Okay. Let's say you're my Stanford roommate, and I hate you because you snore loudly. All I have to do is file three DMCA complaints against you (or get a friend off campus to do so) and Stanford will zap you with $1600 of fines and you'll be brought up for disciplinary action. (Think you're gonna *want* to stick around after that?)
The policy fines students for being accused. THE KID DOESN'T HAVE TO BE GUILTY OF ANYTHING, THEY GET FINED FOR BEING ACCUSED. Do *you* want to go to a school where you're not innocent until proven guilty, you're not even guilty until proven innocent, you're just automatically and permanently guilty the moment anyone makes an accusation?
I had to write up the policy for a university dealing with the question of what to do with RIAA complaints a few years ago. In my opinion, Stanford is being *monumentally* stupid. I told the university I worked for to become an ISP and start charging students for internet access if they wanted it, and put no restrictions on that access aside from what minor restrictions an ordinary residential ISP might place. Then it would all be *their* problem, not the university's.
No, we're moving from one language full of odd but well understood little quirks that's only used for browser-side programming, to a new language full of unknown odd little quirks that's only used for browser-side programming.
Why do we have to keep learning new languages for such special purposes? Think about it: the contemporary programmer, to build a unified web app, has to learn:
1. Java (for server side functional programming),
2. JSP (for server side templating),
3. JDBC (to connect to the database),
4. SQL (to deal with the database),
5. HTML (to display content),
6. CSS (to style content), and
7. Javascript (to make content dynamic) JavaFX is just going to replace one of those 7 things the programmer has to know with a different one.
I've been doing most of my work lately in Water. It lets me program in a uniform, server-side language and it takes care of the browser-side interactivity for me. Let's say, I want to make an AJAX enabled web application in which there is an object class for a person, and I want to use AJAX to be able to change their name. And, I want all person objects to have a blue background. Here's the *complete* application in Water:
There we go. It's MVC (the model is the class contract in the first line, the view is method htm_inst, the controller is method change_name), it handles all the scripting for me, and I only have to write the server side code in *one* language. (Yes, it looks like I put HTML in there. I didn't. I put water objects that *look* like HTML in there.) So, then I make an instance, like this:
biz.<person name="Jane Doe"/> Then I instantiate a web server:
<server root=wob port=8080/> Then I actually open a browser to view the object:
<open_browser_window "http://localhost:8080/biz/person/of/0.htm"/> Poof, done. If i want to persist the data I can:
<file "logical://user/my_data.cxs"/>.<set content=biz.person.of.0/> and if I want to retrieve it I can:
<execute source=<file "logical://user/my_data.cxs"/>.content/>
Now, why should I want to learn seven different technologies/languages to build a web app when I could use one? (The fact that I already know and use those 7 languages/technologies is beside the point.)
1) Paint a picture on your house. Heck, you could even just paint an interesting geometric design on it. Just make it interesting enough that people wouldn't laugh at you if you called it "artistic expression". Stick a copyright symbol on it somewhere. If you're feeling particularly zealous, take a picture of it and register for a copyright with the copyright office.
2) Identify company selling pictures of your house showing the picture or design you painted.
3) Sue them under the DMCA for selling pirated reproductions of your copyrighted "artistic work" (aka the paintjob on your house).
I suggest we blame the lack of video games in his life, and say that if he'd only had video games to relieve his stress perhaps he wouldn't have snapped.
I'm not really a gamer, but the idea of turning the tables on the assholes who were more interested in pointing a finger as part of their political agenda than in learning about reality amuses me.
That's nonsense. Vonage customers are still paying for the use of a "traditional" network, in the context of their Internet service. If I use Vonage for my phone, Verizon can still get my money to use their network service.
If you get Gizmo Project and Grand Central, and configure the latter to use the former, you can get unlimited inbound calls for free.
I've been very happy with my Vonage service, and I hope they'll win this one in court eventually. If they don't, I'll reconfigure my Vonage hardware to use another SIP provider (like Gizmo Project): I'll switch back to TPC when heck freezes over.
I was a university IT director a few years ago. The university told me outright when they hired me that they expected to pay me 25% less than an identical job would pay in industry, because they're a not-for-profit organization, and that I should desire to accept this because of the benefits of working in an academic environment (which they listed as long term job security and minimum of four weeks of vacation per year). Okay, fine. They weren't happy when I came back with documentation showing that my industry value was about twice what they thought, but they coughed up the 75% of my industry value that they said they would.
Then when I wanted to hire anyone, however, they dictated to me what I could offer, and refused to accept any input regarding what industry norms were. So, when I needed a DBA (and frankly needed a really good one), they told me I should get someone Oracle certified, and that I should pay no more than $50k. Skilled, experienced, product certified DBAs, as you may know, tended to go for over twice that (usually more like three times that) a few years back in Boston, and our database wasn't Oracle anyway. I ended up hiring a junior-level person (when I really needed a senior level person) because that was the best I could get for the money they were offering (in fact the only applicant we had received who had any experience with the database products we actually used), and told HR they could forget about certification. Their response was to complain a lot that I hadn't hired a good enough person, despite that they hadn't actually asked me (his manager) about his performance, and he was actually doing unusually well for someone of his level. They also nagged me extensively to replace him with a woman who had applied who was oracle certified (which was still useless because we still didn't have oracle), but didn't actually speak English. (Presumably that's why she was willing to take the lousy pay rate.)
10 months after I was hired the university outsourced my job, proving that their claim of long term job security was a lie in the first place. (I hear they had to hire three consultants to replace me, each one at a cost of two to three times my salary.)
I've seen this pattern repeatedly in university IT groups; they won't pay what it really costs to get someone who can really do the job, but they insist on unreasonable qualifications given the pay level they're offering, so instead of either shelling out what it costs to get what they want or accepting the best qualified person who would normally be in the pay range they're offering, they instead hire the loser who is willing to both take the low pay rate AND inflate their qualifications (either by exaggeration or outright lies) to meet the university's unreasonable demands. So, when they most need a skilled, experienced person, they're most likely to get a lying fraud who can't get the job done and will give everyone else a hard time to try to make it look like nothing is their fault.
Before you cut and run it is always worthwhile to try politely to treat it as if it is an honest mistake and see if they'll make good. The job candidate should email HR and the prospective new manager and politely inform them of the problem, and ask them if they can please take care of it. And while they're at it, they might want to politely let HR know that the candidate would be much more comfortable if HR could please put the terms of the offer, including the relocation terms, in writing, and fax it over. (If you don't have a fax number, sign up with one of the free online services for it.)
If the offer wasn't in writing, it may be possible to get them to acknowledge in writing that they made it verbally, such as by sending them email with a full description of the verbal offer and explaining the problem and asking politely how they're going to fix it for you; there's a good chance that they may reply something to the effect of "oops we made a mistake when we said that", which implicitly acknowledges having said it.
If he had it in writing, and had already quit his current job when they renegged on their offer, he could sue them for the value of his income until he gets a new job. Plus maybe damages.
If you take a job on a verbal contract, either you'd better REALLY know the person you'd making the deal with, or have a recording of it, or you're nuts.
Well, I had one place hire me to sort out their IT... they had a weird proprietary wiring system that worked only with weird proprietary network cards and talked only to a weird proprietary server. I've never seen any of this garbage before or since. All the wires were about 1/2" thick and were run along the hallways, because they'd never heard of the idea that you could have wiring *installed*. And the server was down most of the time, they'd actually poke at it once a day until it went up for an hour or so so they could exchange files, before it crashed again.
So, I spent about $200,000 having actual ethernet installed and replacing all the computers in the (relatively small) company since everything they had was so ancient it couldn't even be connected to a contemporary network, set up a nice reliable server and backups, and after several months of intense work had everything running.
Then just as it was all stable, the boss called me into his office and explained calmly that our lease on the space we were in would be running out and he'd decided that we were in fact going to move, so I should plan the move of our network and equipment, bring in my wiring contractor to handle the new space, and ensure that we'd be back up and running in the new space in minimal time. Okay, no problem boss, when will we be moving? "In about half an hour." That's right folks, he didn't bother telling anybody that we'd be moving until half an hour before we did it, and I had just spent large amounts of money wiring a space we were about to move out of. And then for the new space of course you can't get a good wiring contractor on half an hour's notice, so all I could do was get a pile of long 10-base-T cables delivered and distribute hubs throughout the space and tape wires to the floor. I wanted to cry.
A few weeks later a psychotic middle manager who hated me because she couldn't understand what I did managed to push me out of the company and replace me with some kid who didn't even know what half the stuff I'd installed was, but he was willing to kowtow to her. I was terminated for "insubordination", for the unforgiveable offense of telling the kid that he couldn't plug the high volume laser printer into the UPS for the main server because it would overload the UPS and result in a shutdown. While the middle manager was gleefully screaming at me about what a nasty horrible person I am and that I was fired, the UPS was screaming from overload. I hear the UPS took the server down about 5 minutes after I walked out the door, and I knew offhand that that particular UPS, once it overloaded, would refuse to come back up until it'd had a (timed) 4 hour cooldown period. So, after the server I'd installed had been stable for a year, it died 5 minutes after I walked out the door and the new guy just couldn't make it go.
They'd also forgotten to ask me to tell them anything, like the admin passwords for any of the workstations, the BIOS passwords for anything, etc, which of course as a professional I would have been happy to tell them right up until they escorted me out the door. A week later they realized that they had hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that they couldn't reconfigure. They wheedled someone at the company I'd been friendly with to ask me for the passwords. I asked her "Did they offer to give you anything, like maybe a bonus, if you get the passwords out of me?" She said no. I told her that come to think of it I'd forgotten all the passwords since I didn't need them any more.
If we just let providers choose, they will eventually make the right choice.
Ten years of experience tells me otherwise.
We can't force them to make the right choice NOW, because they won't make it. They'll provide zero content.
Super, that'd be just fine. Then they'll go out of business because they have no sales, and their assets will get sold to someone who will either sell us content in a format we'll accept or who will also go out of business, repeat until we've got what we want.
It's not like we're talking about food or something that we actually need. We're talking about copies of Happy Feet, for goodness sake.
Any man who would take on a position at a yarn store, much less a technological position while surrounded by a dozen women, ages 55+ deserves some kind of reward...
How fantastically sexist. I'm disgusted that such opinions are casually treated as acceptable in this day and age.
It's sexist BOTH in that it implies there's anything wrong with a man who has something to do with knitting, AND that it implies that there's some reason why someone shouldn't want to work around a dozen women.
3D Television and video have been not only available but cheap for some time now, and the adult industry has basically ignored it. A few adult 3D movies were made some decades ago, but they were just treated as a novelty and didn't catch on.
For stereoscopic video to catch on, there are two major requirements: 1) no glasses. Sharp already makes displays that meet this qualification, as does one other manufacturer (I think it's phillips but I'm not sure). 2) Cheap. No-glasses 3D displays are not yet anything like cheap. Too bad. Once it gets to the point of "I can have that 2D display, or I can have the same size 3D display for the same price" then it will start to spread.
Funny, DRM is what made me *stop* buying CDs. It's because the studios started putting DRM nonsense on their CDs, which could interfere with my ability to use my music, that no longer buy CDs, except from independant bands not on major labels. Conversely, Apple's DRM may be annoying but it offers me a clear path to how I can get my music out of its current format so that I will be able to convert it to other formats if necessary for future use (burn it to a CD, rip the CD), so I am comfortable that despite the presence of DRM on the music I buy from the iTunes store, it has a forward migration path and I will continue to be able to use my music in an appropriate and lawful manner.
If the music studios want me to buy more CDs, they need to apologize for having screwed around with the CD standard on the disks they produce and pledge that all their future CDs will be fully red book compliant.
I was in charge of writing a policy for web usage and censorship at a small private university. The policy that was decided on was to charge each student a $20 annual internet usage fee, in exchange for which we provided uncensored internet access to them while on campus. We chose to be their "ISP" so we could wash our hands of responsibility for whatever they would choose to do with it.
It was our opinion that by choosing to actually censor internet access, a college could become responsible for the actions of its students on the net, because it shows that they are monitoring the students' behavior and choosing to intervene. Failure to "correctly" intervene could make a school liable. Establishing a policy that the school is an ISP and provides uncensored access to students who are responsible for their own actions could prevent liability for the school.
So, the specs are nice, and the price isn't bad, and I even have an external hard disk I could slap onto it right now.
I'm not buying it because nowhere in any of the material about it does it say it uses program guide information to manage recordings. After years of Tivo and MythTV, I'm used to not having to know when any show is on or what channel it's on. (When my Tivo died of old age, I was just helpless with the TV until I got my MythTV box running.) I'm not going to give up my MythTV box until I know the replacement is going to be able to schedule recordings based on nothing more than the name of the show. That means it has to have a schedule. That means it has to obtain a schedule. That means I have to know where it's going to obtain its schedule from, so I know if I will have to pay for it, and if so how much. (I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount, I didn't switch to MythTV from Tivo because it's free, I switched because it has better features.)
I would like to switch to a device like this from my MythTV box. It would take up less space, it would be quieter, it might even save on my electric bill, and it would free up the computer I dedicated to MythTV for other purposes. (Like playing Spore when that comes out.) However, this device just doesn't seem like it's quite ready to really call itself a "PVR" yet. It sounds like it's just another video recorder that happens to use digital media.
Oh, and while it's fine for me that it doesn't have an internal hard disk, Neuros should at least sell it with the option of coming with one, even if it's external. I know it's silly, but some people won't buy it unless they can know that they can get it with the disk and that the disk they get is manufacturer tested and approved.
No no, you don't want to do anything he can press charges about, and you shouldn't do anything that isn't a direct step in solving the problem.
Find the noise device, find its speaker, and stick a hat pin in through the speaker grille to pierce the speaker. Then remove the hat pin and walk away. The hole will cause the speaker to tear itself and will cease making any meaningful volume of noise, and the old coot won't be able to hear the difference. More importantly, he can't really do anything with the police about it because to explain how it's broken he'd have to explain what it's supposed to do in the first place, and then he'd be admitting that your complaints about him were true. He can hardly complain "hey, they broke my illegal noise making machine!"
As the former IT manager at a small university, I can say that we regarded the payment to Microsoft as blackmail money: we could pay up and use whatever MS software we wanted, or else they'd come in to "audit" our campus and shut us down for weeks while they hunt for what they want to call pirated software, probably forcing the university to close in the process. So we paid the money and it kept microsoft away, and that was all we could do because replacing and removing 100% of all microsoft software at an entire medical school was simply not possible.
American cell phone plans come with a largeish (600 - 1500) number of prepaid minutes attached to the plan... so, I pay $40 a month, but the first 1000 minutes of calling (in either direction) don't cost me anything more. Also, there are cheap add-ons to allow, or some plans even include, features such as free calls after 7:30pm or free calls on weekends or free calls to family members. (I can get both free nights and free weekends for another $10 a month, for example.)
So, put these things together and for $50 a month (just slightly more than the cost you mention for your monthly bill) you can end up paying a bill that doesn't actually charge you for any calls except calls to non-family members made before 7pm on weekdays that exceed the first 1000 minutes. For most people, that far exceeds actual usage, so they don't care if incoming calls are being included because they almost never end up paying a per-minute rate anyway.
I've had my fair share of nasty complaints about tmobile as well, but who's better? I too got frustrated with them and investigated the possibility of changing carriers, but I found equally stupid and obnoxious errors on the part of each and every carrier reported on the net. The truth is every cell carrier is a huge corporation that doesn't care much about the individual customer, and so as long as things are going well or having problems within their usual range they cope well, but when things get confusing to them it all sorta breaks down. I decided it would be better for me to stick with tmobile and make them resolve the problem than to try to switch to another carrier and deal with their unpredictable problems: at least with tmobile I can make them look at my account and see I've been a customer for 7 years and that makes them a little bit more interested in helping me.
Disputing the individual calls is the precisely correct thing to do. I'd start with that: call customer service and tell them you want to dispute some of the charges and list all the calls that you're disputing. Tell them that you did not receive those calls and neither did your partner and you want them removed from your bill. That's the correct method to start with. If the problem recurs, further complaint will be necessary, and then demand that they find out why this is happening and prevent it from happening again.
Calling the state's public service commission would be completely useless. States do not regulate cellular carriers. Tmobile would laugh and go about their business. At best you might be able to call the state attorney general and claim billing fraud if tmobile refuses to correct the problem, but even then the state may refuse to get involved on the basis of it being a national company.
You could also complain to the postal service police (the postal service has three police departments of its own) on the basis that they're billing you through the mail, which makes it mail fraud if the bill is fraudulent. But I'd make that a last resort.
Tmobile *does* have a special office for dealing with people who are thinking about leaving Tmobile. You could call their customer service number and tell them you're thinking about changing carriers because of their billing error and see if they transfer you to the special office. (They're pretty blunt about the fact that they're transferring you to a person whose job it is to try to mollify you.) That person might not be such an ass to you.
Also, you could go to your local Tmobile store. Find one that's corporate owned, not a franchise. (You can call customer service and ask, they can tell you which one(s) are corporate owned.) The store will have trained tmobile people in it, and they're a lot better about solving problems than the customer service number. I've had problems that the customer service number just flatly refused to fix (like, my voice mail just didn't work at all) and insisted wasn't broken, then I walked into the store and when they didn't get satisfaction out of customer service right away they used their special numbers to call technicians directly and make it happen. That's one example, but I've had several incidents, so I strongly recommend actually going in versus calling if that's feasible to you.
All of this politely assumes that your partner isn't receiving the calls. You could try calling tmobile and seeing if they can identify which phone they claim is receiving the calls. The example you give in which two calls supposedly overlap is meaningless unless they're claiming it was with the same phone. Even then, that can actually happen with only one line if you receive a call, then get bleeped by call waiting and talk to the new person for a minute before the first person disconnects. You really need to find an example on the bill where there are three calls going on for one line simultaneously, because I think unless you've asked for it Tmobile doesn't enable conference calling, or your phone interface may not make it possible. Again, you could ask about that.
Preface: I work for a company whose primary product is a programming language, so I spend my days thinking about things like language design and what makes one language better than another.
In evaluating a language the first thing I'd look at these days is, how rapidly is it evolving, and what impact does that evolution have on its user base? For example, Java evolves relatively slowly, and tends to remain backwards compatible, so when a new version comes out you just install the new compiler and keep working, mostly. My company's product is evolving very rapidly, there are constant changes, but we include a feature that scans your code and brings 99.9% or so of old code up to date, so there's relatively little pain for the programmer in updates, they just have to learn what's different. VB has relatively infrequent updates, but they tend to be huge and, according to the massive wailing and moaning in the trade press, break compatibility substantially. So, unlike other choices, if your employer proceeds with development in VB, they can expect to have to do a substantial rewrite of the product every few years, with associated costs. I know quite a few people who got hired to translate large apps from VB into Java when Microsoft released their last major revision, because companies were fed up with rewriting their app over and over again just to keep up with Microsoft's changes. I would argue that it's better to develop in a language with a smoother growth path, so the code written today will maintain its value in the long term. That represents a businesss advantage of using a language with a smooth growth path.
The next thing I'd look at is what competitive advantage does using this language offer you? Is it unusually fast to develop in VB, bringing you to market early? No, it's not really faster than, say, Java, and I could argue that my employer's product is much faster to develop in than either, so that's not it. Does VB run unusually fast? Not that I've heard, and Java application servers have been highly optimized for speed. Is VB's cost unusually low? No, you can get plenty of Java development software for free. Is VB code particularly easy to maintain? No, Java offers features like Javadoc which can help you keep the code well organized and documented so it'll be easier to maintain. Do available VB libraries and packages substantially exceed those available for other languages? No, there are vast libraries of code you can use in Java to do practically anything you want. Does VB have an unusually superb IDE? No, while I'm told the MS IDE isn't bad, there are plenty of excellent IDEs for Java as well. So, I would argue that VB offers no competitive advantage, and that Java (for example) offers you at least two competitive advantages: its vast libraries of available code, and maintainability features such as Javadoc.
I'd look at whether the language has special purpose features which make it unusually suitable for your application. For example, Ruby on Rails is designed for rapid development and easy rich ui development. My employer's product is designed for rapid development, easy object/relational mapping, easy AJAX, easy rich UI, and easy web services development. VB and Java seem more general purpose, with no particular specialties, so I'd argue that VB offers no particular advantage in this regard.
Finally, I'd look (as a programmer) at the details of the languages themselves. How are everyday constructs expressed? Is it awkward to write the language, or easy? Is it awkward to read the language, like perl (notorious as a write-only language), or easy? I'll give you a tiny example of what I mean. In, say, Javas****t, if I want to loop through all the objects in array foo, I have to do something like this:
for (var x=0; x That sort of thing saves me a few moments here and there, and makes the code neater. A particular example I like to look at is string functions: how easy or difficult is it to do complex things to strings, like if I wanted to replace a
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Okay. Let's say you're my Stanford roommate, and I hate you because you snore loudly. All I have to do is file three DMCA complaints against you (or get a friend off campus to do so) and Stanford will zap you with $1600 of fines and you'll be brought up for disciplinary action. (Think you're gonna *want* to stick around after that?)
The policy fines students for being accused. THE KID DOESN'T HAVE TO BE GUILTY OF ANYTHING, THEY GET FINED FOR BEING ACCUSED. Do *you* want to go to a school where you're not innocent until proven guilty, you're not even guilty until proven innocent, you're just automatically and permanently guilty the moment anyone makes an accusation?
I had to write up the policy for a university dealing with the question of what to do with RIAA complaints a few years ago. In my opinion, Stanford is being *monumentally* stupid. I told the university I worked for to become an ISP and start charging students for internet access if they wanted it, and put no restrictions on that access aside from what minor restrictions an ordinary residential ISP might place. Then it would all be *their* problem, not the university's.
No, we're moving from one language full of odd but well understood little quirks that's only used for browser-side programming, to a new language full of unknown odd little quirks that's only used for browser-side programming.
.<set name=to/> .<refresh/> .<change_name to=newname/>/> />
/>
Why do we have to keep learning new languages for such special purposes? Think about it: the contemporary programmer, to build a unified web app, has to learn:
1. Java (for server side functional programming),
2. JSP (for server side templating),
3. JDBC (to connect to the database),
4. SQL (to deal with the database),
5. HTML (to display content),
6. CSS (to style content), and
7. Javascript (to make content dynamic)
JavaFX is just going to replace one of those 7 things the programmer has to know with a different one.
I've been doing most of my work lately in Water. It lets me program in a uniform, server-side language and it takes care of the browser-side interactivity for me. Let's say, I want to make an AJAX enabled web application in which there is an object class for a person, and I want to use AJAX to be able to change their name. And, I want all person objects to have a blue background. Here's the *complete* application in Water:
<class biz.person name="John Doe"=string style=<style background-color=color.of.blue/> >
<method change_name to=req=string>
</method>
<method htm_inst>
<span>
Name:
<input type="text" id="newname" value=.name/>
<input type="button" value="Change" onclick=.<h2o
</span>
</method>
</class>
There we go. It's MVC (the model is the class contract in the first line, the view is method htm_inst, the controller is method change_name), it handles all the scripting for me, and I only have to write the server side code in *one* language. (Yes, it looks like I put HTML in there. I didn't. I put water objects that *look* like HTML in there.) So, then I make an instance, like this:
biz.<person name="Jane Doe"/>
Then I instantiate a web server:
<server root=wob port=8080/>
Then I actually open a browser to view the object:
<open_browser_window "http://localhost:8080/biz/person/of/0.htm"/>
Poof, done. If i want to persist the data I can:
<file "logical://user/my_data.cxs"/>.<set content=biz.person.of.0/>
and if I want to retrieve it I can:
<execute source=<file "logical://user/my_data.cxs"/>.content
Now, why should I want to learn seven different technologies/languages to build a web app when I could use one? (The fact that I already know and use those 7 languages/technologies is beside the point.)
1) Paint a picture on your house. Heck, you could even just paint an interesting geometric design on it. Just make it interesting enough that people wouldn't laugh at you if you called it "artistic expression". Stick a copyright symbol on it somewhere. If you're feeling particularly zealous, take a picture of it and register for a copyright with the copyright office.
2) Identify company selling pictures of your house showing the picture or design you painted.
3) Sue them under the DMCA for selling pirated reproductions of your copyrighted "artistic work" (aka the paintjob on your house).
I suggest we blame the lack of video games in his life, and say that if he'd only had video games to relieve his stress perhaps he wouldn't have snapped.
I'm not really a gamer, but the idea of turning the tables on the assholes who were more interested in pointing a finger as part of their political agenda than in learning about reality amuses me.
That's nonsense. Vonage customers are still paying for the use of a "traditional" network, in the context of their Internet service. If I use Vonage for my phone, Verizon can still get my money to use their network service.
If you get Gizmo Project and Grand Central, and configure the latter to use the former, you can get unlimited inbound calls for free.
I've been very happy with my Vonage service, and I hope they'll win this one in court eventually. If they don't, I'll reconfigure my Vonage hardware to use another SIP provider (like Gizmo Project): I'll switch back to TPC when heck freezes over.
I was a university IT director a few years ago. The university told me outright when they hired me that they expected to pay me 25% less than an identical job would pay in industry, because they're a not-for-profit organization, and that I should desire to accept this because of the benefits of working in an academic environment (which they listed as long term job security and minimum of four weeks of vacation per year). Okay, fine. They weren't happy when I came back with documentation showing that my industry value was about twice what they thought, but they coughed up the 75% of my industry value that they said they would.
Then when I wanted to hire anyone, however, they dictated to me what I could offer, and refused to accept any input regarding what industry norms were. So, when I needed a DBA (and frankly needed a really good one), they told me I should get someone Oracle certified, and that I should pay no more than $50k. Skilled, experienced, product certified DBAs, as you may know, tended to go for over twice that (usually more like three times that) a few years back in Boston, and our database wasn't Oracle anyway. I ended up hiring a junior-level person (when I really needed a senior level person) because that was the best I could get for the money they were offering (in fact the only applicant we had received who had any experience with the database products we actually used), and told HR they could forget about certification. Their response was to complain a lot that I hadn't hired a good enough person, despite that they hadn't actually asked me (his manager) about his performance, and he was actually doing unusually well for someone of his level. They also nagged me extensively to replace him with a woman who had applied who was oracle certified (which was still useless because we still didn't have oracle), but didn't actually speak English. (Presumably that's why she was willing to take the lousy pay rate.)
10 months after I was hired the university outsourced my job, proving that their claim of long term job security was a lie in the first place. (I hear they had to hire three consultants to replace me, each one at a cost of two to three times my salary.)
I've seen this pattern repeatedly in university IT groups; they won't pay what it really costs to get someone who can really do the job, but they insist on unreasonable qualifications given the pay level they're offering, so instead of either shelling out what it costs to get what they want or accepting the best qualified person who would normally be in the pay range they're offering, they instead hire the loser who is willing to both take the low pay rate AND inflate their qualifications (either by exaggeration or outright lies) to meet the university's unreasonable demands. So, when they most need a skilled, experienced person, they're most likely to get a lying fraud who can't get the job done and will give everyone else a hard time to try to make it look like nothing is their fault.
Before you cut and run it is always worthwhile to try politely to treat it as if it is an honest mistake and see if they'll make good. The job candidate should email HR and the prospective new manager and politely inform them of the problem, and ask them if they can please take care of it. And while they're at it, they might want to politely let HR know that the candidate would be much more comfortable if HR could please put the terms of the offer, including the relocation terms, in writing, and fax it over. (If you don't have a fax number, sign up with one of the free online services for it.)
If the offer wasn't in writing, it may be possible to get them to acknowledge in writing that they made it verbally, such as by sending them email with a full description of the verbal offer and explaining the problem and asking politely how they're going to fix it for you; there's a good chance that they may reply something to the effect of "oops we made a mistake when we said that", which implicitly acknowledges having said it.
If he had it in writing, and had already quit his current job when they renegged on their offer, he could sue them for the value of his income until he gets a new job. Plus maybe damages.
If you take a job on a verbal contract, either you'd better REALLY know the person you'd making the deal with, or have a recording of it, or you're nuts.
Well, I had one place hire me to sort out their IT... they had a weird proprietary wiring system that worked only with weird proprietary network cards and talked only to a weird proprietary server. I've never seen any of this garbage before or since. All the wires were about 1/2" thick and were run along the hallways, because they'd never heard of the idea that you could have wiring *installed*. And the server was down most of the time, they'd actually poke at it once a day until it went up for an hour or so so they could exchange files, before it crashed again.
So, I spent about $200,000 having actual ethernet installed and replacing all the computers in the (relatively small) company since everything they had was so ancient it couldn't even be connected to a contemporary network, set up a nice reliable server and backups, and after several months of intense work had everything running.
Then just as it was all stable, the boss called me into his office and explained calmly that our lease on the space we were in would be running out and he'd decided that we were in fact going to move, so I should plan the move of our network and equipment, bring in my wiring contractor to handle the new space, and ensure that we'd be back up and running in the new space in minimal time. Okay, no problem boss, when will we be moving? "In about half an hour." That's right folks, he didn't bother telling anybody that we'd be moving until half an hour before we did it, and I had just spent large amounts of money wiring a space we were about to move out of. And then for the new space of course you can't get a good wiring contractor on half an hour's notice, so all I could do was get a pile of long 10-base-T cables delivered and distribute hubs throughout the space and tape wires to the floor. I wanted to cry.
A few weeks later a psychotic middle manager who hated me because she couldn't understand what I did managed to push me out of the company and replace me with some kid who didn't even know what half the stuff I'd installed was, but he was willing to kowtow to her. I was terminated for "insubordination", for the unforgiveable offense of telling the kid that he couldn't plug the high volume laser printer into the UPS for the main server because it would overload the UPS and result in a shutdown. While the middle manager was gleefully screaming at me about what a nasty horrible person I am and that I was fired, the UPS was screaming from overload. I hear the UPS took the server down about 5 minutes after I walked out the door, and I knew offhand that that particular UPS, once it overloaded, would refuse to come back up until it'd had a (timed) 4 hour cooldown period. So, after the server I'd installed had been stable for a year, it died 5 minutes after I walked out the door and the new guy just couldn't make it go.
They'd also forgotten to ask me to tell them anything, like the admin passwords for any of the workstations, the BIOS passwords for anything, etc, which of course as a professional I would have been happy to tell them right up until they escorted me out the door. A week later they realized that they had hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that they couldn't reconfigure. They wheedled someone at the company I'd been friendly with to ask me for the passwords. I asked her "Did they offer to give you anything, like maybe a bonus, if you get the passwords out of me?" She said no. I told her that come to think of it I'd forgotten all the passwords since I didn't need them any more.
Ten years of experience tells me otherwise.
Super, that'd be just fine. Then they'll go out of business because they have no sales, and their assets will get sold to someone who will either sell us content in a format we'll accept or who will also go out of business, repeat until we've got what we want.
It's not like we're talking about food or something that we actually need. We're talking about copies of Happy Feet, for goodness sake.
How fantastically sexist. I'm disgusted that such opinions are casually treated as acceptable in this day and age.
It's sexist BOTH in that it implies there's anything wrong with a man who has something to do with knitting, AND that it implies that there's some reason why someone shouldn't want to work around a dozen women.
3D Television and video have been not only available but cheap for some time now, and the adult industry has basically ignored it. A few adult 3D movies were made some decades ago, but they were just treated as a novelty and didn't catch on.
For stereoscopic video to catch on, there are two major requirements:
1) no glasses. Sharp already makes displays that meet this qualification, as does one other manufacturer (I think it's phillips but I'm not sure).
2) Cheap. No-glasses 3D displays are not yet anything like cheap. Too bad. Once it gets to the point of "I can have that 2D display, or I can have the same size 3D display for the same price" then it will start to spread.
Java? What is this "Java"? I program in XML.
Funny, DRM is what made me *stop* buying CDs. It's because the studios started putting DRM nonsense on their CDs, which could interfere with my ability to use my music, that no longer buy CDs, except from independant bands not on major labels. Conversely, Apple's DRM may be annoying but it offers me a clear path to how I can get my music out of its current format so that I will be able to convert it to other formats if necessary for future use (burn it to a CD, rip the CD), so I am comfortable that despite the presence of DRM on the music I buy from the iTunes store, it has a forward migration path and I will continue to be able to use my music in an appropriate and lawful manner.
If the music studios want me to buy more CDs, they need to apologize for having screwed around with the CD standard on the disks they produce and pledge that all their future CDs will be fully red book compliant.
I was in charge of writing a policy for web usage and censorship at a small private university. The policy that was decided on was to charge each student a $20 annual internet usage fee, in exchange for which we provided uncensored internet access to them while on campus. We chose to be their "ISP" so we could wash our hands of responsibility for whatever they would choose to do with it.
It was our opinion that by choosing to actually censor internet access, a college could become responsible for the actions of its students on the net, because it shows that they are monitoring the students' behavior and choosing to intervene. Failure to "correctly" intervene could make a school liable. Establishing a policy that the school is an ISP and provides uncensored access to students who are responsible for their own actions could prevent liability for the school.
So, the specs are nice, and the price isn't bad, and I even have an external hard disk I could slap onto it right now.
I'm not buying it because nowhere in any of the material about it does it say it uses program guide information to manage recordings. After years of Tivo and MythTV, I'm used to not having to know when any show is on or what channel it's on. (When my Tivo died of old age, I was just helpless with the TV until I got my MythTV box running.) I'm not going to give up my MythTV box until I know the replacement is going to be able to schedule recordings based on nothing more than the name of the show. That means it has to have a schedule. That means it has to obtain a schedule. That means I have to know where it's going to obtain its schedule from, so I know if I will have to pay for it, and if so how much. (I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount, I didn't switch to MythTV from Tivo because it's free, I switched because it has better features.)
I would like to switch to a device like this from my MythTV box. It would take up less space, it would be quieter, it might even save on my electric bill, and it would free up the computer I dedicated to MythTV for other purposes. (Like playing Spore when that comes out.) However, this device just doesn't seem like it's quite ready to really call itself a "PVR" yet. It sounds like it's just another video recorder that happens to use digital media.
Oh, and while it's fine for me that it doesn't have an internal hard disk, Neuros should at least sell it with the option of coming with one, even if it's external. I know it's silly, but some people won't buy it unless they can know that they can get it with the disk and that the disk they get is manufacturer tested and approved.
No no, you don't want to do anything he can press charges about, and you shouldn't do anything that isn't a direct step in solving the problem.
Find the noise device, find its speaker, and stick a hat pin in through the speaker grille to pierce the speaker. Then remove the hat pin and walk away. The hole will cause the speaker to tear itself and will cease making any meaningful volume of noise, and the old coot won't be able to hear the difference. More importantly, he can't really do anything with the police about it because to explain how it's broken he'd have to explain what it's supposed to do in the first place, and then he'd be admitting that your complaints about him were true. He can hardly complain "hey, they broke my illegal noise making machine!"
As the former IT manager at a small university, I can say that we regarded the payment to Microsoft as blackmail money: we could pay up and use whatever MS software we wanted, or else they'd come in to "audit" our campus and shut us down for weeks while they hunt for what they want to call pirated software, probably forcing the university to close in the process. So we paid the money and it kept microsoft away, and that was all we could do because replacing and removing 100% of all microsoft software at an entire medical school was simply not possible.
American cell phone plans come with a largeish (600 - 1500) number of prepaid minutes attached to the plan... so, I pay $40 a month, but the first 1000 minutes of calling (in either direction) don't cost me anything more. Also, there are cheap add-ons to allow, or some plans even include, features such as free calls after 7:30pm or free calls on weekends or free calls to family members. (I can get both free nights and free weekends for another $10 a month, for example.)
So, put these things together and for $50 a month (just slightly more than the cost you mention for your monthly bill) you can end up paying a bill that doesn't actually charge you for any calls except calls to non-family members made before 7pm on weekdays that exceed the first 1000 minutes. For most people, that far exceeds actual usage, so they don't care if incoming calls are being included because they almost never end up paying a per-minute rate anyway.
We're here, were queer, we have cell phones, get used to it.
I've had my fair share of nasty complaints about tmobile as well, but who's better? I too got frustrated with them and investigated the possibility of changing carriers, but I found equally stupid and obnoxious errors on the part of each and every carrier reported on the net. The truth is every cell carrier is a huge corporation that doesn't care much about the individual customer, and so as long as things are going well or having problems within their usual range they cope well, but when things get confusing to them it all sorta breaks down. I decided it would be better for me to stick with tmobile and make them resolve the problem than to try to switch to another carrier and deal with their unpredictable problems: at least with tmobile I can make them look at my account and see I've been a customer for 7 years and that makes them a little bit more interested in helping me.
Disputing the individual calls is the precisely correct thing to do. I'd start with that: call customer service and tell them you want to dispute some of the charges and list all the calls that you're disputing. Tell them that you did not receive those calls and neither did your partner and you want them removed from your bill. That's the correct method to start with. If the problem recurs, further complaint will be necessary, and then demand that they find out why this is happening and prevent it from happening again.
Calling the state's public service commission would be completely useless. States do not regulate cellular carriers. Tmobile would laugh and go about their business. At best you might be able to call the state attorney general and claim billing fraud if tmobile refuses to correct the problem, but even then the state may refuse to get involved on the basis of it being a national company.
You could also complain to the postal service police (the postal service has three police departments of its own) on the basis that they're billing you through the mail, which makes it mail fraud if the bill is fraudulent. But I'd make that a last resort.
Tmobile *does* have a special office for dealing with people who are thinking about leaving Tmobile. You could call their customer service number and tell them you're thinking about changing carriers because of their billing error and see if they transfer you to the special office. (They're pretty blunt about the fact that they're transferring you to a person whose job it is to try to mollify you.) That person might not be such an ass to you.
Also, you could go to your local Tmobile store. Find one that's corporate owned, not a franchise. (You can call customer service and ask, they can tell you which one(s) are corporate owned.) The store will have trained tmobile people in it, and they're a lot better about solving problems than the customer service number. I've had problems that the customer service number just flatly refused to fix (like, my voice mail just didn't work at all) and insisted wasn't broken, then I walked into the store and when they didn't get satisfaction out of customer service right away they used their special numbers to call technicians directly and make it happen. That's one example, but I've had several incidents, so I strongly recommend actually going in versus calling if that's feasible to you.
All of this politely assumes that your partner isn't receiving the calls. You could try calling tmobile and seeing if they can identify which phone they claim is receiving the calls. The example you give in which two calls supposedly overlap is meaningless unless they're claiming it was with the same phone. Even then, that can actually happen with only one line if you receive a call, then get bleeped by call waiting and talk to the new person for a minute before the first person disconnects. You really need to find an example on the bill where there are three calls going on for one line simultaneously, because I think unless you've asked for it Tmobile doesn't enable conference calling, or your phone interface may not make it possible. Again, you could ask about that.
Preface: I work for a company whose primary product is a programming language, so I spend my days thinking about things like language design and what makes one language better than another.
In evaluating a language the first thing I'd look at these days is, how rapidly is it evolving, and what impact does that evolution have on its user base? For example, Java evolves relatively slowly, and tends to remain backwards compatible, so when a new version comes out you just install the new compiler and keep working, mostly. My company's product is evolving very rapidly, there are constant changes, but we include a feature that scans your code and brings 99.9% or so of old code up to date, so there's relatively little pain for the programmer in updates, they just have to learn what's different. VB has relatively infrequent updates, but they tend to be huge and, according to the massive wailing and moaning in the trade press, break compatibility substantially. So, unlike other choices, if your employer proceeds with development in VB, they can expect to have to do a substantial rewrite of the product every few years, with associated costs. I know quite a few people who got hired to translate large apps from VB into Java when Microsoft released their last major revision, because companies were fed up with rewriting their app over and over again just to keep up with Microsoft's changes. I would argue that it's better to develop in a language with a smoother growth path, so the code written today will maintain its value in the long term. That represents a businesss advantage of using a language with a smooth growth path.
The next thing I'd look at is what competitive advantage does using this language offer you? Is it unusually fast to develop in VB, bringing you to market early? No, it's not really faster than, say, Java, and I could argue that my employer's product is much faster to develop in than either, so that's not it. Does VB run unusually fast? Not that I've heard, and Java application servers have been highly optimized for speed. Is VB's cost unusually low? No, you can get plenty of Java development software for free. Is VB code particularly easy to maintain? No, Java offers features like Javadoc which can help you keep the code well organized and documented so it'll be easier to maintain. Do available VB libraries and packages substantially exceed those available for other languages? No, there are vast libraries of code you can use in Java to do practically anything you want. Does VB have an unusually superb IDE? No, while I'm told the MS IDE isn't bad, there are plenty of excellent IDEs for Java as well. So, I would argue that VB offers no competitive advantage, and that Java (for example) offers you at least two competitive advantages: its vast libraries of available code, and maintainability features such as Javadoc.
I'd look at whether the language has special purpose features which make it unusually suitable for your application. For example, Ruby on Rails is designed for rapid development and easy rich ui development. My employer's product is designed for rapid development, easy object/relational mapping, easy AJAX, easy rich UI, and easy web services development. VB and Java seem more general purpose, with no particular specialties, so I'd argue that VB offers no particular advantage in this regard.
Finally, I'd look (as a programmer) at the details of the languages themselves. How are everyday constructs expressed? Is it awkward to write the language, or easy? Is it awkward to read the language, like perl (notorious as a write-only language), or easy? I'll give you a tiny example of what I mean. In, say, Javas****t, if I want to loop through all the objects in array foo, I have to do something like this:
for (var x=0; x
That sort of thing saves me a few moments here and there, and makes the code neater. A particular example I like to look at is string functions: how easy or difficult is it to do complex things to strings, like if I wanted to replace a