This. My movie/music tastes are pretty strange at times, and I am genuinely trying to buy some obscure movies or albums. Problem is, they can't be found anywhere any more. Some have been released by Iron Curtain state owned companies (communist era stuff from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, URSS), some were released by now-bankrupt companies, etc. Digital copies are the only chance, and now with less and less large torrent sites around, the chances of actually watching that obscure movie or listening to that obscure album are slimmer. That's too bad, because people will be more and more limited to mainstream crap that sucks most of the time.
I have developed this method of appearing to be helpful and trying to resolve the thing over the phone but invariably reaching the "I don't know about that" conclusion, and pointing them to a repairshop. After a few such occurrences they stopped bothering me. It also helps that all my relatives live at least 100 miles away and I don't own a car so they don't expect me to travel to fix whatever they broke.
How dare you stand against this beautiful buzz-trend??? (that was sarcasm, by the way) Yeah, I whole-heartily agree. It's some sort of "we heard of this Swahili language, therefore we're smart, therefore you should trust us" thing. Project Sky isn't good, we need project Uwingu because it sounds mysterious, sci-fi-ish and generally makes people say "Oh, shiny!".
I am not worried about erasing/hiding/formatting or anything. When I leave current company, I just shutdown the laptop and hand it over, because I have encryption on it and only I know the password. They will HAVE to delete partitions and reformat anyway. Encrypt the damn thing, it's actually good business practice if you have company data on it.
In my case I'd disagree. The main reason why I don't use Linux as a main OS is unavailability of my favorite games, some of them being bought through Steam (Skyrim and Audiosurf pop to mind). If Valve makes them available for Linux (and if World of Tanks would work under Linux), then I'd gradually switch (first by using dual-boot, then by dropping Windows altogether).
In my case it's not cowardice. Hundreds of people left the company in my 5+ years here. Hundreds in a location with a total of cca 2000 employees. That amounts to something like 30% turnover in 5 years. Many of them did provide exit interviews and a good chunk were honest. The biggest complaints were salary discrepancies (older employees were getting less than new hires, at a maximum difference of over 100% so they left the company) and difficulties in optimizing processes and workflows (which leads to frustration). Nothing changed. NOTHING over 5 years, based on hundreds of feedbacks. I know how many people were providing information in exit interviews because I had to build reports on it. Guess what, nobody looked with interest at those reports either. It was just "for tracking purposes". I'd venture to guess that every now and then, some VP up the chain requests those reports and matches them against some thresholds. If turnover goes above X% per year, then something is done, at least in theory. So far, I guess the threshold hasn't been met. AFter all, 5% per year average must be very good , right? RIGHT? Wrong. You have to account for local culture as well, and sorry to say, some VP from the US has no clue how Romanian culture is built, especially considering that most employees here are young (average age is 29!) and they are very unlikely to change jobs as long as they consider salary is enough. Most of them are at first job and are scared by change (after all, it's the only work environment they knew). In this regard, 5% per year is a LOT. But that VP has no clue, and he fails to take the above into consideration. He first looks at turnover percentage and if that's low enough, he looks no further. Who cares that 80% of respondents said they were turned away by salary versus career discrepancies? Hence the general uselessness of exit interviews. As far as I'm concerned, I responded to ONE exit interview, which was probably tossed away in an obscure DB table, never to be accessed again. I'm not going to have my time wasted doing something I don't believe in anymore. Sorry.
Bullshit. My Youtube videos, comments and activity reflect the same mindset that my Slashdot posts do. All my online activity is similarly shaped, for that matter. This means a very small amount of trolling (I only tend to troll very stupid people and that very rarely). However, there are reasons for my real name to be left aside. For example, I am pretty sure that my current employer might see my World of Tanks interest to be not in line with the business. It's easy to get the wrong impression about someone, or to have a right impression skewed by some of his activities. It's human nature. If your boss is a metal hardcore fan and checks Youtube for your name, sees you are an Eminem fan, he might be pushed into liking you less or even hating you out of simple subjectivity. A Hummer car afficionado might loathe your eco-friendliness; a vegan could detest your affiliation to an Youtube Grill Club. The possibilities are endless and cover gaming, music, TV shows, even pets. Why should one increase risks of being disliked by someone with more power just by displaying their true names, on Youtube, no less? If benefits greatly outbalance risks, then I'm all for it, but I am yet to be convinced there are any benefits.
In Bucharest, I already have 100mbps Internet (optic fiber) and 70 TV channels for less than 20 bucks. I could get phone as well for 5 dollars more but I am not interested. Bonus: free 3G USB dongle with unlimited data transfer. Beat this, Riga!
I'd replace "dumb" with "careless". Being careless has repercussions in pretty much all areas, and I really don't think that carelessness is something you turn on and off. Writing on Slashdot, for example, doesn't entitle people to be careless, not any more than when writing their own CV or an important speech. I would honestly prefer to correct someone's written entry rather than point it out, but if I can't do the former, I sometimes do the latter, especially when that entry is riddled with mistakes. I could live with finding a hair in my food, but when there's a whole tuft sprinkled around, I would protest.
Since we're sliding towards off-topic: proper, correct, clear communication holds value everywhere. Spelling errors (yes, even typos, it's not like somebody's holding a gun to your head to write as fast as possible) only distract from the matters at hand.
Nope, I haven't. I am having financial difficulties, with my son having surgery after surgery and blood-sucking doctors being more than kin to suck me dry so I haven't looked at gardgetry in a while. But I just took a look at its specifications on GSM Arena and it looks frigging awesome. However, in my country, it still has a prohibitive price: 500 EUR / 609 USD. The OS can be upgraded to 4.0.4 so I'll just wait until price halves or something... But thanks for the information, much appreciated!
The 5" Dell Streak was probably the best hardware piece I wished to own. Sadly, the software part was disastrous. I still think a 5" screen smartphone-tablet bridge device would be perfect in terms of covering both smartphone and tablet functions. Pair a Bluetooth headset with the device and all of a sudden size is no longer that important. What I mean is I would pick a 5" screen device any day instead of carrying both a smartphone AND a tablet. So yeah, supersized smartphones are bad if they are only considered smartphones. A small tablet with phone functions would be preferable.
It's the third major hack in two days. Summer break boosts hacking? My knee-jerk reaction was that there's a new, unknown exploit out there but from the summary I see there's a "known exploit". At least I don't have an account there and now I am sure I never will...
Slashdot Mirror
This.
My movie/music tastes are pretty strange at times, and I am genuinely trying to buy some obscure movies or albums. Problem is, they can't be found anywhere any more. Some have been released by Iron Curtain state owned companies (communist era stuff from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, URSS), some were released by now-bankrupt companies, etc. Digital copies are the only chance, and now with less and less large torrent sites around, the chances of actually watching that obscure movie or listening to that obscure album are slimmer. That's too bad, because people will be more and more limited to mainstream crap that sucks most of the time.
I have developed this method of appearing to be helpful and trying to resolve the thing over the phone but invariably reaching the "I don't know about that" conclusion, and pointing them to a repairshop. After a few such occurrences they stopped bothering me. It also helps that all my relatives live at least 100 miles away and I don't own a car so they don't expect me to travel to fix whatever they broke.
How dare you stand against this beautiful buzz-trend???
(that was sarcasm, by the way)
Yeah, I whole-heartily agree. It's some sort of "we heard of this Swahili language, therefore we're smart, therefore you should trust us" thing. Project Sky isn't good, we need project Uwingu because it sounds mysterious, sci-fi-ish and generally makes people say "Oh, shiny!".
I am not worried about erasing/hiding/formatting or anything. When I leave current company, I just shutdown the laptop and hand it over, because I have encryption on it and only I know the password. They will HAVE to delete partitions and reformat anyway.
Encrypt the damn thing, it's actually good business practice if you have company data on it.
In my case I'd disagree. The main reason why I don't use Linux as a main OS is unavailability of my favorite games, some of them being bought through Steam (Skyrim and Audiosurf pop to mind). If Valve makes them available for Linux (and if World of Tanks would work under Linux), then I'd gradually switch (first by using dual-boot, then by dropping Windows altogether).
In my case it's not cowardice. Hundreds of people left the company in my 5+ years here. Hundreds in a location with a total of cca 2000 employees. That amounts to something like 30% turnover in 5 years. Many of them did provide exit interviews and a good chunk were honest. The biggest complaints were salary discrepancies (older employees were getting less than new hires, at a maximum difference of over 100% so they left the company) and difficulties in optimizing processes and workflows (which leads to frustration). Nothing changed. NOTHING over 5 years, based on hundreds of feedbacks. I know how many people were providing information in exit interviews because I had to build reports on it. Guess what, nobody looked with interest at those reports either. It was just "for tracking purposes".
I'd venture to guess that every now and then, some VP up the chain requests those reports and matches them against some thresholds. If turnover goes above X% per year, then something is done, at least in theory. So far, I guess the threshold hasn't been met. AFter all, 5% per year average must be very good , right? RIGHT?
Wrong. You have to account for local culture as well, and sorry to say, some VP from the US has no clue how Romanian culture is built, especially considering that most employees here are young (average age is 29!) and they are very unlikely to change jobs as long as they consider salary is enough. Most of them are at first job and are scared by change (after all, it's the only work environment they knew). In this regard, 5% per year is a LOT.
But that VP has no clue, and he fails to take the above into consideration. He first looks at turnover percentage and if that's low enough, he looks no further. Who cares that 80% of respondents said they were turned away by salary versus career discrepancies? Hence the general uselessness of exit interviews.
As far as I'm concerned, I responded to ONE exit interview, which was probably tossed away in an obscure DB table, never to be accessed again. I'm not going to have my time wasted doing something I don't believe in anymore. Sorry.
Bullshit. My Youtube videos, comments and activity reflect the same mindset that my Slashdot posts do. All my online activity is similarly shaped, for that matter. This means a very small amount of trolling (I only tend to troll very stupid people and that very rarely). However, there are reasons for my real name to be left aside. For example, I am pretty sure that my current employer might see my World of Tanks interest to be not in line with the business. It's easy to get the wrong impression about someone, or to have a right impression skewed by some of his activities. It's human nature.
If your boss is a metal hardcore fan and checks Youtube for your name, sees you are an Eminem fan, he might be pushed into liking you less or even hating you out of simple subjectivity. A Hummer car afficionado might loathe your eco-friendliness; a vegan could detest your affiliation to an Youtube Grill Club. The possibilities are endless and cover gaming, music, TV shows, even pets. Why should one increase risks of being disliked by someone with more power just by displaying their true names, on Youtube, no less?
If benefits greatly outbalance risks, then I'm all for it, but I am yet to be convinced there are any benefits.
Still doesn't beat the offer I use, if you look at the free 3G option. The 3G dongle works in all major cities.
I agree, you also shouldn't expect the same prices in Bucharest and Frankfurt for laptops, MP3 players, TV sets... oh wait...
In Bucharest, I already have 100mbps Internet (optic fiber) and 70 TV channels for less than 20 bucks. I could get phone as well for 5 dollars more but I am not interested. Bonus: free 3G USB dongle with unlimited data transfer.
Beat this, Riga!
You just wait two years :) But yeah, my bad, somehow I read 1994.
...and that happened 18 years ago. Once.
Not saying it wasn't nice, simply... those were the times.
Amen, brother. It's not that 50 cents that I get, but the gesture itself that would rise the guy on a long-lasting mental pedestal.
I'd replace "dumb" with "careless". Being careless has repercussions in pretty much all areas, and I really don't think that carelessness is something you turn on and off. Writing on Slashdot, for example, doesn't entitle people to be careless, not any more than when writing their own CV or an important speech.
I would honestly prefer to correct someone's written entry rather than point it out, but if I can't do the former, I sometimes do the latter, especially when that entry is riddled with mistakes. I could live with finding a hair in my food, but when there's a whole tuft sprinkled around, I would protest.
Since we're sliding towards off-topic: proper, correct, clear communication holds value everywhere. Spelling errors (yes, even typos, it's not like somebody's holding a gun to your head to write as fast as possible) only distract from the matters at hand.
Nope, I haven't. I am having financial difficulties, with my son having surgery after surgery and blood-sucking doctors being more than kin to suck me dry so I haven't looked at gardgetry in a while. But I just took a look at its specifications on GSM Arena and it looks frigging awesome. However, in my country, it still has a prohibitive price: 500 EUR / 609 USD. The OS can be upgraded to 4.0.4 so I'll just wait until price halves or something...
But thanks for the information, much appreciated!
The 5" Dell Streak was probably the best hardware piece I wished to own. Sadly, the software part was disastrous. I still think a 5" screen smartphone-tablet bridge device would be perfect in terms of covering both smartphone and tablet functions. Pair a Bluetooth headset with the device and all of a sudden size is no longer that important.
What I mean is I would pick a 5" screen device any day instead of carrying both a smartphone AND a tablet.
So yeah, supersized smartphones are bad if they are only considered smartphones. A small tablet with phone functions would be preferable.
Better yet, Rambo-style clothing.
Dear God, I just watched that movie a few days ago. You're absolutely right on.
...And that's why Google was tried and found guilty. AND they agreed to pay the fine. Because it was NOT their fault.
Have you even read TFA?
It's the third major hack in two days. Summer break boosts hacking?
My knee-jerk reaction was that there's a new, unknown exploit out there but from the summary I see there's a "known exploit".
At least I don't have an account there and now I am sure I never will...
Then I would never post anything...
I should then quit smoking doobies prior to traveling. Bummer.
I was expecting people to extract the essence of my analogy, not take it ad literam.
My post wasn't aimed at Google specifically but rather all companies who mess up like this intentionally.