You naysayers and pessimists! How about instead looking around and seeing a company that still gives a Christmas bonus to it's employees - and congratulate them. A nice shiny new cellphone that you can do anything with is still a nice gift. Yes, it might not be as good as getting a few grand, but looking around at the financial state of the world at the moment, getting a phone might be a heck of a lot better than getting shit-canned as so many banking employees are looking at right now.
In other news, how many people mocking this gift today are actually getting something BETTER given to them as a Christmas bonus?
The company I currently work for combines a short term incentive plan/bonus into the package, and yes, the bonus can be easily around 15K per year - but this is part of the package when you sign up. Apart from that, other companies that I have worked for have given out the following:
1) A $7 fruit cake.
2) A nice christmas party with around $50 bartab for each person.
3) A cruise on the harbour with a very nice dinner payed for by the company.
4) Nothing.
Looking back on those, I wouldn't have minded getting a (by all accounts) pretty decent phone.
I think what you said is interesting, but if I was to summarize:
You fear the day when a botnet becomes self aware. And then sends you an email telling you it can sell you viagra cheaply or that it has found a better way for you to remortgage your loan.
Me personally? I am waiting for the email I get some a self aware botnet in Nigeria saying how it found this great bank account full of moolah, but just needs to use MY bank account to siphon it all out.
I for one welcome our new masters of intergalactic litigation. That is assuming (and hoping) they practice law in a courtroom and not with a death-ray.
Hmmm, who knows what the RIAA have up their sleeves?
Not quite the best source of geothermal. You see these sort of bubbles of magma aren't really truly connected to the lower greater heat sources. It was most likely formed due to one of the eruptions from the 50's or 60's (From TFA) and therefore isn't going to keep the same level of heat. The article even says that they want to study it as it cools.
For a proper geothermal energy supply you want to drill down to the real stuff, not a random bubble up close that you found by luck that might be there for for another 20-50 years before it's a big bubble of rock.
Most geothermal energy sources rely on much much cooler things than molten rock. We simply don't have anywhere near the technology to harness this sort of heat into energy.
More important than that, in Australia court papers need to be served in a manner that ensures the person being served is both given the information and also is aware that they are given it.
Sending papers by the mail for example is NOT considered good enough.
I don't see how this guy could guarantee that the users got proper notification that they did in fact get served the court papers. Short of getting the person to write a reply email confirming that they have indeed accepted the papers (which I would see as being as good as a signature on a sheriff's slip) I can't see how this can possibly stand up.
My understanding is that any ruling based on "being served" can be easily disputed if the party serving the papers cannot prove that the right person got the papers, and that they have proof that they got the papers. I cannot see that via facebook.
But why demand that a company builds all these sort of contingencies into a system? Surely the xbox has the same "stop spinning the CD if the CD is ejected" built in as everything else does?
My point is where do you stop? Lets say it costs an extra $5 to add in your suggested accelerometer fix. Should you expect an xbox to maybe also survive a reasonable amount of splash damage from cola? It wouldn't be too far out there to expect that people will drink cola while playing, and sometimes a spill will happen. Shold they add in another $5 of manufacture to slightly water proof it? Maybe they should also cost the unit at an extra $10 to add in some surge protection into the unit itself?
If we keep coming up with scenarios, the price does simply escalate and escalate. Very soon you are talking having to slap an extra $50-100 in features on "what if's" and "maybe's". Me personally, I would much rather a unit that cost $50-100 less that I knew would scratch the CD if I gave it a bit of a kick while changing the way I am sitting. The result is to simply locate the unit where I won't bump it. Or spill cola on it. or maybe have a surge protector on the power coming into my house instead of on each appliance.
The bit I am still obviously (and painfully) missing is that you somehow expect a company to semi-earthquake proof their console so that if something should indeed bump it enough to have it wobble about (like in this example, a slight earthquake) so that it doesn't even have a chance of scratching a disc?
Let me put it another way, while I agree that a design that has the potential to scratch discs if it is knocked over isn't the best thing in the world, speak out against the company by NOT BUYING one. Poor sales due to a poor product will paint a much more vivid picture than all the whinging and complaining after the fact.
I simply cannot comprehend the logic jump from:
1) Company makes poor product. People don't buy poor products. Company either makes better products or goes out of business.
2) Company makes poor product. People keep buying poor products. Public makes class actions against company forcing them to make better products. People keep buying companies products.
It's not like there is a monopoly for consumer electronics here. If sales of xbox went down far enough, all those games being developed for "xbox exclusive" would suddenly appear on Playstation (or another new competitor). You do get that right? Developers will make/port their game to anyone/anything so they get most cash out of it. If they think they can make more by selling on all markets, they do. If they think that an offer from Sony for PS3 exclusive will more than make up for the sales they lose on xbox/pc they will do that.
Let consumers drive the market, not lawsuits. It works so much better.
That's a great post, but one line which is scary can be this one:
let the unproductive companies go bankrupt
While I am normally all for the survival of the fittest especially in a business world, this is a bit of a problem in our current situation, as if we let all the "bad companies" go bust, we would end up with millions of people ready to retire suddenly have nothing to retire on. Millions of homes would possibly be repossesed. It might be better indeed to try to support these places and then look at tighter control rather than just letting these ones die.
So, frankly, this is MS dropping the ball. I'm not suggesting we're throwing around an xBox while playing it, but to expect a console to stay bolted down at all times is not a valid argument.
Is it just me, or should you perhaps get up off your fatboy chair, put down the jumbo cup of cola and perhaps, just maybe STOP PLAYING CONSOLE GAMES DURING AN EARTHQUAKE?
This has a few benefits. You are more likely to get out of the house and therefore live if it collapses. It might also avoid damaging your precious game discs should your house not collapse. You might have a better chance of passing as a normal healthy citizen.
On second thoughts though, keep playing gears of war if you feel your house starting to shake. It's just the new "force feedback house" feature kicking in.
They are unfairly blaming the users, when the people they should be holding to task are their engineers or businessmen for building bad engines/disc holders.
Being a regular/.-er, and being annoyed/hateful/whatever of Microsoft as the next guy here, I still got to jump in on their side of the fence for this one.
Just because a unit can scratch discs if you toss it around does not mean you need to sue them. I cannot fathom why Americans instantly go for "sue em!" instead of "hey, if the unit isn't as good as the opposition, maybe we should buy the competitors unit instead". If the possibility of you scratching a game disc when you knock your xbox over really really worries you so much... don't buy the damned thing. In this mindset, here are some other things you might want to avoid purchasing, or get a refund if you still can:
1) Your plasma/lcd tv will probably stop working if you knock it over.
2) Your car might not be road worthy if you turn it upside down. Even less chance if you do it while it's moving at the time.
3) If you suddenly pick up your parents, flip em upside down, and drop them, they might be worse for wear afterwards. At the very least, the chances of them talking to you are slim at best.
4) A can of beer doesn't work to well in pouring alcohol down your gullet once it's been tipped upside down for a little while.
5) Your fishtank might damage your fish if you knock it over in normal fishtank operation.
6) Knocking a kettle over during normal operation might result not only in a failure of operation, but possibly some nasty burns.
Feel a little more silly now about bitching at the "evil microsoft" for making something that doesn't work well if you start using it upside down?
I swear when I see stuff like this, it just makes me mad! Do something useful with that jumbo sized judicial system of yours America!
Sorry, this criticizing bit you speak of, is that before or after the laughing till the point of not being able to breathe while pointing madly and hopefully snapping a few pictures on the mobile phone camera for later blackmail as he/she starts pulling their pants up madly?
Yeah, there are times to pull out the sharpest of sharp wit and make a mockery of the intellect of those around you, as they clamber for footholds trying to sort out what was just said and what was actually implied, but doing so during an interview might not be the most opportune time. Why on earth would a manager want to hire someone smarter and better than them, and happy to flaunt it.
The problem with sharp wit - especially combined with a good poker face is that it very often leaves new aquaintances struggling to work out whether you are being a total wad or a comedic miracle.
A funny story I remember was at a friends birthday party, I was introduced to some guests, one of which was a reasonably muscular and certainly trim man. The conversation was about a diet that he had started to lose some weight (I again point out that he was in really good physical shape by all appearances) and I was asked if he needed to lose more. I put on my sarcastic hat and said along the lines of "Yes, he totally needs to lose some pounds, look at him, I mean, such a fatty boombalada, it's bordering on gross." There were a few uncomfortable laughs. I didn't think much more of it until I was quietly asked by the birthday girl (who had been introducing me to the others) if I also thought that she was fat. After a brief pause, it appeared that even though she knew me quite well, surprise sarcasm may not always be either obvious to the audience and can backfire if it isn't picked up. (Once I turned down the sit meter from "subtle sarcasm" to "loud and sometimes crude" the evening went smashingly though, with a highlight being convincing a girl to - no less - snort parmesan cheese through a $20)
I think they were shipped out here to Australia where they have been making poor quality foods and trying desperately not to go under? (No more puns about going under, down under).
He also wrote "Alive in the death zone" after his 2006 expedition when he was thought dead and left overnight by his fellow climbers after suffering a cerebral edema on the way down. I haven't read that one yet.
Suffering a cerebral edema, then writing a book you say? I get the feeling it might read somewhat like an incorrectly filled crossword or one of those newspaper letter games that no-one ever does?
Hey, with the rate of global warming, your body would get chomped by wormies soon enough even up there, they just might have to wait for it to thaw out:)
Get someone into space, enjoy a nice little elevator ride down to the summit of Everest, maybe have a hot chocolate in the bistro, then shoot on back up the elevator on the next ride and back into space to be brought down to earth safely with a big jet or re-entry capsule. Gawd, I can't believe no-one thought of this already.
Most of the time when we GN's (I think you can work out the acronym here yes?) are picking on people, it's those who are either writing with a total disregard for any sort of punctuation or grammar, or we are pointing out something amusing in the text. Please don't take personal offense to our mockery of your post - unless it is one of the above scenarios. If that is indeed the case, please visit Learn To Spell and we will all be happier for your visit.
Slashdot Mirror
Was it one of those PII Celeron 300A's that just ran and ran and ran even if you pushed them up from 300 mhz to 4509 mhz?
Those things were HAWT!
I totally agree!
You naysayers and pessimists! How about instead looking around and seeing a company that still gives a Christmas bonus to it's employees - and congratulate them. A nice shiny new cellphone that you can do anything with is still a nice gift. Yes, it might not be as good as getting a few grand, but looking around at the financial state of the world at the moment, getting a phone might be a heck of a lot better than getting shit-canned as so many banking employees are looking at right now.
In other news, how many people mocking this gift today are actually getting something BETTER given to them as a Christmas bonus?
The company I currently work for combines a short term incentive plan/bonus into the package, and yes, the bonus can be easily around 15K per year - but this is part of the package when you sign up. Apart from that, other companies that I have worked for have given out the following:
1) A $7 fruit cake.
2) A nice christmas party with around $50 bartab for each person.
3) A cruise on the harbour with a very nice dinner payed for by the company.
4) Nothing.
Looking back on those, I wouldn't have minded getting a (by all accounts) pretty decent phone.
Everyone is missing the VITAL question here!
Did the mosquito live?!
Ta much.
Because computers are widely known for their common sense?
It's like saying to a robot "Can you watch this lamb in the oven?" and they do. They bloody watch it burning for three hours.
Ahh thank you Red Dwarf, even historically, you were so accurate of the future...
I think what you said is interesting, but if I was to summarize:
You fear the day when a botnet becomes self aware. And then sends you an email telling you it can sell you viagra cheaply or that it has found a better way for you to remortgage your loan.
Me personally? I am waiting for the email I get some a self aware botnet in Nigeria saying how it found this great bank account full of moolah, but just needs to use MY bank account to siphon it all out.
I for one welcome our new masters of intergalactic litigation. That is assuming (and hoping) they practice law in a courtroom and not with a death-ray.
Hmmm, who knows what the RIAA have up their sleeves?
I still have an original Antikythera 01 on my desk here at work.
I know it's about two thousand and one hundred years too late to say this to you but....
I for one welcome our new gear crunching overlord!
Not quite the best source of geothermal. You see these sort of bubbles of magma aren't really truly connected to the lower greater heat sources. It was most likely formed due to one of the eruptions from the 50's or 60's (From TFA) and therefore isn't going to keep the same level of heat. The article even says that they want to study it as it cools.
For a proper geothermal energy supply you want to drill down to the real stuff, not a random bubble up close that you found by luck that might be there for for another 20-50 years before it's a big bubble of rock.
Most geothermal energy sources rely on much much cooler things than molten rock. We simply don't have anywhere near the technology to harness this sort of heat into energy.
Warning!
This is a troll recipe! I mixed it up and put it in my oven, and what came out? Tubgirl!
And here I was thinking that joke was going to end with ROCKCAKES!
More important than that, in Australia court papers need to be served in a manner that ensures the person being served is both given the information and also is aware that they are given it.
Sending papers by the mail for example is NOT considered good enough.
I don't see how this guy could guarantee that the users got proper notification that they did in fact get served the court papers. Short of getting the person to write a reply email confirming that they have indeed accepted the papers (which I would see as being as good as a signature on a sheriff's slip) I can't see how this can possibly stand up.
My understanding is that any ruling based on "being served" can be easily disputed if the party serving the papers cannot prove that the right person got the papers, and that they have proof that they got the papers. I cannot see that via facebook.
But why demand that a company builds all these sort of contingencies into a system? Surely the xbox has the same "stop spinning the CD if the CD is ejected" built in as everything else does?
My point is where do you stop? Lets say it costs an extra $5 to add in your suggested accelerometer fix. Should you expect an xbox to maybe also survive a reasonable amount of splash damage from cola? It wouldn't be too far out there to expect that people will drink cola while playing, and sometimes a spill will happen. Shold they add in another $5 of manufacture to slightly water proof it? Maybe they should also cost the unit at an extra $10 to add in some surge protection into the unit itself?
If we keep coming up with scenarios, the price does simply escalate and escalate. Very soon you are talking having to slap an extra $50-100 in features on "what if's" and "maybe's". Me personally, I would much rather a unit that cost $50-100 less that I knew would scratch the CD if I gave it a bit of a kick while changing the way I am sitting. The result is to simply locate the unit where I won't bump it. Or spill cola on it. or maybe have a surge protector on the power coming into my house instead of on each appliance.
The bit I am still obviously (and painfully) missing is that you somehow expect a company to semi-earthquake proof their console so that if something should indeed bump it enough to have it wobble about (like in this example, a slight earthquake) so that it doesn't even have a chance of scratching a disc?
Let me put it another way, while I agree that a design that has the potential to scratch discs if it is knocked over isn't the best thing in the world, speak out against the company by NOT BUYING one. Poor sales due to a poor product will paint a much more vivid picture than all the whinging and complaining after the fact.
I simply cannot comprehend the logic jump from:
1) Company makes poor product. People don't buy poor products. Company either makes better products or goes out of business.
2) Company makes poor product. People keep buying poor products. Public makes class actions against company forcing them to make better products. People keep buying companies products.
It's not like there is a monopoly for consumer electronics here. If sales of xbox went down far enough, all those games being developed for "xbox exclusive" would suddenly appear on Playstation (or another new competitor). You do get that right? Developers will make/port their game to anyone/anything so they get most cash out of it. If they think they can make more by selling on all markets, they do. If they think that an offer from Sony for PS3 exclusive will more than make up for the sales they lose on xbox/pc they will do that.
Let consumers drive the market, not lawsuits. It works so much better.
let the unproductive companies go bankrupt
While I am normally all for the survival of the fittest especially in a business world, this is a bit of a problem in our current situation, as if we let all the "bad companies" go bust, we would end up with millions of people ready to retire suddenly have nothing to retire on. Millions of homes would possibly be repossesed. It might be better indeed to try to support these places and then look at tighter control rather than just letting these ones die.
So, frankly, this is MS dropping the ball. I'm not suggesting we're throwing around an xBox while playing it, but to expect a console to stay bolted down at all times is not a valid argument.
Is it just me, or should you perhaps get up off your fatboy chair, put down the jumbo cup of cola and perhaps, just maybe STOP PLAYING CONSOLE GAMES DURING AN EARTHQUAKE?
This has a few benefits. You are more likely to get out of the house and therefore live if it collapses. It might also avoid damaging your precious game discs should your house not collapse. You might have a better chance of passing as a normal healthy citizen.
On second thoughts though, keep playing gears of war if you feel your house starting to shake. It's just the new "force feedback house" feature kicking in.
They are unfairly blaming the users, when the people they should be holding to task are their engineers or businessmen for building bad engines/disc holders.
Being a regular /.-er, and being annoyed/hateful/whatever of Microsoft as the next guy here, I still got to jump in on their side of the fence for this one.
Just because a unit can scratch discs if you toss it around does not mean you need to sue them. I cannot fathom why Americans instantly go for "sue em!" instead of "hey, if the unit isn't as good as the opposition, maybe we should buy the competitors unit instead". If the possibility of you scratching a game disc when you knock your xbox over really really worries you so much... don't buy the damned thing. In this mindset, here are some other things you might want to avoid purchasing, or get a refund if you still can:
1) Your plasma/lcd tv will probably stop working if you knock it over.
2) Your car might not be road worthy if you turn it upside down. Even less chance if you do it while it's moving at the time.
3) If you suddenly pick up your parents, flip em upside down, and drop them, they might be worse for wear afterwards. At the very least, the chances of them talking to you are slim at best.
4) A can of beer doesn't work to well in pouring alcohol down your gullet once it's been tipped upside down for a little while.
5) Your fishtank might damage your fish if you knock it over in normal fishtank operation.
6) Knocking a kettle over during normal operation might result not only in a failure of operation, but possibly some nasty burns.
Feel a little more silly now about bitching at the "evil microsoft" for making something that doesn't work well if you start using it upside down?
I swear when I see stuff like this, it just makes me mad! Do something useful with that jumbo sized judicial system of yours America!
Sorry, this criticizing bit you speak of, is that before or after the laughing till the point of not being able to breathe while pointing madly and hopefully snapping a few pictures on the mobile phone camera for later blackmail as he/she starts pulling their pants up madly?
Yeah, there are times to pull out the sharpest of sharp wit and make a mockery of the intellect of those around you, as they clamber for footholds trying to sort out what was just said and what was actually implied, but doing so during an interview might not be the most opportune time. Why on earth would a manager want to hire someone smarter and better than them, and happy to flaunt it.
The problem with sharp wit - especially combined with a good poker face is that it very often leaves new aquaintances struggling to work out whether you are being a total wad or a comedic miracle.
A funny story I remember was at a friends birthday party, I was introduced to some guests, one of which was a reasonably muscular and certainly trim man. The conversation was about a diet that he had started to lose some weight (I again point out that he was in really good physical shape by all appearances) and I was asked if he needed to lose more. I put on my sarcastic hat and said along the lines of "Yes, he totally needs to lose some pounds, look at him, I mean, such a fatty boombalada, it's bordering on gross." There were a few uncomfortable laughs. I didn't think much more of it until I was quietly asked by the birthday girl (who had been introducing me to the others) if I also thought that she was fat. After a brief pause, it appeared that even though she knew me quite well, surprise sarcasm may not always be either obvious to the audience and can backfire if it isn't picked up. (Once I turned down the sit meter from "subtle sarcasm" to "loud and sometimes crude" the evening went smashingly though, with a highlight being convincing a girl to - no less - snort parmesan cheese through a $20)
I think they were shipped out here to Australia where they have been making poor quality foods and trying desperately not to go under? (No more puns about going under, down under).
He also wrote "Alive in the death zone" after his 2006 expedition when he was thought dead and left overnight by his fellow climbers after suffering a cerebral edema on the way down. I haven't read that one yet.
Suffering a cerebral edema, then writing a book you say? I get the feeling it might read somewhat like an incorrectly filled crossword or one of those newspaper letter games that no-one ever does?
Hey, with the rate of global warming, your body would get chomped by wormies soon enough even up there, they just might have to wait for it to thaw out :)
This is CLEARLY a job for the Space Elevator!
Get someone into space, enjoy a nice little elevator ride down to the summit of Everest, maybe have a hot chocolate in the bistro, then shoot on back up the elevator on the next ride and back into space to be brought down to earth safely with a big jet or re-entry capsule. Gawd, I can't believe no-one thought of this already.
H3y! I s4w Hackers and it was T3H Sh1T! Its r34lly cool! Just cause old people liek you dun get it!!!!!1!! dont dis what you dont g-3-t!!!!
:)
Goodness, I feel dirty just writing that
Most of the time when we GN's (I think you can work out the acronym here yes?) are picking on people, it's those who are either writing with a total disregard for any sort of punctuation or grammar, or we are pointing out something amusing in the text. Please don't take personal offense to our mockery of your post - unless it is one of the above scenarios. If that is indeed the case, please visit Learn To Spell and we will all be happier for your visit.
My name is Inigo Montoya. You stole my laptop. Prepare to shut-down.