(In case you are wondering, the reason they don't switch to Linux is that some of their data acquisition hardware doesn't have good Linux drivers)
Or mac drivers. Which sometimes drives me crazy. I work in a lab, too, and we have an image processing package which we use to make 3D anaglyphs from Z-series data acquired by a confocal optical microscope. A rep from Apple told me that they have tried to get the programmers to make a Mac OS X version of the package, and the programmers keep refusing, even though it's APPLE asking them to do it. I've requested one several times without success.
Given that there are crossplatform dev tools out there these days (RealBasic, which can be used for serious work as well as introduction to programming for new programmers, is an example -- it can compile for Windows, Mac, and Linux all) there's far less of an excuse for that these days. Write it once, compile it for everybody. And the executables are native -- no virtual machines required, so Java's slowness isn't a problem, for instance.
This application didn't even blink when it found itself running under SP2 one day -- just keeps on going and going.
I say we perforate them anyway, I don't give a crap what kind of excuse they have for not helping to prevent fraud. In the industry they're in there's no excuse.
The story says that these things "are seldom limited to a single geographic area"...
SO WHO THE FUCK ELSE HAD THEIR INFO STOLEN!? WHAT STATES!?
We want to know! NOW! Why are they refusing to disclose vital information? I'd be VERY angry to find out that someone committed identity theft, these people knew of the stolen info, and they didn't tell me.
I'd like to know too! I was expecting something either silver or white... of course, like they say, we're not 100% sure that's the iPhone.
Me, I'm getting a Treo when I buy my new phone (which will be real soon, as my current one is starting to mess up more, and it's old). I don't use my cellphone as a jukebox.
BTW, I usually hate free(x) sigs, as my own sig, as of this posting, indicates, but yours made me laugh. Good work!
And I'm free to disagree however much I want. Furthermore, as far as I can tell from what you've said, you're more willing than I am to work in a place where if you screw up even once, you're fired, bosses don't try to help you out a bit, don't go over with you what you did wrong so you won't (deliberately or accidentally) have/cause problems in the future.
My boss can be a pain to deal with sometimes, but that's just his personality. He actually TALKS to you. And I find there's a hell of a lot more decency in that approach than "Oops, you screwed up! You've never done this before, but we're just going to fire you!" I think this guy may actually be better off since now he has the opportunity to find a better job where he could end up working with bosses who aren't complete hardasses.
That, I think, helps make a boss a better boss and makes me want to keep on doing what I do now. Your mileage, obviously, may (and does?) vary.
How do you know someone doesn't have credibility if you don't give them a chance? Granted, we don't know the entire situation, though I know I have accidentally done things I shouldn't have done. Things I said I wouldn't do, then accidentally id anyway. Haven't we all? I doubt there's anyone in existence who hasn't slipped up in some way. And this guy, once he realized the mistake, FIXED the mistake. It's certainly possible to realize you've goofed and undo what you did.
I'm just saying I think the reaction he got was a bit much for what, as far as I can tell, was an honest mistake. As someone who forgives others for their mistakes as much as possible, I like to see forgiveness in others. There is very little in the world that is not worthy of it. And this isn't one of those things. At least try to work things out with people, eh? (Now, again, maybe it wasn't possible, but then again, given the short length of time involved, I'm kinda doubting that.)
If it's not there to read, it's not disclosed -- I couldn't find anything that I could imagine would be a secret in there.
And there's always this thing called common sense people DO screw up, nobody's perfect... if you fire anyone who screws up, every time, you won't have any workers left, nor will they (or you) learn anything from it.
I've screwed up badly a few times, but never got fired. My boss has sense. We talked about things, found ways to avoid future problems. "Off with his head!" is hardly actually constructive.
Sometimes, people do what they do out of a sense of loyalty to other people. The whistleblowers you cited quite possibly did what they did to keep others from suffering the same abuse they did.
If they had simply quit, would anything have changed for the better? Probably not.
These motivations are frequently what drive airline maintenance whistleblowers to come forward when they feel airlines have skimped on maintenance and are risking the lives of passengers and crew on their jets. (Look up Alaska Airlines and the MD T-tailed jet whose jackscrew failed, causing a crash that killed everyone on board, because AA was too cheap to perform routine maintenance consisting of inspections, regreasings, and replacements. The guy who came forward did it because he didn't want people to die. He did it because he felt an obligation to other people, not his employer. He complained to the world because he HAD to to try to save lives.
In the end, he was fired, nothing was changed, and the crash he'd tried to prevent occurred. He then was able to say 'I told you so' and THEN, only then, were procedures changed to prevent future accidents. But it's too late now for the people who died.
Oh, yes, it would have (I'm sure you're familiar with the Turtle, for instance). I'm just trying to point out that he definitely did have an important role to play. Introducing new ideas to the public and inspiring people to show interest in working on them can be very important to getting new technologies to move along. Submarines would have been around without his work, but then who knows how they would have been different? Less advanced? More? Different uses? Different designs?
"Spend that money publishing novelists, or hosting an art gallery, or giving schools better learning materials, you know, something USEFUL."
It's useful to them, even if it's not useful to you. Or they wouldn't do it. If they feel there's a benefit to donating some support to a given cause, then it's useful to them in some way. It's their money or time to donate as they please. If you don't think it's a worthy notion, personally, don't support it -- but someone supporting something you don't think is worthy doesn't mean they should be bashed for it.
But yes, for the idea of fan-supported series of any kind (books, tv, movies, etc) to take off, there are a lot of questions that will need answering. Whether that happens with this series or another, I don't know. But it will be interesting to see what does happen.
While all of those are true, the idea that the general concepts (space travel, especially to the moon, and submarines powered by something many people would not understand) were indeed far ahead of their time, and Verne is widely known (among historians and other similarly involved disciplines) for having introduced the ideas to the public long before it was practical to utilize them in reality.
A lot of people who worked on submarines or the space program would probably say they were inspired by reading about these things as children or young adults... and I would bet that a fair number of them either read Verne directly or read stories derived from his works.
Oh, I don't think you did! I was amused more than anything. But I agree that it was rather disturbing to see so many people who think it's not OK to do anything for yourself and that you HAVE to (or so it seems) donate all your money to "charitable causes!" Doesn't do much recognition of the fact that different people have differing opinions of what contributes a 'cause worthy of support'. I haven't donated to the Red Cross (although I do believe in giving blood), but I have donated to a local raptor (bird of prey) sanctuary that does education work and rehab/release. (I admit to some oversaturation of money-begging; seems every single site out there is shoving an ad at you pushing donations; I tend to react badly to being oversaturated with an ad for a given product/service/whatever and actively avoid buying it if the ad annoyance level grows too high.)
But seriously, it all comes down to what people think is worth donating to. Like I've said elsewhere, nobody's a moron for donating to something they feel is worthy. They already do more than others just by the simple act of getting up and doing something about something being killed.
That said, when I watch TV I watch various sci-fi, or loads of miscellaneous documentaries. There's pretty good stuff out there. And yes, I do watch Enterprise -- and it's gotten far better with the start of this season than it ever was, but people keep bashing it as if we were still in that time-travel arc, which is the part that sucked.
And apparently, you expect enough people to "donate" to the cause of getting you free music instead of donating that same money and effort to other causes that you feel they should donate to (in other words, causes YOU think they should donate THEIR time and money to).
Why aren't you expecting them to support (cause X) instead of your music habit? Go buy your own iPod, or donate to something, with your own money! But as long as you're trying to tell people what to do with THEIR money in a way that benefits YOU, your message kind of gets lost in that sig of yours.
I know you're kidding... I do wish to point out, anyway, that if there seems to be a sizable number of individuals willing to help keep a program (TV, radio, etc) on the air, then there must be people who desire to watch/listen to that program.
And for godssakes, yes, it did suck, but the crap that was universally hated disappeared at the end of the last season. Yeesh. Have you ever LOOKED at it recently? I have, and while I hated the time travel crap, I think it's gotten much better and worthy of watching again.
It's a scam to have a commercial venture and donate some of your proceeds to a cause you feel is worthy? Well gee, then quick, we gotta do something about all those shareware authors who from time to time donate their registration fees to charities of their choice!
If you donate to one of the zillions of websites that are holding their hand out lately for money for disasters (which I grow tired of; I get enough ads demanding I buy this or that; now I'm getting ads demanding donations!? I could stand it at first but now that every time I turn around someone is panhandling for the Red Cross or whatever, it's getting awfully irritating) without reading their terms and descriptions of what they'll do with your donation, then why do you get mad when they do what they say they will and not what you think they will?
If you don't like what a collector plans to do with the donations it gets, DON'T DONATE. It's simple as that. You're not being scammed just because somebody's allowing you to donate to the cause of the week.
Slashdot Mirror
(In case you are wondering, the reason they don't switch to Linux is that some of their data acquisition hardware doesn't have good Linux drivers)
Or mac drivers. Which sometimes drives me crazy. I work in a lab, too, and we have an image processing package which we use to make 3D anaglyphs from Z-series data acquired by a confocal optical microscope. A rep from Apple told me that they have tried to get the programmers to make a Mac OS X version of the package, and the programmers keep refusing, even though it's APPLE asking them to do it. I've requested one several times without success.
Given that there are crossplatform dev tools out there these days (RealBasic, which can be used for serious work as well as introduction to programming for new programmers, is an example -- it can compile for Windows, Mac, and Linux all) there's far less of an excuse for that these days. Write it once, compile it for everybody. And the executables are native -- no virtual machines required, so Java's slowness isn't a problem, for instance.
This application didn't even blink when it found itself running under SP2 one day -- just keeps on going and going.
Your sense of what's "in the history books" is pretty short ;) (notice the datestamp).
I say we perforate them anyway, I don't give a crap what kind of excuse they have for not helping to prevent fraud. In the industry they're in there's no excuse.
[Cue up the mob scene from Beauty and the Beast]
That is not an excuse. The fact that you happen to live in another state doesn't mean they have less of an obligation to you.
So I say again, where is the disclosure?
The story says that these things "are seldom limited to a single geographic area" ...
SO WHO THE FUCK ELSE HAD THEIR INFO STOLEN!? WHAT STATES!?
We want to know! NOW! Why are they refusing to disclose vital information? I'd be VERY angry to find out that someone committed identity theft, these people knew of the stolen info, and they didn't tell me.
I'd like to know too! I was expecting something either silver or white... of course, like they say, we're not 100% sure that's the iPhone.
Me, I'm getting a Treo when I buy my new phone (which will be real soon, as my current one is starting to mess up more, and it's old). I don't use my cellphone as a jukebox.
BTW, I usually hate free(x) sigs, as my own sig, as of this posting, indicates, but yours made me laugh. Good work!
... and why doesn't the story reflect that? Motorola reportedly showed off their new iTunes-compatible phone today, too!
The dirt on the Motorola E1060 - Engadget - www.engadget.com
And I'm free to disagree however much I want. Furthermore, as far as I can tell from what you've said, you're more willing than I am to work in a place where if you screw up even once, you're fired, bosses don't try to help you out a bit, don't go over with you what you did wrong so you won't (deliberately or accidentally) have/cause problems in the future.
My boss can be a pain to deal with sometimes, but that's just his personality. He actually TALKS to you. And I find there's a hell of a lot more decency in that approach than "Oops, you screwed up! You've never done this before, but we're just going to fire you!" I think this guy may actually be better off since now he has the opportunity to find a better job where he could end up working with bosses who aren't complete hardasses.
That, I think, helps make a boss a better boss and makes me want to keep on doing what I do now. Your mileage, obviously, may (and does?) vary.
How do you know someone doesn't have credibility if you don't give them a chance? Granted, we don't know the entire situation, though I know I have accidentally done things I shouldn't have done. Things I said I wouldn't do, then accidentally id anyway. Haven't we all? I doubt there's anyone in existence who hasn't slipped up in some way. And this guy, once he realized the mistake, FIXED the mistake. It's certainly possible to realize you've goofed and undo what you did.
I'm just saying I think the reaction he got was a bit much for what, as far as I can tell, was an honest mistake. As someone who forgives others for their mistakes as much as possible, I like to see forgiveness in others. There is very little in the world that is not worthy of it. And this isn't one of those things. At least try to work things out with people, eh? (Now, again, maybe it wasn't possible, but then again, given the short length of time involved, I'm kinda doubting that.)
If it's not there to read, it's not disclosed -- I couldn't find anything that I could imagine would be a secret in there.
... if you fire anyone who screws up, every time, you won't have any workers left, nor will they (or you) learn anything from it.
And there's always this thing called common sense people DO screw up, nobody's perfect
I've screwed up badly a few times, but never got fired. My boss has sense. We talked about things, found ways to avoid future problems. "Off with his head!" is hardly actually constructive.
Sometimes, people do what they do out of a sense of loyalty to other people. The whistleblowers you cited quite possibly did what they did to keep others from suffering the same abuse they did.
If they had simply quit, would anything have changed for the better? Probably not.
These motivations are frequently what drive airline maintenance whistleblowers to come forward when they feel airlines have skimped on maintenance and are risking the lives of passengers and crew on their jets. (Look up Alaska Airlines and the MD T-tailed jet whose jackscrew failed, causing a crash that killed everyone on board, because AA was too cheap to perform routine maintenance consisting of inspections, regreasings, and replacements. The guy who came forward did it because he didn't want people to die. He did it because he felt an obligation to other people, not his employer. He complained to the world because he HAD to to try to save lives.
In the end, he was fired, nothing was changed, and the crash he'd tried to prevent occurred. He then was able to say 'I told you so' and THEN, only then, were procedures changed to prevent future accidents. But it's too late now for the people who died.
I didn't even see that. Maybe he edited it. If he did, then where's the problem? He took it down when asked to.
I don't see what's so offensive about it. It sounds like anyone's first-day-on-the-job blog post.
Oh, yes, it would have (I'm sure you're familiar with the Turtle, for instance). I'm just trying to point out that he definitely did have an important role to play. Introducing new ideas to the public and inspiring people to show interest in working on them can be very important to getting new technologies to move along. Submarines would have been around without his work, but then who knows how they would have been different? Less advanced? More? Different uses? Different designs?
I doubt it's really possible to say for sure.
"Spend that money publishing novelists, or hosting an art gallery, or giving schools better learning materials, you know, something USEFUL."
It's useful to them, even if it's not useful to you. Or they wouldn't do it. If they feel there's a benefit to donating some support to a given cause, then it's useful to them in some way. It's their money or time to donate as they please. If you don't think it's a worthy notion, personally, don't support it -- but someone supporting something you don't think is worthy doesn't mean they should be bashed for it.
But yes, for the idea of fan-supported series of any kind (books, tv, movies, etc) to take off, there are a lot of questions that will need answering. Whether that happens with this series or another, I don't know. But it will be interesting to see what does happen.
While all of those are true, the idea that the general concepts (space travel, especially to the moon, and submarines powered by something many people would not understand) were indeed far ahead of their time, and Verne is widely known (among historians and other similarly involved disciplines) for having introduced the ideas to the public long before it was practical to utilize them in reality.
... and I would bet that a fair number of them either read Verne directly or read stories derived from his works.
A lot of people who worked on submarines or the space program would probably say they were inspired by reading about these things as children or young adults
It's the year 2000, and I don't see any flying cars! I was promised flying cars! I don't see any flying cars! Why? WHY!? WHY!!!?!?
Oh, I don't think you did! I was amused more than anything. But I agree that it was rather disturbing to see so many people who think it's not OK to do anything for yourself and that you HAVE to (or so it seems) donate all your money to "charitable causes!" Doesn't do much recognition of the fact that different people have differing opinions of what contributes a 'cause worthy of support'. I haven't donated to the Red Cross (although I do believe in giving blood), but I have donated to a local raptor (bird of prey) sanctuary that does education work and rehab/release. (I admit to some oversaturation of money-begging; seems every single site out there is shoving an ad at you pushing donations; I tend to react badly to being oversaturated with an ad for a given product/service/whatever and actively avoid buying it if the ad annoyance level grows too high.)
Well, it HAS been, so there! :p
And Mac Minis are different how? ;) Just can't resist commenting on that!
Anything that has enough people willing to act to further it (or convince others to do so) is a cause.
Heheheh. Have fun! ;)
But seriously, it all comes down to what people think is worth donating to. Like I've said elsewhere, nobody's a moron for donating to something they feel is worthy. They already do more than others just by the simple act of getting up and doing something about something being killed.
That said, when I watch TV I watch various sci-fi, or loads of miscellaneous documentaries. There's pretty good stuff out there. And yes, I do watch Enterprise -- and it's gotten far better with the start of this season than it ever was, but people keep bashing it as if we were still in that time-travel arc, which is the part that sucked.
And apparently, you expect enough people to "donate" to the cause of getting you free music instead of donating that same money and effort to other causes that you feel they should donate to (in other words, causes YOU think they should donate THEIR time and money to).
Why aren't you expecting them to support (cause X) instead of your music habit? Go buy your own iPod, or donate to something, with your own money! But as long as you're trying to tell people what to do with THEIR money in a way that benefits YOU, your message kind of gets lost in that sig of yours.
I know you're kidding ... I do wish to point out, anyway, that if there seems to be a sizable number of individuals willing to help keep a program (TV, radio, etc) on the air, then there must be people who desire to watch/listen to that program.
And for godssakes, yes, it did suck, but the crap that was universally hated disappeared at the end of the last season. Yeesh. Have you ever LOOKED at it recently? I have, and while I hated the time travel crap, I think it's gotten much better and worthy of watching again.
It's a scam to have a commercial venture and donate some of your proceeds to a cause you feel is worthy? Well gee, then quick, we gotta do something about all those shareware authors who from time to time donate their registration fees to charities of their choice!
If you donate to one of the zillions of websites that are holding their hand out lately for money for disasters (which I grow tired of; I get enough ads demanding I buy this or that; now I'm getting ads demanding donations!? I could stand it at first but now that every time I turn around someone is panhandling for the Red Cross or whatever, it's getting awfully irritating) without reading their terms and descriptions of what they'll do with your donation, then why do you get mad when they do what they say they will and not what you think they will?
If you don't like what a collector plans to do with the donations it gets, DON'T DONATE. It's simple as that. You're not being scammed just because somebody's allowing you to donate to the cause of the week.