The most important one, IMHO, is to compute a list of close matches and present these choices to the user. They may use the Soundex algorithm or some other tricks to see if characters are transposed, if one characters is wrong, if one is missing, etc. If well implemented, this would solve 60% of the problem.
BIND (and other Domain Name Servers) are given the simple task of turning a string into set of 4 octets (aka an IP address), using a massively distributed lookup table that maps strings to IP address.
The reason people are pissed off about Verisign's wildcard entry is that they have depended on their DNS saying "I can't find an IP address" when it can't find an IP address.
In general BIND is a program that talks to other programs via a very stable and well understood interface. Now, how would enhance BIND to do a soundex and return multiple possible results to programs that have been written to expect either a response in the form of a single IP address, or a "domain not found" error?
Sounds to me like this is something that should be handled in the application, if at all.
Many people have talked about older methods of storage as the gold standard. Paper, vellum, papryrus, clay tablets - some documents written on these media have survived thousands of years.
BUT, they have not survived that amount of time without degradation. The reason we can still read them is because of their low information density. Documents can fade - a 1 inch square portion of a document could flake away, leaving the original text still readable. Why? Because 1 square inch of most documents doesn't contain all that much information.
As physical objects I suspect that quality CDs or DVDs would degrade less over 1000 years than just about any of the other media I've previously mentionned. The problem is that we are trying to cram so much data onto them that even the slightest bit of degradation leads to data loss.
So what's the answer? Massive redundancy. Replicate data in 100 different ways across the surfaces of the CD or DVD - this might dramatically decrease the storage capacity, but even 10 MB on the surface area of a CD is a massive improvement over the storage density of vellum. Now you have a chance of lasting 1000 years. Even if the CD is shattered and all some future archeologist can find is a shard, there is a good chance that the entire data set is contained within that shard, perhaps even multiple copies.
Even further, one could imagine using file formats that are resistant to file errors, perhaps uncompressed raster images. Easy for future scientists to decode, and wonderfully resistant to degradation. This is just another way to decrease density.
Cell phones for some people are a huge waste of money. They were for me. The next time I think about getting a cell I will just go fishing instead!
Exactly. I used to pay at least $40US/month for a cell phone. I took it everywhere - went out of my way to use it. Then my plan came up for renewal and I decided to drop it. I haven't missed the phone at all.
At work everyone carries a cell phone, so they can get rudely interrupted in meetings. I think that this makes them feel important. But you know, it is a very rare event indeed that cannot wait for someone to check their voice mail/e-mail after the meeting.
As for personal usage I find that so many other people have cell phones that I can usually find a friend with a phone when I am out on the weekend.
To get me to come back, cell phone and service providers need to concentrate on providing a service that is as reliable as land lines. Then, and only then, will I switch back to a cell phone, replacing my land line.
I don't care about freaking games, MP3, color displays and sharing photos - I just want to be able to talk, clearly and reliably, from anywhere. Provide that service and I will come back.
As recently as four years ago, I went with pulse dialing - as a student, I didn't see the point in paying a couple bucks extra a month for something of so little marginal value.
A little known secret is that even if you signed up for pulse only, touch tone usually worked anyways. These days they'd actually have to do some work to block touch tone, rather than to enable it, as it is so pervasive.
I don't see a charge for touch tone dialing anymore though, so I am assuming this has been rolled into my ridiculous $25/month base service charge.
Supposedly the electric company that started it all.
It was only a matter of time...
on
HavenCo In Trouble?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
These guys never had a workable business plan to begin with. They were selling bandwidth at a huge premium over what it costs just a few miles away in the UK. If you are able to pay that much, you are probably doing something illegal to begin with, and HavenCo won't host you.
This was a solution looking for a problem that never materialized. The idea certainly captured the imagination of slashdotters though.
How is this any different than session IDs stored in URLs - i.e. URL re-writing. Sure, the person can see the info in the URL, but do they understand it any more than they would the contents of a cookie?
The example of the vacuum-cleaner shaped robot does make sense, but only if you only want to use the robot for vacuuming. But wouldn't it be more effective to have a single robot that could not only just vacuum, but also clean your bathroom, mow your lawn, fix your car, cook your dinner, etc.?
Actually I'd prefer the limited utility model over general purpose. If I have a humanoid robot, well I have to keep all the same old cleaning supplies around. Mop, broom, cleaning fluids - versus a specialized robot that has all that built in, and probably just takes a disposable cartridge of cleaning supplies.
Also, you mention the need for backward compatibility with existing tools. I think we will always want to keep the backward compatibility. Take the example of cooking dinner. Sure, if you wanted to cede complete control of dinner-cooking to your robot, you could probably come up with a more efficient design for the food storage and preparation tools, and a robot designed to use those new tools effectively. But if the new tools are not usable by a human, what happens when the robot breaks down and you are hungry?
So I imagine you know how to hunt, kill, prepare and cook game on your own? You already depend on a dense web of technology for your current food supply.
As to what happens when the food-a-rack-a-sacka breaks down, well - you get it fixed. Just like you would your refrigerator or stove. I guess you would prefer to build your own fire if the stove broke down - or hall some ice up from the lake if the frig breaks.
Current factory automation bears my point out. You won't find a single humanoid robot in a car factory - nor would you find any demand for one. The robots are designed around the task, which actually make things much more efficient. Previously assembly lines had to accomodate the limitations of the human form. The human form was designed for long distance walking, and perhaps a bit of scurrying up trees - it was not designed to install car windows.
Ok, why the hell does automation have to present itself in the form of a humanoid robot? The best shape for a robot that vaccums the floor, is - well - the shape of a vacuum cleaner. The only reason to create humanoid robots if for the sake of backward compatibility with existing tools. In the time frames we are talking about it's probably more economical to think about redesinging the entire system, with automation in mind, rather than just plopping a humanoid robot behind a cash register.
In fact that is what's happening. If you've ever used an automated checkout, you dealt with a robot that is far from humanoid. It's a squat little brushed metal dealy with a minimal complement of sensor devices and a reasonably dumb computer brain. With some adjustment on the part of the consumer who is using it, the new system performs just about as well as the old - at least for small purchases. Now if they can just come up with an automated bagger that puts the eggs on the bottom of the bag...
Furthermore, much of the automation we are going to see replacing human won't take any sort of a physical form. My job is implementing automated business systems that do the work of a department of dozens, even hundreds of people. Anyone rememeber how payroll was once processed? Clerks manually calculated every check. Today the payroll for 100,000 people with complex benefits, deductions, bonuses, etc... can be run in about an hour - with the attention of a few trained humans to pick up and correct errors.
If you believed the author of this article, the payroll department of the future would look like hundreds of humanoid robots staffing calculators. Not going to happen. Robots and automation will eventually replace most humans at work, but whatever form it takes won't look like us.
Wrigley Field is surrounded by a relatively affluent, high density neighborhood. I am willing to bet you could find an open Wi-Fi node from most spots in the park. Perhaps some of the rooftop bleachers could add a direction antenna and give a little back to the ballpark.
What's really interesting is that these days we think of heart disease as clogging of arteries. Yet before 1910, this form of heart disease was practically unheard of! Between 1910 and 1930, the number of deaths from clogged arteries went from practically nothing to ~300,000 per year!
In 1910 what was the average life span? What is the average age of death due to heart attack? I doubt people lived long enough to die of their heart disease.
Oddly enough, Terence McKenna managed to calculate the end of the world to December 21, 2012 using I Ching, while the Incas (Or was it Mayas? I confuse them.) calculated it to the same date. - Behold the powers of binary.
Huh, they must have both been doing something like storing their dates in 32 bit integers. This currently give the end of the world as a date in 2038.
Why can't we get one standard IM protocol? IM should work like email. Your ISP provides you with an IM account, just like they provide you an email account. They handle the IM servers for their clients, just like they handle mail servers.
Come to think of it, you could do this right now. Write an IM client that sends messages via email, using special headers that identify the emails as instant messages. Email for most people these days is nearly instantaneously delivered. I can recall many occasions were a fast email exchange approached the immediacy of IM - why not write a client to automate the process.
No, they aren't. Where is your research? PeopleSoft tests on every platform it supports. For internal development environments I'd imagine they'd use whatever is simplest, SQL Server on windows. For large production environents, most companies choose Unix (Solaris or HP-UX).
PeopleSoft runs mostly on Microsoft Servers. The thought of losing a potential revenue stream might cause Ballmer to dip into petty cash and settle this argument overnight. Oracle is not going to integrate PeopleSoft; they are buying a customer list and less competition, in addition to kicking a few more thousand geeks to the curb.
Where did you get this idiotic idea? I've worked on approximately 15 different PeopleSoft implementations, and 2 of them were on Intel servers - both exceptionally small implementations.
The majority of PeopleSoft's clients are on Sun/Oracle.
Microsoft certainly has the money to buy PS, for cash no less, but if would have little to do with the the relatively miniscule number of servers that are running PeopleSoft on Windows.
Speaking of poison pills, perhaps it would be a good idea for PeopleSoft to Open Source their products and change their business from development to support. Considering their target audience, support should be a viable business and a takeover would be less attractive to Oracle as they wouldn't gain control of the source.
PeopleSoft is almost entirely open source, at least for their clients. Clients get the source code to damned near everything, except the development IDE. The IDE can be used to create new applications, but it can also be used to customize the existing PeopleSoft code base, which is written using their own IDE.
All of PeopleSoft's batch programs, COBOL, SQR, and their own 'Application Engines' (a GUI designed database script) come with full source as well. Don't like the way your payroll is calculating? Well you can fix it yourself (though you'd have to be insane to edit that impenetrable piece of COBOL).
Now granted, I think the time is more than ripe for a truly open source competitor, especially on the middle to low end of the market - but don't count on PeopleSoft releasing their source code under the GPL - believe me, you wouldn't want it anyway. PeopleSoft's code base is the last place I'd start to design a good ERP.
Imagine paying a few hundred thousand dollars after having chosen Peoplesoft, only to have Oracle call you up one day, and say, 'hey, you're our new customer!'
Try a few hundred million. A large company can easily spend this much implementing a full ERP suite. Even when the implementations cost only a few million (extremely common, even a smallish company can spend this much) I doubt you are going to want to switch it all out for Oracle's half-baked replacements.
The only time I ever call technical support is when checking the manual and web doesn't get me the answer. If the person on the other end of the line has no more information available to them, what's the point?
1. Deactivate the screen saver and energy saving features of the monitor. This gives your cubicle that fresh 'just stepped out' feeling all day long. No need for remote control products. If you don't like leaving your computer unlocked, set the screensave to a screenshot of your desktop with some important looking spreadsheet open.
2. When leaving early, use the stairs, or if in a taller building use the stairs to go to another floor to wait for the elevator. Nothing like getting caught by the boss at the elevator banks at 4:15.
3. If you can, ride your bike in to work every once in awhile. You'd be suprised how impressed people are by that shit. It gives the impression that you are dedicated and athletic - the boss will think that these qualities will transfer to your office work - coworkers will think you have a life outside of work, and be jealous, thus increasing your status in their eyes. Make sure to leave your bike helmet and gear prominently displayed in your cubicle to maximize the benefit.
4. Use dialup and remote control products to send emails on the weekend. The time of an email can be too easily overlooked - the date not so much. It's easy to log on for a few minutes on the weekend. Saves some Friday emails to respond to.
5. The time you leave work is much more important than the time your arrive. Nobody cares that the idiot that leaves at 3:30pm actually gets into work at 6am - the general perception will be that he's a slacker. Even if you get in at 10am, if the boss sees you hanging around at 5:45pm, you'll look dedicated.
6. Try not to carry a backpack or bag - on days when you don't need a coat this allows you to enter late without making it look like you just got there.
7. If you are planning to be late, call people and leave random unimportant voicemails early in the morning. When you see them at 10am they'll think you were there all along (note, some voicemail systems reveal the source of the call, so be careful).
8. Slacking in the middle of the day is much better than showing up late or leaving early. People are paying the most attention in the morning and at quitting time. Arriving early and leaving late will give the semblance of dedication, even if you are taking 2 hours lunches, and hour long trips to the bookstore in the afternoon.
9. Find a sleep hideout. Most places, especially larger corporate offices, have some nook or cranny where nobody goes in the afternoon. Maybe it's a corner of the caffeteria, or perhaps a storeroom somebody forgot to lock. These places are great for sleeping off a hangover, or just reading the newspaper when doing so at you desk would be too conspicuous.
10. When pushed for work, create documentation. Management loves documentation, and doesn't realize how little time it takes to create. A well formatted ten page document with a table of contents and some nice graphics might take a day to create, but the boss can easily be convinced you've been working on it for many days. Frequently submit 'drafts' to the boss (which he will never read) - this will make the boss feel guilty for holding you up, and give you an excuse to take more time.
The constant media fascination with SPAM is getting to be more annoying than spam itself. I can't read an online journal or newspaper without seeing at least one article about spam. These articles are a new form of spam unto themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
BIND should be enhanced in several ways:
The most important one, IMHO, is to compute a list of close matches and present these choices to the user. They may use the Soundex algorithm or some other tricks to see if characters are transposed, if one characters is wrong, if one is missing, etc. If well implemented, this would solve 60% of the problem.
BIND (and other Domain Name Servers) are given the simple task of turning a string into set of 4 octets (aka an IP address), using a massively distributed lookup table that maps strings to IP address.
The reason people are pissed off about Verisign's wildcard entry is that they have depended on their DNS saying "I can't find an IP address" when it can't find an IP address.
In general BIND is a program that talks to other programs via a very stable and well understood interface. Now, how would enhance BIND to do a soundex and return multiple possible results to programs that have been written to expect either a response in the form of a single IP address, or a "domain not found" error?
Sounds to me like this is something that should be handled in the application, if at all.
-josh
Many people have talked about older methods of storage as the gold standard. Paper, vellum, papryrus, clay tablets - some documents written on these media have survived thousands of years.
BUT, they have not survived that amount of time without degradation. The reason we can still read them is because of their low information density. Documents can fade - a 1 inch square portion of a document could flake away, leaving the original text still readable. Why? Because 1 square inch of most documents doesn't contain all that much information.
As physical objects I suspect that quality CDs or DVDs would degrade less over 1000 years than just about any of the other media I've previously mentionned. The problem is that we are trying to cram so much data onto them that even the slightest bit of degradation leads to data loss.
So what's the answer? Massive redundancy. Replicate data in 100 different ways across the surfaces of the CD or DVD - this might dramatically decrease the storage capacity, but even 10 MB on the surface area of a CD is a massive improvement over the storage density of vellum. Now you have a chance of lasting 1000 years. Even if the CD is shattered and all some future archeologist can find is a shard, there is a good chance that the entire data set is contained within that shard, perhaps even multiple copies.
Even further, one could imagine using file formats that are resistant to file errors, perhaps uncompressed raster images. Easy for future scientists to decode, and wonderfully resistant to degradation. This is just another way to decrease density.
-josh
my understanding is that windows has long since cleanroomed all the BSD code out of the operating system, at least on xp.
The following returns the same on Windows XP and Windows 2000:
$ strings ftp.exe | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
So much for clean rooms...
-josh
Cell phones for some people are a huge waste of money. They were for me. The next time I think about getting a cell I will just go fishing instead!
Exactly. I used to pay at least $40US/month for a cell phone. I took it everywhere - went out of my way to use it. Then my plan came up for renewal and I decided to drop it. I haven't missed the phone at all.
At work everyone carries a cell phone, so they can get rudely interrupted in meetings. I think that this makes them feel important. But you know, it is a very rare event indeed that cannot wait for someone to check their voice mail/e-mail after the meeting.
As for personal usage I find that so many other people have cell phones that I can usually find a friend with a phone when I am out on the weekend.
To get me to come back, cell phone and service providers need to concentrate on providing a service that is as reliable as land lines. Then, and only then, will I switch back to a cell phone, replacing my land line.
I don't care about freaking games, MP3, color displays and sharing photos - I just want to be able to talk, clearly and reliably, from anywhere. Provide that service and I will come back.
-josh
As recently as four years ago, I went with pulse dialing - as a student, I didn't see the point in paying a couple bucks extra a month for something of so little marginal value.
A little known secret is that even if you signed up for pulse only, touch tone usually worked anyways. These days they'd actually have to do some work to block touch tone, rather than to enable it, as it is so pervasive.
I don't see a charge for touch tone dialing anymore though, so I am assuming this has been rolled into my ridiculous $25/month base service charge.
-josh
Niagara Mohawk Website
Supposedly the electric company that started it all.
These guys never had a workable business plan to begin with. They were selling bandwidth at a huge premium over what it costs just a few miles away in the UK. If you are able to pay that much, you are probably doing something illegal to begin with, and HavenCo won't host you.
This was a solution looking for a problem that never materialized. The idea certainly captured the imagination of slashdotters though.
-josh
How is this any different than session IDs stored in URLs - i.e. URL re-writing. Sure, the person can see the info in the URL, but do they understand it any more than they would the contents of a cookie?
-josh
The example of the vacuum-cleaner shaped robot does make sense, but only if you only want to use the robot for vacuuming. But wouldn't it be more effective to have a single robot that could not only just vacuum, but also clean your bathroom, mow your lawn, fix your car, cook your dinner, etc.?
Actually I'd prefer the limited utility model over general purpose. If I have a humanoid robot, well I have to keep all the same old cleaning supplies around. Mop, broom, cleaning fluids - versus a specialized robot that has all that built in, and probably just takes a disposable cartridge of cleaning supplies.
Also, you mention the need for backward compatibility with existing tools. I think we will always want to keep the backward compatibility. Take the example of cooking dinner. Sure, if you wanted to cede complete control of dinner-cooking to your robot, you could probably come up with a more efficient design for the food storage and preparation tools, and a robot designed to use those new tools effectively. But if the new tools are not usable by a human, what happens when the robot breaks down and you are hungry?
So I imagine you know how to hunt, kill, prepare and cook game on your own? You already depend on a dense web of technology for your current food supply.
As to what happens when the food-a-rack-a-sacka breaks down, well - you get it fixed. Just like you would your refrigerator or stove. I guess you would prefer to build your own fire if the stove broke down - or hall some ice up from the lake if the frig breaks.
Current factory automation bears my point out. You won't find a single humanoid robot in a car factory - nor would you find any demand for one. The robots are designed around the task, which actually make things much more efficient. Previously assembly lines had to accomodate the limitations of the human form. The human form was designed for long distance walking, and perhaps a bit of scurrying up trees - it was not designed to install car windows.
-josh
If you believe the author of this article, the payroll department of the future will look like a large power generator.
Touche.
-josh
Ok, why the hell does automation have to present itself in the form of a humanoid robot? The best shape for a robot that vaccums the floor, is - well - the shape of a vacuum cleaner. The only reason to create humanoid robots if for the sake of backward compatibility with existing tools. In the time frames we are talking about it's probably more economical to think about redesinging the entire system, with automation in mind, rather than just plopping a humanoid robot behind a cash register.
In fact that is what's happening. If you've ever used an automated checkout, you dealt with a robot that is far from humanoid. It's a squat little brushed metal dealy with a minimal complement of sensor devices and a reasonably dumb computer brain. With some adjustment on the part of the consumer who is using it, the new system performs just about as well as the old - at least for small purchases. Now if they can just come up with an automated bagger that puts the eggs on the bottom of the bag...
Furthermore, much of the automation we are going to see replacing human won't take any sort of a physical form. My job is implementing automated business systems that do the work of a department of dozens, even hundreds of people. Anyone rememeber how payroll was once processed? Clerks manually calculated every check. Today the payroll for 100,000 people with complex benefits, deductions, bonuses, etc... can be run in about an hour - with the attention of a few trained humans to pick up and correct errors.
If you believed the author of this article, the payroll department of the future would look like hundreds of humanoid robots staffing calculators. Not going to happen. Robots and automation will eventually replace most humans at work, but whatever form it takes won't look like us.
-josh
Wrigley Field is surrounded by a relatively affluent, high density neighborhood. I am willing to bet you could find an open Wi-Fi node from most spots in the park. Perhaps some of the rooftop bleachers could add a direction antenna and give a little back to the ballpark.
-josh
What's really interesting is that these days we think of heart disease as clogging of arteries. Yet before 1910, this form of heart disease was practically unheard of! Between 1910 and 1930, the number of deaths from clogged arteries went from practically nothing to ~300,000 per year!
In 1910 what was the average life span? What is the average age of death due to heart attack? I doubt people lived long enough to die of their heart disease.
-josh
Try one IP per household. Nowhere near 4 billions households on the planet. People do share computers and internet connections.
-josh
Oddly enough, Terence McKenna managed to calculate the end of the world to December 21, 2012 using I Ching, while the Incas (Or was it Mayas? I confuse them.) calculated it to the same date. - Behold the powers of binary.
Huh, they must have both been doing something like storing their dates in 32 bit integers. This currently give the end of the world as a date in 2038.
-josh
Why can't we get one standard IM protocol? IM should work like email. Your ISP provides you with an IM account, just like they provide you an email account. They handle the IM servers for their clients, just like they handle mail servers.
Come to think of it, you could do this right now. Write an IM client that sends messages via email, using special headers that identify the emails as instant messages. Email for most people these days is nearly instantaneously delivered. I can recall many occasions were a fast email exchange approached the immediacy of IM - why not write a client to automate the process.
-josh
The majority of installs are on Windows.
No, they aren't. Where is your research? PeopleSoft tests on every platform it supports. For internal development environments I'd imagine they'd use whatever is simplest, SQL Server on windows. For large production environents, most companies choose Unix (Solaris or HP-UX).
-josh
PeopleSoft runs mostly on Microsoft Servers. The thought of losing a potential revenue stream might cause Ballmer to dip into petty cash and settle this argument overnight. Oracle is not going to integrate PeopleSoft; they are buying a customer list and less competition, in addition to kicking a few more thousand geeks to the curb.
Where did you get this idiotic idea? I've worked on approximately 15 different PeopleSoft implementations, and 2 of them were on Intel servers - both exceptionally small implementations.
The majority of PeopleSoft's clients are on Sun/Oracle.
Microsoft certainly has the money to buy PS, for cash no less, but if would have little to do with the the relatively miniscule number of servers that are running PeopleSoft on Windows.
-josh
Speaking of poison pills, perhaps it would be a good idea for PeopleSoft to Open Source their products and change their business from development to support. Considering their target audience, support should be a viable business and a takeover would be less attractive to Oracle as they wouldn't gain control of the source.
PeopleSoft is almost entirely open source, at least for their clients. Clients get the source code to damned near everything, except the development IDE. The IDE can be used to create new applications, but it can also be used to customize the existing PeopleSoft code base, which is written using their own IDE.
All of PeopleSoft's batch programs, COBOL, SQR, and their own 'Application Engines' (a GUI designed database script) come with full source as well. Don't like the way your payroll is calculating? Well you can fix it yourself (though you'd have to be insane to edit that impenetrable piece of COBOL).
Now granted, I think the time is more than ripe for a truly open source competitor, especially on the middle to low end of the market - but don't count on PeopleSoft releasing their source code under the GPL - believe me, you wouldn't want it anyway. PeopleSoft's code base is the last place I'd start to design a good ERP.
-josh
Imagine paying a few hundred thousand dollars after having chosen Peoplesoft, only to have Oracle call you up one day, and say, 'hey, you're our new customer!'
Try a few hundred million. A large company can easily spend this much implementing a full ERP suite. Even when the implementations cost only a few million (extremely common, even a smallish company can spend this much) I doubt you are going to want to switch it all out for Oracle's half-baked replacements.
-josh
The only time I ever call technical support is when checking the manual and web doesn't get me the answer. If the person on the other end of the line has no more information available to them, what's the point?
Exactly.
I am not sure I'd want to meet the other people that are searching for "Horny coed sex slaves".
-josh
1. Deactivate the screen saver and energy saving features of the monitor. This gives your cubicle that fresh 'just stepped out' feeling all day long. No need for remote control products. If you don't like leaving your computer unlocked, set the screensave to a screenshot of your desktop with some important looking spreadsheet open.
2. When leaving early, use the stairs, or if in a taller building use the stairs to go to another floor to wait for the elevator. Nothing like getting caught by the boss at the elevator banks at 4:15.
3. If you can, ride your bike in to work every once in awhile. You'd be suprised how impressed people are by that shit. It gives the impression that you are dedicated and athletic - the boss will think that these qualities will transfer to your office work - coworkers will think you have a life outside of work, and be jealous, thus increasing your status in their eyes. Make sure to leave your bike helmet and gear prominently displayed in your cubicle to maximize the benefit.
4. Use dialup and remote control products to send emails on the weekend. The time of an email can be too easily overlooked - the date not so much. It's easy to log on for a few minutes on the weekend. Saves some Friday emails to respond to.
5. The time you leave work is much more important than the time your arrive. Nobody cares that the idiot that leaves at 3:30pm actually gets into work at 6am - the general perception will be that he's a slacker. Even if you get in at 10am, if the boss sees you hanging around at 5:45pm, you'll look dedicated.
6. Try not to carry a backpack or bag - on days when you don't need a coat this allows you to enter late without making it look like you just got there.
7. If you are planning to be late, call people and leave random unimportant voicemails early in the morning. When you see them at 10am they'll think you were there all along (note, some voicemail systems reveal the source of the call, so be careful).
8. Slacking in the middle of the day is much better than showing up late or leaving early. People are paying the most attention in the morning and at quitting time. Arriving early and leaving late will give the semblance of dedication, even if you are taking 2 hours lunches, and hour long trips to the bookstore in the afternoon.
9. Find a sleep hideout. Most places, especially larger corporate offices, have some nook or cranny where nobody goes in the afternoon. Maybe it's a corner of the caffeteria, or perhaps a storeroom somebody forgot to lock. These places are great for sleeping off a hangover, or just reading the newspaper when doing so at you desk would be too conspicuous.
10. When pushed for work, create documentation. Management loves documentation, and doesn't realize how little time it takes to create. A well formatted ten page document with a table of contents and some nice graphics might take a day to create, but the boss can easily be convinced you've been working on it for many days. Frequently submit 'drafts' to the boss (which he will never read) - this will make the boss feel guilty for holding you up, and give you an excuse to take more time.
The constant media fascination with SPAM is getting to be more annoying than spam itself. I can't read an online journal or newspaper without seeing at least one article about spam. These articles are a new form of spam unto themselves.
-josh
I don't get it. You can send your ashes to space for $5,300 [howstuffworks.com], but a letter is nearly 4 times more expensive?
The ashes stay in space - the letter hopefully comes back. The expense is in making the fligh a round trip.
-josh