What sort of volume (labels/minute) do you need? In what sort of environment will these be printed and applied (office, assembly line, etc.)? How permanent does the image have to be? How small and finicky is the barcode? How much of an issue is the cost of the label itself and the printer consumables? Do you need automated print-and-apply?
The first solution that pops to mind is to get a standard color laser printer and a box of Avery labels, but that's only good for low-volume runs. There are some color thermal label printers out there, but they tend to be quite costly especially in terms of consumables.
My last idea is to check out Frontline Solutions, the trade rag for the barcode/RFID industry. Barcode printers are often sold through VARs. You could call around and see if any of them have solutions you haven't yet thought of.
If the color portion of your label is always the same (ie., each product picture is the same) you could try getting labels pre-printed with the static portions and the printing the dynamic portions with a black-and-white printer. This won't work well if you need to change the color picture more than once a roll of labels, though.
If you're talking about a restricted NNTP server, then you have the issue with 1) people actually knowing what NNTP/Usenet is, and 2) people having to deal with multiple NNTP servers (some news clients are better than others at dealing with that).
I don't know... Why is a link to an HTTP-based forum any easier than a link to an NNTP-based forum? And the Big Two browsers both support multiple servers well enough. (I'm making the rash assumption that OE does, based on about half an hour of experimentation a year ago.)
I agree with the sentiment that no web-based forum out there has yet to achieve the functionality that Usenet browsers had a decade ago. Killfiles, scoring, threading, you name it. Even the half-baked news readers built into Mozilla and IE are better than the quarter-baked web forums.
Sounds like the boss probably has a grasp of the requirements, but not really a grasp of the underlying technology. Asking for "large-print graphics" sounds to me like it's just a general request for accessibility, made by someone who knows what he wants, just not quite how to ask for it. Points given to the boss for asking. Points deducted from your wife for being too literal and not adequately translating from "non-techie speak".
Okay, so the request is for an accessible page. Cool. First rule, do not put text into your images! No, no, no! Don't do it. Following this rule will get you 90% of the way there. And before anyone complains to me about making a boring text-only site, take a look at some of the compositing effects you can do with CSS. Don't make your navigation button a GIF with the word "HOME" hard-coded onto it. Make a text-less button and let the browser render the text "HOME" over the image. Tastes great, less filling, and degrades gracefully.
Next, don't mess with the body font size or face. EVER! Users, especially those with poor vision, set up their default fonts because those are the most readable. DON'T MESS WITH THE FONTS! If you want to get fancy, add a "large type" button to your page that loads a style sheet specifying "x-large" or something similar for the body font. This is done as a convenience for users who would like larger text but don't know how to configure their browsers to do it properly.
Ah yes, that was a brilliant design. You either needed two people or needed to use a foot (or nose, or forehead) to shove the door off. I would not be at all surprised if the three-handed diagram was the tech writer's intentional protest of the bad engineering.
"Way hotter than normal coffee". What, McDonald's somehow superheated it to above 100 degrees C?
Unless the coffee was somehow hotter than the boiling point of water (boiling water is, you may remember, one of the key ingredients in coffee), the case had no merit. IMHO, IANAL, YMMV, FOAD.
After a bit of searching I found this chart that clearly shows similar barometric trends for the days in question (barometric pressure near 30 inches and rising). Is this just a coincidence?
And how many days have there been with that sort of barometric reading when you didn't have headaches?
Actually, I take that back. The first time a guy tried to hit on me, I was kinda flattered, which is something I've yet to experience with those who feel compelled to give witness.
Amen. At least being hit on by a member of your own sex is still being hit on. And those guys tend to take "no" for an answer better than most Jehovah's Mormons.
No mention of Karateka? The game where you fight through a gazillion bad guys to rescue the girl. But, when you finally get to her and forget to drop out of fighting stance, she boots you in the head an kills you.
Now, that's an ending!
I'd give a runner-up position to Diablo. You fight your way through all the demons of hell to get to the Big Guy himself. You kill him. And, in the ending cinematic sequence over which you have no control, your character shoves the bloody soulstone into his head, becoming the bad guy! WTF?! I don't recall signing on to play an absolute freakin' idiot as my character. It's like Frodo deciding to keep the ring after all at the end of the third book. It's not exactly satisfying entertainment.
I was going to make the same comment. Why should Vietnam be a less suitable topic than any other war in history? About the only thing I can think of is that there are more Vietnam veterans still around than, say, WWII vets. I don't think that changes anything morally, though.
I like reading Cringely, even if he's a bit whacky at times. At least he's a good kind of whacky. But this is the biggest load of paranoid crap I've seen in a long time. (Not counting some real tinfoil-hat ravings from other sources. Those are really in an entirely different league of whacky.)
I've worked at half a dozen shops in the past 15 years, from a huge mega-corp to a couple of dinky start-ups and various sizes in-between. In every case the IT department, if it existed at all, was overworked. They may want all-PC shops for various reasons, but it's not because of some vast protectiveness of their own jobs.
There are several reasons for wanting an all-PC shop. The first is that PC techs tend to be more readily available than anything more esoteric. This actually works out fairly well, because most office workers tend to equate "computer == Windows". So the office workers get Windows PCs and the IT staff hires a bunch of Windows monkeys to support them. The problem is that this creates two classes of techs, the Windows techs and the non-Windows techs. The non-Windows techs can generally service Windows machines, but not necessarily the other way around. There's a natural tendancy to buy equipment that most of your people know how to service.
Of course, there are actually some very talented IT people who honestly believe that Windows is the One True Way. I've worked with a number of them. They're not stupid or incompetent by any means. They know Windows inside and out and can force it to do darned near anything. These people may have dabbled with other OSs, but (not knowing them well) couldn't make them work as efficiently as they could make Windows work. This only reinforces the idea that Windows is superior for everything. Whenever a new system is needed, naturally they'll install a Windows system.
And even with all that, everywhere I've been has had one or two token Mac or Unix machines around. Even the staunchest PC supporters have to admit that there are a few niches better served by another OS. Generally these black-sheep machines are unsupported by the IT department simply because there's no one around who knows anything about them other than the people who use them every day.
There's no need to invoke conspiracy or paranoia to explain why other OSs aren't as popular. Face it, for the most part Windows is "good enough" for the job. Unless there's a killer app that demands something else, Windows is going to be the popular choice.
Don't worry about a "spectacular" graphical rendering. I assume that you want to make a 3D model so you can get a feel for what it'll feel like to be in the finished building. Great, I'm with you there. I do the same thing.
BUT... Really, all you need is a renderer that does basic shading. You don't need textures of any sort, to say nothing of of a gazillion-polygon-per-second engine with NURBS support and bump-mapping. Remember, this is a 3D rough sketch.
Pretty much any consumer-grade 3D home design program will work for you. I've been using an ancient copy of "Total Home 3D" for a few years now. It's klunky and has a few very non-intuitive "quirks", but on the whole it works and generates usable walkthroughs. It's easy enough to get a visual feel of the space you've laid out, and to populate it with standard appliances, cabinets, furniture, etc.
Stay away from the FPS engines, unless you want to use your home design as a deathmatch arena afterwards. (Which would be way cool, of course!)
I'm developing embedded systems for retail/industrial environments. What we really need is a radio system that can support several hundred nodes per base station, with a solid 100m actual range in an indoor environment fill with metal shelving. (Ie., retail stores or warehouses.) 32-64 kbps is about right for this app. The kicker is that we need to get 1-2 years battery life out of the equivalent of 8 alkaline C-cells. Any ideas?
I've worked for a medium-sized company where we (the programmers) actually got the marketting types to etch the requirements in stone. It actually does work.
First, it is still engineering's responsibility before signing off to understand what marketting is really looking for. Both over- and under-specification are problems which need to be resolved. Creating the requirements doc is a cooperative effort.
Second, think of the stone as really more of a clay. You can make changes. You will make changes. There is no question about that. The idea is to limit the changes. It helps if the requirements doc is under change control and revisions need the same scrutiny as revisions to the code. This kind of discourages minor changes.
Third, make sure marketting knows that they have to pay for changes. The cost for adding a feature will probably be in delivery time or in other features being cut.
When the whole process works well, things are great. Unfortunately, I've only been employed one place where it really worked well. I'm trying to get it to work with my current company, but it's an uphill battle. I asked a marketting type one time, "Is this feature a requirement or merely a wish?" He asked what's the difference. I had to explain that the schedule was already going to be tight and had no room for "optional" components. If it's a requirement it'll be there. Otherwise it won't!
Re:You may need to look a bit further up the coast
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HavenCo In Trouble?
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· Score: 1
So when does Sealand attack its neighbor, intending to lose so they can get foreign aid?
it's interesting to read what the raid on his house turned up
And...? None of these things are evidence of crime (other than possibly thoughtcrime). A bunch of friends and I like to get together once a year out in the middle of nowhere to blow things up. Most years we have a large supply of hydrogen, liquid oxygen, and various explosives. We've made bowling ball cannons, huge magnesium bonfires, and blown up a toilet (specially trucked out to the middle of nowhere for the purpose) with metallic sodium.
And why? 'Cause it's fun. And 400 pounds of burning thermite is a beautiful thing.
It really annoys me when the mere possession of dangerous stuff is prima facie evidence of wrong-doing. Sure, if the guy's being investigated for blowing up a bank, possessing explosives is a good piece of evidence against him. But unless and until he's accused of some specific act of violence I'm not going to treat possession of explosives as evidence of being any nuttier than my friends and I are.
Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds is a wonderful album. I don't know if the under-10s would appreciate it, though. Maybe play it around the house as background music and let it subliminally seap into their little brains...
Re:You get some better accounting software...
on
Workgroup Messaging?
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· Score: 1
Ahh, the ever-popular patch pumpkin approach. Actually having the software physically stored on the token is a novel innovation, though. Have you thought of patenting it? (Sadly, you probably could...)
If I were in the original poster's shoes, I'd write a batch file that'd just make a lockfile on the same share where the program or data is located. Check for the lock; if it's not there lock the file and run the software. If it is there, pop up a warning. The lockfile should contain a user (or machine) name and a timestamp so you know who currently has the module locked. That way you can beat them up when they lock the file and go on vacation for a week.:-)
(Of course, the proper answer is to dump the buggy software. But I've worked in enough small offices to know that proper isn't always feasible...)
My notes for my entire 4th year of university classes are written in Tengwar. (With the exception of numbers and math/programming symbols...doing them would probably have caused me to fail from not being able to read my notes very quickly.)
Back in my college days I caught the Elvish bug and learned to write the Tengwar. My handwriting is atrocious and my printed "t" is nearly indistinguishable from a "+" sign. Since "t" (time) was a variable in so many equations, I started substituting a Tengwar glyph that looks a lot like "t". Worked great for about a year, until I started to encounter equations with the lowercase Greek "tau" -- which looked nearly identical to the Tengwar "t" glyph I was using! I ended up reversing the two, writing Tengwar for "t" and a block "t" for the much less common "tau". I explained the reversal in a symbol key on the front of all my papers. Must have driven the TAs nuts! Didn't seem to affect my grades, though.
Funny, I thought the biggest profit for cell phone companies was retention of customers.
It is, but only because they're not giving incentives to the retained customers. The extra profit comes from the existing customers paying full rate (and probably on an older, more expensive plan) whereas the new customers get XX months or YY minutes discounted. Give the existing customers a discount and they're no longer a profit center.
Which is why phone providers are so vehemently opposed to number portability. The current pricing structures try to get as many new customers as possible, and try to wring as much money as possible from the existing customers. The only incentive there is for people to continue with one provider is that they'd have to get a new number if they switched. Enter number portability and you get to take your number with you to any provider. Now there's absolutely no reason not to jump to a new provider for the incentives every year or two.
Of course, any provider with a sensible pricing policy has nothing to fear. Call me when you find one...
This annoys me so much, I'm tempted to think the question is a troll. Does anyone really think that the PDA wouldn't belong to the company?
I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee. Your company pays for you to go to a trade show and you drop your card in someone's fishbowl, winning a DVD player/PDA/Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend/whatever. I've never known a company that tried to take that away from the employee. Ditto for this sort of thing. The company doesn't need the PDA, else they would have gone out and bought it (unless they have *SERIOUS* cash-flow problems). It's just plain good for morale to let the employees keep the extras.
It's too late and much water under the bridge, but I surmised that 1) your company has an all-inclusive "for cause" clause and 2) things were precarious enough with your employment (whether your fault or not) to get you canned.
Correct on #1 (Illinois is an 'at-will' state, which pretty much means an employer can fire you for anything not explicitly forbidden by anti-discrimination laws), incorrect on #2. I'd had glowing annual reviews and had been largely responsible for a product that made the company $2M in sales the year it was released. Not only did my boss come to my defense, but the VP of engineering and pretty much the entire engineering department were all fighting for me. None of that mattered. I'd "harrassed" someone, and I was out. Besides, there was a big engineering layoff a month or two before. They could have easily canned me then if they'd wanted to.
But your #2 reason ("They must have wanted me gone anyway.") is the first thing that everyone thinks when I tell them the story. A couple interviews didn't get past the question, "So, why did you leave your last job?" They heard I got fired for something ludicrous and assumed the company was looking for an excuse to get rid of me. If they bothered to check my references they'd have learned that I was well regarded by my boss, the VP, and the rest of the department. This kind of thing makes it really hard to get a new job, especially in the current economy. (This all took place in spring 2002.)
Of course, it all worked out for the best. I've got a job at a new startup doing some exciting cutting-edge stuff. I'm actually eager to go to work in the morning!
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What sort of volume (labels/minute) do you need? In what sort of environment will these be printed and applied (office, assembly line, etc.)? How permanent does the image have to be? How small and finicky is the barcode? How much of an issue is the cost of the label itself and the printer consumables? Do you need automated print-and-apply?
The first solution that pops to mind is to get a standard color laser printer and a box of Avery labels, but that's only good for low-volume runs. There are some color thermal label printers out there, but they tend to be quite costly especially in terms of consumables.
My last idea is to check out Frontline Solutions, the trade rag for the barcode/RFID industry. Barcode printers are often sold through VARs. You could call around and see if any of them have solutions you haven't yet thought of.
If the color portion of your label is always the same (ie., each product picture is the same) you could try getting labels pre-printed with the static portions and the printing the dynamic portions with a black-and-white printer. This won't work well if you need to change the color picture more than once a roll of labels, though.
I don't know... Why is a link to an HTTP-based forum any easier than a link to an NNTP-based forum? And the Big Two browsers both support multiple servers well enough. (I'm making the rash assumption that OE does, based on about half an hour of experimentation a year ago.)
I agree with the sentiment that no web-based forum out there has yet to achieve the functionality that Usenet browsers had a decade ago. Killfiles, scoring, threading, you name it. Even the half-baked news readers built into Mozilla and IE are better than the quarter-baked web forums.
Sounds like the boss probably has a grasp of the requirements, but not really a grasp of the underlying technology. Asking for "large-print graphics" sounds to me like it's just a general request for accessibility, made by someone who knows what he wants, just not quite how to ask for it. Points given to the boss for asking. Points deducted from your wife for being too literal and not adequately translating from "non-techie speak".
Okay, so the request is for an accessible page. Cool. First rule, do not put text into your images! No, no, no! Don't do it. Following this rule will get you 90% of the way there. And before anyone complains to me about making a boring text-only site, take a look at some of the compositing effects you can do with CSS. Don't make your navigation button a GIF with the word "HOME" hard-coded onto it. Make a text-less button and let the browser render the text "HOME" over the image. Tastes great, less filling, and degrades gracefully.
Next, don't mess with the body font size or face. EVER! Users, especially those with poor vision, set up their default fonts because those are the most readable. DON'T MESS WITH THE FONTS! If you want to get fancy, add a "large type" button to your page that loads a style sheet specifying "x-large" or something similar for the body font. This is done as a convenience for users who would like larger text but don't know how to configure their browsers to do it properly.
Ah yes, that was a brilliant design. You either needed two people or needed to use a foot (or nose, or forehead) to shove the door off. I would not be at all surprised if the three-handed diagram was the tech writer's intentional protest of the bad engineering.
"Way hotter than normal coffee". What, McDonald's somehow superheated it to above 100 degrees C?
Unless the coffee was somehow hotter than the boiling point of water (boiling water is, you may remember, one of the key ingredients in coffee), the case had no merit. IMHO, IANAL, YMMV, FOAD.
And how many days have there been with that sort of barometric reading when you didn't have headaches?
Spongebob has the occasional brilliant episode. However, as with Ren & Stimpy, you have to sit through an awful lot of crap to get to it.
Amen. At least being hit on by a member of your own sex is still being hit on. And those guys tend to take "no" for an answer better than most Jehovah's Mormons.
No mention of Karateka? The game where you fight through a gazillion bad guys to rescue the girl. But, when you finally get to her and forget to drop out of fighting stance, she boots you in the head an kills you.
Now, that's an ending!
I'd give a runner-up position to Diablo. You fight your way through all the demons of hell to get to the Big Guy himself. You kill him. And, in the ending cinematic sequence over which you have no control, your character shoves the bloody soulstone into his head, becoming the bad guy! WTF?! I don't recall signing on to play an absolute freakin' idiot as my character. It's like Frodo deciding to keep the ring after all at the end of the third book. It's not exactly satisfying entertainment.
<aol>Me too!</aol>
I was going to make the same comment. Why should Vietnam be a less suitable topic than any other war in history? About the only thing I can think of is that there are more Vietnam veterans still around than, say, WWII vets. I don't think that changes anything morally, though.
I like reading Cringely, even if he's a bit whacky at times. At least he's a good kind of whacky. But this is the biggest load of paranoid crap I've seen in a long time. (Not counting some real tinfoil-hat ravings from other sources. Those are really in an entirely different league of whacky.)
I've worked at half a dozen shops in the past 15 years, from a huge mega-corp to a couple of dinky start-ups and various sizes in-between. In every case the IT department, if it existed at all, was overworked. They may want all-PC shops for various reasons, but it's not because of some vast protectiveness of their own jobs.
There are several reasons for wanting an all-PC shop. The first is that PC techs tend to be more readily available than anything more esoteric. This actually works out fairly well, because most office workers tend to equate "computer == Windows". So the office workers get Windows PCs and the IT staff hires a bunch of Windows monkeys to support them. The problem is that this creates two classes of techs, the Windows techs and the non-Windows techs. The non-Windows techs can generally service Windows machines, but not necessarily the other way around. There's a natural tendancy to buy equipment that most of your people know how to service.
Of course, there are actually some very talented IT people who honestly believe that Windows is the One True Way. I've worked with a number of them. They're not stupid or incompetent by any means. They know Windows inside and out and can force it to do darned near anything. These people may have dabbled with other OSs, but (not knowing them well) couldn't make them work as efficiently as they could make Windows work. This only reinforces the idea that Windows is superior for everything. Whenever a new system is needed, naturally they'll install a Windows system.
And even with all that, everywhere I've been has had one or two token Mac or Unix machines around. Even the staunchest PC supporters have to admit that there are a few niches better served by another OS. Generally these black-sheep machines are unsupported by the IT department simply because there's no one around who knows anything about them other than the people who use them every day.
There's no need to invoke conspiracy or paranoia to explain why other OSs aren't as popular. Face it, for the most part Windows is "good enough" for the job. Unless there's a killer app that demands something else, Windows is going to be the popular choice.
Don't worry about a "spectacular" graphical rendering. I assume that you want to make a 3D model so you can get a feel for what it'll feel like to be in the finished building. Great, I'm with you there. I do the same thing.
BUT... Really, all you need is a renderer that does basic shading. You don't need textures of any sort, to say nothing of of a gazillion-polygon-per-second engine with NURBS support and bump-mapping. Remember, this is a 3D rough sketch.
Pretty much any consumer-grade 3D home design program will work for you. I've been using an ancient copy of "Total Home 3D" for a few years now. It's klunky and has a few very non-intuitive "quirks", but on the whole it works and generates usable walkthroughs. It's easy enough to get a visual feel of the space you've laid out, and to populate it with standard appliances, cabinets, furniture, etc.
Stay away from the FPS engines, unless you want to use your home design as a deathmatch arena afterwards. (Which would be way cool, of course!)
I'm developing embedded systems for retail/industrial environments. What we really need is a radio system that can support several hundred nodes per base station, with a solid 100m actual range in an indoor environment fill with metal shelving. (Ie., retail stores or warehouses.) 32-64 kbps is about right for this app. The kicker is that we need to get 1-2 years battery life out of the equivalent of 8 alkaline C-cells. Any ideas?
I've worked for a medium-sized company where we (the programmers) actually got the marketting types to etch the requirements in stone. It actually does work.
First, it is still engineering's responsibility before signing off to understand what marketting is really looking for. Both over- and under-specification are problems which need to be resolved. Creating the requirements doc is a cooperative effort.
Second, think of the stone as really more of a clay. You can make changes. You will make changes. There is no question about that. The idea is to limit the changes. It helps if the requirements doc is under change control and revisions need the same scrutiny as revisions to the code. This kind of discourages minor changes.
Third, make sure marketting knows that they have to pay for changes. The cost for adding a feature will probably be in delivery time or in other features being cut.
When the whole process works well, things are great. Unfortunately, I've only been employed one place where it really worked well. I'm trying to get it to work with my current company, but it's an uphill battle. I asked a marketting type one time, "Is this feature a requirement or merely a wish?" He asked what's the difference. I had to explain that the schedule was already going to be tight and had no room for "optional" components. If it's a requirement it'll be there. Otherwise it won't!
So when does Sealand attack its neighbor, intending to lose so they can get foreign aid?
And...? None of these things are evidence of crime (other than possibly thoughtcrime). A bunch of friends and I like to get together once a year out in the middle of nowhere to blow things up. Most years we have a large supply of hydrogen, liquid oxygen, and various explosives. We've made bowling ball cannons, huge magnesium bonfires, and blown up a toilet (specially trucked out to the middle of nowhere for the purpose) with metallic sodium.
And why? 'Cause it's fun. And 400 pounds of burning thermite is a beautiful thing.
It really annoys me when the mere possession of dangerous stuff is prima facie evidence of wrong-doing. Sure, if the guy's being investigated for blowing up a bank, possessing explosives is a good piece of evidence against him. But unless and until he's accused of some specific act of violence I'm not going to treat possession of explosives as evidence of being any nuttier than my friends and I are.
Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds is a wonderful album. I don't know if the under-10s would appreciate it, though. Maybe play it around the house as background music and let it subliminally seap into their little brains...
I also highly recommend getting the 1938 Mercury Theatre Of The Air Radio Broadcast. Give 'em a little history behind the show, about how some people believed it was an actual news report. Then, afterwards, expose how it was all just a big coverup of the real invasion!
Ahh, the ever-popular patch pumpkin approach. Actually having the software physically stored on the token is a novel innovation, though. Have you thought of patenting it? (Sadly, you probably could...)
If I were in the original poster's shoes, I'd write a batch file that'd just make a lockfile on the same share where the program or data is located. Check for the lock; if it's not there lock the file and run the software. If it is there, pop up a warning. The lockfile should contain a user (or machine) name and a timestamp so you know who currently has the module locked. That way you can beat them up when they lock the file and go on vacation for a week. :-)
(Of course, the proper answer is to dump the buggy software. But I've worked in enough small offices to know that proper isn't always feasible...)
Back in my college days I caught the Elvish bug and learned to write the Tengwar. My handwriting is atrocious and my printed "t" is nearly indistinguishable from a "+" sign. Since "t" (time) was a variable in so many equations, I started substituting a Tengwar glyph that looks a lot like "t". Worked great for about a year, until I started to encounter equations with the lowercase Greek "tau" -- which looked nearly identical to the Tengwar "t" glyph I was using! I ended up reversing the two, writing Tengwar for "t" and a block "t" for the much less common "tau". I explained the reversal in a symbol key on the front of all my papers. Must have driven the TAs nuts! Didn't seem to affect my grades, though.
It is, but only because they're not giving incentives to the retained customers. The extra profit comes from the existing customers paying full rate (and probably on an older, more expensive plan) whereas the new customers get XX months or YY minutes discounted. Give the existing customers a discount and they're no longer a profit center.
Which is why phone providers are so vehemently opposed to number portability. The current pricing structures try to get as many new customers as possible, and try to wring as much money as possible from the existing customers. The only incentive there is for people to continue with one provider is that they'd have to get a new number if they switched. Enter number portability and you get to take your number with you to any provider. Now there's absolutely no reason not to jump to a new provider for the incentives every year or two.
Of course, any provider with a sensible pricing policy has nothing to fear. Call me when you find one...
My favorite was a programmer implementing a really obnoxious feature...
I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee. Your company pays for you to go to a trade show and you drop your card in someone's fishbowl, winning a DVD player/PDA/Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend/whatever. I've never known a company that tried to take that away from the employee. Ditto for this sort of thing. The company doesn't need the PDA, else they would have gone out and bought it (unless they have *SERIOUS* cash-flow problems). It's just plain good for morale to let the employees keep the extras.
Correct on #1 (Illinois is an 'at-will' state, which pretty much means an employer can fire you for anything not explicitly forbidden by anti-discrimination laws), incorrect on #2. I'd had glowing annual reviews and had been largely responsible for a product that made the company $2M in sales the year it was released. Not only did my boss come to my defense, but the VP of engineering and pretty much the entire engineering department were all fighting for me. None of that mattered. I'd "harrassed" someone, and I was out. Besides, there was a big engineering layoff a month or two before. They could have easily canned me then if they'd wanted to.
But your #2 reason ("They must have wanted me gone anyway.") is the first thing that everyone thinks when I tell them the story. A couple interviews didn't get past the question, "So, why did you leave your last job?" They heard I got fired for something ludicrous and assumed the company was looking for an excuse to get rid of me. If they bothered to check my references they'd have learned that I was well regarded by my boss, the VP, and the rest of the department. This kind of thing makes it really hard to get a new job, especially in the current economy. (This all took place in spring 2002.)
Of course, it all worked out for the best. I've got a job at a new startup doing some exciting cutting-edge stuff. I'm actually eager to go to work in the morning!