I'd like to know how many people die on the roads, or from accidents related to cannabis, though.
Do we also take into account the fact that cannabis (much like other drugs) can be a trigger for a number of mental and cardiac problems, or should we just suppress that information because it doesn't fit in nicely with our views?
If an agent misses a call, the supervisor knows it. If the same agent misses x calls in a row (usually 3 times, sometimes 15), that agent gets disconnected (well, he gets put in a different state). Most companies handle this gracefully, because the agent's phone may be faulty, or there was an actual emergency.
It really depends on how the supervisor sets up the callcentre: it can be atrocious, or it can be fantastic. One or our client companies is "abusing" the system so that instead of opening a "quality control" web page (where the agent is to input data regarding the customer's tone of voice, etc), he rewards his agents by giving them a browser to Facebook or their personal email for a few minutes, if they've had a good run of effective calls. This is automated, and the supervisors can't override it; this means that even if you have douchebag control-freak, the agents can still get 2 hours of breaks during the day, just by being effective.
Other companies treat their employees like live stock. Miss a call? Have a browser window opened to justify why you didn't pick up. Miss 3 calls? Your state gets changed to "GO_SEE_($SUPERVISOR_NAME)_NOW", and you can't receive any more calls. We even had the case of a supervisor who attempted to display random images of animal cruelty if an agent missed a call. We did report that one.
The "problem" is that a lot of our client companies justify the drastic rules they set up because of agent abuse. And the abuse, in some cases, is heroic:
Two agents figured out they were on the same call queue, and that they were the only ones, on said queue, in a specific language. So what did they do? Every day, at 9:38, one of them would take a bathroom break, and the other's girlfriend would call. She'd navigate the voice menus until she ended up in the waiting queue of her boyfriend. He'd pick up, and they'd remain on the phone for 2-3 hours. The other guy would come back, and his girlfriend called a couple of minutes later, and end up with him. Their record, before being discovered, was 6 hours calls, each. They'd let the call running when they went on their lunch break. They were found out because the company thought something was wrong with our system, and pulled a "breach of contract" on us because we weren't able to fix it; that's how much they trusted their agents---until we had them listen to the call recordings.
Some agents will figure out their direct phone line, and have all their friends call, or setup free international calls by calling someone, and then transferring them to other numbers.
Does that justify giving a semi-dictator the authority to destroy people's psychological health? Hell no, but as always, finding a middle ground is difficult. We cater to the needs of small companies, sometimes with only one or two agents at any given time. One of the callcentres we directly operate (for another product) has two agents, up to six when they're backed up. We don't have a supervisor, only the (senior) agents get supervision rights. More supervisors is better, because they see/hear what the other supervisors are doing, and so they police themselves. We provide wireless headsets, so the agents can go out have a cigarette ('tis France, after all), or go make themselves some coffee while being on a call; most of the time, they don't need a computer, as it's just helping people click through software, and they know it by heart.
They can't. If they hit the bathroom break button, it changes their state, and they won't get any calls.
I'm the lead dev / product manager for a software VoIP callcentre solution. We've had to develop features such as "don't allow an agent to take a bathroom break if there aren't enough agents available, or the waiting queue is too big, or if the estimated waiting is over X".
Supervisors will spend the day looking at the monitor, constantly checking how many calls are waiting, how long each agent is on the line. They will put themselves in "whisper" mode, so they can yell at the agent, without the customer hearing anything. If you're ever on the line with a callcentre drone, and he suddenly starts taking time to answer, or suddenly starts having trouble finding his words, it's probably a sign you're using up too much of his allotted per-call time, and getting the poor lad into trouble.
We operate in France, so we've had to deal with a lot of employee-protection laws, but more often that not, our customers (the callcentre) will force us to override specific settings (the mandatory 2 second break after each call can be revoked if the last call was too long; hence not effective enough), even if they violate the law.
If you've got the skills, it is. He's not going to be building the next Facebook, or being creative with CSS3. He's going to install Ubuntu Server and setup Drupal.
Actually, that's not entirely accurate. A magistrate has to authorise the search through a warrant (Commission rogatoire) only if the enquiry being made is an Enquête Préliminaire. The Enquête Préliminaire depends solely on the DA, and is hence often abused.
However, when the enquiry at hand is an Enquête de Flagrance, which is not limited to having an officer be a first-witness, the search does not require a warrant, and does not require a written statement of the suspect accepting the search (as is the case during an Enquête Prélimiaire). An Enquête de Flagrance can also take place when an alleged victim denounces the crime, and the search can then be conducted in any location owned, or used as a residence (e.g.: hotel room), by any person who can be suspected of being related to the events.
Simple suspicion is enough to allow officers in your home. For having been on that end of the stick (and not knowing the law at the time), I asked the Gendarme trying to enter my house to present a "mandat". He simply replied "This isn't the movies, now get out of the way." (I know, I know, the plural of anecdote isn't data, but still).
There are no search warrants in France. The police (and especially the Gendarmerie) is allowed to enter any building, any house, any property, within certain conditions (for example, they're not allowed to wake you up before 6AM). The only time that a DA has to sign something off is if there is no official case yet, and the owner of the property did not agree to it being searched.
Other than that, they can just walk in and have a coffee for all they care.
Yeah, because you'd definitely ask the Java team to start using C# and.Net because "the business needs" have evolved.
Most probably, there's a number of stickers on the software OP has to use that says "You will need a good understanding of Windows and AD to understand the fuck we're on about in the documentation", and the vendor is recommending they have a "real Winadmin" available.
It's not that he doesn't want to learn, but more probably that the decision has come from above; a mix between managerial incompetence, who saw the sticker, asked HR who of the team had "Windows" on their CV, and made corporate send the "recruit" order down to fill the gap.
Well, sure, I'm capable of compiling one of my projects on a single core 400Mhz CPU, with 256MB of RAM, but takes 25 minutes. On my quad core desktop, it takes 5-8 seconds, in the process kicking up 15GB of RAM-dust.
Also, try managing 60k SLOC, assorted (local) documentation, and standard/API (remote) documentation on a 10" screen.
There's a reason why pressing alt-tab works: It enables me to switch from one screen to another without having to refocus my eyes. Which means that when I'm comparing documentation to my code, I can instantly see implementation and reference, with minimum eye movement.
Try doing the same on a tablet where I have to double click a central button, then find the icon of the app, move my hand to click the button, then re-position my hands on the keyboard, and finally try and find the area of the screen I was focused on.
By the same logic you're applying, anyone currently walking around with an iPod should just walk around with a discman and a bunch of CDs, on the go. The sound quality is the same, and you can buy batteries anywhere. If you're an iPhone user, stop being so pretentious and just use payphones.
Maybe your usage fits a tablet, but please, I'm fine with paying premium prices to keep my hands on a real keyboard, attached to a real computer. I'm not telling you "you're wrong" for being fine with paying premium for a glorified iPod, so please, do return the courtesy. It's this kind of bullshit PHB-wannabe[1] arguments that have provided us with the abortions that are unity, gnome3, metro and the app store.
[1]: "I don't understand what I'm talking about, yet I'll talk out of my ass just to seem knowledgeable." Your boss is probably like this, which is fine; we're there to manage our bosses.
Indeed. I remember the kickstart project and all, and how the project went from "With a few grand we can do this" to "Oh wow, we've got 7 times what we asked for, let's do more".
I don't think they should've done more than they originally set out, they should've increased the planned quality. What I mean by that is that it is likely the initial budget they asked for was way too low, anyway, for what they wanted to do.
Indeed, the quality of the recordings is poor, at best, and there are a great number of mistakes in the performances. Yet none of those care, because for maybe one of the first times, there are actual, recent recordings in the public domains. But coughing? Seriously?
Anyway, I'd like for MusOpen to take this chance to also distribute the works in the raw format they have, or.wav, or any other kind of lossless format, preferably not encumbered by patents or licensing issues. I'll even go ahead and offer a lot of bandwidth to help MusOpen achieve that goal.
France has been doing the same thing, but that's not the same WEEE. The one you're talking about is this one, dated from 2003. The "eco-tax" has been applied since 2005, IIRC.
The main difference, as I understand it, is that the 2003 WEEE left it up to the member state to define which scheme to implement, in order to recoup the costs of recycling electronic goods:
It is important to note that the WEEE Directive does not stipulate how its aims should be achieved and the system therefore currently varies between member states. A new WEEE Directive is proposed for publication in early 2012 that should solve this problem, among others.
I'll recommend ruTorrent, a web frontend for rTorrent. I've been using it as the main interface for my seedbox. No database, no bullshit, just a nice, clean, user interface with great plugins available.
Please don't spread stupidities like these. Fibromyalgia may not be a disease, but that doesn't mean it's automatically a "psychiatric problem".
Disclaimer: I'm a software architect, not a doctor, and have never had a passing grade in biology.
My mother was diagnosed with fibromyalgia roughly 15 years ago. I may not like the woman, but I have to speak up for people who suffer from this syndrome; because whether or not it is related to some "psychiatric problem", these patients suffer tremendously. This is only worsened by the fact that a great number of doctors and institutions not only "don't believe" in the syndrome, they won't even acknowledge it, or attempt to help.
My understanding is that we don't have a fucking clue where it's coming from. Some people believe it's purely psychiatric (exhibit A, parent post), others believe it's purely physical (problem in the muscles and soft tissues themselves), others believe it's a nervous system problem (aka "Central Sensitisation Syndrome"), and others believe it may come from the way the brain interprets the signals coming from the nervous system. The FDA writes on its website it may be caused by "injury, emotional distress, or viruses that change the way the brain perceives pain". Which is the bureaucratic equivalent of "Fuck, if I know!"
The problem, for the patients, is that when they go to their GP, he will recommend some drugs. In my mother's case, I've seen *a lot* of anti-depressants (tricyclics, SSRIS and SNRIs, sometimes combinations of these), anti-convulsants (Lyrica, some forms of gabapentin, Rivotril (clonazepam)...) in *massive quantities*, and painkillers, in even greater quantities (Morphine patches, codeine, paracetamol and coproxamol tabs by the bucket).
There is no supervision, control nor regulation as to how much the patient takes, because doctors have no clue what to do. Her GP, for a long time, was a "pain management" aficionado, which basically meant "just tell me what you need, and I'll write it down on the prescription pad"; not because he was an incompetent idiot, but he was simply at a loss as to what to do.
What do I mean by "no supervision nor regulation"? Patients are routinely indicated to "take as many as you need". My mother has been *addicted* to Rivotril for nearly a decade, where instead of the 45 drops a day she was supposed to take, she would drink from the little bottle directly. Rivotril was banned in the country she resides a few months ago, for non-epilepsy cases. I don't know whether it's physically possible to be addicted to clonazepam, but that one was a tough habit to kick.
As for her GP, when he asked for help from colleagues, they would get a copy of the medical file, and _refuse_ consults. Then comes the referral game. GP sends patient to a rheumatologist, great. He takes a couple of scans, notices some bone decay, arthritis, and whatnot, and sends her off with another bag of drugs. Because the patient is high on meds 24/7 (and hence, can suffer from a lot of side effects, such as memory loss, speech impairment, etc), they get sent to a neurologist, to see if he can figure something out, who then prescribes something else. The neurologist then decides to test her levels of substance P, because not being a "believer in fibromyalgia", the pain has to "come from somewhere". The levels fluctuate, but not in sync with the pain crises that most fibromyalgia patients experience, which discredits the patient even further.
It is true that a great number of fibromyalgia patients suffer from depression, anxiety or even PTSD, but considering these are people who feel pain every second of every day and night, that's not something I'm very surprised about. The pain and sleep disturbance make it very difficult for fibromyalgia patients to behave normally in society, and function correctly with the rest of the working crowd (going out for drinks, inviting people
We use (paid for) Google Apps at work, to provide us with all the basic tools our employees need: mail, calendar, documents, and last, but most definitely not least, chat.
The company is divided over multiple countries, most of those in the same time zone. GTalk has been acting funny for the past 24 hours (messages not going through, having to kill the phone app so the browser one would work, etc), but around lunch time today (Europe) things went south.
To give you an idea, most people here _only_ use GTalk to communicate with others on other sites. Calling is invasive (ironic for a VoIP company), and not everyone has each other's number (nobody but a few know about the company-wide directory), email is easier to miss, and not handy for quick one liners.
As soon as GTalk went down, we simply fired up another VM and installed the hybrid ircd, and qwebirc client. It only took two emails to get everyone organised in the proper (team-based) channels, and enforced people to use their regular login so people could/msg each other easily. I believe a few teams are actually considering keeping irc as a more permanent solution, considering the ease with which they can communicate as a single team, which is still a massive pain with GTalk.
All that, to say, some companies pay for GTalk, and actually rely on it. If it weren't for our ability to create a semi-viable alternative quickly, I'm guessing a lot of pain would have ensued.
It is illegal for anyone who is not a police officer to detain another person. There is no such thing as a "citizen's arrest". Even security guards, in a shop where---for example---you have allegedly shoplifted, can't tell you to follow them into a room. They can ask you to come with, but they can't force you.
Even if they saw you do it. Even if they videotaped it. Only police/gendarmerie can do that.
Somehow, the fact you have to refer to a previous president through the use of "Dubya" either says a lot about yourself, or the state of American politics.
Slashdot Mirror
Some would argue that not wanting to be "average" is being average.
I'd like to know how many people die on the roads, or from accidents related to cannabis, though.
Do we also take into account the fact that cannabis (much like other drugs) can be a trigger for a number of mental and cardiac problems, or should we just suppress that information because it doesn't fit in nicely with our views?
Yeah, that's a solution... but it doesn't work.
If an agent misses a call, the supervisor knows it. If the same agent misses x calls in a row (usually 3 times, sometimes 15), that agent gets disconnected (well, he gets put in a different state). Most companies handle this gracefully, because the agent's phone may be faulty, or there was an actual emergency.
It really depends on how the supervisor sets up the callcentre: it can be atrocious, or it can be fantastic. One or our client companies is "abusing" the system so that instead of opening a "quality control" web page (where the agent is to input data regarding the customer's tone of voice, etc), he rewards his agents by giving them a browser to Facebook or their personal email for a few minutes, if they've had a good run of effective calls. This is automated, and the supervisors can't override it; this means that even if you have douchebag control-freak, the agents can still get 2 hours of breaks during the day, just by being effective.
Other companies treat their employees like live stock. Miss a call? Have a browser window opened to justify why you didn't pick up. Miss 3 calls? Your state gets changed to "GO_SEE_($SUPERVISOR_NAME)_NOW", and you can't receive any more calls. We even had the case of a supervisor who attempted to display random images of animal cruelty if an agent missed a call. We did report that one.
The "problem" is that a lot of our client companies justify the drastic rules they set up because of agent abuse. And the abuse, in some cases, is heroic:
Two agents figured out they were on the same call queue, and that they were the only ones, on said queue, in a specific language. So what did they do? Every day, at 9:38, one of them would take a bathroom break, and the other's girlfriend would call. She'd navigate the voice menus until she ended up in the waiting queue of her boyfriend. He'd pick up, and they'd remain on the phone for 2-3 hours. The other guy would come back, and his girlfriend called a couple of minutes later, and end up with him. Their record, before being discovered, was 6 hours calls, each. They'd let the call running when they went on their lunch break. They were found out because the company thought something was wrong with our system, and pulled a "breach of contract" on us because we weren't able to fix it; that's how much they trusted their agents---until we had them listen to the call recordings.
Some agents will figure out their direct phone line, and have all their friends call, or setup free international calls by calling someone, and then transferring them to other numbers.
Does that justify giving a semi-dictator the authority to destroy people's psychological health? Hell no, but as always, finding a middle ground is difficult. We cater to the needs of small companies, sometimes with only one or two agents at any given time. One of the callcentres we directly operate (for another product) has two agents, up to six when they're backed up. We don't have a supervisor, only the (senior) agents get supervision rights. More supervisors is better, because they see/hear what the other supervisors are doing, and so they police themselves. We provide wireless headsets, so the agents can go out have a cigarette ('tis France, after all), or go make themselves some coffee while being on a call; most of the time, they don't need a computer, as it's just helping people click through software, and they know it by heart.
They can't. If they hit the bathroom break button, it changes their state, and they won't get any calls.
I'm the lead dev / product manager for a software VoIP callcentre solution. We've had to develop features such as "don't allow an agent to take a bathroom break if there aren't enough agents available, or the waiting queue is too big, or if the estimated waiting is over X".
Supervisors will spend the day looking at the monitor, constantly checking how many calls are waiting, how long each agent is on the line. They will put themselves in "whisper" mode, so they can yell at the agent, without the customer hearing anything. If you're ever on the line with a callcentre drone, and he suddenly starts taking time to answer, or suddenly starts having trouble finding his words, it's probably a sign you're using up too much of his allotted per-call time, and getting the poor lad into trouble.
We operate in France, so we've had to deal with a lot of employee-protection laws, but more often that not, our customers (the callcentre) will force us to override specific settings (the mandatory 2 second break after each call can be revoked if the last call was too long; hence not effective enough), even if they violate the law.
If you've got the skills, it is. He's not going to be building the next Facebook, or being creative with CSS3. He's going to install Ubuntu Server and setup Drupal.
Yes, solving a problem with wireless technology using wires is always an option.
Actually, that's not entirely accurate. A magistrate has to authorise the search through a warrant (Commission rogatoire) only if the enquiry being made is an Enquête Préliminaire. The Enquête Préliminaire depends solely on the DA, and is hence often abused.
However, when the enquiry at hand is an Enquête de Flagrance, which is not limited to having an officer be a first-witness, the search does not require a warrant, and does not require a written statement of the suspect accepting the search (as is the case during an Enquête Prélimiaire). An Enquête de Flagrance can also take place when an alleged victim denounces the crime, and the search can then be conducted in any location owned, or used as a residence (e.g.: hotel room), by any person who can be suspected of being related to the events.
Simple suspicion is enough to allow officers in your home. For having been on that end of the stick (and not knowing the law at the time), I asked the Gendarme trying to enter my house to present a "mandat". He simply replied "This isn't the movies, now get out of the way." (I know, I know, the plural of anecdote isn't data, but still).
Source: http://www.e-juristes.org/expose-enquete-preliminaire-flagrance-et-commission-rogatoire-1377/
The 75% income tax does not apply to athletes, artists, "creators" (whatever that means), etc...
Working from this, you'll have CEOs say the tax doesn't apply to them, because they're magicians. "Look, 75000 jobs, DISAPPEAR! Poof!"
There are no search warrants in France. The police (and especially the Gendarmerie) is allowed to enter any building, any house, any property, within certain conditions (for example, they're not allowed to wake you up before 6AM). The only time that a DA has to sign something off is if there is no official case yet, and the owner of the property did not agree to it being searched.
Other than that, they can just walk in and have a coffee for all they care.
Yeah, because you'd definitely ask the Java team to start using C# and .Net because "the business needs" have evolved.
Most probably, there's a number of stickers on the software OP has to use that says "You will need a good understanding of Windows and AD to understand the fuck we're on about in the documentation", and the vendor is recommending they have a "real Winadmin" available.
It's not that he doesn't want to learn, but more probably that the decision has come from above; a mix between managerial incompetence, who saw the sticker, asked HR who of the team had "Windows" on their CV, and made corporate send the "recruit" order down to fill the gap.
Best reply I ever heard to that one: "Who cares, as long as Nagios goes thermonuclear to wake you up?"
You'll get something close, but will always being playing catch up trying to support all of the corner flavors.
I'm always playing ketch up with tomato sauce.
Well, sure, I'm capable of compiling one of my projects on a single core 400Mhz CPU, with 256MB of RAM, but takes 25 minutes. On my quad core desktop, it takes 5-8 seconds, in the process kicking up 15GB of RAM-dust.
Also, try managing 60k SLOC, assorted (local) documentation, and standard/API (remote) documentation on a 10" screen.
There's a reason why pressing alt-tab works: It enables me to switch from one screen to another without having to refocus my eyes. Which means that when I'm comparing documentation to my code, I can instantly see implementation and reference, with minimum eye movement.
Try doing the same on a tablet where I have to double click a central button, then find the icon of the app, move my hand to click the button, then re-position my hands on the keyboard, and finally try and find the area of the screen I was focused on.
By the same logic you're applying, anyone currently walking around with an iPod should just walk around with a discman and a bunch of CDs, on the go. The sound quality is the same, and you can buy batteries anywhere. If you're an iPhone user, stop being so pretentious and just use payphones.
Maybe your usage fits a tablet, but please, I'm fine with paying premium prices to keep my hands on a real keyboard, attached to a real computer. I'm not telling you "you're wrong" for being fine with paying premium for a glorified iPod, so please, do return the courtesy. It's this kind of bullshit PHB-wannabe[1] arguments that have provided us with the abortions that are unity, gnome3, metro and the app store.
[1]: "I don't understand what I'm talking about, yet I'll talk out of my ass just to seem knowledgeable." Your boss is probably like this, which is fine; we're there to manage our bosses.
Christians have been used as lion food since the heyday of the Roman Empire.
Wouldn't that have made it the "Humanday for Lions", rather than hayday for Romans?
Indeed. I remember the kickstart project and all, and how the project went from "With a few grand we can do this" to "Oh wow, we've got 7 times what we asked for, let's do more".
I don't think they should've done more than they originally set out, they should've increased the planned quality. What I mean by that is that it is likely the initial budget they asked for was way too low, anyway, for what they wanted to do.
Indeed, the quality of the recordings is poor, at best, and there are a great number of mistakes in the performances. Yet none of those care, because for maybe one of the first times, there are actual, recent recordings in the public domains. But coughing? Seriously?
Anyway, I'd like for MusOpen to take this chance to also distribute the works in the raw format they have, or .wav, or any other kind of lossless format, preferably not encumbered by patents or licensing issues. I'll even go ahead and offer a lot of bandwidth to help MusOpen achieve that goal.
France has been doing the same thing, but that's not the same WEEE. The one you're talking about is this one, dated from 2003. The "eco-tax" has been applied since 2005, IIRC.
The main difference, as I understand it, is that the 2003 WEEE left it up to the member state to define which scheme to implement, in order to recoup the costs of recycling electronic goods:
From this website:
It is important to note that the WEEE Directive does not stipulate how its aims should be achieved and the system therefore currently varies between member states. A new WEEE Directive is proposed for publication in early 2012 that should solve this problem, among others.
I'll recommend ruTorrent, a web frontend for rTorrent. I've been using it as the main interface for my seedbox. No database, no bullshit, just a nice, clean, user interface with great plugins available.
Please don't spread stupidities like these. Fibromyalgia may not be a disease, but that doesn't mean it's automatically a "psychiatric problem".
Disclaimer: I'm a software architect, not a doctor, and have never had a passing grade in biology.
My mother was diagnosed with fibromyalgia roughly 15 years ago. I may not like the woman, but I have to speak up for people who suffer from this syndrome; because whether or not it is related to some "psychiatric problem", these patients suffer tremendously. This is only worsened by the fact that a great number of doctors and institutions not only "don't believe" in the syndrome, they won't even acknowledge it, or attempt to help.
My understanding is that we don't have a fucking clue where it's coming from. Some people believe it's purely psychiatric (exhibit A, parent post), others believe it's purely physical (problem in the muscles and soft tissues themselves), others believe it's a nervous system problem (aka "Central Sensitisation Syndrome"), and others believe it may come from the way the brain interprets the signals coming from the nervous system. The FDA writes on its website it may be caused by "injury, emotional distress, or viruses that change the way the brain perceives pain". Which is the bureaucratic equivalent of "Fuck, if I know!"
The problem, for the patients, is that when they go to their GP, he will recommend some drugs. In my mother's case, I've seen *a lot* of anti-depressants (tricyclics, SSRIS and SNRIs, sometimes combinations of these), anti-convulsants (Lyrica, some forms of gabapentin, Rivotril (clonazepam)...) in *massive quantities*, and painkillers, in even greater quantities (Morphine patches, codeine, paracetamol and coproxamol tabs by the bucket).
There is no supervision, control nor regulation as to how much the patient takes, because doctors have no clue what to do. Her GP, for a long time, was a "pain management" aficionado, which basically meant "just tell me what you need, and I'll write it down on the prescription pad"; not because he was an incompetent idiot, but he was simply at a loss as to what to do.
What do I mean by "no supervision nor regulation"? Patients are routinely indicated to "take as many as you need". My mother has been *addicted* to Rivotril for nearly a decade, where instead of the 45 drops a day she was supposed to take, she would drink from the little bottle directly. Rivotril was banned in the country she resides a few months ago, for non-epilepsy cases. I don't know whether it's physically possible to be addicted to clonazepam, but that one was a tough habit to kick.
As for her GP, when he asked for help from colleagues, they would get a copy of the medical file, and _refuse_ consults. Then comes the referral game. GP sends patient to a rheumatologist, great. He takes a couple of scans, notices some bone decay, arthritis, and whatnot, and sends her off with another bag of drugs. Because the patient is high on meds 24/7 (and hence, can suffer from a lot of side effects, such as memory loss, speech impairment, etc), they get sent to a neurologist, to see if he can figure something out, who then prescribes something else. The neurologist then decides to test her levels of substance P, because not being a "believer in fibromyalgia", the pain has to "come from somewhere". The levels fluctuate, but not in sync with the pain crises that most fibromyalgia patients experience, which discredits the patient even further.
It is true that a great number of fibromyalgia patients suffer from depression, anxiety or even PTSD, but considering these are people who feel pain every second of every day and night, that's not something I'm very surprised about. The pain and sleep disturbance make it very difficult for fibromyalgia patients to behave normally in society, and function correctly with the rest of the working crowd (going out for drinks, inviting people
We use (paid for) Google Apps at work, to provide us with all the basic tools our employees need: mail, calendar, documents, and last, but most definitely not least, chat.
The company is divided over multiple countries, most of those in the same time zone. GTalk has been acting funny for the past 24 hours (messages not going through, having to kill the phone app so the browser one would work, etc), but around lunch time today (Europe) things went south.
To give you an idea, most people here _only_ use GTalk to communicate with others on other sites. Calling is invasive (ironic for a VoIP company), and not everyone has each other's number (nobody but a few know about the company-wide directory), email is easier to miss, and not handy for quick one liners.
As soon as GTalk went down, we simply fired up another VM and installed the hybrid ircd, and qwebirc client. It only took two emails to get everyone organised in the proper (team-based) channels, and enforced people to use their regular login so people could /msg each other easily. I believe a few teams are actually considering keeping irc as a more permanent solution, considering the ease with which they can communicate as a single team, which is still a massive pain with GTalk.
All that, to say, some companies pay for GTalk, and actually rely on it. If it weren't for our ability to create a semi-viable alternative quickly, I'm guessing a lot of pain would have ensued.
Oh, and before you mention Skype: Fuck 'em.
Replying to myself: "There's no such thing in France."
It is illegal for anyone who is not a police officer to detain another person. There is no such thing as a "citizen's arrest". Even security guards, in a shop where---for example---you have allegedly shoplifted, can't tell you to follow them into a room. They can ask you to come with, but they can't force you.
Even if they saw you do it. Even if they videotaped it. Only police/gendarmerie can do that.
Note to self, Anonymous Coward's login password is 15 characters long, and ends with any two-digit number different from 54 and 11.
Non-american speaking:
Somehow, the fact you have to refer to a previous president through the use of "Dubya" either says a lot about yourself, or the state of American politics.
Or both.
Just wait 'till you meet this guy on your commute home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxZxjgKcsPE
1110111 1101000 1101111 1101111 1110011 1101000,
or 011101110110100001101111011011110111001101101000, depending on how you take your coffee. Mine's with milk.