I got re-organized under a manager who uses buzzword-bingo techno-speak, and his use of "bandwidth" as a syn for "capacity" drove me bonkers.
Guy was a trainer that had been promoted to manager when his boss got moved around to cover the gap where another manager had left. He's a nice enough guy, and probably was an ok trainer, but sucked ass at being a manager.
I ended up working for him when our training/documentation department (which included web dvlp for our doc sites) got split up. I was pressed into service as a server monkey, installing and "conditioning" the applications they were to train. (I jumped ship as quickly as I could).
Never ceased to amaze me how he could use technical terms in non-technical context and vice versa.
Talking about not having enough available trainer hours to meet a specific request for training:
"We simply don't have the bandwidth right now."
When he first described what he wanted me to do, setting up a clean database, then loading a prefab set of accounts and then make a backup that could be loaded before each class:
"We need to condition the data and then create the 'golden copy' so that we can do a refresh before each delivery."
simple. it's the typical double-speak that doesn't really mean anything, but is remembered by the PHB types because it sounds good and they can quote it at you as an argument against whatever you are proposing (esp, when they've already decided they want to buy something else because the salesman took them out to lunch last week)...
Ok, we're proposing using 'abc' because it is a well-established open source solution for 'xyz' that meets all our key technical and business criteria -- plus, it's free (as in beer) and we have the source code if we want to make changes or fix bugs and there is a strong community that uses and supports it, plus there is always commerical support available if we really want it.
That's all well and good, but 'open source' does not guarantee upward compatibility!
I never meant to imply that it was right -- just that it was not very common but worked in that case.
Thing is, you would probably have to be prepared for a protracted battle and have the funds for legal help. These guys both had families, morgages and car payments -- They signed agreements as terms of employment; the company let them know they would "vigorously pursue enforcement of those agreements" within their legal rights. The company offering to hire these two guys didn't want them bad enough to have to deal with getting lawyers involved, and didn't offer any help.
In the end, these two guys didn't want the new jobs bad enough either to put up a fight. They talked to a lawyer who told them they would probably win in the end, but only after months of screwing around, during which time they would not be employed (they would be ejnoined from showing up to work and the new company could retract the offers and hire someone else if they wanted to).
Our company offered (reportedly, they will neither confirm or deny) a settlement which included a "bonus" if they would tear up their resignations and forget the whole thing.
>Even if you didn't remember one single line, how'll you prove it?
Well, they also typically make you sign a non-compete. They don't have to prove that you are re-using source code you wrote for them, they can go and get a TRO to keep you from working at a company that they can convince a judge is their competition.
In my admittedly limited experience, this doesn't happen that much, tho. Only twice at the company I've worked for the last 10+ years.
Once two guys quit at the same time and the higher-ups found out they were going to work for a company in the same field -- they sent the lawyers out after them and threatened to make their lives miserable if they went to work at this other company (and made sure the hiring company knew about it). Both of them ended up staying here (and got a nice settlement offer, rumor has it).
The other case was a little different. Guy left and said he was changing careers, going into stock brokerage business or something (burned a lot of bridges too when he left -- lots of bad feelings with his boss). He turned up months later at a meeting with a client working for a competing company. Someone must have decided to make an example, because they went after him like he was OJ Simpson trying to join an all-white country club.
Heh, reminds me of the logic in Sunday's "Boondocks" comic
1. John Kerry doesn't like President Bush 2. Radical Islamic terrorists don't like President Bush 3. President Bush fights terrorism 4. therefore, John Kerry supports terrorism
>If the student knows that the URLs cannot be traced back to him, what's his motivation for policing himself?
not getting 20 other guys pissed at him for causing a suspension of access for everyone for 30 days
We discussed having a solution where they would have to log into the proxy server so that their specific access would be tracked back to them . We decided against that in favor of semi-anonymous logging backed up with peer pressure not to screw it up for everyone. The students themselves actually suggested this -- they knew who the single offender was but wouldn't rat him out and wanted to have a system that helped them keep him honest rather than getting him busted.
Yep, this is essentially what I did for my son's private school.
Small private school with a couple PCs in the library and my son came home telling me one of his classmates was browsing porn in front of everyone.
Next day we get a note from the administrator (well, he's founder, principal, finance coordinator, administrator, teacher, janitor and network admin -- really nice guy) saying that they were going to disconnect internet access until they could work out some filtering or something.
I next got a call from him asking if I had any ideas on what options there were and how much it might cost to implement some kind of filtering software. I was hoping for a chance to put in my two cents (the school's founded on very community-oriented, democratic processes and we were often invited to open discussions about school issues), and I had rounded up some different software options and had the pros and cons ready to discuss.
I proposed a logging and reporting system exactly as the parent post describes. We (the teachers, parents _and_ students) decided that we would solve this issue by implementing this system so that students could continue to browse the web free of problematic filtering software, but also with the knowledge that the sites they visited were being logged and their access to the web depended on them exercising good judgement and responsibility.
We did log everything, but we only produced a report of URL's (not who visited them) and started tacking the printed out report to the public notice board. It was amazing how well it worked.
We found a simple solution that did not interfere with web access, did not require invasion of privacy or scrutiny of individual surfing habits, but resulted in the students using good judgement to police themselves.
We had discussed how we would handle the situation if inappropriate sites ever showed up -- would we immediately pull up the logs to determine who was going there and take away their access? We decided instead, when it did eventually happen, that we would tell all the students that someone had visited a porn site, and that if it happened again, we would pull access for everyone for 30 days.
>The hardware belongs to the Bells, they were the ones that invested the time, effort, and money into building the network.
"...some people propose that telephone network assets belong to the public because captive ratepayers funded them under a system of monopoly regulation."
Actually AT&T is claiming that it is they, not the Bells**, who built the telephone network, and that it belongs to the public, not the Bells.
* yeah, I realize this guy argues against this idea, but I couldn't find the article I had read that claimed this (pretty convincingly, I thought), this is the only thing I found after a 10-second googling.
** yes, I realize the Bells were spun off from AT&T in the MFJ, go ahead and point that out anyway if you must.
*grin* some people scream 'camping' anytime you appear to be doing anything they don't like, especially if you keep killing them all the time.
...been a long time since I had the spare time to play Q2, but I recall a time when cable modems first became available in my area and railing became my favorite pastime.
I found a couple servers that had _really_ good response, ran maps I liked and were generally full of good players all the time -- and I had a blast. I didn't rail exclusively, mind -- there were times though when I got in the zone and was getting high-velocity depleted uranium rounds to intersect with other players at a fairly good ratio.
"Camper!!!"
What?
"You fucking suck, you are camping the railgun all the time!"
Eh, no I'm not.
"You are too!!! Everytime I see you you have the railgun and you keep killing me!"
That's not camping.
"Yes it is, faggot!!!"
Whatever, here -- have another round in the gut.
...see, in my opinion, camping is when a player finds a weapon or powerup spawn point and generally hangs in that one location, either ambusing or sniping other players. Usually the "camper" is a player with poor abilities and/or a slow connection that can only get frags by hiding until quad damage or BFG spawns and then waiting to pick it up until someone comes along.
What I would do was run around, picking up armor and health, weapons and ammo, fighting other players along the way. When I had the railgun, plenty of health, armor and ammo I would find a nice open area with other players around and start drilling them like a roofer tacking shingles. When I ran out of ammo or was fragged, I would start the process all over again.
Re:I know it's not tin foil, but....
on
RF-Blocking Wallpaper
·
· Score: 5, Informative
RTFWS:
* FOOTNOTE: The American spelling** of aluminum is used here. If you are searching for more information on aluminum, be aware that the British spell it "aluminium" (and pronounce it accordingly).
** HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: Aluminum was originally named "alumium" by Sir Humphry Davy, who later changed it to "aluminum" (perhaps in an attempt to make it more Latinized since alumen is Latin for alum, the aluminum compound that the name is derived from). The British (and allied English speakers) shortly thereafter changed the name once more, this time to "aluminium" so that it would again match the pattern of most other elements (helium, sodium, etc.), while the North Americans eventually decided to keep the second, slightly more traditional name. I predict that North Americans will adopt the more regular "-ium" spelling by the year 2050, prompting the British to start calling it "alumininium". At that point debate can begin on changing "platinum" to "platinium"
Not nearly as effective or attractive as aluminum.;-P
Aluminum is the perfect medium for constructing an AFDB
Get a five foot sheet of aluminum foil (standard one foot wide Reynolds Wrap brand will do nicely.)
Fold the sheet four times into five equal segments so that you end up with a 1x1 foot square, making sure that you fold over the dull side of the foil leaving the square shiny* on both sides.
Use scissors to cut from one corner of the square to the center, making a straight line.
Bend the foil from one side of the cut under the other, making a slight cone. Again, make sure that the outside of the cone has a shiny side of the foil; this is VERY important.
Place the cone on your head and squash the top and sides to make it fit snugly.
Apply Scotch tape liberally making sure to secure the cut in the foil and any form-fitting creases made in step 5.
Use more tape to secure AFDB to your cranium.
*A Note About The Shiny Side: It can't be stressed enough how important it is to have the shiny side pointing out. This is needed because the shiny side is most reflective to psychotronic radiation, while the dull side can actually, in certain environmental conditions, absorb it. However, as is illustrated in the instructions above, it is also wise to complement this with a layer of foil pointing shiny side in. This will keep your brain waves, which are also reflected by the shiny side, from being picked up by mind-reading equipment. There is a small number of aluminum foil researchers who believe that this may cause an alpha-wave harmonic to build up in the skull resulting in memory loss or pseudo-religious visions, but their findings have never been replicated by the aluminum foil research community at large. Even if their findings are validated, the risk involved is small compared to the potential of mind-intrusion.
The Washington Post is reporting that Comcast, the nation's largest broadband ISP, has started blocking port 25 to reduce Spam. ... one might reasonably assume the nation they are talking about is the US.:-p
I'll have to go back and watch that scene again. Only thing I remeber is that you can kinda see the stick the thing is mounted on and you can imagine the prop guy standing behind the doorway 'operating' the droid to make it appear to float behind Vader.
Good point, I agree. Your sig seems particularly relevant to this discussion.
Nude anime wallpapers -- some would undoubtedly look at some of these images as "child pornography" as they depict what could arguably be minors (under 18?) in nude or semi-nude (or even "suggestive" in some cases) poses.
Who decides where to draw the line? I answer myself -- a committee of elected officials that would probably rather err on the side of banning things that aren't as clear-cut as what most of us would consider child porn, rather than risk having their voting record come up in the next election, screaming "so and so is *soft* on enforcing child pornography laws!!!"
Drawings of (apparent) 13-17&1/2 year old girls washing a cat in the shower isn't what I would consider porn, but is this law ambiguous enough that they could have this blocked?
correct -- I did remember that it was the girl that was bringing up the systems after SLJ's character lost his arm (he went to go power up the generators, if I recall), I just couldn't remember his line until now..
Hold onto your butts...
Thanks for the link to FSN -- I'd never seen it before!
...but, it still seems funny. I remember being the only one to just about fall out of my seat when she said that line and then proceeded to use a graphical file navigation tool. I mean, I guess I didn't really expect to see her open an xterm or something and pronounce that this was 'UNIX', but it seemed pretty silly at the time.
seems like a useless stunt. What's the point of slamming a bunch of these in a sitting for a newspaper article? He could have had one each day for 13 days and had the same information.
Slashdot Mirror
How about it.
I got re-organized under a manager who uses buzzword-bingo techno-speak, and his use of "bandwidth" as a syn for "capacity" drove me bonkers.
Guy was a trainer that had been promoted to manager when his boss got moved around to cover the gap where another manager had left. He's a nice enough guy, and probably was an ok trainer, but sucked ass at being a manager.
I ended up working for him when our training/documentation department (which included web dvlp for our doc sites) got split up. I was pressed into service as a server monkey, installing and "conditioning" the applications they were to train. (I jumped ship as quickly as I could).
Never ceased to amaze me how he could use technical terms in non-technical context and vice versa.
Talking about not having enough available trainer hours to meet a specific request for training:
"We simply don't have the bandwidth right now."
When he first described what he wanted me to do, setting up a clean database, then loading a prefab set of accounts and then make a backup that could be loaded before each class:
"We need to condition the data and then create the 'golden copy' so that we can do a refresh before each delivery."
arrgh!!!
Ok, we're proposing using 'abc' because it is a well-established open source solution for 'xyz' that meets all our key technical and business criteria -- plus, it's free (as in beer) and we have the source code if we want to make changes or fix bugs and there is a strong community that uses and supports it, plus there is always commerical support available if we really want it.
That's all well and good, but 'open source' does not guarantee upward compatibility!
(wtf is he talking about!?)
I never meant to imply that it was right -- just that it was not very common but worked in that case.
Thing is, you would probably have to be prepared for a protracted battle and have the funds for legal help. These guys both had families, morgages and car payments -- They signed agreements as terms of employment; the company let them know they would "vigorously pursue enforcement of those agreements" within their legal rights. The company offering to hire these two guys didn't want them bad enough to have to deal with getting lawyers involved, and didn't offer any help.
In the end, these two guys didn't want the new jobs bad enough either to put up a fight. They talked to a lawyer who told them they would probably win in the end, but only after months of screwing around, during which time they would not be employed (they would be ejnoined from showing up to work and the new company could retract the offers and hire someone else if they wanted to).
Our company offered (reportedly, they will neither confirm or deny) a settlement which included a "bonus" if they would tear up their resignations and forget the whole thing.
Sucks, I know, but that's how it worked out.
>Even if you didn't remember one single line, how'll you prove it?
Well, they also typically make you sign a non-compete. They don't have to prove that you are re-using source code you wrote for them, they can go and get a TRO to keep you from working at a company that they can convince a judge is their competition.
In my admittedly limited experience, this doesn't happen that much, tho. Only twice at the company I've worked for the last 10+ years.
Once two guys quit at the same time and the higher-ups found out they were going to work for a company in the same field -- they sent the lawyers out after them and threatened to make their lives miserable if they went to work at this other company (and made sure the hiring company knew about it). Both of them ended up staying here (and got a nice settlement offer, rumor has it).
The other case was a little different. Guy left and said he was changing careers, going into stock brokerage business or something (burned a lot of bridges too when he left -- lots of bad feelings with his boss). He turned up months later at a meeting with a client working for a competing company. Someone must have decided to make an example, because they went after him like he was OJ Simpson trying to join an all-white country club.
best. post. ever.
thank you
Heh, reminds me of the logic in Sunday's "Boondocks" comic
1. John Kerry doesn't like President Bush
2. Radical Islamic terrorists don't like President Bush
3. President Bush fights terrorism
4. therefore, John Kerry supports terrorism
>If the student knows that the URLs cannot be traced back to him, what's his motivation for policing himself?
not getting 20 other guys pissed at him for causing a suspension of access for everyone for 30 days
We discussed having a solution where they would have to log into the proxy server so that their specific access would be tracked back to them . We decided against that in favor of semi-anonymous logging backed up with peer pressure not to screw it up for everyone. The students themselves actually suggested this -- they knew who the single offender was but wouldn't rat him out and wanted to have a system that helped them keep him honest rather than getting him busted.
Yep, this is essentially what I did for my son's private school.
Small private school with a couple PCs in the library and my son came home telling me one of his classmates was browsing porn in front of everyone.
Next day we get a note from the administrator (well, he's founder, principal, finance coordinator, administrator, teacher, janitor and network admin -- really nice guy) saying that they were going to disconnect internet access until they could work out some filtering or something.
I next got a call from him asking if I had any ideas on what options there were and how much it might cost to implement some kind of filtering software. I was hoping for a chance to put in my two cents (the school's founded on very community-oriented, democratic processes and we were often invited to open discussions about school issues), and I had rounded up some different software options and had the pros and cons ready to discuss.
I proposed a logging and reporting system exactly as the parent post describes. We (the teachers, parents _and_ students) decided that we would solve this issue by implementing this system so that students could continue to browse the web free of problematic filtering software, but also with the knowledge that the sites they visited were being logged and their access to the web depended on them exercising good judgement and responsibility.
We did log everything, but we only produced a report of URL's (not who visited them) and started tacking the printed out report to the public notice board. It was amazing how well it worked.
We found a simple solution that did not interfere with web access, did not require invasion of privacy or scrutiny of individual surfing habits, but resulted in the students using good judgement to police themselves.
We had discussed how we would handle the situation if inappropriate sites ever showed up -- would we immediately pull up the logs to determine who was going there and take away their access? We decided instead, when it did eventually happen, that we would tell all the students that someone had visited a porn site, and that if it happened again, we would pull access for everyone for 30 days.
It has never happened again since.
Scientists renamed Uranus in 2024 in order to finally stop all those stupid jokes...
what did they name it?
Urectum!</farnsworth>
Ruprecht, what did we do when uncle Charles was over?
*Ruprecht proceeds to put on rubber glove and pour honey on it*
No, _after_ that!?
>The hardware belongs to the Bells, they were the ones that invested the time, effort, and money into building the network.
"...some people propose that telephone network assets belong to the public because captive ratepayers funded them under a system of monopoly regulation."
Are U.S. Telecom Networks Public Property?*
Actually AT&T is claiming that it is they, not the Bells**, who built the telephone network, and that it belongs to the public, not the Bells.
* yeah, I realize this guy argues against this idea, but I couldn't find the article I had read that claimed this (pretty convincingly, I thought), this is the only thing I found after a 10-second googling.
** yes, I realize the Bells were spun off from AT&T in the MFJ, go ahead and point that out anyway if you must.
*grin* some people scream 'camping' anytime you appear to be doing anything they don't like, especially if you keep killing them all the time.
...been a long time since I had the spare time to play Q2, but I recall a time when cable modems first became available in my area and railing became my favorite pastime.
...see, in my opinion, camping is when a player finds a weapon or powerup spawn point and generally hangs in that one location, either ambusing or sniping other players. Usually the "camper" is a player with poor abilities and/or a slow connection that can only get frags by hiding until quad damage or BFG spawns and then waiting to pick it up until someone comes along.
I found a couple servers that had _really_ good response, ran maps I liked and were generally full of good players all the time -- and I had a blast. I didn't rail exclusively, mind -- there were times though when I got in the zone and was getting high-velocity depleted uranium rounds to intersect with other players at a fairly good ratio.
"Camper!!!"
What?
"You fucking suck, you are camping the railgun all the time!"
Eh, no I'm not.
"You are too!!! Everytime I see you you have the railgun and you keep killing me!"
That's not camping.
"Yes it is, faggot!!!"
Whatever, here -- have another round in the gut.
What I would do was run around, picking up armor and health, weapons and ammo, fighting other players along the way. When I had the railgun, plenty of health, armor and ammo I would find a nice open area with other players around and start drilling them like a roofer tacking shingles. When I ran out of ammo or was fragged, I would start the process all over again.
that's how people end up going by their middle name.
colleague at work was always known as Blaine, last name Hood. Found out later he was actually R. Blaine Hood. Parents can be cruel.
that's what the cellophane tape is for!
* FOOTNOTE: The American spelling** of aluminum is used here. If you are searching for more information on aluminum, be aware that the British spell it "aluminium" (and pronounce it accordingly).
** HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: Aluminum was originally named "alumium" by Sir Humphry Davy, who later changed it to "aluminum" (perhaps in an attempt to make it more Latinized since alumen is Latin for alum, the aluminum compound that the name is derived from). The British (and allied English speakers) shortly thereafter changed the name once more, this time to "aluminium" so that it would again match the pattern of most other elements (helium, sodium, etc.), while the North Americans eventually decided to keep the second, slightly more traditional name. I predict that North Americans will adopt the more regular "-ium" spelling by the year 2050, prompting the British to start calling it "alumininium". At that point debate can begin on changing "platinum" to "platinium"
;-)
Aluminum is the perfect medium for constructing an AFDB
*A Note About The Shiny Side:
It can't be stressed enough how important it is to have the shiny side pointing out. This is needed because the shiny side is most reflective to psychotronic radiation, while the dull side can actually, in certain environmental conditions, absorb it. However, as is illustrated in the instructions above, it is also wise to complement this with a layer of foil pointing shiny side in. This will keep your brain waves, which are also reflected by the shiny side, from being picked up by mind-reading equipment. There is a small number of aluminum foil researchers who believe that this may cause an alpha-wave harmonic to build up in the skull resulting in memory loss or pseudo-religious visions, but their findings have never been replicated by the aluminum foil research community at large. Even if their findings are validated, the risk involved is small compared to the potential of mind-intrusion.
Well, when quoting a US publication...
... one might reasonably assume the nation they are talking about is the US. :-p
The Washington Post is reporting that Comcast, the nation's largest broadband ISP, has started blocking port 25 to reduce Spam.
I'll have to go back and watch that scene again. Only thing I remeber is that you can kinda see the stick the thing is mounted on and you can imagine the prop guy standing behind the doorway 'operating' the droid to make it appear to float behind Vader.
One can only imagine the other goodies that that thing whips out once the door slams behind Vader:
"...and now, Your Highness, we will discuss the location of your Hidden Rebel Base!"
*shudder*
Good point, I agree. Your sig seems particularly relevant to this discussion.
Nude anime wallpapers -- some would undoubtedly look at some of these images as "child pornography" as they depict what could arguably be minors (under 18?) in nude or semi-nude (or even "suggestive" in some cases) poses.
Who decides where to draw the line? I answer myself -- a committee of elected officials that would probably rather err on the side of banning things that aren't as clear-cut as what most of us would consider child porn, rather than risk having their voting record come up in the next election, screaming "so and so is *soft* on enforcing child pornography laws!!!"
Drawings of (apparent) 13-17&1/2 year old girls washing a cat in the shower isn't what I would consider porn, but is this law ambiguous enough that they could have this blocked?
Ronald Reagan is _not_ dead, he just went home.
Agent K
hold on to your butts...
;-)
there, that better?
correct -- I did remember that it was the girl that was bringing up the systems after SLJ's character lost his arm (he went to go power up the generators, if I recall), I just couldn't remember his line until now..
Hold onto your butts...
Thanks for the link to FSN -- I'd never seen it before!
Hey, it worked for Samuel L Jackson...
this is a UNIX system, I know this!!!
seems like a useless stunt. What's the point of slamming a bunch of these in a sitting for a newspaper article? He could have had one each day for 13 days and had the same information.