I'd like to use the right of your employer to have a mandatory drug testing policy as a parallel to this issue.
As I was taught in my MBA Business Law class, private companies have the right to require drug tests if they choose, but governmental organizationas do not have the right to require drug testing.
Because of this, I believe the person who asked this question, as a federal employee, has the right to refuse a search without being terminated as a direct result. Remember, they can always find another reason to remove you, so make sure you keep your nose clean in every other way.
If the asker of this question worked for a private company, I would say the opposite.
And remember, folks, surrendering to a search by a government representative without probable cause is a breach of the fourth amendment. Period. Even if you have nothing to hide. Times like these do not automatically allow for the universal interpretation of our constitution to change, but official interpretation of our constitution cannot change without someone fighting what they believe is a transgression of their rights. If you feel your rights are being ignored, take it up with a lawyer, not slashdot. Get the case escalated as high as possible to sustain your interpretation of the right. If the court disagrees with you, it's not because you're wrong, it's because times have changed. They'll probably change back some day.
You know what? I didn't need to be nasty. Please accept my apology.
::Colz Grigor
Enough on this disaster!
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I come to/. to get my daily dose of technology. I go elsewhere to get my daily does of atrocities.
Could we please stop posting top-level articles with non-technological news updates? All the major news sites are no longer flooded, so there's no more need.
Damn... could my.sig be any more ironic?! For those of you who don't speak German, it translates: "Whoever fights with monsters must be careful that they don't become a monster themselves."
People killing people is a viscious cycle. I know you're angry, now. I'm angry and I don't know how I feel about this. But ask yourself, "Is killing another human being, with family and friends just like you, ever the right thing to do."
I don't know the answer. But I know we need to answer it before we fight back.
Nigel Short was playing Deep Fritz anonymously. IBM wanted to give the computer a few practice rounds prior to the Kramnik matchup. And since IBM is an American company, of course Deep Fritz's conversation would sound American... all its AI training was done by American scientists! *wink*
I think we ought to put Fritz through a Turing test.
...because you obviously haven't seen the movie you're referring to. Okay, okay... I suppose that's unfair to Jon, because Jon does see the movies he critiques, but he just doesn't seem to understand them.
Searching for Bobby Fischer [imdb.com] is supposedly a true story about a brilliant child named Josh Waitzkin who is aware of the negativity surrounding Bobby Fischer and chooses to not become another Bobby Fischer.
You're right, it's a great movie, but how would you know since you haven't watched it?!
All I can provide is anecdotal evidence, but I learned early that difficult times and quality are mutually exclusive.
Since the mid-60s, my father has been a huge proponent of Quality Assurance and Total Quality Management, having followed the teachings of W. Edward Deming long before even General Motors had taken a liking to him (Deming, not my father). Since I was very young, I knew that my father's job was to make companies make better products. Sometimes he'd cost a company a few hundred thousand dollars in new quality programs that would, in several years, pay the company back millions of dollars in decreased support or re-work costs.
I also knew that when the United States fell on hard times (relatively so, like in the 70s, early 80s, mid 90s, and now), my father would inevitably spend several months looking for a new job because the companies he worked for could no longer afford the overhead that a Quality Assurance program introduces. There was never any question of a Return on Investment in quality, but there was always the question of how much cash the Quality Programs required. What's worse, Quality Assurance is a cost center: cash flows in but revenue never comes out. Most improved processes in all parts of the company can no be directly tied to an increase in revenue or a decrease in costs, so even though people understand that Quality Assurance is something beneficial, they don't know how to quantify how beneficial it is.
Because of this, when a company needs to tighten its belt, Quality Assurance staff are the first out the door.
It's a great thing to get management interested in improving quality. There are many people who truly believe the principles that were taught by W. Edward Deming, that are awarded by Malcolm Baldridge, and that are supported by the ISO 9000 certification process, but given today's economic situation, now is probably not the right time to be bringing this up with your management.
Oh, and if anyone knows of any upper-management positions for a long-time Quality Assurance guru with an impressive track record and who's been through the ISO-9000 process many times, send me e-mail. My father is, yet again, looking for a new job in the Los Angeles/Orange County/San Diego County area.
I am the proud creator of several large newsgroups in the alt.* hierarchy (Hey! Who isn't?!). This can be confirmed by checking the archive of the 'control' (and on occasion, the 'alt.config' newsgroup.
I wonder if I could ask Google to remove everything posted in those groups.
Okay, so I'm a moderator today, but I'm obviously giving up my ability to moderate in this article by posting.
I've been working with tech for longer than I'd expect the average/. reader to have been. I'm a smart guy. I can program decently in many real (i.e. not created by Microsoft) languages and I can administrate the hardware and software on several UNIX variant systems. But I'm obviously not smart enough to read/. because I just don't get the humor in wiZd0m's "witticism".
Would someone be so kind as to explain to me why this was funny? If, like me, you don't get the humor, you have moderator status for the day, and you just find this insulting, please do me the favor of modding this idiot down; at least we've given him a chance. If it is funny, maybe now would be a good time to educate me. Thanks!
I imagined the conversation to go a little differently...
Bill: What happen? MS Admin: Somebody set up us the bomb. We get signal! Bill: Main screen turn on. MS Admin: It's you!! Code Red: All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction. Bill: What you say?!!?!
Though I agree with several of the other replies to your comment (that Terraserver's photos weren't nearly as cool as this set), Terraserver is hardly defunct. In fact, it's got a lot more functionality, now. Too bad it's brought to us by the enemy.
Sounds familiar, but when this was a common thing in my past I was working at an Internet-based streaming media company, where live webcams were placed on pan/tilt mounts that could be controlled from a public web page.
Took them months to figure out why people from all over the net kept hacking into the web server.
I did use the Preview button, but I managed to let this slip by:
Depreciation is the amount of value that has been used on an asset that has a defined life span.
Incorrect. Depreciation is the opposite. It is the remaining value of the asset, excluding the amount of the asset that has been used in the present and previous accounting periods.
Well that's obvious. =) Maybe I can help out a bit with some understanding and answer your question. (FYI, I'm not an accountant, either, but I took many classes in accounting and taxation during my Bachelor's/MBA programs.)
First, there's some confusion in some of your terminology. When I think of the word "deductible", I think of it in the donation/income tax sense; it represents an outflow of cash (expense) that can be deducted directly from a company's net income (NI) in order to determine net income before taxes (NIBT).
Depreciation is not a deduction in this sense. Depreciation is the amount of value that has been used on an asset that has a defined life span. In other words, if a company purchases new computer equipment that they expect will last four years, rather than expense the entire value of the equipment purchase in a single accounting period, they only expense the portion of the value of the equipment that has been used during the accounting period. For example: You earn $10,000, and you buy a server for $4,000. You honestly expect to be able to use the server for about 4 years before it will no longer be able to serve your needs adequately. Rather than reporting $10,000 less $4,000 ($6,000) as your total income, you choose to report $10,000 less $1,000 (1/4 of the $4,000 value) ($9,000) as your total income, leaving $3,000 to be depreciated in the following three years.
The amount paid for electricity, on the other hand, is typically not a deduction nor can it be depreciated because it is instantaneous and has no lifespan. It's an expense, much like the $4,000 (or $1,000, if you depreciate) expense for the computer. It's an outflow of cash.
So the question remains: Could an employer deduct as a charitable donation the percent computer usage donated to such causes?
No. The employer did not have an outflow of cash for these CPU cycles and therefore it cannot be deducted. Even if the charitable CPU cycles caused a loss of overall productivity, the loss is an opportunity cost, not and actual cost, and can not be considered in financial reporting. The company would only consider opportunity cost in the decision-making process on whether it made sense to devote resources toward the charitable CPU usage. In order to do this, the CPU cycles would have a value of whatever else you were planning to do with the cycles. Since we're saying the CPU would otherwise be idle, the opportunity cost is $0.
Confused? So was I for the first three years. I've tried to be clear, here, but if you (or any other reader) are interested and I just didn't make sense, please send me e-mail and we can continue the discussion.
I expect that I'm like a majority of the/. readership; I found high school to be a breeze and I struggled through college because I hated dealing with all the bureaucracy and being forced to spend money on classes that I had no interest in taking (gee... that mandatory class on how to use Lotus 1-2-3 and the history of urban planning was so useful). So after four years of university, three quarters shy of a diploma, I left to see what the world was like.
I found that the world was a lot of fun. I made a shitload of money for a 23 year old and found myself moving up the ladder (sometimes by switching companies) of the IT profession. Eventually, I was promoted to be the head of an IS department in a small start-up and the position was what I felt was my ideal job. I had all the technical knowledge I needed for the job (Thank you O'Reilly!), but I suddenly found that I had three employees working for me. I doubt I could have been much worse as a manager. I knew that returning to university was probably a good place to figure out how to effectively motivate and co-ordinate people.
While working full time, I went to San Jose State to pick up a few classes and get me closer toward a Bachelor's in IS. When I could see the light at the end of the tunnel (two quarters to go!) and I'd saved up enough money, I quit my job, moved back to the town I went to university in originally, and finished off my degree. At the same time, I enrolled in the (not nationally acclaimed) MBA program.
The first year of the MBA program was somewhat useful. I took classes in Economics, Finance, Organizational Behavior, Business Law, Accounting, etc. The second year was made entirely of elective classes, where I focused on Organizational Behavior/Design and Finance. I studied corporate leaders to learn a few tricks and I learned how to gauge whether a project would be profitable or not considering the time value of money. I was even offered a one-quarter position to teach a class in computer networking where I got to learn how to communicate information effectively.
When I graduated with my MBA, I was anxious to get back to doing what I loved: working with technology. I was hired as a Technical Marketing Manager where many of the things I learned from my MBA program are utilized. The important thing is that what I use was mostly not learned from reading the textbooks, it was learned from digesting the information and thinking about ways that I could improve the process.
As I said: getting my MBA has been very useful for me. I feel personally enriched because I now feel comfortable managing a staff of employees. I've had employees tell me I'm the best manager they've ever had, and I have one of the most successful on-time project co-ordination records I know of (comparing to the other managers at my present and previous employers). The important thing is that I did not go back to get my MBA to become a better employee; I got the degree for my own betterment.
Slashdot Mirror
In Linux (on a PC, right?):
In a Windows variant command prompt (File|Run|command):
or
If that doesn't do the trick, I'll loan you a large magnet.
--
I'd like to use the right of your employer to have a mandatory drug testing policy as a parallel to this issue.
::Colz Grigor
As I was taught in my MBA Business Law class, private companies have the right to require drug tests if they choose, but governmental organizationas do not have the right to require drug testing.
Because of this, I believe the person who asked this question, as a federal employee, has the right to refuse a search without being terminated as a direct result. Remember, they can always find another reason to remove you, so make sure you keep your nose clean in every other way.
If the asker of this question worked for a private company, I would say the opposite.
And remember, folks, surrendering to a search by a government representative without probable cause is a breach of the fourth amendment. Period. Even if you have nothing to hide. Times like these do not automatically allow for the universal interpretation of our constitution to change, but official interpretation of our constitution cannot change without someone fighting what they believe is a transgression of their rights. If you feel your rights are being ignored, take it up with a lawyer, not slashdot. Get the case escalated as high as possible to sustain your interpretation of the right. If the court disagrees with you, it's not because you're wrong, it's because times have changed. They'll probably change back some day.
--
I ran across this ad while surfing the net, today. No, not on the Onion. It was on a serious news site.
::Colz Grigor
--
But until now I never had a coinage for the value of privacy.
How many lives is my complete privacy worth?
For me, not a single one.
--
You know what? I didn't need to be nasty. Please accept my apology.
::Colz Grigor
Could we please stop posting top-level articles with non-technological news updates? All the major news sites are no longer flooded, so there's no more need.
--
I've read this all over the net today and I think the reference of "city of god" being New York is quite a stretch.
--
People killing people is a viscious cycle. I know you're angry, now. I'm angry and I don't know how I feel about this. But ask yourself, "Is killing another human being, with family and friends just like you, ever the right thing to do."
I don't know the answer. But I know we need to answer it before we fight back.
--
Kabul, Afghanistan is under attack.
::Colz Grigor
Looks just like Baghdad in 1991.
Nigel Short was playing Deep Fritz anonymously. IBM wanted to give the computer a few practice rounds prior to the Kramnik matchup. And since IBM is an American company, of course Deep Fritz's conversation would sound American... all its AI training was done by American scientists! *wink*
I think we ought to put Fritz through a Turing test.
--
Searching for Bobby Fischer [imdb.com] is supposedly a true story about a brilliant child named Josh Waitzkin who is aware of the negativity surrounding Bobby Fischer and chooses to not become another Bobby Fischer.
You're right, it's a great movie, but how would you know since you haven't watched it?!
--
Since the mid-60s, my father has been a huge proponent of Quality Assurance and Total Quality Management, having followed the teachings of W. Edward Deming long before even General Motors had taken a liking to him (Deming, not my father). Since I was very young, I knew that my father's job was to make companies make better products. Sometimes he'd cost a company a few hundred thousand dollars in new quality programs that would, in several years, pay the company back millions of dollars in decreased support or re-work costs.
I also knew that when the United States fell on hard times (relatively so, like in the 70s, early 80s, mid 90s, and now), my father would inevitably spend several months looking for a new job because the companies he worked for could no longer afford the overhead that a Quality Assurance program introduces. There was never any question of a Return on Investment in quality, but there was always the question of how much cash the Quality Programs required. What's worse, Quality Assurance is a cost center: cash flows in but revenue never comes out. Most improved processes in all parts of the company can no be directly tied to an increase in revenue or a decrease in costs, so even though people understand that Quality Assurance is something beneficial, they don't know how to quantify how beneficial it is.
Because of this, when a company needs to tighten its belt, Quality Assurance staff are the first out the door.
It's a great thing to get management interested in improving quality. There are many people who truly believe the principles that were taught by W. Edward Deming, that are awarded by Malcolm Baldridge, and that are supported by the ISO 9000 certification process, but given today's economic situation, now is probably not the right time to be bringing this up with your management.
Oh, and if anyone knows of any upper-management positions for a long-time Quality Assurance guru with an impressive track record and who's been through the ISO-9000 process many times, send me e-mail. My father is, yet again, looking for a new job in the Los Angeles/Orange County/San Diego County area.
--
Damn.
::Colz Grigor
I returned to school at the peak of the market since I could finally afford to pay for that fifth, six, and seventh year.
I wonder if I could ask Google to remove everything posted in those groups.
--
I've been working with tech for longer than I'd expect the average /. reader to have been. I'm a smart guy. I can program decently in many real (i.e. not created by Microsoft) languages and I can administrate the hardware and software on several UNIX variant systems. But I'm obviously not smart enough to read /. because I just don't get the humor in wiZd0m's "witticism".
Would someone be so kind as to explain to me why this was funny? If, like me, you don't get the humor, you have moderator status for the day, and you just find this insulting, please do me the favor of modding this idiot down; at least we've given him a chance. If it is funny, maybe now would be a good time to educate me. Thanks!
--
Bill: What happen?
MS Admin: Somebody set up us the bomb. We get signal!
Bill: Main screen turn on.
MS Admin: It's you!!
Code Red: All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction.
Bill: What you say?!!?!
. . .
--
--
--
That's ironic. Here in the United States, you're legal if you're 18 or older. And being a "Professional" isn't legal unless you're in Nevada!
--
I got a kick out of it.
--
Depreciation is the amount of value that has been used on an asset that has a defined life span.
Incorrect. Depreciation is the opposite. It is the remaining value of the asset, excluding the amount of the asset that has been used in the present and previous accounting periods.
Sorry about that.
--
Well that's obvious. =) Maybe I can help out a bit with some understanding and answer your question. (FYI, I'm not an accountant, either, but I took many classes in accounting and taxation during my Bachelor's/MBA programs.)
First, there's some confusion in some of your terminology. When I think of the word "deductible", I think of it in the donation/income tax sense; it represents an outflow of cash (expense) that can be deducted directly from a company's net income (NI) in order to determine net income before taxes (NIBT).
Depreciation is not a deduction in this sense. Depreciation is the amount of value that has been used on an asset that has a defined life span. In other words, if a company purchases new computer equipment that they expect will last four years, rather than expense the entire value of the equipment purchase in a single accounting period, they only expense the portion of the value of the equipment that has been used during the accounting period. For example: You earn $10,000, and you buy a server for $4,000. You honestly expect to be able to use the server for about 4 years before it will no longer be able to serve your needs adequately. Rather than reporting $10,000 less $4,000 ($6,000) as your total income, you choose to report $10,000 less $1,000 (1/4 of the $4,000 value) ($9,000) as your total income, leaving $3,000 to be depreciated in the following three years.
The amount paid for electricity, on the other hand, is typically not a deduction nor can it be depreciated because it is instantaneous and has no lifespan. It's an expense, much like the $4,000 (or $1,000, if you depreciate) expense for the computer. It's an outflow of cash.
So the question remains: Could an employer deduct as a charitable donation the percent computer usage donated to such causes?
No. The employer did not have an outflow of cash for these CPU cycles and therefore it cannot be deducted. Even if the charitable CPU cycles caused a loss of overall productivity, the loss is an opportunity cost, not and actual cost, and can not be considered in financial reporting. The company would only consider opportunity cost in the decision-making process on whether it made sense to devote resources toward the charitable CPU usage. In order to do this, the CPU cycles would have a value of whatever else you were planning to do with the cycles. Since we're saying the CPU would otherwise be idle, the opportunity cost is $0.
Confused? So was I for the first three years. I've tried to be clear, here, but if you (or any other reader) are interested and I just didn't make sense, please send me e-mail and we can continue the discussion.
--
I expect that I'm like a majority of the /. readership; I found high school to be a breeze and I struggled through college because I hated dealing with all the bureaucracy and being forced to spend money on classes that I had no interest in taking (gee... that mandatory class on how to use Lotus 1-2-3 and the history of urban planning was so useful). So after four years of university, three quarters shy of a diploma, I left to see what the world was like.
I found that the world was a lot of fun. I made a shitload of money for a 23 year old and found myself moving up the ladder (sometimes by switching companies) of the IT profession. Eventually, I was promoted to be the head of an IS department in a small start-up and the position was what I felt was my ideal job. I had all the technical knowledge I needed for the job (Thank you O'Reilly!), but I suddenly found that I had three employees working for me. I doubt I could have been much worse as a manager. I knew that returning to university was probably a good place to figure out how to effectively motivate and co-ordinate people.
While working full time, I went to San Jose State to pick up a few classes and get me closer toward a Bachelor's in IS. When I could see the light at the end of the tunnel (two quarters to go!) and I'd saved up enough money, I quit my job, moved back to the town I went to university in originally, and finished off my degree. At the same time, I enrolled in the (not nationally acclaimed) MBA program.
The first year of the MBA program was somewhat useful. I took classes in Economics, Finance, Organizational Behavior, Business Law, Accounting, etc. The second year was made entirely of elective classes, where I focused on Organizational Behavior/Design and Finance. I studied corporate leaders to learn a few tricks and I learned how to gauge whether a project would be profitable or not considering the time value of money. I was even offered a one-quarter position to teach a class in computer networking where I got to learn how to communicate information effectively.
When I graduated with my MBA, I was anxious to get back to doing what I loved: working with technology. I was hired as a Technical Marketing Manager where many of the things I learned from my MBA program are utilized. The important thing is that what I use was mostly not learned from reading the textbooks, it was learned from digesting the information and thinking about ways that I could improve the process.
As I said: getting my MBA has been very useful for me. I feel personally enriched because I now feel comfortable managing a staff of employees. I've had employees tell me I'm the best manager they've ever had, and I have one of the most successful on-time project co-ordination records I know of (comparing to the other managers at my present and previous employers). The important thing is that I did not go back to get my MBA to become a better employee; I got the degree for my own betterment.
--
(Now if only they could make a CPU, hard drive, and mouse in the size and shape of a pencil...)
--
Lord of the Trailers
--