'I forgot' or 'shit happens' is just not an excuse. In reality, it's an admission of unprofessional conduct.
We had an 'accountability moment.' It was called the landing of the probe. It's past us now, and we need to spend our political capital on killing the little green bug-eyed monsters.
both the employee and AppleInsider broke the law in California.
but ThinkSecret is run by a guy who lives in Boston, and ThinkSecret the website is registered to the dePlume Organization LLC, a company headquartered in New York... if they don't have a 'nexus' in California, and don't do any business in California, are they bound by California IP law? IANAL, but I'm pretty sure they aren't. Since Ohio passed an anti-gay-marriage law, can I sue gays who get married in Massachusetts in the Cleveland courts Like I posted earlier- this isn't as much about Apple trying to 'get' ThinkSecret as it is an attempt by Apple to force Nick to reveal his sources within Apple, so Jobs can fire those people.
While I support the sentiment, I think the execution is flawed. I know if I had employees who were habitually releasing secret information to third parties, I would seek to puninsh those employees to the fullest extent of the law. However, I would prefer the 'Sherlock Holmes' method, telling a group of suspect the same story (in secret) with one key detail changed, so that you know who the leak is by the wording of the rumor when it is eventually published.
I think it was Professor Plum, in the kitchen, with the lead pipe!
If you were to hand me your company's confidential material, and I had no contractual relationship with your company, I can do whatever I want with what you gave me. I think your company might want to have some words with you, however. If trade secrets changed hands in this case, it's one or more Apple employees who are at fault, not ThinkSecret. Apple is suing to flush those people out of hiding.
mod parent (+1, insightful). Last I checked, exposing undercover CIA ops is still TREASON, but Robert Novak is still walking around free.
This is a little trade secret squabble, and unless Apple can prove that TS committed a crime to obtain the information they published, or had a contractual relationship with Apple and breached that contract to reveal information THAT WASN'T EVEN 100% CORRECT, they don't have a case against him... Someone PROBABLY broke the rules, but TS should easily be able to get this claim dismissed.
*disclaimer* my company bought some version of the peoplesoft HR web page crap. I think it sucks, becuase (1)it's broken a lot, and (2)our HR people use it as an excuse for why they can't be bothered to do their jobs anymore. */disclaimer*
I don't want to be the wet blanket on the roast-Larry party here, but I have to ask: has anyone actually USED the PeopleSoft product? I'm not asking if you've seen a demo, or if you dated some dumb chick from Dublin who worked on their customer service team. Have you USED it?
it's TERRIBLE.
My company bought a license last spring. Yes, it was after the initial offer. No, nobody seemed to be worried that Larry has more money than God and always gets what he wants. Yes , I thought it was a short-sighted and poorly qualified decision. No, nobody asked me.
From a user's perspective, it's never worked right. We bought a whole bunch of shit from them, including payroll, timesheets, forms administration, approvals workflow, etc etc etc. Payroll is the only part that sort of works correctly, 11 months after the purchase was announced.
oddly, last week I had a problem with my timesheet, so I opened a support ticket. The technical guy assigned to support the peeholesoft application called me, and told me that everyone in the company was having the same problem, and that nobody from PS would return his phone calls.
to the people who still work at the PS HQ in Dublin: steal stuff now, becuase in a week, there won't be anything good left. To the Oracle folks supervising the "merger:" do the world a favor and fire everyone now, and just pretend that Peoplesoft never existed. Give away copies of 9i or 12i or whatever, those poor customers you just bought have suffered enough.
The reality was the stock options were used as employee comp but not counted as such [...] it was a crazy situation where your compensation really revolved around luck, when you got hired, what company you went to work for and how many options they gave you.
that's kind of the point. This rule, just like every other rule made under the Bush administration, is about screwing the little guy at the expense of (a) large corporations, (b) financial institutions, or (c) extremely wealthy individuals. If you go to work for a very early-stage company, and you are one of the first, say, 20 employees, you are really taking a risk- becuase the odds are that your tiny company just won't be around in 5 years. If you have a two kids, a mortgage and a car payment, how do you think it would impact your life if the company you work for suddenly couldn't make payroll? That's right, even with six months' savings in the bank (which you don't have) and a $10k limit on your gold card (of which you've already used $7k), you're going to be scrambling to find work. If I'm going to risk my livelihood for a dream, I expect to be rewarded handsomely.
But a small company can't afford to pay you more in cash than a company like Cisco or Oracle, so that small company needed a way to reward quality employees for hard work and loyalty. That's what stock option grants at startups were about- the company rewards its employees for taking a risk, but is legally still solvent. And yes- it does revolve around luck, and when you got in- becuase if you join a company as the 100th employee or the 1,000th employee, it should be clear that you're making a much safer bet than the 10th employee was when she joined. High risk, high reward.
Under the new rules, there's no easy way to reward early-stage employees for their risk-taking except to pay them more cash. And until the company is doing well financially, an employer can't afford to do that. Catch-22.
This rule change will make no difference to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, becuase they'll still get paid $lots. It won't change the risk involved for institutional investing, so the i-bankers and vc's will still have the same issues to worry about. If anything, it will make the i-banker's job easier, becuase there is one less number they have to add to the financial statements if the reporting company is putting it in there for them already. It will slow down the progress of startup companies with disruptive technologies, becuase it will be harder for them to motivate quality people to leave their current employers. It's a minor accounting change for a Fortune-500 company, and death knell for the way that startups recruit talent... which is probably music to the ears of those F500 companies who can now pay their regular employees LESS because they don't have to worry about as much competition for their talent.
It sounds like you were the beneficiary (in spades) of the old system- you of all people should recognize the upside! The only real impact this rule change will have is to make it more difficult for very early stage startups to attract and retain quality employees- which is great for everyone, except entrepreneurs, their early-stage startup companies, and their employees...
Riling Texas is pretty stupid as they supply a lot of the nations needs - we need them, they don't need us, and they have a lot of armed citizens who could easily make sure that all the "stupid crimials" stayed on the OTHER side of the fence, thank you very much.
I think you may be confusing 'Texas' with 'California.' Nobody needs Texas, or anything or anyone that comes out of it.
Name one thing that Texas makes that we the US can't get from some other domestic source- and power-crazed traitors who will steal an election and jeapordize 200+ years of democracy don't count, becuase I'm sure we could find some of those in Hollywood too.
The other part of your post is bunk - Harris certified the election according to Florida state statue. That their election system is crap is true, but she adhered to the law as required by her oath of office.
ok, you caught me...If I could mod myself -1(flamebait) I probably would have. And I'm not going to get into the florida recount issue, or the gore-won-the-popular-vote issue, because everyone's tired of talking and nobody is going to change their beliefs at this point. BUT! I will happily argue that Blackwell & Co. conspired to suborn the election process in Ohio in a systematic and demonstrable way, and that all of the irregularities in Ohio documented so far favor Bush. Of course nobody has been indicted, and nothing's been PROVEN, except that it's highly unlikely that all of the "random" errors in a given sample will shift the outcome in the same direction. That's why I say "I believe," instead of "I know," which was the real point of the post.
He has an implanted pacemaker
Yeah, but I'm thinking Dick's brain is electronically connected to a metal support skeleton inside a molded silicone body, kind of like those RealDoll sex toys. Since nobody ever actually touches Dick, nobody would know that his skin is cold and clammy. Since nobody ever sees him naked, nobody would see the seams between his neck and torso... and since it's his real brain, as long as he could find an outlet to recharge his cybernetic batteries on a regular basis, the public would never know the truth!
I also belive that Ronald Reagan was the greatest President ever.
We're basically now arresting and locking up stupid people. Maybe this is a good trend
Only if we also castrate them so that they can't breed and make MORE stupid people. Locking people up is a bad idea in general, because you have to then worry about feeding them, sheltering them, etc. Wouldn't it be much better to just kill them outright?
My solution to the prison problem in the US: Stop locking people up locally- instead just put up a big fence around Texas, and let's send all of our criminals there, like the British used to do with Australia. Give them NOTHING. Let them kill each other and steal from each other and defraud each other and shoot lasers at each other as much as they want- I would volunteer to sit on the other side of the fence and shoot anyone who tries to get across. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would proudly serve his country this way.
And all the people who already live in Texas? Well, life's a bitch sometimes, ain't it? Stay on your side of the fence.
After several generations, perhaps Texas could transform itself from the barren wasteland and breeding ground of theives and traitors that it is today into a nation of proud citizens, working for the good of the world, just like Australia. And if that doesn't work, we can just salt the earth, pave the whole state and use it as a parking lot for Mexico.
I believe that Blackwell stole the election for Bush, the same way it was proved that Harris and Scalia stole the election for Bush 4 years ago. How long will it take before we see the proof this time?
Oh, and I also believe that Dick Cheney is a cyborg.
I've taken work on a contractor basis for two different companies, and i've been able to negotiate for a weekly pay basis both times. There were both long (90-hr, suit and tie, not counting air travel time) and short (25 hr, work from home in my underpants) weeks at both jobs- but the weekly basis makes it easier for you to justify billing in whole-week increments so you don't have to account for every hour of your time. billing hours is a pain in the ass, and you're not likely to get paid for more than 40 anyway.
My rule of thumb for $$ was that since I expect to pay 35 - 40% of salary in some form of tax, you should ask for double or 2.5x the annual pay you would expect if you were a salaried employee, and then divide by 52 for your weekly rate... and go ahead and start high at 2.5x, because if they think it's too much but they want to hire you anyway, they'll be willing to negotiate- but going from 2000/week to 2300/week doesn't seem like as big a jump, even though it represents another 15,000/year... and for some reason, it seems much more reasonable to talk about 3000/week vs 2500/week than it does to argue about $60/hr vs $75/hr. justify the multiplier by noting that you'll be responsible for managing your own administrative costs and healthcare, and that you'll need to file estimated income tax payments several times a year, so if they're getting 40 hours/week of work from you, you're really working for free for an additional 10 hours on administrative stuff that otherwise the company would have to pay for. Use the term "Fully-Loaded FTE" to compare yourself against a salaried employee with full health benefits, disability insurance, FICA tax... that's what fully-loaded means to an HR person. Have this conversation with the hiring manager, not with HR.
Another benefit of the weekly schedule is that if you need to take some vacation time, you can tell them up front "I won't be available during the week of January 1st." I think it's probably a good policy to tell them in advance that you'll need to take at least 3 or 4 weeks off during the year- if you don't have events scheduled, make some up, and tell them before they agree to hire you. That way you'll look resposible for having your schedule planned so far in advance, and if it's more than a week or two away the manager won't be able to justify telling you "no."
The machine is there to help them get work done, not entertain them.
This is an important point that people should be encouraged to remember. If you work for a company, and that company provides you with a computer, that computer belongs to the company, not to you. You should expect that the company or its representatives are monitoring every keystroke you make at that computer, and choose your actions accordingly.
Just because you are able to take advantage of holes in your company's IT policies to install programs and make changes to the settings doesn't mean it's your inalienable right to do so.
Yes, it's more attractive to me (as a geek) to work for a company with lax computer security, but (as a manager) it makes me cringe to know that I'm not in IT, but (a) I can login as Administrator on 80% of the boxes in my office, (b) I have deactivated the software audit client on my own box (provided by the company) becuase it was annoying and inconvenient, (c) I've installed openVPN so I can ssh out through the corporate firewall, and (d) we're paying ANOTHER COMPANY over $5 million a year to manage our desktops for us, supposedly becuase they're experts at it and should therefore be able to prevent me from, e.g., running an open-source SSH client as an administrative service, or incurring liability for my company by having a no-cd-hack-enabled WCIII executable on a company laptop.
As a manager, I want my desktops locked down so that I KNOW I'm not liable when the BSA comes knocking at my door, and that's all I care about.
Compression works by only storing the changes between frames. Water never compresses well as it is constantly changing.
That much makes sense... I guess I was just surprised by how evident the artifacts were. It was almost like someone had applied a checkerboard filter to the video output, becuase you could clearly see the edges between different tiles, especially on the surface of the water.
as an aside, I'm sure that the artifacts would be less apparent if I recorded at a higher quality setting... but then i only get to put 11 hrs of TV on the 40gig disk, which kinda defeats the whole purpose. Yes, I'm probably going to stuff a spare 120-gig drive in the Tivo, thus voiding my warranty and increasing my storage by 3X, but I think it's kind of misleading to advertize it as a 40 hour box when the minimum acceptable quality contstrains you to only 25 hours of time.
yeah. but then you need to factor in $20 or $30 for a tivo-compatible USB 802.11b adapter... but the reall killer app for Myth that TiVo just doesn't offer at all is the burn-to-dvd option included in the parent's spec.
Tivo lets you play stuff back through a VCR or standalone DVD-R, but that's a half-assed solution at best. The integrated TiVo + DVD-R boxes from e.g. Pioneer are over $500 for just the hardware. add $300 for lifetime service, and that MythTV box starts to look downright cheap.
why would you want to burn to DVD? well, because you might want to archive something on broadcast, or make copies to give to your friends. As a for-example, I'm on a masters' water polo team, and I'm fanatic about watching and playing polo. But there is never any polo on American TV... except during the Olympics! So yes, I went to Circuit City and bought a $99 TiVo with the 40-gig disk for the SOLE PURPOSE of recording olympic water polo matches. But guess what? Everybody on my team wants to watch them too, but since Tivo records the whole 8-hour block of programming, I had to delete some games from Tivo to make room for the next games. And I noticed something interesting- whatever algorithm Tivo uses to compress the video stream, it has some problems with water, especially at the lower quality settings... Often I could see rectangular divisions in the surface of the pool, and it's even worse on the VHS tapes I tried to make from the TiVo.
When you buy a Tivo, you're buying convenience, but if you also want to buy the ability to make archival copies on DVD, you're going to spend $500 on hardware either way... and then the MythTV box does save you money because you don't have to subscribe to get progam listings.
Yes, I know, we are supposed to check the email headers
never mind that Outlook makes it a real PITA to do so... I think it's what, like 4 clicks away from the preview pane to actually see the mail header? double-click on msg line in preview -> view -> options (not "message headers," like you think it might be)* and then you can see the SMTP stuff. I bet 99% of Outlook users have never even seen that screen- how am I supposed to check something if I don't know it exists?
*yes, I know what a mail header is. You know what a mail header is. If you tell an Outlook user to "check headers," the most obvious thing that matches your instruction is to go view -> message header in the message dialog... which doesn't tell you anything interesting or useful. Another case of a Microsoft product where "user friendly" trumps useful information. IMHO this is one of the most goddamn frustrating things about Outlook- I want to see the actual SMPT address of every email sender, and there is no way for me to tell outlook to show me that address by default instead of the sender's name in the "from" field. Thanks, Microsoft!
Let's change the wording a bit shall we:... Do as I say, not as I do.
right, but changing the words as you have done changes the whole point. It's not the powerful government that is doing the tracking, it's powerless individuals who are tracking agents of the government to ensure that they don't abuse the power they ALREADY have, by virtue of their government affiliation. Shoe's on the other foot, isn't it? It is entirely appropriate for individuals to engage in behavior that the government is prohibited from pursuing, because of the differential in the balance of power.
Last I checked, I don't need a permit to follow you around my candy store and keep an eye on you. Especially if I've already caught you with one hand in the cookie jar.
now, s/candy store/country and s/cookie jar/treasury and there we have the current situation. Are you saying it's not legal to watch people as they go about in public? This society seems to spend an awful lot of time watching people for the sole reason that they are unusually attractive or wealthy. Do you think it should be illegal for this cult of celebrity to continue chasing movie stars around just to take "candid" pictures? If this kind of celebrity worship is legal, why isn't it legal to make available information about other, less famous people?
If you think tracking people who haven't been convicted of any crimes should be illegal, I think John Ashcroft would choose to differ with you. I'm sure that retired Admiral John Poindexter would disagree, were he to be given the opportunity. try my first paragraph again, and this time s/cookie jar/koran and I'm pretty sure that you have criteria that the justice department would suggest is probable cause to keep an eye (and maybe a wiretap) on you. Do you think that the FBI isn't spying on American Citizens right now, making a list and checking it twice, without telling anyone who is on that list?
Think again, my friend, think again. At least Indymedia has published the list of delegates, and the delegates themselves can look to see if they are listed on it. You would think these delegates would be PROUD of their chosen roles in the democratic process, and be willing to submit themselves to stand up and be counted, rather than so ashamed of the policies they represent that they have to call in the FBI to make some bogus claims to protect them from the public eye.
I do. When I buy a new CD, the first thing I do is rip it to MP3 and save it to RAID. The second thing I do is throw away the jewel box. The third thing is I file the CD in a CaseLogic folder, and put it on the shelf.
Every note that comes out of a speaker in my house or car is from that original rip. I have an MP3-CD 6 disk changer in my car, which allows me to hold 30 or 40 hours of music at 192kbps. I play mp3's off hard disk in my office, and I play mp3's through TiVo in my living room.
After that initial rip, i never even TOUCH the CD.
I ask this because I do not back up my media. Nor does my family. Nor does anyone in my wife's family. Nor does anyone I work with or even know. NO one I've met in "the real world" has backed up a DVD or CD. Ever!
All you've told me is that nobody you know is capable of or willing to plan for the future... how are those credit card bills looking this month? Still making the minimum payment?
mechanism for variable expression in vertabrates?
on
Prions, Darwin's Friend
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· Score: 5, Informative
from the article:
In its non-infectious form, the protein normally helps to read and convert the DNA code into other proteins. But in its infectious form, the prion stops working. This means that many proteins are manufactured slightly sloppily.
The team believes that prions may therefore offer a speedy way for yeast to evolve, because those cells with the infectious prion churn out a whole range of slightly altered proteins. Normally this is bad news for the yeast, but when the cells find themselves in a tough spot, one or two of them may grow better in the new conditions as a result, and so help the colony to survive.
This is interesting for a number of reasons, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the transfer of plasmids between prokaryotes. Eukaryotes, like eyu and me, don't pass our DNA around as casually as, say, Staphlococcus Aureus does. This has the benefit that our DNA is relatively stable, meaning that we are almost guaranteed to be able to breed with someone two or three generations younger than we are ourselves (hellOOOO, Hef!) but the trade-off is that we're not very responsive to environmental stressors that require quick adaptation to survive.
In simpler terms, through conjugation live bacteria can pick up spare DNA from other living bacteria and immediately "evolve" to meet a new environmental challenge without needing to wait for another generation to be born before the mutation can take effect. The plasmid DNA is then passed along to the daughter cells of successuful bacteria. This obviously confers huge selective advantages on bacteria which pick up plasmids that code for antibiotic resistance genes.
I interpret this prion research in yeast to suggest that yeast can experience the same kind of variable protein expression as bacteria, throught the mechanism of prion inactivation. This is significant because eukaryotic cells do not experience conjugation, and generally do not have plasmids, but DO transport various small proteins across the cell wall and into the cytoplasm.
And if it works for yeast, perhaps the prion mechanism is intended to perform the same function in humans, or in the cows that end up with BSE. The test would be to find some gene in a higher mammal that expresses one way when a prion is in conformation A, but expresses another way in conformation B...
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'I forgot' or 'shit happens' is just not an excuse. In reality, it's an admission of unprofessional conduct.
We had an 'accountability moment.' It was called the landing of the probe. It's past us now, and we need to spend our political capital on killing the little green bug-eyed monsters.
I for one welcome our inane linear formula overlords.
both the employee and AppleInsider broke the law in California.
but ThinkSecret is run by a guy who lives in Boston, and ThinkSecret the website is registered to the dePlume Organization LLC, a company headquartered in New York... if they don't have a 'nexus' in California, and don't do any business in California, are they bound by California IP law? IANAL, but I'm pretty sure they aren't. Since Ohio passed an anti-gay-marriage law, can I sue gays who get married in Massachusetts in the Cleveland courts Like I posted earlier- this isn't as much about Apple trying to 'get' ThinkSecret as it is an attempt by Apple to force Nick to reveal his sources within Apple, so Jobs can fire those people.
While I support the sentiment, I think the execution is flawed. I know if I had employees who were habitually releasing secret information to third parties, I would seek to puninsh those employees to the fullest extent of the law. However, I would prefer the 'Sherlock Holmes' method, telling a group of suspect the same story (in secret) with one key detail changed, so that you know who the leak is by the wording of the rumor when it is eventually published.
I think it was Professor Plum, in the kitchen, with the lead pipe!
If you were to hand me your company's confidential material, and I had no contractual relationship with your company, I can do whatever I want with what you gave me. I think your company might want to have some words with you, however. If trade secrets changed hands in this case, it's one or more Apple employees who are at fault, not ThinkSecret. Apple is suing to flush those people out of hiding.
mod parent (+1, insightful). Last I checked, exposing undercover CIA ops is still TREASON, but Robert Novak is still walking around free.
This is a little trade secret squabble, and unless Apple can prove that TS committed a crime to obtain the information they published, or had a contractual relationship with Apple and breached that contract to reveal information THAT WASN'T EVEN 100% CORRECT, they don't have a case against him... Someone PROBABLY broke the rules, but TS should easily be able to get this claim dismissed.
*disclaimer* my company bought some version of the peoplesoft HR web page crap. I think it sucks, becuase (1)it's broken a lot, and (2)our HR people use it as an excuse for why they can't be bothered to do their jobs anymore. */disclaimer*
I don't want to be the wet blanket on the roast-Larry party here, but I have to ask: has anyone actually USED the PeopleSoft product? I'm not asking if you've seen a demo, or if you dated some dumb chick from Dublin who worked on their customer service team. Have you USED it?
it's TERRIBLE.
My company bought a license last spring. Yes, it was after the initial offer. No, nobody seemed to be worried that Larry has more money than God and always gets what he wants. Yes , I thought it was a short-sighted and poorly qualified decision. No, nobody asked me.
From a user's perspective, it's never worked right. We bought a whole bunch of shit from them, including payroll, timesheets, forms administration, approvals workflow, etc etc etc. Payroll is the only part that sort of works correctly, 11 months after the purchase was announced.
oddly, last week I had a problem with my timesheet, so I opened a support ticket. The technical guy assigned to support the peeholesoft application called me, and told me that everyone in the company was having the same problem, and that nobody from PS would return his phone calls.
to the people who still work at the PS HQ in Dublin: steal stuff now, becuase in a week, there won't be anything good left. To the Oracle folks supervising the "merger:" do the world a favor and fire everyone now, and just pretend that Peoplesoft never existed. Give away copies of 9i or 12i or whatever, those poor customers you just bought have suffered enough.
that's kind of the point. This rule, just like every other rule made under the Bush administration, is about screwing the little guy at the expense of (a) large corporations, (b) financial institutions, or (c) extremely wealthy individuals. If you go to work for a very early-stage company, and you are one of the first, say, 20 employees, you are really taking a risk- becuase the odds are that your tiny company just won't be around in 5 years. If you have a two kids, a mortgage and a car payment, how do you think it would impact your life if the company you work for suddenly couldn't make payroll? That's right, even with six months' savings in the bank (which you don't have) and a $10k limit on your gold card (of which you've already used $7k), you're going to be scrambling to find work. If I'm going to risk my livelihood for a dream, I expect to be rewarded handsomely.
But a small company can't afford to pay you more in cash than a company like Cisco or Oracle, so that small company needed a way to reward quality employees for hard work and loyalty. That's what stock option grants at startups were about- the company rewards its employees for taking a risk, but is legally still solvent. And yes- it does revolve around luck, and when you got in- becuase if you join a company as the 100th employee or the 1,000th employee, it should be clear that you're making a much safer bet than the 10th employee was when she joined. High risk, high reward.
Under the new rules, there's no easy way to reward early-stage employees for their risk-taking except to pay them more cash. And until the company is doing well financially, an employer can't afford to do that. Catch-22.
This rule change will make no difference to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, becuase they'll still get paid $lots. It won't change the risk involved for institutional investing, so the i-bankers and vc's will still have the same issues to worry about. If anything, it will make the i-banker's job easier, becuase there is one less number they have to add to the financial statements if the reporting company is putting it in there for them already. It will slow down the progress of startup companies with disruptive technologies, becuase it will be harder for them to motivate quality people to leave their current employers. It's a minor accounting change for a Fortune-500 company, and death knell for the way that startups recruit talent... which is probably music to the ears of those F500 companies who can now pay their regular employees LESS because they don't have to worry about as much competition for their talent.
It sounds like you were the beneficiary (in spades) of the old system- you of all people should recognize the upside! The only real impact this rule change will have is to make it more difficult for very early stage startups to attract and retain quality employees- which is great for everyone, except entrepreneurs, their early-stage startup companies, and their employees...
50% of the population is below a certain curve. How do we know you are not in that lower half?
I think I've shown conclusively that I'm below any curve you care to draw.
Name one thing that Texas makes that we the US can't get from some other domestic source- and power-crazed traitors who will steal an election and jeapordize 200+ years of democracy don't count, becuase I'm sure we could find some of those in Hollywood too.
ok, you caught me...If I could mod myself -1(flamebait) I probably would have. And I'm not going to get into the florida recount issue, or the gore-won-the-popular-vote issue, because everyone's tired of talking and nobody is going to change their beliefs at this point. BUT! I will happily argue that Blackwell & Co. conspired to suborn the election process in Ohio in a systematic and demonstrable way, and that all of the irregularities in Ohio documented so far favor Bush. Of course nobody has been indicted, and nothing's been PROVEN, except that it's highly unlikely that all of the "random" errors in a given sample will shift the outcome in the same direction. That's why I say "I believe," instead of "I know," which was the real point of the post.
He has an implanted pacemaker
Yeah, but I'm thinking Dick's brain is electronically connected to a metal support skeleton inside a molded silicone body, kind of like those RealDoll sex toys. Since nobody ever actually touches Dick, nobody would know that his skin is cold and clammy. Since nobody ever sees him naked, nobody would see the seams between his neck and torso... and since it's his real brain, as long as he could find an outlet to recharge his cybernetic batteries on a regular basis, the public would never know the truth!
I also belive that Ronald Reagan was the greatest President ever.
Only if we also castrate them so that they can't breed and make MORE stupid people. Locking people up is a bad idea in general, because you have to then worry about feeding them, sheltering them, etc. Wouldn't it be much better to just kill them outright?
My solution to the prison problem in the US: Stop locking people up locally- instead just put up a big fence around Texas, and let's send all of our criminals there, like the British used to do with Australia. Give them NOTHING. Let them kill each other and steal from each other and defraud each other and shoot lasers at each other as much as they want- I would volunteer to sit on the other side of the fence and shoot anyone who tries to get across. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would proudly serve his country this way.
And all the people who already live in Texas? Well, life's a bitch sometimes, ain't it? Stay on your side of the fence.
After several generations, perhaps Texas could transform itself from the barren wasteland and breeding ground of theives and traitors that it is today into a nation of proud citizens, working for the good of the world, just like Australia. And if that doesn't work, we can just salt the earth, pave the whole state and use it as a parking lot for Mexico.
I believe that Blackwell stole the election for Bush, the same way it was proved that Harris and Scalia stole the election for Bush 4 years ago. How long will it take before we see the proof this time?
Oh, and I also believe that Dick Cheney is a cyborg.
I've taken work on a contractor basis for two different companies, and i've been able to negotiate for a weekly pay basis both times. There were both long (90-hr, suit and tie, not counting air travel time) and short (25 hr, work from home in my underpants) weeks at both jobs- but the weekly basis makes it easier for you to justify billing in whole-week increments so you don't have to account for every hour of your time. billing hours is a pain in the ass, and you're not likely to get paid for more than 40 anyway.
My rule of thumb for $$ was that since I expect to pay 35 - 40% of salary in some form of tax, you should ask for double or 2.5x the annual pay you would expect if you were a salaried employee, and then divide by 52 for your weekly rate... and go ahead and start high at 2.5x, because if they think it's too much but they want to hire you anyway, they'll be willing to negotiate- but going from 2000/week to 2300/week doesn't seem like as big a jump, even though it represents another 15,000/year... and for some reason, it seems much more reasonable to talk about 3000/week vs 2500/week than it does to argue about $60/hr vs $75/hr. justify the multiplier by noting that you'll be responsible for managing your own administrative costs and healthcare, and that you'll need to file estimated income tax payments several times a year, so if they're getting 40 hours/week of work from you, you're really working for free for an additional 10 hours on administrative stuff that otherwise the company would have to pay for. Use the term "Fully-Loaded FTE" to compare yourself against a salaried employee with full health benefits, disability insurance, FICA tax... that's what fully-loaded means to an HR person. Have this conversation with the hiring manager, not with HR.
Another benefit of the weekly schedule is that if you need to take some vacation time, you can tell them up front "I won't be available during the week of January 1st." I think it's probably a good policy to tell them in advance that you'll need to take at least 3 or 4 weeks off during the year- if you don't have events scheduled, make some up, and tell them before they agree to hire you. That way you'll look resposible for having your schedule planned so far in advance, and if it's more than a week or two away the manager won't be able to justify telling you "no."
but then who would stir the hot grits?
The machine is there to help them get work done, not entertain them.
This is an important point that people should be encouraged to remember. If you work for a company, and that company provides you with a computer, that computer belongs to the company, not to you. You should expect that the company or its representatives are monitoring every keystroke you make at that computer, and choose your actions accordingly.
Just because you are able to take advantage of holes in your company's IT policies to install programs and make changes to the settings doesn't mean it's your inalienable right to do so.
Yes, it's more attractive to me (as a geek) to work for a company with lax computer security, but (as a manager) it makes me cringe to know that I'm not in IT, but (a) I can login as Administrator on 80% of the boxes in my office, (b) I have deactivated the software audit client on my own box (provided by the company) becuase it was annoying and inconvenient, (c) I've installed openVPN so I can ssh out through the corporate firewall, and (d) we're paying ANOTHER COMPANY over $5 million a year to manage our desktops for us, supposedly becuase they're experts at it and should therefore be able to prevent me from, e.g., running an open-source SSH client as an administrative service, or incurring liability for my company by having a no-cd-hack-enabled WCIII executable on a company laptop.
As a manager, I want my desktops locked down so that I KNOW I'm not liable when the BSA comes knocking at my door, and that's all I care about.
it's only dangerous if you get caught.
Congratulations! Your sig is a felony!
"HA HA HA HA HAAAA HA HA HA HA." and also "HA HA HA HA, *sniff* HA HA HA."
Compression works by only storing the changes between frames. Water never compresses well as it is constantly changing.
That much makes sense... I guess I was just surprised by how evident the artifacts were. It was almost like someone had applied a checkerboard filter to the video output, becuase you could clearly see the edges between different tiles, especially on the surface of the water.
as an aside, I'm sure that the artifacts would be less apparent if I recorded at a higher quality setting... but then i only get to put 11 hrs of TV on the 40gig disk, which kinda defeats the whole purpose. Yes, I'm probably going to stuff a spare 120-gig drive in the Tivo, thus voiding my warranty and increasing my storage by 3X, but I think it's kind of misleading to advertize it as a 40 hour box when the minimum acceptable quality contstrains you to only 25 hours of time.
yeah. but then you need to factor in $20 or $30 for a tivo-compatible USB 802.11b adapter... but the reall killer app for Myth that TiVo just doesn't offer at all is the burn-to-dvd option included in the parent's spec.
Tivo lets you play stuff back through a VCR or standalone DVD-R, but that's a half-assed solution at best. The integrated TiVo + DVD-R boxes from e.g. Pioneer are over $500 for just the hardware. add $300 for lifetime service, and that MythTV box starts to look downright cheap.
why would you want to burn to DVD? well, because you might want to archive something on broadcast, or make copies to give to your friends. As a for-example, I'm on a masters' water polo team, and I'm fanatic about watching and playing polo. But there is never any polo on American TV... except during the Olympics! So yes, I went to Circuit City and bought a $99 TiVo with the 40-gig disk for the SOLE PURPOSE of recording olympic water polo matches. But guess what? Everybody on my team wants to watch them too, but since Tivo records the whole 8-hour block of programming, I had to delete some games from Tivo to make room for the next games. And I noticed something interesting- whatever algorithm Tivo uses to compress the video stream, it has some problems with water, especially at the lower quality settings... Often I could see rectangular divisions in the surface of the pool, and it's even worse on the VHS tapes I tried to make from the TiVo.
When you buy a Tivo, you're buying convenience, but if you also want to buy the ability to make archival copies on DVD, you're going to spend $500 on hardware either way... and then the MythTV box does save you money because you don't have to subscribe to get progam listings.
Yes, I know, we are supposed to check the email headers
never mind that Outlook makes it a real PITA to do so... I think it's what, like 4 clicks away from the preview pane to actually see the mail header? double-click on msg line in preview -> view -> options (not "message headers," like you think it might be)* and then you can see the SMTP stuff. I bet 99% of Outlook users have never even seen that screen- how am I supposed to check something if I don't know it exists?
*yes, I know what a mail header is. You know what a mail header is. If you tell an Outlook user to "check headers," the most obvious thing that matches your instruction is to go view -> message header in the message dialog... which doesn't tell you anything interesting or useful. Another case of a Microsoft product where "user friendly" trumps useful information. IMHO this is one of the most goddamn frustrating things about Outlook- I want to see the actual SMPT address of every email sender, and there is no way for me to tell outlook to show me that address by default instead of the sender's name in the "from" field. Thanks, Microsoft!
Let's change the wording a bit shall we: ... Do as I say, not as I do.
right, but changing the words as you have done changes the whole point. It's not the powerful government that is doing the tracking, it's powerless individuals who are tracking agents of the government to ensure that they don't abuse the power they ALREADY have, by virtue of their government affiliation. Shoe's on the other foot, isn't it? It is entirely appropriate for individuals to engage in behavior that the government is prohibited from pursuing, because of the differential in the balance of power.
Last I checked, I don't need a permit to follow you around my candy store and keep an eye on you. Especially if I've already caught you with one hand in the cookie jar.
now, s/candy store/country and s/cookie jar/treasury and there we have the current situation. Are you saying it's not legal to watch people as they go about in public? This society seems to spend an awful lot of time watching people for the sole reason that they are unusually attractive or wealthy. Do you think it should be illegal for this cult of celebrity to continue chasing movie stars around just to take "candid" pictures? If this kind of celebrity worship is legal, why isn't it legal to make available information about other, less famous people?
If you think tracking people who haven't been convicted of any crimes should be illegal, I think John Ashcroft would choose to differ with you. I'm sure that retired Admiral John Poindexter would disagree, were he to be given the opportunity. try my first paragraph again, and this time s/cookie jar/koran and I'm pretty sure that you have criteria that the justice department would suggest is probable cause to keep an eye (and maybe a wiretap) on you. Do you think that the FBI isn't spying on American Citizens right now, making a list and checking it twice, without telling anyone who is on that list?
Think again, my friend, think again. At least Indymedia has published the list of delegates, and the delegates themselves can look to see if they are listed on it. You would think these delegates would be PROUD of their chosen roles in the democratic process, and be willing to submit themselves to stand up and be counted, rather than so ashamed of the policies they represent that they have to call in the FBI to make some bogus claims to protect them from the public eye.
Every note that comes out of a speaker in my house or car is from that original rip. I have an MP3-CD 6 disk changer in my car, which allows me to hold 30 or 40 hours of music at 192kbps. I play mp3's off hard disk in my office, and I play mp3's through TiVo in my living room.
After that initial rip, i never even TOUCH the CD.
All you've told me is that nobody you know is capable of or willing to plan for the future... how are those credit card bills looking this month? Still making the minimum payment?
build more farms!
This is interesting for a number of reasons, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the transfer of plasmids between prokaryotes. Eukaryotes, like eyu and me, don't pass our DNA around as casually as, say, Staphlococcus Aureus does. This has the benefit that our DNA is relatively stable, meaning that we are almost guaranteed to be able to breed with someone two or three generations younger than we are ourselves (hellOOOO, Hef!) but the trade-off is that we're not very responsive to environmental stressors that require quick adaptation to survive.
In simpler terms, through conjugation live bacteria can pick up spare DNA from other living bacteria and immediately "evolve" to meet a new environmental challenge without needing to wait for another generation to be born before the mutation can take effect. The plasmid DNA is then passed along to the daughter cells of successuful bacteria. This obviously confers huge selective advantages on bacteria which pick up plasmids that code for antibiotic resistance genes.
I interpret this prion research in yeast to suggest that yeast can experience the same kind of variable protein expression as bacteria, throught the mechanism of prion inactivation. This is significant because eukaryotic cells do not experience conjugation, and generally do not have plasmids, but DO transport various small proteins across the cell wall and into the cytoplasm.
And if it works for yeast, perhaps the prion mechanism is intended to perform the same function in humans, or in the cows that end up with BSE. The test would be to find some gene in a higher mammal that expresses one way when a prion is in conformation A, but expresses another way in conformation B...