It has taken me years to realize that other people are actually interesting and may actually be fun to talk to.
m3 t00.
I'm twice-cursed, being both a geek and female; I didn't think I had much in common with other women. Then we had a baby, and suddenly I had something to occupy the small talk (which is, as you say, hard) and learned that yes, Virginia, there *are* intelligent, not-necessarily-geek women out there.
It also helps to practice the small talk. You feel stupid, shallow and fake at first. But once you get past that, you start to get a feel for the underlying interaction, which *is* real - if you're doing it right, you're establishing common ground with safe (stupid, shallow) stuff. After you realize that, small talk isn't so hard.
Do you really think that the biz.yahoo.com server could ever be slashdotted?
You may be right about the stupid part, but for a different reason: I was going to say that people would still appreciate it because it saved them having to actually click on the article to read it....But then I realized, those people would actually have to click on a link to grant him karma, so maybe it *wasn't* such a good idea.
(Or her. I might be able to tell, but it would take *two* clicks to go back and check...)
What they probably meant is that they would check on letters with return addresses or was sent registered or certified. Registered, Certified and Insured mail DID get that sort of record keeping, for obvious reasons.
They could probably also get some information on bulk mailings, too, though that'd be through more indirect means.
Nerds who are *really* interested in Bob should go see the Live show. The in-laws took our then-two-year-old, and we went along.
The vehicles are really well done... all sorts of RC servo stuff going on there. (The characters are good, too, as mascot-type suits go, but that's not as cool.) Aside from the fact that it was TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS A TICKET even for the nosebleed section, I'd've liked to have been all the way down behind the controllers' booth.
It's a little unsettling to see/hear them singing "Mambo No. 5" knowing all the original words, but still.
Actually, Bob the Builder does carry around a thermos of tea. It's one of the few carryovers from the British to American version. (They even changed the hedgehogs to "porcupines," even though they're obviously hedgehogs.)
WinInformant was referenced as one of the top articles on this by Google:
"Linux was certified as providing 'low to moderate' security, while Windows 2000 received a 'moderate to high' security rating last year. According to people close to the certification, Linux was being tested for better security ratings, but only achieved the 'low to moderate' rating."
Somebody wanna explain to me how this works? Near as I can figure, all that happened was that Linux is still only EAL3 where Windows2K is EAL4 (versus scoring differently on the same test, as WinInformant seems to imply); IBM's older press releases seem to say that EAL4 testing is expected down the road, but this article seems to imply that they've now tried and flunked EAL4.
I'm not familiar with the differences in the testing, and some basic Googling just turns up lots of press releases so far.
Because I got a free (as in beer) Win95 license, mainly.
Like I said, I've got Linux on the server, and this box is mostly just a terminal aside from PageMaker (and Corel, but I could live without that these days). It's just a little P133, after all. And it really doesn't need rebooting very often... it gets reset once every week or two for one reason or another anyway, so it's happy with that. (Which is really pretty astonishing, considering how old and crufty this install is.)
Once I get around to testing Scribus to see if we can dump PageMaker, I'll probably consider switching the desktop. But at this point, it doesn't much matter to me what the desktop runs if it's mostly just telnetting to the real machine anyhow.
Most, if not all, linux users are computer savvy already.
I don't know about that. We get a lot of queries from people who know we've got a Linux server in the basement... "So how about that Linux stuff? Should I install it?"
An introductory course wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. For most people, the answer is "not yet," since they're married to this or that Windows-only program (heck, *I'm* using Win95 on my otherwise-just-a-terminal-to-the-Linux-server desktop because I need to run PageMaker), but once in awhile you run into somebody who's just technical enough to be the unofficial IT department in a small business, and who's ready to start learning system administration... and could either go Windows or Linux at this stage, depending on who he finds to teach him one or the other.
I run a server that serves several web sites. I'm not paid for this.
Me too and me neither, respectively.
Back in the old days of dialup BBSi and whatnot, free boards were pretty much immune from hacking attacks. (Heck, I remember having an old Info-Ex BBS crash and hand me a BASIC prompt over the modem: I patched the code, commented it nicely, and fired it up again so I could leave a note for the sysop.)
Be nice if the same ethic extended to this case, but I suppose that doesn't work once the community gets beyond a certain size.
I'd say Tex/LaTeX is pretty damn good considering that a lot of scientific journals use it...they do NOT use Word or some other crapass toy.
I don't think it'll work. It's a brochure-and-flyer-heavy environment... TeX is just fine, but it's a very linear critter. We need something that's more like PageMaker than Ventura Publisher.
CorelDraw would work in a pinch, but since there's no budget (it's a church) it's hard to justify a conversion as long as the creaky Win95 boxen are doing *reasonably* okay. (The chief problem with Corel, as we'll probably have with any modern product, is that the boxen are ~ P166, and Corel gets tedious with that little processor behind it.)
For everything else, the boxes are nothing but platforms to telnet and browse to the servers (Linux), so running Windows isn't too onerous (nor switching platforms too difficult, if the typesetting obstacle is overcome).
I'll think about going full-time with Linux when someone comes up with an Open Source...... typesetting package, in my case. (A package that I can teach nontechnical volunteers to use, lest anyone feel compelled to mention TeX.)
I've got a pair of creaky old Win95 boxen that are just dying to get upgraded, if I can just get past that roadblock.
I remember doing things like this, albeit on a more benign level.
This was in the day when nobody had sound on their computers, and 386en were the latest and greatest thing.
We installed one of those nifty simulate-a-SoundBlaster-through-the-PC-speaker drivers. Then we put the player in the autoexec.bat (this *was* the day of DOS), with various selections. The head honcho (a VP; we were a division) got an excerpt from 2001; can't remember which one, but it started with "Dave... Dave..." (which happened to be his name). His secretary got "... HEY! Lemme outta here!"
The quality (these were Epson Equity ]['s) and volume were both so low that folks would think they were hearing someone off in the distance, and would be running around trying to find out who was calling.
We also had a cobbled-together system built out of scraps we found in the basement; no monitor, half a case, and a battered keyboard. That guy was set up to announce "I'm fully functional and all my circuits are operating perfectly" on bootup, and "Don't do that, Dave" whenever anyone touched a key (it was temptingly set near our visitor chair).
Many addresses can be tagged by adding a "+" (plus-sign)
A startling number of sites (eBay is one, or was last I checked) refuse addresses formatted like this. Sanity-checking run amok, I assume. I've occasionally emailed site admins to point out that they're rejecting RFC-valid addresses, and the answer is invariably "Just set up a throwaway yahoo account to register then."
(My answer to *that* is invariably "Your site's not worth the trouble.")
No matter what there will be countermeasures by random hackers.
More to the point, there will be countermeasures by virus writers.
Imagine if the system Hatch proposed (at least, I think it was him at that point in the story) is implemented: two warnings, and your system is destroyed.
Now imagine a virus. If the capability is written into the hardware, all it has to do is trigger it locally. If the capability is somehow, magically, out there in RIAAland, all the virus has to do is download offending material and suppress the warnings.
The virus writer is nowhere to be seen, so the consumer's wrath is going to fall on the folks who put the weapon into the virus writer's hands.
It's why sararimen are called "exempt" employees. The employer is exempt from wage and hour restrictions on salaried employees, i.e. they 0wnz j00.
I think, but may be confusing it with another state, that they're only "mostly exempt."
But it hasn't come up because thus far the places for which I or my husband has worked overtime have had contracts that are more restrictive than whatever the laws are (presently: overtime is paid, at the calculated hourly rate plus six dollars and some change. It's not time-and-a-half, but it'll do).
Naw. And, in retrospect, it was a bad idea to point out *any* benefits, considering that I really wasn't all that fond of wearing 'em (or, more accurately, the pantyhose associated therewith). Though, being that the company was a dealership (MAI/Basic Four, just to give you an idea of the timeframe I'm talking about) and we had to go to client sites all the time, it was understandable, I guess. Not too many of the clients had scorpions running loose in the office areas, though.
I *did* mention the Title VII exemptions, which would cover the first two examples.
But yes, as I understand it it's legal to fire someone because you decide they're ugly and stupid, as long as you're doing it on an individual basis and not making a pattern of deciding that sort of thing about members of a protected class (Title VII again). They might have grounds for slander charges, or even assault if you phrase it wrong, but that's a side issue.
I'm not a lawyer, but I had grounds to consult one. Two, actually. The first lawyer I spoke to was one I knew of who normally handled the corporation's side of the case, and who I trusted to refer me to someone who wasn't an ambulance-chaser to handle an employee's side of the case. He flipped through the employee's handbook, which the company owner had written without benefit of counsel. There's nothing quite as interesting as having a lawyer shaking his head and muttering "Oh, shit. Oh, *shit*." very quietly under his breath. I'm not sure he was aware he was doing it.
At any rate, one thing that stuck with me was when he pointed out that the company owner stated that part of the company mission statement was "to treat employees fairly." He said he'd never advise a company to put that in... because Kansas law does not require a company to treat its employees fairly. It merely requires a company to treat its employees in accordance with the law.... Which means if there isn't a law specifically against forcing a salaried employee to work more than reasonable hours for weeks on end, with no compensation, the company can fire the employee for not doing so. The employee will almost certainly be granted unemployment even if the company fights it, but that's the extent of the protection the state offers against generic "unfairness."
All that said, I do suspect there's Wage & Hour restrictions on extreme hours, but sararimen get much less protection than the hourly guys, so I dunno. Never have had to find out, fortunately.
After about 60 hours, in my experience, you start getting negative returns (the project actually starts regressing) because more bugs than good code is put in.
I was trying to convince a lead "programmer" of that one Friday at 11 pm... we were on an out-of-town project, and I suggested we knock off, get a night's sleep, and finish the project in the morning. Nope, he wanted to finish that night and drive home in the morning. So us programmers went back to work.
About fifteen minutes later, a scorpion turned up in his cubicle (this was the Oklahoma panhandle, and not an uncommon occurrence). After the other two programmers screamed like little girls and I disposed of it (did I mention I'm female? What I wouldn't have given for security-camera footage) we went back to work again....For all of about five minutes. Both guys were fidgeting and sure they were feeling dozens of the critters crawling up their pantslegs. I pointed out the advantage of a skirt (company dress code)... clear scorpion visibility. The lead decided to go back to the hotel after all (where more security-camera footage would have doubtless revealed paranoid bedding-checking). We knocked the code out in a couple of hours the next morning, and drove home.
Unfortunately, staging a Scorpion Incident would only work for the article-poster if the decision-making management is also working the same hours, is arachnophobic, and will fall for the same trick 28-42 times in a row...
When they don't give a more precise location than "in the USA" that's not necessarily wrongful termination. Kansas, for example, is an "at-will employment" state, as I think the majority are. The only time you get anything like "wrongful termination" is when you have a written contract, and then it's "breach of contract," isn't it?
(Well, and as someone else mentioned, when you have a Title VII violation or something, but that's different.)
Slashdot Mirror
It has taken me years to realize that other people are actually interesting and may actually be fun to talk to.
m3 t00.
I'm twice-cursed, being both a geek and female; I didn't think I had much in common with other women. Then we had a baby, and suddenly I had something to occupy the small talk (which is, as you say, hard) and learned that yes, Virginia, there *are* intelligent, not-necessarily-geek women out there.
It also helps to practice the small talk. You feel stupid, shallow and fake at first. But once you get past that, you start to get a feel for the underlying interaction, which *is* real - if you're doing it right, you're establishing common ground with safe (stupid, shallow) stuff. After you realize that, small talk isn't so hard.
As a shy extrovert, I can attest to this.
And as a shy-but-I-got-over-it introvert, I agree.
Do you really think that the biz.yahoo.com server could ever be slashdotted?
...But then I realized, those people would actually have to click on a link to grant him karma, so maybe it *wasn't* such a good idea.
You may be right about the stupid part, but for a different reason: I was going to say that people would still appreciate it because it saved them having to actually click on the article to read it.
(Or her. I might be able to tell, but it would take *two* clicks to go back and check...)
What they probably meant is that they would check on letters with return addresses or was sent registered or certified. Registered, Certified and Insured mail DID get that sort of record keeping, for obvious reasons.
They could probably also get some information on bulk mailings, too, though that'd be through more indirect means.
Nerds who are *really* interested in Bob should go see the Live show. The in-laws took our then-two-year-old, and we went along.
The vehicles are really well done... all sorts of RC servo stuff going on there. (The characters are good, too, as mascot-type suits go, but that's not as cool.) Aside from the fact that it was TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS A TICKET even for the nosebleed section, I'd've liked to have been all the way down behind the controllers' booth.
It's a little unsettling to see/hear them singing "Mambo No. 5" knowing all the original words, but still.
Did they reuse the original footage and dub it, or remake the whole thing?
Dubbed, I think. Occasionally it shows, even though the motion isn't really that detailed.
Of course, it's possible they remade the whole thing and just badly synched the voices.
Tweenies (now there's an obnoxious show) is another import.
didn't drink tea
Actually, Bob the Builder does carry around a thermos of tea. It's one of the few carryovers from the British to American version. (They even changed the hedgehogs to "porcupines," even though they're obviously hedgehogs.)
The EAL rating itself is meaningless, except to sales people.
And newspaper reporters?
I guess what I was getting at was "Is this a valid comparison?"
(Not that it matters for other than my personal curiosity; we're pretty well Debian-committed.)
... for those of us who can never remember the titles, only the critters.
WinInformant was referenced as one of the top articles on this by Google:
"Linux was certified as providing 'low to moderate' security, while Windows 2000 received a 'moderate to high' security rating last year. According to people close to the certification, Linux was being tested for better security ratings, but only achieved the 'low to moderate' rating."
Somebody wanna explain to me how this works? Near as I can figure, all that happened was that Linux is still only EAL3 where Windows2K is EAL4 (versus scoring differently on the same test, as WinInformant seems to imply); IBM's older press releases seem to say that EAL4 testing is expected down the road, but this article seems to imply that they've now tried and flunked EAL4.
I'm not familiar with the differences in the testing, and some basic Googling just turns up lots of press releases so far.
Why don't you use win4lin or vmWare?
Because I got a free (as in beer) Win95 license, mainly.
Like I said, I've got Linux on the server, and this box is mostly just a terminal aside from PageMaker (and Corel, but I could live without that these days). It's just a little P133, after all. And it really doesn't need rebooting very often... it gets reset once every week or two for one reason or another anyway, so it's happy with that. (Which is really pretty astonishing, considering how old and crufty this install is.)
Once I get around to testing Scribus to see if we can dump PageMaker, I'll probably consider switching the desktop. But at this point, it doesn't much matter to me what the desktop runs if it's mostly just telnetting to the real machine anyhow.
Most, if not all, linux users are computer savvy already.
I don't know about that. We get a lot of queries from people who know we've got a Linux server in the basement... "So how about that Linux stuff? Should I install it?"
An introductory course wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. For most people, the answer is "not yet," since they're married to this or that Windows-only program (heck, *I'm* using Win95 on my otherwise-just-a-terminal-to-the-Linux-server desktop because I need to run PageMaker), but once in awhile you run into somebody who's just technical enough to be the unofficial IT department in a small business, and who's ready to start learning system administration... and could either go Windows or Linux at this stage, depending on who he finds to teach him one or the other.
A) They actually maintain this level of lawsuits, they could easily step up the amount.
Maybe not... didn't one of the court workers get quoted as saying they had to bring in extra help just to handle the stuff that's being filed now?
I run a server that serves several web sites. I'm not paid for this.
Me too and me neither, respectively.
Back in the old days of dialup BBSi and whatnot, free boards were pretty much immune from hacking attacks. (Heck, I remember having an old Info-Ex BBS crash and hand me a BASIC prompt over the modem: I patched the code, commented it nicely, and fired it up again so I could leave a note for the sysop.)
Be nice if the same ethic extended to this case, but I suppose that doesn't work once the community gets beyond a certain size.
I'd say Tex/LaTeX is pretty damn good considering that a lot of scientific journals use it...they do NOT use Word or some other crapass toy.
I don't think it'll work. It's a brochure-and-flyer-heavy environment... TeX is just fine, but it's a very linear critter. We need something that's more like PageMaker than Ventura Publisher.
CorelDraw would work in a pinch, but since there's no budget (it's a church) it's hard to justify a conversion as long as the creaky Win95 boxen are doing *reasonably* okay. (The chief problem with Corel, as we'll probably have with any modern product, is that the boxen are ~ P166, and Corel gets tedious with that little processor behind it.)
For everything else, the boxes are nothing but platforms to telnet and browse to the servers (Linux), so running Windows isn't too onerous (nor switching platforms too difficult, if the typesetting obstacle is overcome).
I'll think about going full-time with Linux when someone comes up with an Open Source... ... typesetting package, in my case. (A package that I can teach nontechnical volunteers to use, lest anyone feel compelled to mention TeX.)
I've got a pair of creaky old Win95 boxen that are just dying to get upgraded, if I can just get past that roadblock.
I remember doing things like this, albeit on a more benign level.
This was in the day when nobody had sound on their computers, and 386en were the latest and greatest thing.
We installed one of those nifty simulate-a-SoundBlaster-through-the-PC-speaker drivers. Then we put the player in the autoexec.bat (this *was* the day of DOS), with various selections. The head honcho (a VP; we were a division) got an excerpt from 2001; can't remember which one, but it started with "Dave... Dave..." (which happened to be his name). His secretary got "... HEY! Lemme outta here!"
The quality (these were Epson Equity ]['s) and volume were both so low that folks would think they were hearing someone off in the distance, and would be running around trying to find out who was calling.
We also had a cobbled-together system built out of scraps we found in the basement; no monitor, half a case, and a battered keyboard. That guy was set up to announce "I'm fully functional and all my circuits are operating perfectly" on bootup, and "Don't do that, Dave" whenever anyone touched a key (it was temptingly set near our visitor chair).
Possibly this site:
Traffic waves
(Just google for the phrase "antitraffic destroys traffic".)
Many addresses can be tagged by adding a "+" (plus-sign)
A startling number of sites (eBay is one, or was last I checked) refuse addresses formatted like this. Sanity-checking run amok, I assume. I've occasionally emailed site admins to point out that they're rejecting RFC-valid addresses, and the answer is invariably "Just set up a throwaway yahoo account to register then."
(My answer to *that* is invariably "Your site's not worth the trouble.")
No matter what there will be countermeasures by random hackers.
More to the point, there will be countermeasures by virus writers.
Imagine if the system Hatch proposed (at least, I think it was him at that point in the story) is implemented: two warnings, and your system is destroyed.
Now imagine a virus. If the capability is written into the hardware, all it has to do is trigger it locally. If the capability is somehow, magically, out there in RIAAland, all the virus has to do is download offending material and suppress the warnings.
The virus writer is nowhere to be seen, so the consumer's wrath is going to fall on the folks who put the weapon into the virus writer's hands.
Hmm.
Maybe slashdotters should *back* Hatch in this.
It's why sararimen are called "exempt" employees. The employer is exempt from wage and hour restrictions on salaried employees, i.e. they 0wnz j00.
I think, but may be confusing it with another state, that they're only "mostly exempt."
But it hasn't come up because thus far the places for which I or my husband has worked overtime have had contracts that are more restrictive than whatever the laws are (presently: overtime is paid, at the calculated hourly rate plus six dollars and some change. It's not time-and-a-half, but it'll do).
So, did they start wearing skirts?
Naw. And, in retrospect, it was a bad idea to point out *any* benefits, considering that I really wasn't all that fond of wearing 'em (or, more accurately, the pantyhose associated therewith). Though, being that the company was a dealership (MAI/Basic Four, just to give you an idea of the timeframe I'm talking about) and we had to go to client sites all the time, it was understandable, I guess. Not too many of the clients had scorpions running loose in the office areas, though.
Wrongful termination is possible in any state
... Which means if there isn't a law specifically against forcing a salaried employee to work more than reasonable hours for weeks on end, with no compensation, the company can fire the employee for not doing so. The employee will almost certainly be granted unemployment even if the company fights it, but that's the extent of the protection the state offers against generic "unfairness."
I *did* mention the Title VII exemptions, which would cover the first two examples.
But yes, as I understand it it's legal to fire someone because you decide they're ugly and stupid, as long as you're doing it on an individual basis and not making a pattern of deciding that sort of thing about members of a protected class (Title VII again). They might have grounds for slander charges, or even assault if you phrase it wrong, but that's a side issue.
I'm not a lawyer, but I had grounds to consult one. Two, actually. The first lawyer I spoke to was one I knew of who normally handled the corporation's side of the case, and who I trusted to refer me to someone who wasn't an ambulance-chaser to handle an employee's side of the case. He flipped through the employee's handbook, which the company owner had written without benefit of counsel. There's nothing quite as interesting as having a lawyer shaking his head and muttering "Oh, shit. Oh, *shit*." very quietly under his breath. I'm not sure he was aware he was doing it.
At any rate, one thing that stuck with me was when he pointed out that the company owner stated that part of the company mission statement was "to treat employees fairly." He said he'd never advise a company to put that in... because Kansas law does not require a company to treat its employees fairly. It merely requires a company to treat its employees in accordance with the law.
All that said, I do suspect there's Wage & Hour restrictions on extreme hours, but sararimen get much less protection than the hourly guys, so I dunno. Never have had to find out, fortunately.
After about 60 hours, in my experience, you start getting negative returns (the project actually starts regressing) because more bugs than good code is put in.
...For all of about five minutes. Both guys were fidgeting and sure they were feeling dozens of the critters crawling up their pantslegs. I pointed out the advantage of a skirt (company dress code)... clear scorpion visibility. The lead decided to go back to the hotel after all (where more security-camera footage would have doubtless revealed paranoid bedding-checking). We knocked the code out in a couple of hours the next morning, and drove home.
I was trying to convince a lead "programmer" of that one Friday at 11 pm... we were on an out-of-town project, and I suggested we knock off, get a night's sleep, and finish the project in the morning. Nope, he wanted to finish that night and drive home in the morning. So us programmers went back to work.
About fifteen minutes later, a scorpion turned up in his cubicle (this was the Oklahoma panhandle, and not an uncommon occurrence). After the other two programmers screamed like little girls and I disposed of it (did I mention I'm female? What I wouldn't have given for security-camera footage) we went back to work again.
Unfortunately, staging a Scorpion Incident would only work for the article-poster if the decision-making management is also working the same hours, is arachnophobic, and will fall for the same trick 28-42 times in a row...
"wrongful termination"
When they don't give a more precise location than "in the USA" that's not necessarily wrongful termination. Kansas, for example, is an "at-will employment" state, as I think the majority are. The only time you get anything like "wrongful termination" is when you have a written contract, and then it's "breach of contract," isn't it?
(Well, and as someone else mentioned, when you have a Title VII violation or something, but that's different.)