I think you missed what I was getting at... that the time zones are more often than not, "off by one" while in standard time during the winter months. I am agreeing that we should stop messing with the clocks, and just pin them to DST. Since we spend 8 months out of the year in DST and 4 in ST, it is already almost there. The net result could very well be a national shift of time zones "to the left".
What you are suggesting is that during the winter months, people change office hours to start earlier, to counteract the meddling with the clocks. How is that better than my solution of not meddling?
Did you read my post? Work is starting at 8 and it's *still* too dark at the end of the day during the four months of EST... I've noticed this problem in other time zones as well (JST, AST). I am guessing that the pre-alarm clock "up with the sun" mindset is why the time zones are the way they are, but if you poll people with a simple question "do you prefer sunlight before work or after" the answer is a resounding after.
During EST, my upstate NY city has hardly any sunlight after 4:30 PM. As a result, it seems the local businesses are all on a 8-4:30 work schedule. A few weeks ago I overslept and was amazed at how freely traffic flowed when trying to get to work at 9.
And, we *still* want it to be EDT year round. I don't care if it's completely dark on the drive in to work, but driving home in the dark is depressing (it's dark because "the day is already over" versus "the day hasn't begun yet").
It does make the situation worse; by adding sources it drives down the price of the weapons, allowing the cartels to to be better armed for less money.
In sortof agreement with what you said: this seems to be a simple case of jury nullficiation, but in the opposite direction/. seems to desire. People here like to advocate it as a way of getting someone who was arrested under an unjust law out of trouble. But the truth is, far more often it is used in a matter that results in convicting those who exhibit scummy behavior, regardless of the evidence.
This is a very good point, replying to hopefully make it more visible.
If he wanted a hip, trendy city Seattle would have worked nicely, while not as cheap as Portland it's still a better bang for the real estate $ than SF... hell, any city would be better, even NYC (outside Manhattan)...
The cost is because it is "on an airplane" meaning it needs to be certified by FAA and other alphabet soup agencies around the world. And forget about firmware updates...
You can use downforeveryoneorjustme.com, though it will use its own DNS and routing so it will still require you to figure out which of those is the problem.
The side effect of the rule is perpetuating no longer correct information. For example: a wikipedia entry states that a building is slated to be demolished, but the demolition hasn't begun, since that is what the last cited source has. However, looking out my window, I can see they have finally started demolishing it. Even if I provide a picture of the demolition, I cannot update the article and be within the rules, until the local paper is bored enough to run a story about it (which may never happen).
They once added an extra 19% discount to my bill. Remarkably, after about four bills, they fixed the error without me having to call them.
Ah well, it was nice while it lasted... and at least they never asked for the money back. That "billing errors in your favor" are honored was enough to keep me as a customer...
Since they are essentially a "New York Company" they tended to get a lot of state contracts. Because of this, it would be a big mistake for IBM to lay off too many employees within the state. Right now there are IBM consultants working in many state agencies, babysitting mainframes. Consultants are pretty much free money for IBM; if there were suddenly a huge pool of IBM trained individuals entering the local job market, it'd be easy to replace the expensive consultants with cheaper ex-IBM employees (via cheaper consulting firms, or direct hire) of comparable skill.
No, the solution is to invalidate all the exclusivity agreements and allow anyone with a sound business plan to get a permit to run their own fiber/coax/copper/whatever (including municipal governments). The reason the market isn't sorting itself out is *because* of regulation.
The flaw in password lockout schemes that lack a timeout is that anyone can lock out anyone's account. I can imagine someone hammering every member of "Domain Admins", "Helpdesk Staff", etc with three fake attempts, and by the time anyone has realized it, it will be difficult to even find someone who can unlock the accounts.
It's possible to take this too far though. Some work accounts I have require a 30 day minimum before you are allowed to change the password, to prevent people from rotating through them at password change time. So, if you suspect your password is compromised (either by accidentally typing it in the username field or a focus-stealing chat window, or noticing a security camera pointed right at your keyboard at a coffee shop somewhere), not only are you not able to change it, but whoever has it knows you can't change it for at least a little while...
He told one of my co-workers that if the root password was lost, he'd need to boot with a rescue disk and do some trickery with/etc/shadow
While it is a strange thing to say, what is incorrect about it? If: 1. you've lost the root password 2. sudo is not configured (disappointingly common) 3. single user mode is configured to require entering the root password
The fastest way to regain root access is to blank it in/etc/shadow. A boot disk is one way to accomplish this. Others would be mounting the root partition on another server (in virtual environments) or using the backup software to restore a shadow file with a blank or known root password.
The comments section of the beta is absolutely terrible, horribly unusable. The way it is now, the day beta's comment section is the only option, would be the last day I come here. I cannot begin to think of how it could be fixed without a complete rewrite or a kluge that puts classic's comment section in its stead. The two biggest problems: 1. The comment boxes NEED to span the full width of the page. 2. Every little feature in the classic comment boxes (UID #, moderation breakdown, parent post link, etc) MUST be retained. 3. Changing view thresholds needs to be easy, persistent, and actually work.
That having been said, I actually don't mind the beta's main page. As it is right now, it is at least usable and visually appealing. Helpful improvements: 1. Some more customization (font sizes and maybe an option for the green and white bar for the headlines). 2. If they want to keep the giant picture next to each story, the picture should be directly related to the thing being discussed. A picture next to a story about a fire at Iron Mountain should show the actual fire at iron mountain. If no picture on that level is available, stick with the small generic graphics.
You love to put words in peoples mouths. I never said Japanese businessmen were wonderful, I said it was not in their culture and cultural pressure would prevent abuses like this from going on for very long. Example: A company tied their timecard system such that you had to smile for a camera in order to clock in (and a note would be sent to the supervisor if the smile wasn't good enough). The press got wind of it and they quickly shitcanned that idea. A similar situation would occur with abuse of this technology. Might I also inform you that Japan is a country that has unions, and while patronage is down now (because they are currently unnecessary), should companies start abusing their workers you can bet they will return in force.
You make so many assumptions in your posts, including ones about me, that it seems you are only talking to hear yourself speak. I will make one about you: you have not yet graduated college and have never left your continent of origin. You have no concept of people from different cultures having different values and that they would view and use the same tools differently. Continuing to argue with you would be pointless because you aren't even dimly aware of this basic fact of society, and seem to have no interest in exploring it. Your "humans are humans" approach is flawed because humans have created society to suppress the basic urge to take and exploit. In the west we lean towards laws and regulations, in the east they lean towards social pressure. For crying out loud you are lumping a culture where CEOs will kill themselves for tanking a company, with one where CEOs walk away with golden parachutes!
For the record, I am absolutely NOT a surveillance nut who espouses "if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to hide". I once had that ignorant attitude in college, and I grew out of it shortly afterward. Hopefully once you finish college your ignorant attitudes will change as well.
At what point in any of my posts did I say the corporate culture was better? I was stating it is different, and in the specific context of the culture and technology discussed here, I pointed out how a device capable of tracking communication patterns would be helpful in fixing the deficiencies. In my original post I provided other examples of culturally dependent technology.
Your posts however have been a long list of reasons why the technology is bad, but they are founded in the assumption that the employer is out to screw the employee. That isn't the case in Japan, just like it wasn't the case in the US from the 50s-80s. Your reasoning also seems to be founded in the assumption that the problems it is attempting to address are not important. I suggested preventing suicide as a counter to that. How is my arguing that "this device could help prevent suicide" translate into me stating that suicide is a good thing? The fact is whenever people fail hard enough at *anything* in Japan (education, work, love, family, or reputation) suicide is seen by many as a respectable out. It is not unique to work, and they are trying different things but reversing over a millenia of tradition is difficult.
You still need to fill out the forms to prove that you do not earn 6 figures and therefore should not be taxed. Your bank and employer still need to provide information to the U.S. government that they may not want to disclose (and thus it is easier for them to say "you can't bank here" or "you can't work here"). This continues *even after renouncing your citizenship*. The forms are both more complex than the domestic version, *and* you're in a country where 99.9% of tax preparers have no experience with them.
This creates the insanity where a U.S. law is causing citizens of the US who work in foreign countries to have greater difficulty than citizens of foreign countries working in the US have.
?? Where did I say anything pro-Japanese business practices?? In any case I will spell it out for you: the purpose of this technology has NOTHING TO DO WITH LACK OF TRUST. And while a safe westerner assumption *would* be abuse of such technology, it is far less likely to occur in Japan due to general cultural differences. You know how some cultures find it normal to stone a woman for adultery and we think it's crazy? A Japanese employer treating his employees like prisoners is equally as crazy.
The business model / culture is *very* relevant. One of the problems Japan has in business is actually communication: they are afraid to embarass people through direct confrontation (it is actually considered impolite to do so), a tool like this can help a management team identify communication issues where the subtle hints of "actually that's a terrible idea" are getting missed. There is also another beneficial use; there is a suicide problem there, and this could be used to help find suicidal employees and refer them to psychologists before it is too late.
As for potential abuse, Japanese are by and large more responsible than many other cultures, pretty much across the board. It really is unlikely to be abused there. Other technology people enjoy in Japan that wouldn't work elsewhere: -Public toilets with toilet seat warmers (because men can both lift the seat and aim) -laundromats with washing machines that provide the soap and also dry the clothes (because people don't put stupid things in washing machines) -Vending machines everywhere, even in public streets and alleyways (because no one is going to try and break them to steal goods / cash) -High speed escalators (because less able or clumsy people know their own limitations) -Trains that run almost perfectly on time (because no one holds train doors for the ass who shouted "hold the door"... or rather, no one would even be arrogant enough to make such a request in the first place)
Slashdot Mirror
I think you missed what I was getting at... that the time zones are more often than not, "off by one" while in standard time during the winter months. I am agreeing that we should stop messing with the clocks, and just pin them to DST. Since we spend 8 months out of the year in DST and 4 in ST, it is already almost there. The net result could very well be a national shift of time zones "to the left".
What you are suggesting is that during the winter months, people change office hours to start earlier, to counteract the meddling with the clocks. How is that better than my solution of not meddling?
Did you read my post? Work is starting at 8 and it's *still* too dark at the end of the day during the four months of EST... I've noticed this problem in other time zones as well (JST, AST). I am guessing that the pre-alarm clock "up with the sun" mindset is why the time zones are the way they are, but if you poll people with a simple question "do you prefer sunlight before work or after" the answer is a resounding after.
During EST, my upstate NY city has hardly any sunlight after 4:30 PM. As a result, it seems the local businesses are all on a 8-4:30 work schedule. A few weeks ago I overslept and was amazed at how freely traffic flowed when trying to get to work at 9.
And, we *still* want it to be EDT year round. I don't care if it's completely dark on the drive in to work, but driving home in the dark is depressing (it's dark because "the day is already over" versus "the day hasn't begun yet").
It does make the situation worse; by adding sources it drives down the price of the weapons, allowing the cartels to to be better armed for less money.
And to pre-empt any response that says "flying is not a right", you can't take a bus to Hawaii and the U.S. Territories...
In sortof agreement with what you said: this seems to be a simple case of jury nullficiation, but in the opposite direction /. seems to desire. People here like to advocate it as a way of getting someone who was arrested under an unjust law out of trouble. But the truth is, far more often it is used in a matter that results in convicting those who exhibit scummy behavior, regardless of the evidence.
More, a drunk passenger is safer than a sober driver. Pity the intercity buses in the US disallow consumption of alcohol...
This is a very good point, replying to hopefully make it more visible.
If he wanted a hip, trendy city Seattle would have worked nicely, while not as cheap as Portland it's still a better bang for the real estate $ than SF... hell, any city would be better, even NYC (outside Manhattan)...
The cost is because it is "on an airplane" meaning it needs to be certified by FAA and other alphabet soup agencies around the world. And forget about firmware updates...
You can use downforeveryoneorjustme.com, though it will use its own DNS and routing so it will still require you to figure out which of those is the problem.
The side effect of the rule is perpetuating no longer correct information. For example: a wikipedia entry states that a building is slated to be demolished, but the demolition hasn't begun, since that is what the last cited source has. However, looking out my window, I can see they have finally started demolishing it. Even if I provide a picture of the demolition, I cannot update the article and be within the rules, until the local paper is bored enough to run a story about it (which may never happen).
They once added an extra 19% discount to my bill. Remarkably, after about four bills, they fixed the error without me having to call them.
Ah well, it was nice while it lasted... and at least they never asked for the money back. That "billing errors in your favor" are honored was enough to keep me as a customer...
Since they are essentially a "New York Company" they tended to get a lot of state contracts. Because of this, it would be a big mistake for IBM to lay off too many employees within the state. Right now there are IBM consultants working in many state agencies, babysitting mainframes. Consultants are pretty much free money for IBM; if there were suddenly a huge pool of IBM trained individuals entering the local job market, it'd be easy to replace the expensive consultants with cheaper ex-IBM employees (via cheaper consulting firms, or direct hire) of comparable skill.
Bonuses are *not* taxed as capital gains; bonuses get handled the same way as overtime or other "supplemental wages". Here is one source.
No, the solution is to invalidate all the exclusivity agreements and allow anyone with a sound business plan to get a permit to run their own fiber/coax/copper/whatever (including municipal governments). The reason the market isn't sorting itself out is *because* of regulation.
The flaw in password lockout schemes that lack a timeout is that anyone can lock out anyone's account. I can imagine someone hammering every member of "Domain Admins", "Helpdesk Staff", etc with three fake attempts, and by the time anyone has realized it, it will be difficult to even find someone who can unlock the accounts.
It's possible to take this too far though. Some work accounts I have require a 30 day minimum before you are allowed to change the password, to prevent people from rotating through them at password change time. So, if you suspect your password is compromised (either by accidentally typing it in the username field or a focus-stealing chat window, or noticing a security camera pointed right at your keyboard at a coffee shop somewhere), not only are you not able to change it, but whoever has it knows you can't change it for at least a little while...
True, but that only works in environments where the bootloader is not configured to require a password to edit the kernel parameters...
He told one of my co-workers that if the root password was lost, he'd need to boot with a rescue disk and do some trickery with /etc/shadow
While it is a strange thing to say, what is incorrect about it? If:
1. you've lost the root password
2. sudo is not configured (disappointingly common)
3. single user mode is configured to require entering the root password
The fastest way to regain root access is to blank it in /etc/shadow. A boot disk is one way to accomplish this. Others would be mounting the root partition on another server (in virtual environments) or using the backup software to restore a shadow file with a blank or known root password.
The comments section of the beta is absolutely terrible, horribly unusable. The way it is now, the day beta's comment section is the only option, would be the last day I come here. I cannot begin to think of how it could be fixed without a complete rewrite or a kluge that puts classic's comment section in its stead. The two biggest problems:
1. The comment boxes NEED to span the full width of the page.
2. Every little feature in the classic comment boxes (UID #, moderation breakdown, parent post link, etc) MUST be retained.
3. Changing view thresholds needs to be easy, persistent, and actually work.
That having been said, I actually don't mind the beta's main page. As it is right now, it is at least usable and visually appealing. Helpful improvements:
1. Some more customization (font sizes and maybe an option for the green and white bar for the headlines).
2. If they want to keep the giant picture next to each story, the picture should be directly related to the thing being discussed. A picture next to a story about a fire at Iron Mountain should show the actual fire at iron mountain. If no picture on that level is available, stick with the small generic graphics.
You love to put words in peoples mouths. I never said Japanese businessmen were wonderful, I said it was not in their culture and cultural pressure would prevent abuses like this from going on for very long. Example: A company tied their timecard system such that you had to smile for a camera in order to clock in (and a note would be sent to the supervisor if the smile wasn't good enough). The press got wind of it and they quickly shitcanned that idea. A similar situation would occur with abuse of this technology. Might I also inform you that Japan is a country that has unions, and while patronage is down now (because they are currently unnecessary), should companies start abusing their workers you can bet they will return in force.
You make so many assumptions in your posts, including ones about me, that it seems you are only talking to hear yourself speak. I will make one about you: you have not yet graduated college and have never left your continent of origin. You have no concept of people from different cultures having different values and that they would view and use the same tools differently. Continuing to argue with you would be pointless because you aren't even dimly aware of this basic fact of society, and seem to have no interest in exploring it. Your "humans are humans" approach is flawed because humans have created society to suppress the basic urge to take and exploit. In the west we lean towards laws and regulations, in the east they lean towards social pressure. For crying out loud you are lumping a culture where CEOs will kill themselves for tanking a company, with one where CEOs walk away with golden parachutes!
For the record, I am absolutely NOT a surveillance nut who espouses "if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to hide". I once had that ignorant attitude in college, and I grew out of it shortly afterward. Hopefully once you finish college your ignorant attitudes will change as well.
At what point in any of my posts did I say the corporate culture was better? I was stating it is different, and in the specific context of the culture and technology discussed here, I pointed out how a device capable of tracking communication patterns would be helpful in fixing the deficiencies. In my original post I provided other examples of culturally dependent technology.
Your posts however have been a long list of reasons why the technology is bad, but they are founded in the assumption that the employer is out to screw the employee. That isn't the case in Japan, just like it wasn't the case in the US from the 50s-80s. Your reasoning also seems to be founded in the assumption that the problems it is attempting to address are not important. I suggested preventing suicide as a counter to that. How is my arguing that "this device could help prevent suicide" translate into me stating that suicide is a good thing? The fact is whenever people fail hard enough at *anything* in Japan (education, work, love, family, or reputation) suicide is seen by many as a respectable out. It is not unique to work, and they are trying different things but reversing over a millenia of tradition is difficult.
You still need to fill out the forms to prove that you do not earn 6 figures and therefore should not be taxed. Your bank and employer still need to provide information to the U.S. government that they may not want to disclose (and thus it is easier for them to say "you can't bank here" or "you can't work here"). This continues *even after renouncing your citizenship*. The forms are both more complex than the domestic version, *and* you're in a country where 99.9% of tax preparers have no experience with them.
This creates the insanity where a U.S. law is causing citizens of the US who work in foreign countries to have greater difficulty than citizens of foreign countries working in the US have.
?? Where did I say anything pro-Japanese business practices?? In any case I will spell it out for you: the purpose of this technology has NOTHING TO DO WITH LACK OF TRUST. And while a safe westerner assumption *would* be abuse of such technology, it is far less likely to occur in Japan due to general cultural differences. You know how some cultures find it normal to stone a woman for adultery and we think it's crazy? A Japanese employer treating his employees like prisoners is equally as crazy.
The business model / culture is *very* relevant. One of the problems Japan has in business is actually communication: they are afraid to embarass people through direct confrontation (it is actually considered impolite to do so), a tool like this can help a management team identify communication issues where the subtle hints of "actually that's a terrible idea" are getting missed. There is also another beneficial use; there is a suicide problem there, and this could be used to help find suicidal employees and refer them to psychologists before it is too late.
As for potential abuse, Japanese are by and large more responsible than many other cultures, pretty much across the board. It really is unlikely to be abused there. Other technology people enjoy in Japan that wouldn't work elsewhere:
-Public toilets with toilet seat warmers (because men can both lift the seat and aim)
-laundromats with washing machines that provide the soap and also dry the clothes (because people don't put stupid things in washing machines)
-Vending machines everywhere, even in public streets and alleyways (because no one is going to try and break them to steal goods / cash)
-High speed escalators (because less able or clumsy people know their own limitations)
-Trains that run almost perfectly on time (because no one holds train doors for the ass who shouted "hold the door"... or rather, no one would even be arrogant enough to make such a request in the first place)