee handbook.
This wouldn't be such a bad thing if I could track the cell phones of the people who are tracking me. I really don't see what's so bad about letting my boss track me as long as I'm able to follow him around. It's the imbalance of power that's the main problem with typical surveillance. Want to track my movements with a camera? Go ahead.... but only if I get to know who's watching me and I have the ability to watch them back. An open and transparent society can make the world both safe and free. As it is now the powerful, well-connected and criminal can invade your privacy any time they want... privacy laws only prevent us from spying on them.
How does this thing work? I understand from the technology side, but how does it work from the business side? Is this company FollowUs making deals/agreements with the cell phone carriers to get this information? Or is it something they are able to access some other way?
Haven't seen something like this site in the US. Probably the response to the first question above will explain way.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
If the police can convince a judge that certain information is necisarry evidence in a criminal investigation, and they document the justification, then the police can access any information or property they need. In all other cases, releasing my private information to anyone other than me is simply unacceptable. (In the case of a company cell phone used on company time, it is the company's private information.)
You don't need to trade away your freedom for security - ever. The due process of law that we have had for hundreds of years already provides the all the powers (and "tools") needed to maintain the peace.
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN
But, methinks by Nero your yeant Belshazzar and by Ezekiel you meant Daniel.
What grounds did you have to sue them, for writing you up? You resigned.
Hostile work environment cases don't care whether you resigned or were fired.
What criminal charges could a DA Possibly promise them for writing you up (not even firing you)? Why was the local DA even involved in a civil lawsuit in the first place?
ADA covers people with "temporary" disabilities (including the flu). Violations of the ADA would involve the DA (well, techically they violations are federal, but most local laws are re-written versions of the ADA so the cases can be handled locally). There have been cases where the DA threatened criminal action if civil action failed. The DA would have been involved at the begining if someone made an ADA claim against the company and would certainly follow the civil suit. If "justice" is served in the civil hearing, then there would be no reason for a criminal trial to be held with all those costs.
But I do agree that the story sounds like BS, as I think it would have gained more press had it actually happened, and the poster was AC.
Learn to love Alaska
Add to that, the fact that a good many jobs are now perfectly capable of being done by a telecommuter. This means that the job does not require any commute to be performed. The employer just has you commuting for their convenince. It doesn't matter if your commute is 2 hours, or 5 minutes. It is still time spent on behalf of the employer in relation to completeing your job.
I'm not saying that I think an employer should pay for commute time. I'm just saying that the 'you choose to live away from your job' is a bogus argument. I would probably argue in favor of commute being considered 'on the job', except that I know that there are those that would move 3 hours away, get paid for an 8 hour day, and be on site for only 2. This would be unfair to the employer, and disasterous for our economy.
Most (non-management) people on white-colar jobs have no idea of where the borders are, of what they and other stakeholders (managers, clients) can get away with. The younger the worker, the less likelly he or she will know how the "social forces" that surround him/her work and can be shapped.
Learning that you can say NO, when to say NO, and what is the right way to say NO to the different persons and under different situations goes a long way to avoiding abuses from managers.*
Traditional unions with industry wide wage agreements are not the solution (except perhaps for those that want everybody to be reduced to the industry average).
However, the pooling of resources (as in knowing from other union members in the same company and/or situation what can be done) and education side of unions (as in advising people) would be most usefull.
* The first thing to learn is that it's NOT a company that does something like this to you - companies do not feel, care or decide anything. It's people that choose to act or not towards you in ways that are abusive
Second thing to know is that a lot of managers that abuse the employees time are quite likelly deep into the grey areas of the borders of the company policy on acceptable behaviour towards employees. If as much as you try you can't get a manager to explicitly make the request on an e-mail (which you could then forward to their bosses) then they themselfs KNOW they're abusing the system
All the tracking information should be freely available on the Internet ... ... including historical logs ... ... for all managers too
....
I mean, fair is fair, we should be able to know that the CFO goes visit his mistress every thursday evening, or that the CEO is out golfing
And yet this is the world many of you fantasize about living in. Every week they fight for and babble on and on about the inalienable rights of aliens. How could anyone not believe they would use the ship's monitoring cameras to see each other's poker hands and use the Holodeck for Orion slave-girl porn reenactments?
In that same FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, employers and government don't abuse the massive database. The communicators for tracking are onlt worn by military personel, and only (necessarily) on duty. Apparently, the location function only works when abord the Enterprise. Apparently, having a genetic trait that will/could lead to a disease requiring expensive treatment doesn't get you banned from free medical care.
Unfortunatly, those conditions are not present today. The ability of a society to pinpoint any citizen's location and to know their exact medical condition carry great responsabilities. Our 'leaders' today are far too irresponsable to be trusted with any it.
..hey, if you don't like it, just remember to it off before you leave in the shuttle craft without authorization.
I have a company car that has a GPS system on it, I also have a cell that they can track. I couldn't care less if they are tracking me. It's helped out sometimes when I am at a clients location and there is another near where I am that is having a problem. I can get a call and just swing by the clients location.
The company did set this in motion because we had a ton of techs and sales reps that were "goofing" off. So they needed something done about it. They implemented a new policy that for the first 90 days of a sales reps pay was based on their activity. This was to be a way to document what they did.
"Big Brother", "good for the company"...what ever you want to call it. While I'm at work and and I am being paid, that is what I'm doing. When 5pm comes...it's none of their business.
Like I said, I couldn't care less if they track me. I got a free car and a free cellphone. :)
salary is = y.
There is supposed to be a "less than or equal to" in there, but it didn't go through. Plain Old Text, indeed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I wonder why anyone would bother producing a Markov-chain gibberish generator for slashdot? It seems like we were doing fine without one.
6 48948
Someone else noticed this first:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176375&cid=14
Umm, if you are on the clock you dont have a right to 'hide'.. You dont like being tracked and br held accountable for your workday actions? Too bad.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What happened on November 9, 2001?
Pubs everywhere will install measures to circumvent such tracking, so that their customers would appear to be elsewhere or just be invisible any time they enter the establishment. They'd be filled with employees who are on extended lunches, "stuck" in traffic, or at a lengthy visit to a client.
If my location is being tracked, databased, and thrown into a final report to question my committment to work or a company, I will quit. It is that simple.
Personally, I rank autonomy as a Top-3 requirement when choosing employment. If I am going to be followed or if I will have to do "performance reports" I just wont take a job. Why? Because I like to be happy where I work. When I am happy, I work long hours. I goof off every so offten, cracking jokes with colleagues over AIM or reading slashdot, but this all contributes to a worker keeping sanity. Seriously, this is about 20 minutes wasted per day. Less on busy days.
Why ruin that?
Summary:
1) Everyone would like to goof off from time to time. Most people actually do goof off.
2) Would tracking your employees be good for the company in the long run or would it just create disgruntled workers and "workarounds?"
3) If they don't trust that I am working, then why should I trust them at all?
Again, I disagree with you. Sorry, but quitting one's job and suing for minor damages later doesn't sound like a way to effectively send any kind of worthwhile message to a company that's this abusive towards your individual rights and freedom. Sure, he very well might have worked with other people who had 10 kids to raise, were deep in debt, or whatnot. That's true anywhere. There's also nothing saying the competitor might end up hiring those people back later. Considering the company was just a startup business, anyone signing on to work for them should have been well aware that doing so meant a considerable risk of losing one's job anyway. It's not like startups are known for their job security or stability.
But not too difficult if it's in a copper-mesh bag.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Personally I believe in the ability of self rectifying, the startup's board members and countless investors would not have been happy at losing (if priced properly ~50% profits) enough money to make them hurt without going under. This would very likely have prompted a change in management and a change in policy. I'll disagree all the same with your comments since I've been through three redundancies in the dot com bust years (due to administration - not due to the above) shortly after getting a degree. The fields I was in were highly technical (AI and GIS respectively), and I needed the experience in these rare companies. I didn't give a damn as long as I was paid well, on time etc etc, I could then move to a better job down the line. This is were I am coming from, and I can imagine some people wanted those jobs more than I wanted mine.
this is the method used to locate old people who are conversing with their robots ...
How many beans make five, anyhow ?