Something is better than nothing. I assume you also need your username and password. My thing is that very few of my friends use actual pictures of themselves as avatars. More than half use a favorite TV character, movie screen shot, comic frame or other mostly unidentifiable image.
Reasonably I think the problem in this case was that it was an entry level job and there was very little to differentiate the candidates on. I've been involved with searches for more senior people and had a lot less trouble sorting through the resumes. There were less of them and the qualifications were much more obvious.
Urban legend or not, it's not far off the truth when you have hundreds of resumes to sort. I've done this. I worked as senior systems administrator for a small high tech firm. We decided we needed a help desk guy, and I was asked to be the primary decision maker. I wasn't actually the hiring manager, but I was basically told that the hiring manager would take whatever I recommended. Then they dumped a hundred-plus resumes on my desk.
Let me tell you that it's all but impossible to make an intelligent and informed decision on hiring from a hundred 1-2 page documents. First pass I went through and tossed all the blatantly illiterate or unqualified. Second pass I kept anyone with a degree or 3 years of experience (completely arbitrary, but I was getting desperate). Third pass I looked at the relevance of the degree/experience more closely. By the fourth pass I still had 10 resumes. Basically you wound up getting an interview if you had a degree *and* relevant experience (assuming that your resume wasn't written in crayon or leet speak). It was the best I could do. For an entry level job there's just not that much to really judge people on.
I'm a hundred percent certain that somewhere in that pile of ~95 discarded resumes was at least one person better than at least one of the five I chose for interviews, but I had to draw lines somewhere. It's not like I knew these people.
Disagree. A degree in history will probably not get you a job as an engineer or research scientist (though I have a degree in history and my title is "Systems Engineer" so it's not entirely accurate to say it won't), but it still helps you get into better jobs than no degree at all. Lot's of "not great, but pretty good" jobs in offices and mid-level supervision give advantage to people with degrees, but aren't too chuffed what those degrees are in. Just look at big retail stores. I have a few younger friends who work in them. Universally they require a degree for a manager's job. Most of the managers in a place like Target or Best Buy are people who've worked for the company for a few year and either had a degree when they took the job, or got a degree while working there.
Now you may say that manager for a big box store is hardly a prestigious job. You'd be right, but they make 50-100% more than their employees. Store managers actually earn money on par with a skilled engineer or even engineering manager. So Bob gets a job with Target, he doesn't have a degree and doesn't earn one. Ten years later he's still with Target, and at best he's shift supervisor. Even though his managers like him, they can't promote him because he doesn't have a degree.
Sue get got a job at Target at the same time after discovering that despite having a degree in theater, acting isn't really paying her bills. Like Bob she was well liked and did a good job. Sue now manages the cosmetics department (an interesting twist on her degree, but it does come in handy sometimes) and makes half again as much as Bob. She's in line for assistant manager when a spot comes open in the region (100% more money than Bob), and can reasonably hope for her own store (and a 6 figure income) in five years or so. Especially if she goes and gets her MBA (which at her level Target will probably pay for and which she already has the base bachelors to work from).
My example is somewhat contrived, but it plays out all the time in the real world. My mother is a certified nursing assistant. It's a low skill job, but she's a hard worker and has been at it for some 25 years. She's well respected by her colleges, and now works as a trainer and training coordinator rather than in the field. She even serves on the state nursing board as a CNA rep. She makes OK money considering her lack of a degree or much formal training beyond an 8 week course 25 years ago, but her boss has essentially told her, in so many words, "Get a degree and I can pay you 50% more on the spot. Any degree, HR won't let me do it unless you get a degree". She's getting a degree (Liberal Arts I think).
My mother, Sue in my example, they'll likely never be rich. They don't have jobs that we who read/. might even consider all that interesting. None the less, they have advantages over their peers. A degree in theater or history may not be your ticket to the big bucks like an MBA or even the medium bucks like an EE or a BS-CS, but they give you a distinct advantage over people with no degree. If you play your cards right; work hard, learn on your own, get the tough certs, and eventually a masters in Computer Science, you might even wind up as a senior systems engineer.
Seems to me this is the entire point of all modern power systems, getting access to the stored potential energy in various stuff. Whether that "stuff" is dead organic matter (coal, wood, oil), light, atoms, or chemicals. In all cases we are getting more out of it than we put into it. There's no such thing as a free lunch, the energy comes from somewhere, but we don't have to produce it, just get at it. The problem we're having is that there's a limited quantity of most of the easiest and most popular "stuff" that contains a lot of potential energy. We're running out (whatever your opinion on *when* we'll run out I don't think anyone is delusional enough to think there is infinite oil in the ground). Things like nuclear (fusion or fission), solar, geothermal, wind... All of them are harder, and some much less efficient than burning stuff, but they have the advantage of being effectively infinite (yes, they are finite too, but for practical purposes we could never use all of them up).
That's an interesting approach. According to TFS, Google got 282 new patents in just the last year, Apple got approximately 550, and Microsoft got 3000. So as a developer, in order to avoid violating anyone's patents I must now read and comprehend just under 4000 patents. Just for those three companies. Just for last year. Given that patents last for what? 12 years? I figure, conservatively, that in order to be reasonably sure that I'm not violating any software patents on my next project I just need to read and comprehend around 100,000 technically and legally dense patents. I'll get right on that.
Where do you get this? I have, not once, but twice now, said I don't approve of her actions. I also say "company's actions, which in my opinion were very nearly as bad as "Sally's" are glossed over as perfectly reasonable." Note the bold. "Sally's" actions were the worse of the two. She was wrong, however she was more understandable in her actions than the others. The other two were flatly criminal and I don't claim otherwise anywhere.
I'm not being "tribal" here, she was in the wrong but so was her company. The article presents her as wrong, but ignores the company's wrongdoing (beyond superficial and obvious security mistakes). I'm not saying she shouldn't have been let go, I don't know what the company's situation was. It's quite possible that they had little choice. What I am saying is that there are different ways to handle layoffs, and based on the info in the article this company handled them in the least friendly possible way.
Mow maybe the company did give notice to their employees that layoffs were imminent. Maybe they provided good severance packages, job search assistance or career counseling. I don't know, but it's not mentioned in the article. If they did do all of that, the article could have mentioned it. It would have made "Sally" seem that much less sympathetic. If they didn't do any mitigation, the article could easily have mentioned that too. It would have fit quite nicely into the lessons learned. People who are treated well in a bad situation, like unavoidable layoffs, are much less likely to be revenge motivated than people who are treated poorly. It doesn't mean some sociopath won't do something evil anyway, but at the very least it's a *a* good counter strategy to the revenge motivation.
Security is about more than making sure systems are locked down and people are prevented from getting access to unnecessary privileges. There's a social aspect as well. A disgruntled employee is much more likely to do bad things than a happy or at least content employee. people who are treated with respect are (generally) happier, and happy people are (generally) less likely to do damage. You don't want to base your entire enterprise security strategy around "Happy people", but it should definitely be something that gets considered.
The article even acknowledges this, saying that you should keep a particular eye on people when news like layoffs could leak out. That would have been a perfect place to segue into talking about how to manage these sorts of crisis to minimize employee unhappiness and thus minimize the chance of people even wanting revenge.
I don't agree with her response, just think she is more sympathetic than the others. My problem with the way the whole tale was presented was that the company's actions, which in my opinion were very nearly as bad as "Sally's" are glossed over as perfectly reasonable. Of course you outsource the entire department. Of course you don't tell anyone till the last possible moment. Of course you don't provide counseling or job search assistance.
While their points about escalation of privileged and job separation are perfectly valid, their most "valuable" piece of advice for this one appeared to be "Watch your employees close when you're about to screw them, the sneaky bastard probably figured it out." They didn't even bother to mention being open and honest with your staff, providing transition services or any of the other things the company could have to done to prevent or cushion the proximal cause of the employee anger.
Sure, watch people, especially people under stress. Sure, don't give people access to systems they don't need access too. Sure, make sure you know who has what keys. Also treat people with a bit of respect and don't fuck with them any more than you have to at a bad time.
I've only every worked at one company that had a merit "ceiling" higher than 4% and that was SGI (8% I think). Sadly they were in their death throes at the time, so merit increases were frozen.
My current company had to give me a "one time adjustment" in order to raise my salary 15% to keep me after I got another offer. The system couldn't even handle a merit increase that high.
I have a little sympathy for "Sally". What she did was wrong and I don't condone it, but the article (clearly written from a management perspective), is rather cavalier about the company just essentially eliminating their IT department. Cost cutting is as cost cutting does, and I don't know the whole story (it may have really been a necessary measure), but the whole thing is treated kinda like "Oh well she was just a little upset because she was being let go." As opposed to "She was rightfully pretty damned pissed that the company was terminating her after 8 years of what appeared to be service they were extremely happy with, to save a few bucks, and they weren't even bothering to be upfront about it."
As it turns out she was probably a thief, or very very careless, but clearly no one knew that when the decision was made. All in all I'd say a better "lesson learned" from that one is "be upfront with your employees about major changes in their careers due to company action, and help them in every reasonable way to adjust to the changes you caused." Not: " Watch your evil employees like hawks when you're about to screw them to make sure they don't screw you first."
No, he's making valid observation and also saying it makes no sense (which you apparently agree with). What he's talking about is a real and noticeable trend where internal raises for IT staff are either very small or non-existent, but new hires are often paid more. There's lots of reasons for this. Old companies tend to take talent they have for granted, but new companies (whether they are actually "new" or just in need of replacements) tend to overvalue talent they need *right now* either because they lost it or are going into anew area. It's easy to justify hiring new staff at market rates, but harder to justify raises. Companies don't like to give one class of workers a larger base raise rate than other classes of workers. Probably other reasons as well, but those are the ones that come to mind without much thought.
As GP states, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You go into lots of the reasons *why* it doesn't make a lot of sense. None the less, it happens... a lot. I can point to each and every significant jump in my income and every one of them was either because I changed jobs or because an employer was matching an offer from someone else (and that's only happened once). Merit raises at most places (If they're even doing them, my company has frozen them this year) are 2% for reasonable performance and top out at 4% for exceptional performance. Changing jobs can easily net you a 20% raise. Often more. That's 5 years worth of merit raises (assuming you are exceptional, your boss isn't trying to save a few bucks on labor, and your company hasn't frozen merit raises).
Occasionally you encounter companies smart enough to see the value in keeping people, my current company gave me a big raise to match an offer, but it's not all that common. Mostly I've accepted my crappy little annual raises when offered them and moved on when someone offered me more money than I could ignore.
Alternately you could could learn the new technology and using your new combination of experience and in demand skills, get another job making 40% more:-)
It wouldn't get the FBI in your hypothetical, I'd like think it'd get the same attention from the local cops (and it probably would, with this many people dead or wounded it wouldn't exactly be easy to file under "statistics")
As to your point two... it wouldn't really bother me if they hadn't gotten a warrant in this case. If the FBI calls me up and says "We'd like you clients records, because he.. um... might have been involved in some... stuff" I'm gonna want to see the warrant. If the FBI calls me up and says "Your client was that guy on TV that just killed six people in front of hundreds of witnesses... think we could see his records?" Unless there's a compelling legal reason for me to insist on a warrant I probably won't. I know they can get one in couple of hours, why waste everyone's time? The facts of the case aren't in question and the records are clearly relevant.
The guy shot 20 people in broad daylight, killing six including a little girl, an old man trying to shield his wife with his body, and a federal judge. Among the 14 wounded were a US Rep who may never fully recover. He was only prevented from killing more people by people tackling him during a reload... If ever there was an excuse to get a warrant for some transcripts this is it.
It is, none the less, not worth endless pedantic agonizing that Slashdot has spent on it over the years. We're all aware of the fact you speak. You don't need to bring it up every time the word is "misused". You certainly don't need hundred of comments about it every time the word is "misused". At one time that was the norm.
I didn't say I hated them place. Hell I've been coming back and making comments for nigh on 12 years now (I'd love a function that told me how old my account actually was... I suppose I could just scroll back to my first ever comment.) It's always had a strong and useful core population. It's also always had a population of trolls, extremists of almost every stripe, pedants, and wackos. Both play their part in the great tapestry of Grits, Winblows, in depth technical discussion, and craziness that we all love.
So you think it should be someone's job to watch this kid on a camera 24/7 while he eats, sleeps, and uses the bathroom, rather than just not giving him the implements to kill himself in the first place? This is standard practice with suicide watches. It's also standard practice to keep potentially endangered inmates away from other who might hurt them. Most of the guys in military prison are violent offenders, and many of them are still surprisingly loyal to the government that locked them up.
As far as I understand it, he has been charged and is awaiting trial. If you have some evidence to the contrary I'd like to see it.
I can't be arsed to look it up, but I'm pretty sure the formal legal definition of "treason" requires you to give help or information to a an active enemy of the Unites States (as in a foreign power we are in state of war or conflict with). I don't think he committed the legal act of treason. On the other hand he's guilty of at least half a dozen crimes which he knowingly committed. The kid is boned. He'll be lucky if the courts take youthful idealism into account and just send him to military prison for 10 or 20 years instead of life (the US hasn't executed anyone for espionage outside a time of war for a long time and i doubt they'd start by making a martyr out of this kid).
I don't know what kind of "vigorous defense" they plan to offer. Regardless of your opinion of Wikileaks itself, this guy has pretty clearly committed actions which violate a number of laws and military regulations, all of which he was aware of, and all of which he was reminded of at least annually if not more often. He deserves his day in court like anyone else, but the smart money would be on taking a plea deal and hoping for the best.
a standard that is not open, and subject to licensing fees, is NOT open.
Here you refer to a standard and its status of openness or non-openness. H.264 is an open standard by any traditional definition. It does not have an open implementation. This has been the case for many "open standards" throughout the history of computing in the early days of the standard. Often the "standards body" will approve a "standard" which is open, but based on a proprietary implementation. Later, when the patents on the closed implementation expire open implementations of the open standard come into being.
I know what you (and Google) are trying to say, but you're trying to redefine a lot of vocabulary in order to say it. Say what you mean. Leave standards out of it. H.264 is clearly an open standard, you object to the fact that there are no open implementations. That's fine. Say that. OP is not trying to redefine any terms, he is using the traditional definition of a term you are trying to redefine.
You're redefining "open" as it relates to standards, not the OP. The traditional definition of "open standards" is a standard propagated by one or more international standard setting bodies (in this case ISO and ITU) and implemented by companies or other organizations in ways that may or may not in turn be "open". In other words, C++ is an open standard. g++ is an open implementation of that standard. The C++ compiler in Visual Studios is a close implementation of the same standard. Both are C++, both are based on the same open standard. H.264 is an open standard. Right now the only implementation of that standard is a closed product. Until the MPEG-LA patents expire there is unlikely to be an open implementation of H.264. It doesn't make the standard any less open.
However the article makes a valid point. By the traditional definition of "open standard" H.264 is one. The idea behind "open standards" has always been: "The standards is open, feel free to make your implementation as open or closed as you like". ISO and ITU created the standard, it's "open". Now the program itself is not open or revenue free. I'm not even trying to say it is. The point is that the term has a pretty well defined meaning and H.264 meets that meaning. H.264 is not an open product, but it *is* an open standard.
To be fair, while I haven't been around quite as long as you, I have a pretty low UID and I can't remember a time when Slashdot didn't contain it's fair share of immature prattle, tremendously uncreative insults, or pedantry. Remember when half the people here insisted on always referring to Microsoft as M$, or every single post on a mainstream press articles containing the word "hacker" had at least one, probably several, 20-30 comment threads on the difference between "hackers" and "crackers"? Sadly, we've always been retards.
I'm an iPhone user and a Mac owner (I don't say "Mac user" because my wife stole it:-)), and I think this is a pretty bad idea. There are are at least two major functions to the home key (return to the home page and task switching) and not many obvious or intuitive gestures left. Any of them are likely to require two hands. It's also much more comfortable to activate the phone by using the home key than using the power key. I'm all for the inclusion of new gestures to mimic the home key's functions, but not for the removal of the key itself. On the other hand this is completely unfounded rumor so we'll see what happens.
Read the damned summary. Not even the article, the summary. They are eliminating approximately half the mobile phones. So a *lot* of people will still have them. Probably all the IT staff, or at least all of the 24 hour on call IT staff. Despite what GP claims, I can think of a fair number of state workers who will be on the road most of the time. Tax assessors come to mind, various types of case workers for state welfare and human services agencies, parole officers and other "semi-law enforcement" types who don't mostly use radios.. the list goes on, but again, I think those people will keep their phones.
Really IT probably don't even need phones. I don't do high availability stuff any more, but when I did, I doubt my total calls EVER came up to more than 100 minutes. Most months it was much less. Let the IT staff use a personal phone and pay them a prorated by minute stipend if you have to call them. Assuming a normal rate plan of 7 to 9 cents a minute that's not likely to ever be more than $10 a month. Most months it'll be practically nothing. If they don't have a personal phone (highly unlikely, but possible I guess), get them a pager for ten bucks a month.
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Something is better than nothing. I assume you also need your username and password. My thing is that very few of my friends use actual pictures of themselves as avatars. More than half use a favorite TV character, movie screen shot, comic frame or other mostly unidentifiable image.
Reasonably I think the problem in this case was that it was an entry level job and there was very little to differentiate the candidates on. I've been involved with searches for more senior people and had a lot less trouble sorting through the resumes. There were less of them and the qualifications were much more obvious.
Urban legend or not, it's not far off the truth when you have hundreds of resumes to sort. I've done this. I worked as senior systems administrator for a small high tech firm. We decided we needed a help desk guy, and I was asked to be the primary decision maker. I wasn't actually the hiring manager, but I was basically told that the hiring manager would take whatever I recommended. Then they dumped a hundred-plus resumes on my desk.
Let me tell you that it's all but impossible to make an intelligent and informed decision on hiring from a hundred 1-2 page documents. First pass I went through and tossed all the blatantly illiterate or unqualified. Second pass I kept anyone with a degree or 3 years of experience (completely arbitrary, but I was getting desperate). Third pass I looked at the relevance of the degree/experience more closely. By the fourth pass I still had 10 resumes. Basically you wound up getting an interview if you had a degree *and* relevant experience (assuming that your resume wasn't written in crayon or leet speak). It was the best I could do. For an entry level job there's just not that much to really judge people on.
I'm a hundred percent certain that somewhere in that pile of ~95 discarded resumes was at least one person better than at least one of the five I chose for interviews, but I had to draw lines somewhere. It's not like I knew these people.
Disagree. A degree in history will probably not get you a job as an engineer or research scientist (though I have a degree in history and my title is "Systems Engineer" so it's not entirely accurate to say it won't), but it still helps you get into better jobs than no degree at all. Lot's of "not great, but pretty good" jobs in offices and mid-level supervision give advantage to people with degrees, but aren't too chuffed what those degrees are in. Just look at big retail stores. I have a few younger friends who work in them. Universally they require a degree for a manager's job. Most of the managers in a place like Target or Best Buy are people who've worked for the company for a few year and either had a degree when they took the job, or got a degree while working there.
Now you may say that manager for a big box store is hardly a prestigious job. You'd be right, but they make 50-100% more than their employees. Store managers actually earn money on par with a skilled engineer or even engineering manager. So Bob gets a job with Target, he doesn't have a degree and doesn't earn one. Ten years later he's still with Target, and at best he's shift supervisor. Even though his managers like him, they can't promote him because he doesn't have a degree.
Sue get got a job at Target at the same time after discovering that despite having a degree in theater, acting isn't really paying her bills. Like Bob she was well liked and did a good job. Sue now manages the cosmetics department (an interesting twist on her degree, but it does come in handy sometimes) and makes half again as much as Bob. She's in line for assistant manager when a spot comes open in the region (100% more money than Bob), and can reasonably hope for her own store (and a 6 figure income) in five years or so. Especially if she goes and gets her MBA (which at her level Target will probably pay for and which she already has the base bachelors to work from).
My example is somewhat contrived, but it plays out all the time in the real world. My mother is a certified nursing assistant. It's a low skill job, but she's a hard worker and has been at it for some 25 years. She's well respected by her colleges, and now works as a trainer and training coordinator rather than in the field. She even serves on the state nursing board as a CNA rep. She makes OK money considering her lack of a degree or much formal training beyond an 8 week course 25 years ago, but her boss has essentially told her, in so many words, "Get a degree and I can pay you 50% more on the spot. Any degree, HR won't let me do it unless you get a degree". She's getting a degree (Liberal Arts I think).
My mother, Sue in my example, they'll likely never be rich. They don't have jobs that we who read /. might even consider all that interesting. None the less, they have advantages over their peers. A degree in theater or history may not be your ticket to the big bucks like an MBA or even the medium bucks like an EE or a BS-CS, but they give you a distinct advantage over people with no degree. If you play your cards right; work hard, learn on your own, get the tough certs, and eventually a masters in Computer Science, you might even wind up as a senior systems engineer.
Seems to me this is the entire point of all modern power systems, getting access to the stored potential energy in various stuff. Whether that "stuff" is dead organic matter (coal, wood, oil), light, atoms, or chemicals. In all cases we are getting more out of it than we put into it. There's no such thing as a free lunch, the energy comes from somewhere, but we don't have to produce it, just get at it. The problem we're having is that there's a limited quantity of most of the easiest and most popular "stuff" that contains a lot of potential energy. We're running out (whatever your opinion on *when* we'll run out I don't think anyone is delusional enough to think there is infinite oil in the ground). Things like nuclear (fusion or fission), solar, geothermal, wind... All of them are harder, and some much less efficient than burning stuff, but they have the advantage of being effectively infinite (yes, they are finite too, but for practical purposes we could never use all of them up).
That's an interesting approach. According to TFS, Google got 282 new patents in just the last year, Apple got approximately 550, and Microsoft got 3000. So as a developer, in order to avoid violating anyone's patents I must now read and comprehend just under 4000 patents. Just for those three companies. Just for last year. Given that patents last for what? 12 years? I figure, conservatively, that in order to be reasonably sure that I'm not violating any software patents on my next project I just need to read and comprehend around 100,000 technically and legally dense patents. I'll get right on that.
Where do you get this? I have, not once, but twice now, said I don't approve of her actions. I also say "company's actions, which in my opinion were very nearly as bad as "Sally's" are glossed over as perfectly reasonable." Note the bold. "Sally's" actions were the worse of the two. She was wrong, however she was more understandable in her actions than the others. The other two were flatly criminal and I don't claim otherwise anywhere.
I'm not being "tribal" here, she was in the wrong but so was her company. The article presents her as wrong, but ignores the company's wrongdoing (beyond superficial and obvious security mistakes). I'm not saying she shouldn't have been let go, I don't know what the company's situation was. It's quite possible that they had little choice. What I am saying is that there are different ways to handle layoffs, and based on the info in the article this company handled them in the least friendly possible way.
Mow maybe the company did give notice to their employees that layoffs were imminent. Maybe they provided good severance packages, job search assistance or career counseling. I don't know, but it's not mentioned in the article. If they did do all of that, the article could have mentioned it. It would have made "Sally" seem that much less sympathetic. If they didn't do any mitigation, the article could easily have mentioned that too. It would have fit quite nicely into the lessons learned. People who are treated well in a bad situation, like unavoidable layoffs, are much less likely to be revenge motivated than people who are treated poorly. It doesn't mean some sociopath won't do something evil anyway, but at the very least it's a *a* good counter strategy to the revenge motivation.
Security is about more than making sure systems are locked down and people are prevented from getting access to unnecessary privileges. There's a social aspect as well. A disgruntled employee is much more likely to do bad things than a happy or at least content employee. people who are treated with respect are (generally) happier, and happy people are (generally) less likely to do damage. You don't want to base your entire enterprise security strategy around "Happy people", but it should definitely be something that gets considered.
The article even acknowledges this, saying that you should keep a particular eye on people when news like layoffs could leak out. That would have been a perfect place to segue into talking about how to manage these sorts of crisis to minimize employee unhappiness and thus minimize the chance of people even wanting revenge.
I don't agree with her response, just think she is more sympathetic than the others. My problem with the way the whole tale was presented was that the company's actions, which in my opinion were very nearly as bad as "Sally's" are glossed over as perfectly reasonable. Of course you outsource the entire department. Of course you don't tell anyone till the last possible moment. Of course you don't provide counseling or job search assistance.
While their points about escalation of privileged and job separation are perfectly valid, their most "valuable" piece of advice for this one appeared to be "Watch your employees close when you're about to screw them, the sneaky bastard probably figured it out." They didn't even bother to mention being open and honest with your staff, providing transition services or any of the other things the company could have to done to prevent or cushion the proximal cause of the employee anger.
Sure, watch people, especially people under stress. Sure, don't give people access to systems they don't need access too. Sure, make sure you know who has what keys. Also treat people with a bit of respect and don't fuck with them any more than you have to at a bad time.
I've only every worked at one company that had a merit "ceiling" higher than 4% and that was SGI (8% I think). Sadly they were in their death throes at the time, so merit increases were frozen.
My current company had to give me a "one time adjustment" in order to raise my salary 15% to keep me after I got another offer. The system couldn't even handle a merit increase that high.
I have a little sympathy for "Sally". What she did was wrong and I don't condone it, but the article (clearly written from a management perspective), is rather cavalier about the company just essentially eliminating their IT department. Cost cutting is as cost cutting does, and I don't know the whole story (it may have really been a necessary measure), but the whole thing is treated kinda like "Oh well she was just a little upset because she was being let go." As opposed to "She was rightfully pretty damned pissed that the company was terminating her after 8 years of what appeared to be service they were extremely happy with, to save a few bucks, and they weren't even bothering to be upfront about it."
As it turns out she was probably a thief, or very very careless, but clearly no one knew that when the decision was made. All in all I'd say a better "lesson learned" from that one is "be upfront with your employees about major changes in their careers due to company action, and help them in every reasonable way to adjust to the changes you caused." Not: " Watch your evil employees like hawks when you're about to screw them to make sure they don't screw you first."
No, he's making valid observation and also saying it makes no sense (which you apparently agree with). What he's talking about is a real and noticeable trend where internal raises for IT staff are either very small or non-existent, but new hires are often paid more. There's lots of reasons for this. Old companies tend to take talent they have for granted, but new companies (whether they are actually "new" or just in need of replacements) tend to overvalue talent they need *right now* either because they lost it or are going into anew area. It's easy to justify hiring new staff at market rates, but harder to justify raises. Companies don't like to give one class of workers a larger base raise rate than other classes of workers. Probably other reasons as well, but those are the ones that come to mind without much thought.
As GP states, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You go into lots of the reasons *why* it doesn't make a lot of sense. None the less, it happens... a lot. I can point to each and every significant jump in my income and every one of them was either because I changed jobs or because an employer was matching an offer from someone else (and that's only happened once). Merit raises at most places (If they're even doing them, my company has frozen them this year) are 2% for reasonable performance and top out at 4% for exceptional performance. Changing jobs can easily net you a 20% raise. Often more. That's 5 years worth of merit raises (assuming you are exceptional, your boss isn't trying to save a few bucks on labor, and your company hasn't frozen merit raises).
Occasionally you encounter companies smart enough to see the value in keeping people, my current company gave me a big raise to match an offer, but it's not all that common. Mostly I've accepted my crappy little annual raises when offered them and moved on when someone offered me more money than I could ignore.
Alternately you could could learn the new technology and using your new combination of experience and in demand skills, get another job making 40% more :-)
It wouldn't get the FBI in your hypothetical, I'd like think it'd get the same attention from the local cops (and it probably would, with this many people dead or wounded it wouldn't exactly be easy to file under "statistics")
As to your point two... it wouldn't really bother me if they hadn't gotten a warrant in this case. If the FBI calls me up and says "We'd like you clients records, because he.. um... might have been involved in some... stuff" I'm gonna want to see the warrant. If the FBI calls me up and says "Your client was that guy on TV that just killed six people in front of hundreds of witnesses... think we could see his records?" Unless there's a compelling legal reason for me to insist on a warrant I probably won't. I know they can get one in couple of hours, why waste everyone's time? The facts of the case aren't in question and the records are clearly relevant.
The guy shot 20 people in broad daylight, killing six including a little girl, an old man trying to shield his wife with his body, and a federal judge. Among the 14 wounded were a US Rep who may never fully recover. He was only prevented from killing more people by people tackling him during a reload... If ever there was an excuse to get a warrant for some transcripts this is it.
I never knew about the "/" shortcut. This is really quite nice to know, thanks.
It is, none the less, not worth endless pedantic agonizing that Slashdot has spent on it over the years. We're all aware of the fact you speak. You don't need to bring it up every time the word is "misused". You certainly don't need hundred of comments about it every time the word is "misused". At one time that was the norm.
I didn't say I hated them place. Hell I've been coming back and making comments for nigh on 12 years now (I'd love a function that told me how old my account actually was... I suppose I could just scroll back to my first ever comment.) It's always had a strong and useful core population. It's also always had a population of trolls, extremists of almost every stripe, pedants, and wackos. Both play their part in the great tapestry of Grits, Winblows, in depth technical discussion, and craziness that we all love.
So you think it should be someone's job to watch this kid on a camera 24/7 while he eats, sleeps, and uses the bathroom, rather than just not giving him the implements to kill himself in the first place? This is standard practice with suicide watches. It's also standard practice to keep potentially endangered inmates away from other who might hurt them. Most of the guys in military prison are violent offenders, and many of them are still surprisingly loyal to the government that locked them up.
As far as I understand it, he has been charged and is awaiting trial. If you have some evidence to the contrary I'd like to see it.
I can't be arsed to look it up, but I'm pretty sure the formal legal definition of "treason" requires you to give help or information to a an active enemy of the Unites States (as in a foreign power we are in state of war or conflict with). I don't think he committed the legal act of treason. On the other hand he's guilty of at least half a dozen crimes which he knowingly committed. The kid is boned. He'll be lucky if the courts take youthful idealism into account and just send him to military prison for 10 or 20 years instead of life (the US hasn't executed anyone for espionage outside a time of war for a long time and i doubt they'd start by making a martyr out of this kid).
I don't know what kind of "vigorous defense" they plan to offer. Regardless of your opinion of Wikileaks itself, this guy has pretty clearly committed actions which violate a number of laws and military regulations, all of which he was aware of, and all of which he was reminded of at least annually if not more often. He deserves his day in court like anyone else, but the smart money would be on taking a plea deal and hoping for the best.
a standard that is not open, and subject to licensing fees, is NOT open.
Here you refer to a standard and its status of openness or non-openness. H.264 is an open standard by any traditional definition. It does not have an open implementation. This has been the case for many "open standards" throughout the history of computing in the early days of the standard. Often the "standards body" will approve a "standard" which is open, but based on a proprietary implementation. Later, when the patents on the closed implementation expire open implementations of the open standard come into being.
I know what you (and Google) are trying to say, but you're trying to redefine a lot of vocabulary in order to say it. Say what you mean. Leave standards out of it. H.264 is clearly an open standard, you object to the fact that there are no open implementations. That's fine. Say that. OP is not trying to redefine any terms, he is using the traditional definition of a term you are trying to redefine.
You're redefining "open" as it relates to standards, not the OP. The traditional definition of "open standards" is a standard propagated by one or more international standard setting bodies (in this case ISO and ITU) and implemented by companies or other organizations in ways that may or may not in turn be "open". In other words, C++ is an open standard. g++ is an open implementation of that standard. The C++ compiler in Visual Studios is a close implementation of the same standard. Both are C++, both are based on the same open standard. H.264 is an open standard. Right now the only implementation of that standard is a closed product. Until the MPEG-LA patents expire there is unlikely to be an open implementation of H.264. It doesn't make the standard any less open.
However the article makes a valid point. By the traditional definition of "open standard" H.264 is one. The idea behind "open standards" has always been: "The standards is open, feel free to make your implementation as open or closed as you like". ISO and ITU created the standard, it's "open". Now the program itself is not open or revenue free. I'm not even trying to say it is. The point is that the term has a pretty well defined meaning and H.264 meets that meaning. H.264 is not an open product, but it *is* an open standard.
To be fair, while I haven't been around quite as long as you, I have a pretty low UID and I can't remember a time when Slashdot didn't contain it's fair share of immature prattle, tremendously uncreative insults, or pedantry. Remember when half the people here insisted on always referring to Microsoft as M$, or every single post on a mainstream press articles containing the word "hacker" had at least one, probably several, 20-30 comment threads on the difference between "hackers" and "crackers"? Sadly, we've always been retards.
I'm an iPhone user and a Mac owner (I don't say "Mac user" because my wife stole it :-)), and I think this is a pretty bad idea. There are are at least two major functions to the home key (return to the home page and task switching) and not many obvious or intuitive gestures left. Any of them are likely to require two hands. It's also much more comfortable to activate the phone by using the home key than using the power key. I'm all for the inclusion of new gestures to mimic the home key's functions, but not for the removal of the key itself. On the other hand this is completely unfounded rumor so we'll see what happens.
Read the damned summary. Not even the article, the summary. They are eliminating approximately half the mobile phones. So a *lot* of people will still have them. Probably all the IT staff, or at least all of the 24 hour on call IT staff. Despite what GP claims, I can think of a fair number of state workers who will be on the road most of the time. Tax assessors come to mind, various types of case workers for state welfare and human services agencies, parole officers and other "semi-law enforcement" types who don't mostly use radios.. the list goes on, but again, I think those people will keep their phones.
Really IT probably don't even need phones. I don't do high availability stuff any more, but when I did, I doubt my total calls EVER came up to more than 100 minutes. Most months it was much less. Let the IT staff use a personal phone and pay them a prorated by minute stipend if you have to call them. Assuming a normal rate plan of 7 to 9 cents a minute that's not likely to ever be more than $10 a month. Most months it'll be practically nothing. If they don't have a personal phone (highly unlikely, but possible I guess), get them a pager for ten bucks a month.