Perhaps this is biased?
An American Civil Liberties Union supporter with a personal interest in "race relations" must certainly have a nitpick with Yahoo after the law suits of the organization against Yahoo, and what with nazi memorabelia being posted and so forth. Perhaps that was the motive behind the slant in this research?
Giving up the hatred of Microsoft as the parent poster requested, seems to imply that Microsoft's behavior would be excused. Mod me up, I'm captain obvious.
There are three types of people in this world.
Intelligent people, morons, and people too stupid to even be called morons! Hillary says stuff like this makes being a parent harder? How about, if there is a game called "Grand Theft Auto", that has been widely publicized for literally forever (since the very first versions of it) to contain very obscene stuff, and you are a religious PMRC holy roller, don't buy it for your little delinquent coke snorting brats. Get of the crack, start parenting full time, and stop crying for the community to make up for your poor parenting.
You can not be fired in the U.S. for no reason. The thing is though, employers will make up reasons or find some way to get rid of you while fitting within the bounds of law. For example, I was working for a company that got bought out. I was one of a very small handful of veteran employees, and got paid well because I was also one of their top persons. They fired me on the claim that I was one minute late to work. They had a team of lawyers prepared to fight me on it when I attempted to draw unemployment. Having lost my job during a troubling economic period, I was obviously not in a financial position to spend the money to hire a lawyer and fight it. About a month later, they ended up laying off all of the other employees for other various trumped up reasons.
I went to work for another corporation that unfortunately, merged with a larger company. Now I work with several types of interesting people which include the following:
-people that play hardball and dirty politics (not to be prejudice, but these are almost exclusively baby boomers and older)
-people who are just suck ups, who work 100 hours and clock 40, who hide the projects they are working on until they are completed so that they can all present the illusion that they are more efficient, and who spout lies which are easily gobbled up by the PHB's. This group is so warped they are falling over each other in the hallways trying to impress people.
-people who are disgusted with the company now and are deciding to leave. (many of our senior employees have left already)
-people who are tirelessly coping with the suckups and politics, constantly fixing the suck ups problems while the suckups take all the credit and promotions. These people generally care about their work, take pride in themselves, and are the "nice guys finishing last".
-people that just wander around mindlessly with no initiative, long term goals, nothing.
-PHB's of course, most who only care about the bottom line. Short term savings is all that is a concern for them because that is how their bonuses are determined. Generally, they are an obstacle and a detriment to the company and take advantage of everyone.
I have never personally been pressured into taking a pay cut, but I and hundreds of others in my company have been pressured into taking promotions without a pay increase, which in my opinion is just as troubling.
You have said you prefer discussion with "open source developers" as opposed to "open source zealots". My question is, why do an interview on Slashdot of all places?
Amend federal law to match the most strict state regulation. This way, states would not require differences in laws, and all citizens could share the same level of privacy every other American is entitled to. Americans are willing to give up privacy every day to the federal government, for "national defense" reasons. Most of them are more than willing to make such sacrifices, because laws like those are at least allegedly in the interest of defending the people. I believe justice would be for the federal government to in this case choose hard working citizens over crooked companies with business models that depend on taking advantage of laws and people. Doing so would obviously have a minimal impact on legitamit business.
Although it would be less of a hassle for the user than passphrases, I think the image button is maybe an additional deterrent at best.
-Scammer signs up for legitamit accounts
-Scammer collects images from the ones he is offered to choose from
-Scammer proceeds to scam using this fake security image, while at least a percentage would see the image they did select. Other users may ignore the image altogether and be suckered into clicking the button anyway despite the wrong image being displayed.
My windows solution was to use the free Foxit Reader. It is a reasonably sized standalone executable without a lame installation program or any bull like the activation notices and registration popups. It also lacks the excessive and graphically intensive garbage, context menu modifications, startup modifications, document compatibility issues, deployment complications, and other various annoyances you are sure to get out of Adobe products. Foxit doesn't have a firefox plugin yet so you can't view it in a tab, but it will easily open in another window, and it does it faster than acrobat from my experience.
Not to dismiss your suggestion, but I have a silent installation of Firefox 1.0.3 I put together this morning. Here's my info on it:
Extract the firefox.exe (I used winrar). Open the config.ini file in a text editor. Change line 9 to Run Mode=Silent. Comment line 224 to disable quality feedback agent. The rest I do with a simple vbs script which does the following:
Delete the existing searchplugins directory under c:\program files\mozilla, and copy my own searchplugins folder to that directory, and copy my firefox profile (which includes extensions) into my user profile directory. Extensions can also be installed silently in other ways if you'd rather. See this URL for a hint on how to do this:
I also create a shortcut which points to sort of a logon script which parses the output of ipconfig to determine my location (this is my windows work PC by the way). It will toggle my internet explorer proxy settings on (via registry). It does the same thing with firefox, but do do this my script overwrites the prefs.js with one for either my work or home location. I am still looking to find another way to determine the IP address for a specific network adapter without having to parse ipconfig output, but I have a job, which reminds me, I'm at work...
I'm no scientist, but I think the B612 project is almost on the right track. IMHO the easier way to stop asteroids is to move space rocks to improvise some very dense, rock barriers and not to count on a rendevous with the killer asteroid itself.
I started off in support at this one company and used to think our developers and admins were all morons. I moved into their ranks and they all think the support people are morons, while the wisest of us have come to realise that it's the guys in the ties that cause the biggest problems. IMHO bigotry is not at all exclusive to Java in this regard. Often, a certain tool or type of technology gets a bad wrap in many organizations because of poor applications that are a pain to implement, extend, maintain and support.
Heres an example... In my own environment, one of our bad words is Acrobat. Management got us into the mess by not enforcing standards and you have half the company using one version, another using an entirely different version. This has become a nightmare for many groups involved. This is hardly the fault of Adobe, but you can bet our employees think that "the stupid program sucks", and that "PDF files never work right". Sometimes you can smile and nod, and sometimes you wish you just never got into the IT field to begin with when you get berated by some heartless meanie who doesn't understand that it wasn't your incompetence that caused the problem.
Men needed to unbutton thier shirt with their left hand while the sword was wielded with the right. Women's shirts are buttoned on the opposite side because they did not need to fight with swords, not because they were expected to be left handed. This is still much the case in modern times.
The morale of the story is that if you are a (code) warrior, you should be right handed. Otherwise you should purchase feminine products and wear womens clothing. Just thought I'd clear that up.
your car get's hit by lightening
Call my State Farm Insurance agent.
You have to boost another car and get the wires mixed up?
We shouldn't have to. There are ways to keep your battery charged when your car is off. Heres one way to do it. For those with disabilities (including incompetence), there is AAA roadside assistance.
Some guy like me comes along with a localized EMP generator?
Probably die. Pacemaker.
And so what if I don't always look both ways on a one way street. The chances are so incredibly low that a car would happen to be driving the wrong way on the road at the exact time I cross.
Risks that are taken may not be much of a risk by themselves, but the possibility that something bad will happen to you increases with the risks that you take. Imagine that.
Mad cow acceptable level of risk to big businesses
on
Artificial Prion Created
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"the U.S. government has refused to support widespread testing of the nation's cattle herds."
"Those representing the U.S. meat industry say the U.S. government's testing program is more than adequate."
-CNN
Heres a suggestion. How about making a geekbox that we can uncheck. I could care less wether the default assumption is made that I am a total geek, but I prefer to indicate that I am not and have content like this filtered accordingly. I'm not putting down geeks. Hell, I shared a lunch table with them for years. I just don't have the same interests.
This is probably because their big buildings are empty. They were built to show the power of their leaders, not to house their poverty stricken people.
"When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he's getting might really be fear. So I don't carry a gun because I don't want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I'd rather they respect me."
-Andy Griffith
Speaking about the business side, my company went this route. Our "homemade" servers have a very large failure rate compared to the commercial products, and have plagued us with issues over a very long period of time.
If we counted up all of the parts we've lost because of cooling and similar issues in all of these systems, and the labor of building them and keeping them maintained, we could have easily purchased commercial systems, never had those issues, and used our time in more productive areas, possibly saving more money. Our bosses only cared about immediate savings though, because it is easier for them to say "hey Big Boss, we just slashed cost!" Saving the money in the long run is harder for them to take credit for. Management decisions are made based on bonuses. Imagine that.
Some "genius" knew this and was like, look what I can do boss! I'm such a smartie pants I can build you servers out of straw and mud. This jerk got all the credit and the guys who did the damage control and worked their butt off to support this stuff aftererwards went pretty much unrewarded.
Of course, almost anything can work well with competent staff. Unfortunately my company doesn't have much talent, and the people that do have talent (not to brag, but including myself) are leaving. This is primarily because the bosses are still as cheap on the paychecks as they are with the equipment.
As another poster pointed out, this was a result of the Mydoom virus. Funny that when I saw the server errors I felt a bit nervous. I explained to my coworker that I was going to be relatively useless for a little while, to which he replied "and that is different how?" I started to open up google to look for another search engine (oops) and around then I decided it was time to go smoke.
I haven't felt that helpless since the time our vending machines ran out of both honey buns AND mountain dew before my 15 minute breakfast break.
Micromaning trains is easy, but when the AI starts taking shortcuts off the rail onto side streets and beating my production times, I think I'm going to retire stock in T3H TR41N TR4X0RZ (my virtual rail company).
One thing my boss says to me all of the time is that "If someone doesn't understand you, it is your fault". Unfortunately both technicians and users often have poor communication skills, and both sides blame the other instead of taking responsibility.
I work in banking IT. When it comes to issues related to banking I often depend on the bankers to help me understand what is a priority to them, because of my lack of experience in that area. It may be common sense to us that the error message that pops up on a screen is important to us, but it may also be common sense to them that the printing issue we prioritized very low is holding up their productivity and costing them a lot of money.
The bigger stress in our IT department is not the lack of understanding between IT and our clients. It is when our own IT department can't communicate with themselves properly because of poor management and coordination. The same could be said for our banking side's internal communication. Not a day goes by that I don't hear people complaining that someone went off and did something without talking to someone first.
Like I have said before, everyone seems to have the "look at me" syndrome, and are less concerned for the companies they work for than their own personal goals. Management reinforces this behavior by only rewarding the people who step on others to accomplish their goals instead of working with others as a team. I hear that not all companies are like this, but I have yet to find one after 10+ years in the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps this is biased? An American Civil Liberties Union supporter with a personal interest in "race relations" must certainly have a nitpick with Yahoo after the law suits of the organization against Yahoo, and what with nazi memorabelia being posted and so forth. Perhaps that was the motive behind the slant in this research?
Giving up the hatred of Microsoft as the parent poster requested, seems to imply that Microsoft's behavior would be excused. Mod me up, I'm captain obvious.
There are three types of people in this world. Intelligent people, morons, and people too stupid to even be called morons! Hillary says stuff like this makes being a parent harder? How about, if there is a game called "Grand Theft Auto", that has been widely publicized for literally forever (since the very first versions of it) to contain very obscene stuff, and you are a religious PMRC holy roller, don't buy it for your little delinquent coke snorting brats. Get of the crack, start parenting full time, and stop crying for the community to make up for your poor parenting.
I went to work for another corporation that unfortunately, merged with a larger company. Now I work with several types of interesting people which include the following:
-people that play hardball and dirty politics (not to be prejudice, but these are almost exclusively baby boomers and older)
-people who are just suck ups, who work 100 hours and clock 40, who hide the projects they are working on until they are completed so that they can all present the illusion that they are more efficient, and who spout lies which are easily gobbled up by the PHB's. This group is so warped they are falling over each other in the hallways trying to impress people.
-people who are disgusted with the company now and are deciding to leave. (many of our senior employees have left already)
-people who are tirelessly coping with the suckups and politics, constantly fixing the suck ups problems while the suckups take all the credit and promotions. These people generally care about their work, take pride in themselves, and are the "nice guys finishing last".
-people that just wander around mindlessly with no initiative, long term goals, nothing.
-PHB's of course, most who only care about the bottom line. Short term savings is all that is a concern for them because that is how their bonuses are determined. Generally, they are an obstacle and a detriment to the company and take advantage of everyone.
I have never personally been pressured into taking a pay cut, but I and hundreds of others in my company have been pressured into taking promotions without a pay increase, which in my opinion is just as troubling.
You have said you prefer discussion with "open source developers" as opposed to "open source zealots". My question is, why do an interview on Slashdot of all places?
Bed goes up. Bed goes down. - Homer Simpson
Although it would be less of a hassle for the user than passphrases, I think the image button is maybe an additional deterrent at best. -Scammer signs up for legitamit accounts
-Scammer collects images from the ones he is offered to choose from
-Scammer proceeds to scam using this fake security image, while at least a percentage would see the image they did select. Other users may ignore the image altogether and be suckered into clicking the button anyway despite the wrong image being displayed.
I'll sell out my girlfriend. She plays solitaire.
The result after renaming the halflife executable is?
My windows solution was to use the free Foxit Reader. It is a reasonably sized standalone executable without a lame installation program or any bull like the activation notices and registration popups. It also lacks the excessive and graphically intensive garbage, context menu modifications, startup modifications, document compatibility issues, deployment complications, and other various annoyances you are sure to get out of Adobe products. Foxit doesn't have a firefox plugin yet so you can't view it in a tab, but it will easily open in another window, and it does it faster than acrobat from my experience.
Extract the firefox.exe (I used winrar). Open the config.ini file in a text editor. Change line 9 to Run Mode=Silent. Comment line 224 to disable quality feedback agent. The rest I do with a simple vbs script which does the following:
Delete the existing searchplugins directory under c:\program files\mozilla, and copy my own searchplugins folder to that directory, and copy my firefox profile (which includes extensions) into my user profile directory. Extensions can also be installed silently in other ways if you'd rather. See this URL for a hint on how to do this:
I also create a shortcut which points to sort of a logon script which parses the output of ipconfig to determine my location (this is my windows work PC by the way). It will toggle my internet explorer proxy settings on (via registry). It does the same thing with firefox, but do do this my script overwrites the prefs.js with one for either my work or home location. I am still looking to find another way to determine the IP address for a specific network adapter without having to parse ipconfig output, but I have a job, which reminds me, I'm at work...
I'm no scientist, but I think the B612 project is almost on the right track. IMHO the easier way to stop asteroids is to move space rocks to improvise some very dense, rock barriers and not to count on a rendevous with the killer asteroid itself.
Heres an example... In my own environment, one of our bad words is Acrobat. Management got us into the mess by not enforcing standards and you have half the company using one version, another using an entirely different version. This has become a nightmare for many groups involved. This is hardly the fault of Adobe, but you can bet our employees think that "the stupid program sucks", and that "PDF files never work right". Sometimes you can smile and nod, and sometimes you wish you just never got into the IT field to begin with when you get berated by some heartless meanie who doesn't understand that it wasn't your incompetence that caused the problem.
The morale of the story is that if you are a (code) warrior, you should be right handed. Otherwise you should purchase feminine products and wear womens clothing. Just thought I'd clear that up.
Call my State Farm Insurance agent.
You have to boost another car and get the wires mixed up?
We shouldn't have to. There are ways to keep your battery charged when your car is off. Heres one way to do it. For those with disabilities (including incompetence), there is AAA roadside assistance.
Some guy like me comes along with a localized EMP generator?
Probably die. Pacemaker.
Risks that are taken may not be much of a risk by themselves, but the possibility that something bad will happen to you increases with the risks that you take. Imagine that.
"Those representing the U.S. meat industry say the U.S. government's testing program is more than adequate."
-CNN
One more reason to stop eating meat
Nerds != Geek, dude.
Heres a suggestion. How about making a geekbox that we can uncheck. I could care less wether the default assumption is made that I am a total geek, but I prefer to indicate that I am not and have content like this filtered accordingly. I'm not putting down geeks. Hell, I shared a lunch table with them for years. I just don't have the same interests.
"When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he's getting might really be fear. So I don't carry a gun because I don't want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I'd rather they respect me." -Andy Griffith
If we counted up all of the parts we've lost because of cooling and similar issues in all of these systems, and the labor of building them and keeping them maintained, we could have easily purchased commercial systems, never had those issues, and used our time in more productive areas, possibly saving more money. Our bosses only cared about immediate savings though, because it is easier for them to say "hey Big Boss, we just slashed cost!" Saving the money in the long run is harder for them to take credit for. Management decisions are made based on bonuses. Imagine that.
Some "genius" knew this and was like, look what I can do boss! I'm such a smartie pants I can build you servers out of straw and mud. This jerk got all the credit and the guys who did the damage control and worked their butt off to support this stuff aftererwards went pretty much unrewarded.
Of course, almost anything can work well with competent staff. Unfortunately my company doesn't have much talent, and the people that do have talent (not to brag, but including myself) are leaving. This is primarily because the bosses are still as cheap on the paychecks as they are with the equipment.
That must be a fun job. I can just picture all the people trying to look serious standing around at mission control going pchearrrrbooommm.
As another poster pointed out, this was a result of the Mydoom virus. Funny that when I saw the server errors I felt a bit nervous. I explained to my coworker that I was going to be relatively useless for a little while, to which he replied "and that is different how?" I started to open up google to look for another search engine (oops) and around then I decided it was time to go smoke. I haven't felt that helpless since the time our vending machines ran out of both honey buns AND mountain dew before my 15 minute breakfast break.
Micromaning trains is easy, but when the AI starts taking shortcuts off the rail onto side streets and beating my production times, I think I'm going to retire stock in T3H TR41N TR4X0RZ (my virtual rail company).
I work in banking IT. When it comes to issues related to banking I often depend on the bankers to help me understand what is a priority to them, because of my lack of experience in that area. It may be common sense to us that the error message that pops up on a screen is important to us, but it may also be common sense to them that the printing issue we prioritized very low is holding up their productivity and costing them a lot of money.
The bigger stress in our IT department is not the lack of understanding between IT and our clients. It is when our own IT department can't communicate with themselves properly because of poor management and coordination. The same could be said for our banking side's internal communication. Not a day goes by that I don't hear people complaining that someone went off and did something without talking to someone first.
Like I have said before, everyone seems to have the "look at me" syndrome, and are less concerned for the companies they work for than their own personal goals. Management reinforces this behavior by only rewarding the people who step on others to accomplish their goals instead of working with others as a team. I hear that not all companies are like this, but I have yet to find one after 10+ years in the industry.