So, is there any data out there on their spud resistance?:)
While small, they do tend to fly slow and straight....:)
Re:Hopefully Dell will not make this mistake
on
Mark Vena on Dellienware
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"They bought Alienware to eliminate competition..."
They were only competition in the sense that they sold PC's-their volume was miniscule copmared to Dell. Dell bought the reputation. If they are smart they won't screw that up. I wouldn't hold my breath.
"but in our house the smoke detectors are linked. We had to remove all the ones within 1 room of the kitchen, because every time someone cooked something at night, they would go off and wake everyone up."
Ever considered install alarms that weren't linked?
"But I can also see the case that the company is trying to make. Upon termination, he should simply return the work computer in-situ. Since his computer was arguably wiped post termination, it can and is being argued that a non-employee erased data from a company computer."
The case the company wants to make is this-"We should be able to go after this person despite our incompetence". The company ALLOWED his to delete files. If they didn't want that, they shouldn't have it in a contract....
I have no doubt that what this person did was unethical. I just don't see a evidence of a crime if he erased data before any investigation started.
"Unless the company stipulated in a legally binding agreement that he was forbiden from delecting any files they don't have a leg to stand on."
You would think so. But three judges on the appeals court think otherwise. And this despite him having the option to delete files when his employment ended.
The company had a poorly written contract and the appeals court is allowing them to wiggle out of it. What I want to know if the appeals court will apply the same logic to other cases? If they don't its pretty obvious who they are biased towards. I doubt those against "judical activism" will champion this case....
"RTFA. That's exactly what the judge did. The company appealled the decision, and the appeals court sent it back to the judge saying: no, you can't throw this out. The company might be right. You need to hold a trial to figure it out."
Technically you are correct. He should have stated that the appeals court has an ID10t error.:)
"3) There is no way there are 30 minutes of commercials. Maybe 5. 10 tops."
Been to a movie recently? Let's see, there is the "20" (various advertisements) before the movie (that you might miss if you don't want a "good" seat). The commercials when the projector starts. And the trailers (they ARE commercials, albeit sometimes wanted).
"National Healthcare is not acceptable to me -- there is no mandate or power to Congress to provide it."
While you have the right to your opinion about national healthcare (even if I think it is wrong), your basic ignorance of the facts insures that your opinion holds little weight. I would suggest you actually read the US Constitution-especially the phrases below:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
and
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States"
Congress has the mandate and authority to provide national healthcare (that falls under the "general welfare"). They have certainly had their power and authority upheld in far murkier areas....
"Just like people, companies need to focus on what they did right. If I'm getting 999 out of 1,000 orders right, I'd be foolish to focus on that 1 order. I need to focus on continuing that level and seeing how I can raise it to 9,999 out of 10,000."
While it is important for the company to recognize what they did correctly, it is bad to ignore that 1 out of a 1000. What if that 1 order went to a very important customer? Who might be ordering from you for the first time? How much money and time will it take to fix that order?
That one incorrect order may be a symptom of something much larger that is "broken". Something that is compensated for most of the time by the employees. Something that saps productivity.
"Exceptions simply need to be treated as exceptions - just like you have exception handling in software applications."
Maybe. If they are REAL exceptions. Most of the time they may not be (it's easier to blame something on a one time event than take the blame....) If they occur on a regular basis they aren't exceptions.
"The only time your approach is appropriate is when your general process is so broken that it doesn't work. Most companies don't have this problem - because those that do quickly go out of business."
Depends on your definition of "doesn't work". I have seen many poorly run organizations whose idea of success was shipping the product.... It makes no sense to concentrate on what goes correctly except if you want to improve it. The stuff that goes wrong IS important. And is often only the tip of the iceberg....
"The problem is that the drug companies don't make much money from antibotics. They have high production costs and are used infrequently..."
Unfortunately, there is not one single "problem". First, they are used WAY TOO OFTEN. This is the fault of doctors (at least in countries that require prescriptions). Second, doctors (and hospital staff) don't understand the concept of DISINFECTION. Or if they do, they don't practice it (hospitals are terrible places to get well and often the sources of really bad infections). Third, it is easy to spend lots of money promoting drugs and not so easy to develop them. There is plenty of money to be made in a new antibiotic. But it is far easier to modify existing drugs (lisinopril vs vasotec) and make me-too ones (aka generics). From a profit stand point, I can't blame them.
"Which is great for covering your own site, but doesn't stop Google from finding it on that person's site that takes the photos and puts them up."
Which means you should go after the site that posted them. And then tell google that the photos are infringing. Then it would be reasonable to expect them to be removed.
Unfortunately, in reality it is virtually impossible to control images once they leave your site and make them usable at the same time. It sucks, but that's life....
"Sounds like the Democrats in the 90s. "The Republicans are cutting funding to ______" when in fact the Republicans were reducing the rate of increase. It just sounds a lot more dramatic their way."
Technically you are correct, a decrease in the expected rate of increase is not a cut. In reality if your company said they were reducing your raise, most people would consider it a cut. Largely a matter of perception. But perception is often more important than reality.
Look on the bright? side, recruiters in other fields aren't any better.
I have had recruiters in the environmental field ask me about the programs and phrases on my resume. Such as GIS or geographic information system.... Clueless....
"No the "president at the time" (can't bring yourself to say Clinton, can you?) didn't fight back. Too bad, it probably would have saved the Twin Towers and thousands of lives."
And what about the President who ignored the intel that would have stopped it? We did fight back at the time-unless you count lobbing cruise missles as "nothing".
"According to Marc Genest, professor of Strategy and Policy at the Naval War College, the overall lesson from the Cole is that not responding to terrorists attacks only emboldens them."
It is possible that he is an idiot. The Cole ignored basic security (allowing an unidentified craft inside its security perimeter) and suffered for it. If I am not mistaken we also managed to grab many of those responsible.
And attacking the terrorists didn't seem to prevent them from bombing a lot of SE Asia locations. Nor did attacking Iraq and creating a terrorist training ground (of course we weren't attacking terrorists in that case). We have created MORE terrorism from our actions of late.
"If agents know their conversations might be tapped they will find ways of coding their communications. Pretty rational reason to keep the program secret."
Only if they thought they were not being listened to. I don't think they are that stupid.
I would say exposing this program has increased our national security (assuming it stops or is reduced in scope). Now maybe the FBI can do something useful rather than chasing thousands of dead ends. You chase enough dead ends and you start to assume all leads are worthless.
We have two main problems with intelligence. We don't get enough "on the ground" intel. And we have a had time turning useful intel into actions. We had sufficient intel to stop 9/11. But the intel didn't get converted into action. This program doesn't address the first issue and only make the second worse.
"Hate to break this to you, but in fact during World War II there was massive scale surveillance of US citizens communicating with people in Europe in order to keep tabs on what Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in this country were up to."
I'm not quite sure I see a point here. That was a war. This isn't. It is, at best, a minor conflict.
Well, if they really care about this issue perhaps they would revoke China's MFN status. Or prohibit companies from doing business with China.
And that will happen when pigs fly (or learn to land). Congress as a whole does not give a crap. Unless of course they can get some good PR for complaining that companies work with China despite encouraging them to do so. It's called hypocrisy. And Congress is really good at it.
At a minimum they could shut the hell up. For the chance of that happening, see the previous paragraph.:)
Considering that many (most?) companies can't even be bothered to send ANYTHING, I don't have a problem with a form letter like that.
Many companies want professionals but aren't professional in their hiring practices. Which is pretty stupid. These same people (rejected applicants) are likely to be in a position (eventually) to chose whether to do business with those companies.
"Although I doubt they will take off soon (SACD), I believe they *will* in the near future as they have better sound quality than CDs and consequently than any kind of MP3. If you believe you can not distinguish between a normal CD sound and a SACD sound you just have to wait until you listen to one of those."
Oh, I doubt they will ever take off. Sound quality is not the most important feature to most people. More people download music (mp3's) than listen to SACD. I suspect far more people listen to satellite radio (mp3 quality) than SACD. Heck, most listeners speakers suck so much they couldn't tell the difference between SACD and CD. Even on a good system most people couldn't tell the difference between a CD and SACD (using the same source material).
To summarize, SACD is a niche product. Always will be. Most people either don't care about the quality or can't hear it.
"Of course, the results would be slightly skewed. Not from a pool of all computer users, but from all users that encounter severe problems && lack the skill to fix it themselves"
SLIGHTLY SKEWED!?! Try worthless. Unless you use a random sample the results will be pretty worthless.
"I read about this earlier and my first thought was: This is going to be a nightmare for businesses."
Only the stupid and/or lazy ones.
There's a reason why companies should blow away the OS and programs on any computer they buy and install only their approved OS and programs. And lock them down.
Ultimately the google service isn't significantly different from a lot of spyware that a user might install. Except in scope and the fact that it tells you exactly what it will do.
"I agree, however the average joe blow that is buying a new dell that has Google desktop installed when it arrives, don't get the option to choose, nor are very many people informed about the data collection they perform."
Just because the software is installed doesn't mean it automatically runs. I believe you have to "opt-in".
"Also there isn't an 'I Agree' button on the Google Search website, people think they are just looking up information."
So google is different from every? other search engine how?
"We definately have the right and responsibility to not use a service if we don't agree with it, but we also owe it to others to alert them to facts about the service when the company offering the service fails to MAKE IT CLEAR."
Do they really not make it clear? Or are people just lazy and apathetic? I know where I would place my money....
Slashdot Mirror
So, is there any data out there on their spud resistance? :)
:)
While small, they do tend to fly slow and straight....
"They bought Alienware to eliminate competition..."
They were only competition in the sense that they sold PC's-their volume was miniscule copmared to Dell. Dell bought the reputation. If they are smart they won't screw that up. I wouldn't hold my breath.
"but in our house the smoke detectors are linked. We had to remove all the ones within 1 room of the kitchen, because every time someone cooked something at night, they would go off and wake everyone up."
Ever considered install alarms that weren't linked?
Perhaps improve ventilation?
Or, as last resort, learn how to cook?
"But I can also see the case that the company is trying to make. Upon termination, he should simply return the work computer in-situ. Since his computer was arguably wiped post termination, it can and is being argued that a non-employee erased data from a company computer."
The case the company wants to make is this-"We should be able to go after this person despite our incompetence". The company ALLOWED his to delete files. If they didn't want that, they shouldn't have it in a contract....
I have no doubt that what this person did was unethical. I just don't see a evidence of a crime if he erased data before any investigation started.
"Unless the company stipulated in a legally binding agreement that he was forbiden from delecting any files they don't have a leg to stand on."
You would think so. But three judges on the appeals court think otherwise. And this despite him having the option to delete files when his employment ended.
The company had a poorly written contract and the appeals court is allowing them to wiggle out of it. What I want to know if the appeals court will apply the same logic to other cases? If they don't its pretty obvious who they are biased towards. I doubt those against "judical activism" will champion this case....
"RTFA. That's exactly what the judge did. The company appealled the decision, and the appeals court sent it back to the judge saying: no, you can't throw this out. The company might be right. You need to hold a trial to figure it out."
:)
Technically you are correct. He should have stated that the appeals court has an ID10t error.
"3) There is no way there are 30 minutes of commercials. Maybe 5. 10 tops."
Been to a movie recently? Let's see, there is the "20" (various advertisements) before the movie (that you might miss if you don't want a "good" seat). The commercials when the projector starts. And the trailers (they ARE commercials, albeit sometimes wanted).
I would say say 30 minutes is far too low.
"National Healthcare is not acceptable to me -- there is no mandate or power to Congress to provide it."
While you have the right to your opinion about national healthcare (even if I think it is wrong), your basic ignorance of the facts insures that your opinion holds little weight. I would suggest you actually read the US Constitution-especially the phrases below:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
and
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States"
Congress has the mandate and authority to provide national healthcare (that falls under the "general welfare"). They have certainly had their power and authority upheld in far murkier areas....
"From my studies of economics I have come to understand that we don't really understand economics..."
This isn't a major problem as long as we realize our understanding is limited.
The problem occurs when economists (and others) believe they understand economics and act accordingly.
"Just like people, companies need to focus on what they did right. If I'm getting 999 out of 1,000 orders right, I'd be foolish to focus on that 1 order. I need to focus on continuing that level and seeing how I can raise it to 9,999 out of 10,000."
While it is important for the company to recognize what they did correctly, it is bad to ignore that 1 out of a 1000. What if that 1 order went to a very important customer? Who might be ordering from you for the first time? How much money and time will it take to fix that order?
That one incorrect order may be a symptom of something much larger that is "broken". Something that is compensated for most of the time by the employees. Something that saps productivity.
"Exceptions simply need to be treated as exceptions - just like you have exception handling in software applications."
Maybe. If they are REAL exceptions. Most of the time they may not be (it's easier to blame something on a one time event than take the blame....) If they occur on a regular basis they aren't exceptions.
"The only time your approach is appropriate is when your general process is so broken that it doesn't work. Most companies don't have this problem - because those that do quickly go out of business."
Depends on your definition of "doesn't work". I have seen many poorly run organizations whose idea of success was shipping the product.... It makes no sense to concentrate on what goes correctly except if you want to improve it. The stuff that goes wrong IS important. And is often only the tip of the iceberg....
"The problem is that the drug companies don't make much money from antibotics. They have high production costs and are used infrequently..."
Unfortunately, there is not one single "problem". First, they are used WAY TOO OFTEN. This is the fault of doctors (at least in countries that require prescriptions). Second, doctors (and hospital staff) don't understand the concept of DISINFECTION. Or if they do, they don't practice it (hospitals are terrible places to get well and often the sources of really bad infections). Third, it is easy to spend lots of money promoting drugs and not so easy to develop them. There is plenty of money to be made in a new antibiotic. But it is far easier to modify existing drugs (lisinopril vs vasotec) and make me-too ones (aka generics). From a profit stand point, I can't blame them.
"Which is great for covering your own site, but doesn't stop Google from finding it on that person's site that takes the photos and puts them up."
Which means you should go after the site that posted them. And then tell google that the photos are infringing. Then it would be reasonable to expect them to be removed.
Unfortunately, in reality it is virtually impossible to control images once they leave your site and make them usable at the same time. It sucks, but that's life....
"Sounds like the Democrats in the 90s. "The Republicans are cutting funding to ______" when in fact the Republicans were reducing the rate of increase. It just sounds a lot more dramatic their way."
Technically you are correct, a decrease in the expected rate of increase is not a cut. In reality if your company said they were reducing your raise, most people would consider it a cut. Largely a matter of perception. But perception is often more important than reality.
Look on the bright? side, recruiters in other fields aren't any better.
I have had recruiters in the environmental field ask me about the programs and phrases on my resume. Such as GIS or geographic information system.... Clueless....
"No the "president at the time" (can't bring yourself to say Clinton, can you?) didn't fight back. Too bad, it probably would have saved the Twin Towers and thousands of lives."
And what about the President who ignored the intel that would have stopped it? We did fight back at the time-unless you count lobbing cruise missles as "nothing".
"According to Marc Genest, professor of Strategy and Policy at the Naval War College, the overall lesson from the Cole is that not responding to terrorists attacks only emboldens them."
It is possible that he is an idiot. The Cole ignored basic security (allowing an unidentified craft inside its security perimeter) and suffered for it. If I am not mistaken we also managed to grab many of those responsible.
And attacking the terrorists didn't seem to prevent them from bombing a lot of SE Asia locations. Nor did attacking Iraq and creating a terrorist training ground (of course we weren't attacking terrorists in that case). We have created MORE terrorism from our actions of late.
"If agents know their conversations might be tapped they will find ways of coding their communications. Pretty rational reason to keep the program secret."
Only if they thought they were not being listened to. I don't think they are that stupid.
I would say exposing this program has increased our national security (assuming it stops or is reduced in scope). Now maybe the FBI can do something useful rather than chasing thousands of dead ends. You chase enough dead ends and you start to assume all leads are worthless.
We have two main problems with intelligence. We don't get enough "on the ground" intel. And we have a had time turning useful intel into actions. We had sufficient intel to stop 9/11. But the intel didn't get converted into action. This program doesn't address the first issue and only make the second worse.
"Hate to break this to you, but in fact during World War II there was massive scale surveillance of US citizens communicating with people in Europe in order to keep tabs on what Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in this country were up to."
I'm not quite sure I see a point here. That was a war. This isn't. It is, at best, a minor conflict.
Saying we are at war does not make it so.
"So what should the government do?"
:)
Well, if they really care about this issue perhaps they would revoke China's MFN status. Or prohibit companies from doing business with China.
And that will happen when pigs fly (or learn to land). Congress as a whole does not give a crap. Unless of course they can get some good PR for complaining that companies work with China despite encouraging them to do so. It's called hypocrisy. And Congress is really good at it.
At a minimum they could shut the hell up. For the chance of that happening, see the previous paragraph.
Considering that many (most?) companies can't even be bothered to send ANYTHING, I don't have a problem with a form letter like that.
Many companies want professionals but aren't professional in their hiring practices. Which is pretty stupid. These same people (rejected applicants) are likely to be in a position (eventually) to chose whether to do business with those companies.
"Although I doubt they will take off soon (SACD), I believe they *will* in the near future as they have better sound quality than CDs and consequently than any kind of MP3. If you believe you can not distinguish between a normal CD sound and a SACD sound you just have to wait until you listen to one of those."
Oh, I doubt they will ever take off. Sound quality is not the most important feature to most people. More people download music (mp3's) than listen to SACD. I suspect far more people listen to satellite radio (mp3 quality) than SACD. Heck, most listeners speakers suck so much they couldn't tell the difference between SACD and CD. Even on a good system most people couldn't tell the difference between a CD and SACD (using the same source material).
To summarize, SACD is a niche product. Always will be. Most people either don't care about the quality or can't hear it.
"...they are (probably deliberately) confusing the terms "trojan" and "spyware"."
.... :)
On the other hand, does it really matter? Both can do bad things-you don't want any of them.
Unless of course they will organize your bookmarks, provide you with emoticons or
"Of course, the results would be slightly skewed. Not from a pool of all computer users, but from all users that encounter severe problems && lack the skill to fix it themselves"
:)
SLIGHTLY SKEWED!?! Try worthless. Unless you use a random sample the results will be pretty worthless.
Unless of course you want to sell something.
"Alienware doesn't make enough money to service SGI's debt."
:)
Apparently SGI might not either.
"I read about this earlier and my first thought was: This is going to be a nightmare for businesses."
Only the stupid and/or lazy ones.
There's a reason why companies should blow away the OS and programs on any computer they buy and install only their approved OS and programs. And lock them down.
Ultimately the google service isn't significantly different from a lot of spyware that a user might install. Except in scope and the fact that it tells you exactly what it will do.
"I agree, however the average joe blow that is buying a new dell that has Google desktop installed when it arrives, don't get the option to choose, nor are very many people informed about the data collection they perform."
Just because the software is installed doesn't mean it automatically runs. I believe you have to "opt-in".
"Also there isn't an 'I Agree' button on the Google Search website, people think they are just looking up information."
So google is different from every? other search engine how?
"We definately have the right and responsibility to not use a service if we don't agree with it, but we also owe it to others to alert them to facts about the service when the company offering the service fails to MAKE IT CLEAR."
Do they really not make it clear? Or are people just lazy and apathetic? I know where I would place my money....